As this very strange year comes to an end, I believe it’s entirely appropriate for me to compose my year-end Top Ten List. I’ve decided to end the year focusing on the positive. Maybe I should break it out into categories, but I’m just too lazy.
- Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring twice in one weekend, with Nick and the gang on Sunday
- Surviving the year despite one or more incidents in which being in a car could have gotten me killed
- Hearing that my brother was hired as a police officer in North Carolina
- Seeing a baseball game in Milwaukee with my brother (and spending time with my mom, and my dad, and the rest of my family, the rest of the year)
- Enjoying the Land of Evermor in Baraboo, Wisconsin with Amber
- Discovering new (to me) music by Built to Spill, Quasi, Death Cab for Cutie, Guided by Voices (um, and, oh yeah, seeing the Minders and Of Montreal in separate shows)
- Visiting Seattle in the summer, and seeing Jonathan (and going to the web design conference, at which I got to meet Zeldman briefly)
- Launching gohlkusmaximus.com
- Trekking out to Ohio for the Sloan shows in Detroit and (especially) Cleveland, and road-tripping with Will
- Enjoying a sunny, lazy day at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in early April with Amber
Barely missed the top 10: my summer road trip to Chicago and Columbus; the end of the state employee strike; finishing the design, though not the production, of the new Minnesota DNR web site. Fairly far off the top 10: shaving off my six-month-experiment full beard (but that was a good thing—believe me).
Happy new year, everyone. See you in 2002.