All my troubles seemed so far away...

Important events from my past 12 months

2006

September

• Attended my first ACL Festival. Favorite discovery: The Secret Machines.
  

October

• Bought a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. Still developing finger calluses in August 07.
  

November

• Jeff Rountree invites me to see The Decemberists at Stubb's in Austin. I'm hooked!
• Accepted a job at Comcast Interactive Media in Philadelphia
• Traveled to Tokyo to see two U2 concerts (Thanks Janean, Naoji and Junko!)

December

• 11^th: Last day at Dell
• 13^th: First day at Comcast. Philly is dark and cold in December.
• 25^th: James Brown passes away. You may know him as The Godfather of Soul or The Hardest Working Man in Show Business. His last words? "I don't feel so good."

2007

January

• Discovered the joys of communing to work by train. No, really. I enjoy the down time. I'm re-discovering all kinds of music. The Cranberries and Oingo Boingo are two examples.
• Sold the house in Austin in a matter of days. Janean and kids would spend ~15 weeks with family in Utah while I looked for a house in Philly.

February

• Work, work and more work.
• Elder daughter gets a nasty virus and is quite sick for days. She also falls while climbing over a chair, twisting her ankle. The x-ray reveals no break.
• Bought ticket for 2007 Austin City Limits Festival

March

· Bought Come on Feel the Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens while in Utah on a business trip. Excellent album!

· Bought Arcade Fire's Neon Bible. The album's organ and orchestral arrangement is the perfect complement to the dreary cold of the northeast.

· Saw The Decemberists again. Didn't feel the connection this time around.

• Saw Philly locals The Roots at The Tower in Upper Darby. Left early.

(blogger formats March funny)

April

• Family joins me in Philly. We spent our first East Coast weekend in NYC. Kids repeatedly sing "New York I Love You, but you're bringing me down" by LCD Soundsystem. A. asks, "daddy, what does 'bringing me down' mean?"
• 13^th: Moved into our new home
• 14^th: Our first nor'easter. Copious amounts of water seep into the garage and one of our window wells. Thankfully no interior flooding.
• Thinking A's ankle is taking too long to heal, we take her back to the doctor. She is diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, likely contracted during her illness in February. Her doctors tell us she may grow out of it in a few years. She may not, but she's fairing well.

May

• Very busy at work transitioning our analytics infrastructure to Omniture

June

• Summer in Philly ain't so bad, compared to Austin

August

• Complete transition to Philly local status by referring to the beach as "the shore"
• M.I.A. releases her second album. Didn't expect to like it as much as I do.