I redo this page once a year and it tends to reflect what design stuff I'm into, while still being fairly low tech. This year is box-inside-a-box year which I think looks just fine.

Compared to most years I feel like I have very little to say. It's more of a resting on laurels time. In the past year I have gotten realistically closer to being bi-coastal. I have a job that I have been able to take with me to Vermont, which is where I am writing this from. I have a car and a post office box on both coasts. I no longer work for the Odd Fellows and, connectedly, no longer have much to do with Jack. It's too bad on the one hand but oddly liberating on the other -- both from the job and from Jack.

I woke up one morning to find that I no longer had one person in my life who I considered a best friend and as a result, suddenly felt more comfortable keeping my own counsel on things and making more of my own decisions. This led to even more of my crackpot schemes than ever before. This has been making me happy. I'm not really at a loss for company, though companionship ebbs and flows like any other variable in life.

I've been travelling a lot and have been to San Francisco, Los Angeles, DC, Boston, Austin, Montreal, Burlington and Western MA since this time last year. I feel best when I'm in motion with my backpack and a good book or two. I have a housemate in Seattle, and no housemate in Vermont. I like both situations. Seattle thrills me with its constant goings-on and all the people who are ready and willing to come to a party, or help me move my stuff, or just be game for whatever's up and round the corner. Vermont, by contrast, feels like it may stay the same forever. The things I find on my land are mine to keep. The things I put in my house are there to stay. The neighbors are worth trying to get along with because they may be there forever, too. I don't know what I would do without either one of these places.

My online world is developing a life of its own for better or worse. I've been meeting some good people, dispelling more assumptions about librarians, and trying to use the technology to communicate with the humans, not as an end in itself. I doubt myself sometimes, and this is one of the bigger areas that I question -- is all this technology and all this intermediated communication real? For the moment, I am operating as if the answer is yes.