If a picture is worth a thousand words
there's about 33,000 words worth here. What do you
mean, you want more? You want actual words as well
a visual equivalents?
Ok, but as I've already provided the
equivalent of 30k+ words I will keep it brief. Too
much reading can be bad for your eyes after all.
2007 was good to us in an undramatic
way. We didn't change the world in some headline making
way but we did get through the year having learnt and
grown some and it's hard to ask more than that.
First, lets get the things that didn't
change much out of the way. We still enjoy living in
the same house. We still have two dogs, Baba and Desi,
as surrogate children. Martin still works for Oracle
and commutes in the same car he's had for 12+ years
- you can have my Miata keys when you prise them out
of my cold, dead fingers, or whenever the engine finally
blows; whichever comes sooner. We're still together
- 10 years now!
Highlights of our 2007 included a long,
planned trip to England, We got to explore a changed
London - everything is so groovy, and beautiful and
expensive (have you seen the dollar / pound exchange
rate lately?). We also got to catch up with family
over kitchen tables rather than over the telephone.
As Martin's Dad was celebrating 40 years as a vicar
the whole family was together in the same room for
the first time in a decade - that really was special.
And, no sooner had we got back to the States but Martin's
brother, Richard, called to say he and Consi, his girlfriend
who the whole family had just met, were getting married
next summer. I guess we'll be back in London much sooner
than we anticipated.
We also enjoyed our annual Thanksgiving
road trip to Phoenix to catch up with Patti's family
and to smell the Arizonan desert that Patti loves.
Patti's Mom and Dad were in good form and her brother,
Dennis, and his wife Cammy hosted the feast itself
out at their beautiful home in Apache Junction.
As for other milestones - Martin hit
the big 4-0. Patti and his friends threw him a fabulous
party. Still, he doesn't look a day over 39.
Much of the rest of our free time this
year was spent on photography (hence the 33,000 words
with millions more on our collective hard drives).
This was the year Patti's photography really took off.
Just last year Patti was shying away from DSLRs (bigger,
more professional cameras) - this year she's rarely
without her precious D40 and a couple of lenses. She
has progressed both technically and artistically and
is scaling new challenges in the field with aplomb.
You can see her work both on her
photoblog and her flickr
account. Both Patti and Martin have
taken part in a photographic project to take, and post
a picture a day for a year. It's part photo-journal,
part artistic project, part marathon but it has become
part of our daily rituals to share images we took that
day; you can see Patti's
project365 set here, and Martin's
here. We're met real friends in the
process and learnt so much - we both intend to continue
our picture-a-day projects in some form in 2008 - stay
tuned!
Favorite concert of the year -
the older we get the more impressive a band or personality
has to be to get us to drag our butts out to a venue.
This year Glen
Hansard rules, with the more acoustic Swell
Season gig and the rocking Frames set
at the Great American Music Hall. We both hope their
fan base and success continues to grow and that there's
a Oscar nod or two towards "Once" when
the Academy Awards are announced in 2008. Others included
Luce, Eddie Izzard in a work improgress set and David
Sadaris.
Which leads to Patti's favorite movie
of the year, "Once". Martin is more undecided
with "Bourne Ultimatum", "The Host" and "Gone
Baby Gone" all contenders - Martin is obviously
much more mainstream than Patti.
So that was the year, that was. We wish
all our family and friends a safe, happy, creative,
prosperous and peaceful 2008
Peace - 
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