Well, here we are, the end of the year rundown. I’ve been thinking about the
last year a lot and I think i have to honestly say that the last twelve months
were the best I’ve had so far.

And here are just a few of the highlights:

• By far the highlight of the year is moving in to the Whitney House with
  a great roommate, Keith. Followed shortly thereafter by Chris and Athena moving
  out here. Now there are just a few more souls to move out this way and plans
  will be complete.
• Best travel: This is a toss-up between href="http://gallery.danimal.org/Las_Vegas_Birthday/">Las Vegas for my
  birthday and href="http://gallery.danimal.org/Chris_and_Athenas_Wedding/">Chris and
  Athena’s Wedding on Block Island. Both were great and celebratory. I
  would almost give the edge to the wedding because I saw more friends, but you
  only turn 30 once, and Vegas is a heck of a way to celebrate.
• Best thing I did for myself: get off my butt and start losing
  weight. I moved into my current apartment in March. At that point I weighed
  about 300 pounds. Through a change in my diet I immediately saw a few pounds
  drop off. It then took me until July to get motivated enough to start hitting
  a gym every day. Since then I’ve href="http://danimal.org/health/weight-overall.png">lost over 40 pounds.
  I purposely leveled off my weight in the middle of November to give my body a
  chance to even out. I’ve been able to hold to about the same average with
  a little up and down in there and in January I’ll go back on a more strict
  diet.
  It’s been really encouraging to have my friends, family, and
  coworkers comment on my progress. The best is seeing a person the I hadn’t
  seen in months. Generally their expressions were priceless and in the case
  of a person that hadn’t seen me in years, he didn’t even recognize me.
• Best Party I Helped Throw: href="http://gallery.danimal.org/Halloween_2004/">Halloween at the Whitney
  House. Keith, Cortney, Athena, Chris, and I put on one heck of a great
  party if I do say so my self. Hopefully we can top it next year.
• I got two big tattoos this year: an anchor and a skull and cross bones. I
  haven’t posted on them yet because I was waiting for the skull to heal so
  I can have some pictures of it up. Look for a post very soon about both
  experiences.

I’m sure there is a lot more stuff, but nothing I really feel like writing
down. If you look through the archives here and at the href="http://gallery.danimal.org/">photo gallery you’ll see a glimpse of
what the year was like. Very good overall as I said before.

Now I get to look forward to what will happen in the next year. It’ll be
interesting to see what happens out of this list of my predictions.

• I’ll be losing more weight, this is for sure as long as I keep to working
  out and a good diet.
• I’m probably going to shave off my goatee. A lot of people seem to like
  it but sometimes I just don’t think it fits me.
• More tattoos. As much as my mom doesn’t like them they are a part of me
  and I’m sure I’ll be getting more.
• I’m going to read a lot more books. I’d like to shoot for at least two a
  month.
• My job will get more exciting, but nothing I can talk about yet.

Happy New Year Y’all!

Photo by Dan Weeks

Joe sits by the fire while Polly watches from the couch (she’s in the
reflection, but on some monitors it might be too dark to see clearly. try
this image if so).

No, I didn’t pick the title, it was said by my friend Cortney. Having already
traveled back to Texas in
December and having seen my family I didn’t feel that traveling twice
would be good for me, besides, I don’t have any more vacation days left.
So, my friend Cort invited me to her mom’s house in Marin. Not having
anything else to do and generally having a great time when Cort is involved
I agreed to go.

Saturday morning rolls around and I’m up early because I was going to take
some friends to the airport. Cort calls and tells me that (a) her mom’s flight
is delayed some six hours (yeah, booo) and (b) she has to be in Marin at noon
to pick up her mom’s dog, George, from the kennel. I didn’t mind going along
and hanging out all day so she came over and picked me up at eleven after I
had done the airport drop off. Little did we know what was in store for us
at the kennel.

Now, George is quite an energetic pup and he’s also a show dog, so he’s not
been snipped. It seems George was in the kennel for a refresher course
in behavior. He did really well and even thought the trainers explanations
seemed to go on for ever everything she said made a lot of sense. Why does
George jump up on people? Because you touch him and he wants that. Anyway,
George was a perfect dog on the way home and we let him out in the yard and
he went nuts with the running and the jumping and the leaping through the air
(there were even parts where he looked like he should have been in the Matrix).

