2008 seemed to fly by. The cliche that time speeds up as you get older seems painfully true.
The highlight of the year was definitely our trip back to the States. The most memorable day for me was a day we spent in San Francisco where we biked across the Golden Gate Bridge in order have a nice lunch in Sausalito before taking the ferry back to the city. We were joined on our venture by my very good friend Alison, who had driven down from Oregon to spend the day with us. The weather was perfect, the setting was fabulous, and the company couldn't be beat.
Of course, it was also really lovely to spend time with all the family, and even though covering the distance to see everyone was a bit exhausting, the visits were really nice and confirmed our
suspicion that we are really missing out on something special by not seeing our nieces and nephews more often.
The other highlights of the year included:
OBAMA- Yes we did!
Taking Laika to a sheep herding clinic - we discovered she's more wolf than Shepard.
Seeing Rufus Wainwright and Billy Bragg again (though separately).Seeing Paul Weller (first time for me). He was in fantastic voice. Great show.
Seeing Jet in a tiny venue in Brunswick, exactly as you should see a local band.
Visiting Northern Queensland and seeing lots of new birds and mammals, including a platypus. The whole trip was lovely and relaxing.
Best movie I saw in 2008:
"The Visitor" I highly recommend you see it.
"Man on Wire" was also really good.
Favourite new music from 2008:
P.J. Harvey's White Chalk. I f**king love PJ Harvey and this cd is just further proof of her genius.
Personal low lights of the year-
Even though I like my job, this year was unnecessarily stressful, and the past 6 months seem to have been dominated by work. I will work on this, as I'd like to say this won't happen again in 2009. Work and home should be wholly separate (like Church and State).
Having to move from Albert Park after four years of loving the place. Our house was auctioned from under us (not really our house, but...). Luckily Clifton Hill is nice, my commute is much shorter (and greener because I walk or ride my bike everyday) and we now live near the best cinema in Melbourne the Palace Westgarth so will see a lot more movies on the big screen then we have in years past.
Mark and I have big plans for 2009 already. Hopefully will be able to make them happen. We have a trip to Japan scheduled in the next few months, and we're seriously talking about going to Africa this year. We had initially talked about moving back to the USA in 2009, but that now seems highly unlikely as we both have stable employment and the world is about to enter into a possibly serious recession. Maybe 2010. We really liked the Bay area and could definitely be happy living there. In the mean time, if you've been planning a trip to Australia (or another trip) you've still got at least a year to visit us here.
