Thursday, January 04, 2007

The Year in Review: What 2006 has meant in my life

It's quite odd how life can fluctuate, one day is among the most joyous, and a week later among the most painful. Looking back on the past year I can truly say I've seen the best of times and the worst of times in my life thus far, both on a personal level and in my family as a whole. Rather than try to explain it all in narrative form, I decided it's easier for me as writer to simply write out a list of a portion of what 2006 has meant to me:

- Both Grandma Sue and Grandma Ruth went to live in their eternal Home with Jesus
- Grandpa Ray moved into assisted living
- I worked as Assistant Technical Director for Minnehaha Academy's Madrigal Dinner (www.MinnehahaAcademy.net)
- I finished my second year of college
- Harry Putter auditions began in April, shooting began in June, and we wrapped at the end of August (www.harryputtermovie.com)
- I was an executive producer on the local independent film IceBreaker (www.icebreakermovie.com)
- I wrote a new Technology Request System at Minnehaha from scratch with my newfound skills in PHP and MySQL
- Minnehaha embarked on the voyage of creating a new website... committees happened... we're still working on it as of this writing
- I went on my first ever cruise (it was to the Bahamas)
- I started my third year of college
- Two of my best friends left on a jet plane as part of St Olaf's Global semester abroad (and another went to live in Japan for a year)
- We bought a new used car after my old one died on a freeway entrance ramp (it had been in our family for 13 years, and served us well)
- I was hired to create a website for a local jewelry business (www.mayfairjewel.com)
- God called me to buy a guitar and start learning how to play it
- I moved into my own house a mile away from my parents' (it's a long story to type, but a happy one, so feel free to ask me about it)
- My roommate, Ben, convinced me to buy a new MacBook Pro to replace my PowerBook after he did the same
- I made a number of new friends this year, and greatly strengthened some of my friendships from last year
- I have now finished my foreign language requirement at St Olaf, meaning semester 2, starting in 2007, will be the first time in one and a half years that I won't have a Norwegian class
- I have finished my Computer Science major (except for Senior Capstone next year), and semester 2 will be the first time since I started college that I won't have a Computer Science class (though I guess it could be argued that my Theory of Computation class may be a CS course...)


2006 holds both my fondest memories of my life, and also my darkest and saddest. It's an odd combination, really, but I will always remember this year as a shining highlight in my life; the good has far outweighed the bad.

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