After some intense traveling, I’m finally back in my usual routine in Santa Barbara. In fact, I’m sitting in my office 100 steps from State Street on a beautiful day as I write this. I’ve been pondering the last year and, what can I say, life is good. I’ve had a tremendous amount of blessings this year – the biggest of which is my daughter, Emma. It is amazing to think that she’s nearly a year old.

Many of you followed our travel adventures around Christmas on Twitter and Facebook. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a stressful time. Fortunately, after the initial shittiness of being stuck in Newark, NJ overnight and having our bags lost for three days, we enjoyed a great stint with family.

For those that are interested, I produced a video of Emma’s first Christmas called “The Five Days of Christmas.” The project had two purposes. First, the event is something we wanted to have to look back on when E gets older. Second, I had just started playing with my new Canon 5D Mark II and I needed to field test it where I’d be allowed to makes mistakes, rather than f’ing up important professional work. I think it came out pretty well considering (a) the lighting conditions were awful most of the time and (b) I have never used a professional still camera in my life before last week.

Anyway, I hope you all have happy new year! I look forward to our weekly chats starting back up in early ’09. We’ll talk soon.