2010 in Review

I felt that writing something like this might bring a little bit of closure. What happened last year? I’m not sure. Let me think about it for a minute…

Family related:

  • Wifey and I have now been married 8 years!
  • Our fourth child, our second adoption and first international adoption (Ethiopia) is finally well underway. Virtually all the paperwork is done and we are waiting for final approval and a date to travel. (Late Spring 2011)
  • Daughter turned 6 and is growing much more independent. So enjoyable. Homeschooling her.
  • Son turned 4 and is in preschool. Loves numbers. An introvert like myself.
  • Baby son turned 1 and is a whirlwind. Woooooshhh!!!

Books Read in 2010 (in chronological order):

  • I See Satan Fall Like Lightening, Rene Girard
  • Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies, David Bently Hart
  • The Chestnut King, N.D. Wilson
  • Poetic Knowledge, James Taylor (partial)
  • No Man is an Island, Thomas Merton (reread)
  • Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, James Alison
  • On Being Liked, James Alison
  • Oedipus Unbound, Rene Girard (partial)
  • The Ball and the Cross, G.K. Chesterton
  • Young Man Luther, Erik Erikson
  • Acedia & Me, Kathleen Norris
  • Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton (partial reread)
  • Battling to the End, Rene Girard
  • The Path to Rome, Hilaire Belloc
  • The Genesis of Desire, Jean-Michel Oughourlian
  • The Art of Biblical Narrative, Robert Alter
  • That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis
  • For Rene Girard, various authors
  • The Oresteia, Aeschylus (audio book)
  • Who Will Deliver Us?, Paul Zahl
  • All Hallows Eve, Charles Williams
  • Between Noon and Three, Robert Capon
  • The Lost History of Christianity, Philip Jenkins
  • The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis

Happenings at work:

  • Wrote lots and lots of code (C#, SQL, Javascript, HTML/CSS), most of it tedious, but some of it clever
  • Didn’t get fired or laid off, despite large cuts to higher ed
  • Finally have a new coworker, after the vacancy was held up by red tape for over 2 years
  • Started working a couple days a month assisting a local coffee roaster
  • Wrote a moderately complex web app for a local non-profit using all new (to me) languages and frameworks (PHP 5.3 + Yii)

Music related:

  • Have now officially forgotten all of my classical guitar rep
  • Started playing guitar or bass regularly at church (simple song leading)
  • Took Jazz Theory again and learned so much
  • Discovered most of U2’s music and why it is so great. Also listened to a lot of Lunasa.