9:13 AM, Dec 30, 2004
2004 in Review
It's been a good year for me. I'll start with the bad things, though. My new job(in March) caused me to have to stop taking the bus to work, and as a result, all the exercise I was getting by having to habitually walk a couple miles a day ended, and I started picking up weight. My new year's resolution was to exercise for 200 days of 2004, and I think I may have managed about half that. I tried a number of times to get back into the habit of deliberate exercise, since my lifestyle no longer required it, but none of the attempts ever really caught on. In 2005, I resolve to make exercise a more permanent part of my life.
Another bad thing was that my brother moved out in July, leaving me without an easy roommate. He moved to Chicago to work for a company doing work he loved, only to get laid off with absolutely no warning five months later. It marked the first time I felt just as bad for someone else's misfortune as I would have felt if it had been my problem. In 2005, I resolve to help get my brother a job.
I did an unprecedented amount of travel in 2004, which is a good thing. I got a new job in March, working as a Linux System Administrator, for a government contractor. This accounted for a lot of the travel in question. They sent me to
Pennsylvania,
California,
Idaho,
California again, and
Florida for various business trips. I took quite a few personal trips, as well. I started off the year in
Colorado, attended a wedding in
Wisconsin, visited my sister in
Cleveland, spent the Fourth of July in
Boston, visited some friends in
Portland, turned 26 in
Minnesota, enjoyed Labor Day weekend in
New York, went back to
Peoria for another wedding, and fit in
a smattering of
other trips. Also, I'm sorry if some of those pictures don't work. They'll be back up directly, with the hard work of my friendly neighborhood Matt.
I also began a couple of new sections for this webpage: the
Draught of the Week came in April, the
Lyons Den in June, and the
Bahua Brewing Saga in November. I resolve, in 2005, to keep this site as innovative and original as I can make it, while remaining easy and fun to use.
Living downtown has been fantastic. Whenever I've had visitors, I've tried to impart on them the ease and fun of living in downtown Kansas City, and I have loved watching it grow right in front of me. I resolve in 2005 to get out more in Kansas City, because the more I see of this town, the more I love it.
In August, I got a new roommate and friend in
Josh, and together, even managed to keep our rent from increasing.
It's hard to summarize a year, so I think I'll cut it off there. I think I got all the main points. If 2005 is half as great as 2004 was, I think I'm in for a good year.