Merry Christmas all. I hope that this has been a good year for you. Unfortunately, 2009 has not really been a good year for a lot of people. Professionally, its been pretty good for me. Halo 3: ODST did really well, the Bungie Store is finally back, Reach is well underway, etc. Other events, however, have made this a generally a shitty year. First, my wife gets laid off from Expedia in some mass layoffs they did. This causes us to have to drop down to one car, which was at times irritating. Then we went through a series of Jarrah getting "almost hired" for various jobs, only to find out the company went with an internal person so they didn't have to add new headcount. Then one of our Great Danes becomes very ill, and after a harrowing night in the vet hospital, a few days of recovery, and a huge vet bill, he's okay. Of course, now he has a $150/month injection to keep him from getting sick again.
Things just sucked more after that - my paternal Grandfather died - and while he had been sick for a while, I wasn't able to get back east to the funeral, which really sucked. And then in October, my maternal Grandmother died - at least I was able to go to that funeral.
Finally in November things began looking up. Jarrah got hired at a great company, I got a new car. Jarrah just stabled her new horse that she got as a gift. After a nice end of year vacation, we'll hit 2010 ready for a good year. This will, with a bit of luck, include a new house for me and my family.
Hopefully everyone has a better year than 2009.
