Hey Everyone, I'm Back

Yes, it's been well over a year now since my last post, and I have to say I feel bad about that. I've got friends and family all over the country and it's hard to keep in touch with everyone. Most of the time we pick up just like we left off, but it's always easier if you have a general idea of what everybody has been up to. This blog was to be my method of keeping everybody up to date with my life, which is simply impractical to do now via phone calls or even email. But, I haven't done a great job with this experiment over the past year.

So what happened? Well, it's been a really busy year. There was a lot - and I mean a lot - to do. I decided that the theme for 2006 had to be "taking irons out of the fire". All non-essential activities (such as posting to this site) had to be curtailed or postponed indefinitely. 2007 will probably have the same irons-out-of-fire theme, but I do hope to restart some of the activities I previously enjoyed.

Here's some of what's been happening with me over the past year - not necessarily in order:

• I finished building and shipping BEA Workshop 9.2 (along with the rest of the Workshop team of course), which given circumstances at work was quite possibly one of the hardest things I've ever done.
• Matt and I took a trip to Creede to go 4 wheeling in the Alpine Loop area. The scenery was stunning.
  
• I designed a house to build on our land in Creede, and construction is currently under way.
• Sunday and I finally got our finances and savings plans in order. This one has been on my todo list for years.
• We almost bought a house in Boulder, but backed out when we realized how much work and investment it was going to require. We loved the location though. It was also good for us to go through the decision making process - it really helped us clarify what we were looking for.
• I built and deployed CBrooksKurtz.com II. Creede had wanted features like comments for years, and he finally got that and a whole lot more.
• Sunday and I took her parents to Hawaii for two weeks for their 40th wedding anniversary. We went to the big island and Maui.
• Sunday, Allison, my mom and I went to New York city to see some Broadway shows and to visit Mary Ellen and Anne.
• Jack and I finally finished rebuilding our upstairs deck in July. This item had been on my todo list since 1999. Now we have a retractable awning and nice Trex deck boards (made in Mississippi, by the way). I highly recommend the Trex stuff - it is expensive but it is very, very nice.
  
• I almost got caught up on email. Yes, the eternal, elusive struggle to clean out the inbox is mostly within reach, if I don't relapse into email deluge again.
• Sunday and I attended another family reunion in Pennsylvania.
  
• ... and probably lots of other stuff I can't remember right now.
  

Anyway, with some of this major backlog cleared I'm hoping I can become a more reliable writer again. I did take the time to jot down lots of things I want to write about, so stay tuned over the next few weeks and months.

My "Aww Yeah" for this entry is the debut of Picasa Web Albums. Finally it will be easy to post pictures directly from Picasa to the web, and then pass them on to you. It wasn't too hard to do this before, but there were enough steps involved that it was a bit of an impediment. I highly recommend this tool. It is vastly superior in my opinion to any alternative, and sure beats emailing pictures to everybody you know. You do have to get a Gmail login to use it, but that's a good thing to do anyway.

I have to throw in one more *SPECIAL* "Aww Yeah" to my brother in law Jess, who passed the bar exam Thursday before last. I'm really happy and relieved for him, and glad that I'll have free legal advice for life now.