Looking back at the movements of the past year I fuzzily remember a term from university physics,“Brownian Motion” - “Brownian Motion is the constant and erratic movement of tiny particles” (not to be confused with “Chris Brownian motion”; which is also erratic but less constant).  Writing this Christmas/New Year’s note, I think I know how the tiny-particle feels.  This has been a year of constant motion; and someone looking on from above would have a hard time finding rhyme or reason in it…but it’s been a lot of fun!

Hello friend!

Any year that starts off in Dublin and ends up in Malta is not a normal year.  2004 was, for us, not a normal year.  Our couches moved from London to Aachen (Germany) and in March we followed them there.  Our skis took a more circular route; joining 20 other friends’ skis and boards in St. Anton Austria in February then heading out west to the familiar territory of Whistler, BC in March, and finally out to Germany.  Rolley bags and heavy plastic boots in tow, we let them lead from behind.  Days after landing in Germany Krista turned around and headed off to Uganda with our friends Kerri and Mark to visit Kerri’s sister Sue; I stayed in Aachen and got acquainted with the new place and new job.  Any year where you start with no intention to visit Denmark but find yourself their twice, is not a normal year; first we headed to Coppenhagen and second we headed off to the “Tønder Festival” to see Great Big Sea playing there (great show, Murray!).   (btw: I’ve always wanted to find a reason to use the letter “ø”; Tønder, Tønder, Tønder, feels nice, I think we should adopt the character).  A year in which you end up in Madrid twice, and once by accident, is not a particularly normal year; the first visit was unintentional due to our discount carrier flying off into the sunset while we were on vacation.  The second visit was all meetings; I much preferred the first visit when we were airline refugees, but such is life.  Having left Briton in the spring, we ended up seeing strangely warped versions of it in both Gibraltar and Malta; suffice it to say “Marks & Spenser” stores seem to have made it everywhere the British Empire did and have outlasted it by several decades – maybe Marks and Spenser secretly is the British Empire, sneaky Brits, who knew?  Again, not normal. 

If you move around enough you eventually start forgetting where you were; I think we were back in North America 4 times this year with Canada and the USA tied at 2 trips a piece.  Prague was fantastic.  Luxemburg is bigger than we thought (Lichtenstein, as yet unvisited, is the tiny one).  Amsterdam is always great.  Christmas was spent in the Black Forest (Hoch Schawartzwald) and then in Konstanz.  In Konstanz we managed to almost accidentally walk into Switzerland; arriving at a random chain-link fence in an apartment building’s parking lot bewildered we asked an old man walking to his car, “Bitte, Ist dass die Schweiz?” (or “Pardon me, would that happen to be Switzerland on the other side of your parking lot there?”).  With a bit of a chuckle he confirmed that that was indeed “die Schweiz.”  Curious and undeterred by the fortifications we walked up a few blocks to find the border crossing we assumed must be somewhere near.  If you want to confuse a Swiss border guard try indeterminacy; when he asked what we were planning on doing after we walked into Switzerland with our knapsacks the best we could proffer was “We’re not sure, I think we’ll walk around a bit and then come back.  We’ll probably be about 10 minutes.”  Our papers were inspected with great care before we were let in for our short wander; the Swiss don’t do ad-hoc very well, probably a result of too many years spent making tiny watches and high precision measuring instruments.  In the event, we walked around a bit and then came back into Germany.  Interestingly, the German border guards were far more laid back than we were.  There you have it, the Swiss are perhaps the only people who can make the Germans look like a bunch of relaxed surfer kids and have them refer to other people as “uptight.”

It’s been a year of friends’ weddings and babies; we wish everyone well!  It’s terrific to see so many of our friends happy.  On our own front Krista and I have decided to “tie the knot” and are planning on getting married in Canada sometime this coming summer.  We’re very excited and planning is afoot.

In other news, I’ve been spending a significant amount of time this past year writing a book.  The book is finished and is in final editing now, so it looks like the whole caper is going to come off.  Coming to quality supermarket markets near you this February should be “Writing Mobile Code: Essential Software Engineering for Mobile Devices” (it’s a story about a boy and a girl).  The books been a lot of effort, but was a great experience nonetheless.  Hopefully a few copies will find heir way off the shelves. (if curious see: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321269314/qid%3D1104917701/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-2919645-9166427) – Remember, it makes a great stocking stuffer, Easter or Presidents Day present.

Tomorrow Krista is flying to NYC on and Friday (Jan 7) I am following in her footsteps.  We’re going to spend a few days visiting my folks in Connecticut.  Following that I am off to Seattle for half a week (Jan 11-15) for work stuff.  – Hopefully there will be a good amount of visiting friends mixed in there as well!

That pretty much wraps it up for the year.  For this coming year we hope to spend significant time working on our German language skills; Krista’s have already become quite good, mine remain “schlecht.”  Hopefully with some more time on my hands now I’ll get to remedy this.  We hope to see you all sometime in the New Year and wish you all the best the year has to offer.

            Best wishes, happy holidays, and hopes for a grand new year!

                                                                        -ivo, and of course, krista too!