Cort and I were a bit hungry so we left George at the house and went in search
of food. Now, it being Christmas everything was closed…except the Rite-Aid.
Not only was this Rite-Aid open, it was stocked to the hilt with alcohol.
Cort and I got some cookies, hot pockets, vodka, kalua, and half-and-half.
Back at the house we made white russians and ate snacks since her mom wouldn’t
be getting home until at least eight that evening. A good time was had and
both of us got a bit drunk much to our amusement.

So, we’re at the house and we’ve pulled the roast out of the freezer that’s
supposed to be for dinner. As anyone that cooks can tell you, a roast will be
barely defrosted in time for dinner if you just pulled it out. Cort and I did
our best in trying to defrost it, but only the outside got that way.
Fortunately Michael had brought a ham back with him from his trip. With
Cort’s mom delayed and dinner not on it’s way we started to prepare some food.
I don’t know why, but I took over what was going on with some suggestions from
Cort’s mom over the phone (like where stuff was).

So, I put the ham in the oven to heat, started some red potatoes to boil, put
some pre-made butternut squash soup on to heat, and then stewed some carrots
in a pan with beef broth and worcestershire sauce. The soup seemed kind of
thin so I left that on to reduce and it came out much better. The carrots and
potatoes cooked for a while and once the carrots were tender and had soaked in
some of the flavors they were done. The ham was hot and ready to bake rolls
only took about 10 minutes once we knew we were ready to eat.

I’m really surprised that I was able to pull enough stuff together to have
a decent Christmas dinner for us. It appeared everyone liked it and nothing
tasted bad (not that it was too complex at all). The title comes from Cort
telling me later that this was going to be a memorable Christmas dinner like
the “year grandmas set the table on fire” this would be the “year dan saved
christmas dinner.” I’m honored I guess. It was a lot of fun and I’d do it
again soon for sure, although I passed on an invitation to go over again today
because I just wanted to chill around the house and goto bed early since I
have to work in the morning (boo hoo me).

It’s been a while since I got new music and based on some recommendations
from my best friend when I was href="http://danimal.org/SenorTaco/2004/12/08#texas-december-2004">in Texas
I picked up a few things used.

• My Chemical Romance
  – Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. This album is one of the best
  I’ve gotten in a long time. I guess you could put it in the emo group, but
  it’s got a bit of spookiness in there too. Just really good stuff and easy to
  listen to.
• H.I.M. — Greatest Love
  Songs, Vol. 666. While I’m not normally into Gothic Rock from Finland
  this one is surprisingly easy to listen to and has two great covers on it:
  “Wicked Game” and “Don’t Fear the Reaper.” I can’t say more other than
  the original songs are good too, but those covers make it worth the cost.
• Hayseed Dixie –
  A Hillbilly Tribute to AC/DC. Yeah, it was used and I couldn’t resist.
  The covers (all of them AC/DC) are great. That’s what I love in covers, when
  they’re totally different from the original but still carry some hint of the
  inspiration.

I also picked up the Nirvana Box Set while in Texas, but I haven’t had a chance
to really give it a listen yet. I’ll post a review of that when I feel
more comfortable with it.

The LucasFilm holiday party last night was fun. Enjoy them all.

LucasFilm Holiday Party 2004

11 December 2004

Texas, December 2004

1-7 December 2004

Pixar — Incredibles Party

9 October 2004

30th Birthday — Las Vegas

21-23 May 2004

Well, I’m back in the bay area after a nice week long trip to Texas. The major
reason I went down there was that my sister, Amanda, was graduating from
UT Austin. Yes, that makes her a
sip now. Anyway, she actually has to finish up classes this week and
start looking for a job. She’s got a few leads so we’ll see where that ends.

Austin was a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of family and some friends. I
had forgotten what a great town Austin is. My friends Jodi and Rich took me
out to dinner after I got to see their great house.

The other part of my trip was getting to stay with my best friend Matt and
his wife Susan. They got a new pup (rescued her from a culvert actually) and
the licking and jumping ensued. She was so adorable. I’ll have pictures up
shortly (there was no time last night).