Dan's Thoughts

(not so) Happy New Year!!!
So the year isn't exactly off to a great start, and it didn't end quite so well either. There were some really good things that happened last year, and we are looking forward to some nice things in the year ahead.

To start this year off, my 16yr old daughter had some kind of altercation with her mother that has resulted in the State of NJ taking temporary custody of her. She's now in a shelter and her case workers now have to figure out what to do with her. So that means interviews, visits to the court and other assorted painful details (reliving past events). On the bright side (here's me having hope), this is probably a process she needed to experience in her life. She still needs to learn when to stop fighting, to loose the battle so that she could win the war, so to speak. Keep escalating and it only gets worse, and you certainly don't get what you were fighting for.

Also on the list of not so good way to end/start a year, my wife's uncle passed away last week. We had my wife's mother over for the holidays. Her return trip home was to be via a cousin who happened to be returning home himself from a visit with the uncle and other cousins. So we bundled up the kids to take Grandma over to her ride and have a quick visit with the cousins and the uncle. Upon our arrival he starts up the stairs (his apartment is in the lower part of the cousin's split level home), and at some point we hear a crash -- he fell down the stairs. Not sure how far up he was, could have been 1 step or up to 6. A fast call to 911, much CPR and the fast arrival of police and rescue folks probably didn't really help. They took him away but he didn't make it to the hospital. Would he still be alive if he didn't come up to see us? if we didn't go there in the first place? It's all just very sad.

Josh Neal also passed away very recently. He was at VA Software when I joined the company and left a number of months later. I didn't know him /that/ well -- though what I did know of him tended to include stories of computer parts that met with an untimely demise. Perhaps there's a theme there....

Work wise... I was feeling rather burnt out so I was really looking forward to the time off for the holidays. My wife pointed out that I didn't do any work during the holidays, which was not normal for me. I was hoping that I'd feel better about work after the vacation... so much for that.

Positive things! Yes, there are some. I've had some new wood carving ideas I'm working on that I feel good about, my family is happy and my youngest daughter is doing amazingly well, I'm designing a new Body focused yoga/meditation workshop, my yoga classes are going really well and I've been doing more Thai Yoga.

Funny how my list of good things doesn't include my day job... Well, here's hoping that turns around as well.

So to 2007, RIP -- and for 2008 let's hope that the light at the end of the tunnel isn't a train! Woo... err, uh. Yeah.