The Decade in Review

Last post of 2009 :-) Between Blogger, Wordpress and Tumblr, I totaled 168 posts for the year. All in all, not bad, considering my long slump in the middle of the year.

A couple weeks ago Steve posted a blog entry titled "Decade in Review", which briefly chronicled his (mis)adventures throughout the last 10 years. I thought it was neat, and a much broader spin on the typical "Year in Review", so I thought I'd give it a shot, too... well, assuming I can remember enough details from that far back.

2000: spent New Year's Eve... laying down carpet tiles in my apartment! Still living in Mannheim, Germany. Started serving my "dream job" in the Army, as the Battalion Adjutant (S-1), and loved it.

2001: got out of the Army, did an overseas separation and used up my accumulated leave time to tour Europe the last couple months there before returning stateside. I planned to pick up my car from the Los Angeles port... on 9/11. Had to reschedule. Moved into bedroom in Lien's house. Started first quarter at UCSB that Fall.

2002: Summer school classes at Cal State Long Beach, met most of the "Geeks" (including Allan) when they arrived at UCSB. Moved into bedroom in Margaret's house.

2003: Uncle passed away. So Cal Bioinformatics Summer Institute at Cal State LA followed by internship at USC. Started working as Lead TA at UCSB. Got married. Went to Minneapolis, MN in the dead of winter for our honeymoon, freezing our lungs out and visiting Mall of America. Picked up favorite stuffed Rottweiler, Rocky, there. Moved to brand new studio apartment above Mike and Corrie's house.

2004: Moved to 2-bedroom in Storke FSH. Todd born. Spent the summer working on research instead of doing an internship. Flew to Germany with my grad advisor (his home country), met with his German colleagues and collaborated on research project.

2005: Finally graduated from UCSB. Started working at Amgen. Moved back in with my parents and Todd, and visited Allan on weekends. Started blogging on Grab.com. Mom underwent surgery to remove colon cancer.

2006: Rang in the New Year with a Yahoo chat party involving online friends from ALL over the world-- US, Canada, UK, Australia! Geronimo, the first of the stuffed sea turtles, arrives from Hawaii. Moved to 1-bedroom in West Campus FSH. Todd started preschool and began socializing more.

2007: Lisa visited the US. I turned the big 3-0, and went to California Adventure with the boys to celebrate. Summer family road trip! Flew to Vancouver, stayed for a week, then drove down West Coast, visiting friends and sights along the way: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco. Grandma passed away. Beloved Neon conked out after all the heavy commutes to/from Thousand Oaks. Started blogging on Myspace. Laid off from Amgen. Mom underwent surgery to remove metastasized cancer in lung. Brought Todd to SB full-time. Pistachio, the next sea turtle, joins the family on Christmas.

2008: Started working at Citrix alongside Allan. Todd started preschool here, didn't like it. Moved to 1-bedroom in Willow Springs. Started blogging on Blogger. Todd began kindergarten. Traveled to Indonesia with my parents to visit huge extended family I'd never met before!

2009: Spent the summer singing karaoke online on Myspace. Moved to 2-bedroom in Willow Springs. Had a foray into the real estate world. Started blogging on Wordpress. Discovered how fun it is to travel to Vegas at Christmastime.

So that's the decade in review. I'm probably forgetting an important item here and there-- feel free to refresh my memory if I left something out, so I can edit!

Looks like 2007 was quite the busy year! I am amused that, as many times as I moved physically throughout the decade, I moved blogging services almost as many times ;-) I feel a bit like a flea-- always jumping around. One of these days we'll settle somewhere, for good, and actually stay longer than 2 years in one place ;-P (Funny-- 2 years is my record on one blogging service (Grab) and 2 years is our record for staying in any one place (the 1-bedroom West Campus apartment)). Let's see how 2010 and the next decade shape up!

And how was your decade?