I still have a few minutes before 2010 so I thought I’d write a little some­thing while Jasna and I are sit­ting on the couch watch­ing cel­eb­ra­tions on TV with her parents.

Well, first off I think I need to take more pic­tures, the evid­ence for that being that the above is my favour­ite pic­ture I took this year. It’s our fat­test cat, Pin­cho.

Per­son­ally — and I never pass up an oppor­tun­ity to talk about myself — the year sur­pris­ingly turned out really well. I taught my first uni­ver­sity course, Net­work­ing, and had a lot of fun with it and actu­ally won an award for it. I’m actu­ally regret­ting a little bit not apply­ing to lec­ture again, but I sup­pose it would be bet­ter choice to try and gradu­ate if I can. I got to meet Jorge Cham at the West­ern Research Forum (where I also won an award, since this para­graph is devoted to brag­ging). I also star­ted offi­ci­at­ing (Cana­dian) foot­ball this year, which has been a long-​​time dream of mine, though I can’t explain why it never occurred me before to do it. I ended up win­ning Rookie of the Year for that. Of any­thing hap­pen­ing next year I’m def­in­itely most excited about reff­ing again: it’s really a shame you can’t make a career out of it.

The down­side to get­ting on with my thesis is that I have to think about what I’ll do when I’m done. Next to “how are the cats?” prob­ably the most com­mon ques­tion I get is about what I’ll do when I’m done, and the offi­cial answer is that I have no idea. The cur­rent plan is to avoid think­ing about it for as long as pos­sible and pick the most awe­some option when forced to (or the least annoy­ing, for the pess­im­ists). I might have to revise that plan at some time.

If I can avoid talk­ing about myself for a little while, the high­light of the year was def­in­itely going to the Neth­er­lands and espe­cially to Utrecht to see Jasna’s sis­ter Ana and to meet her hus­band, Andre. Regard­less of whether I made him into a Haskell con­vert it was pretty awe­some to meet him and stay with them and help move their furniture.

As seems to be a com­mon trend lately, I feel fant­ast­ic­ally optim­istic about the upcom­ing year, and I expect life to con­tinue get­ting bet­ter. The most import­ant thing in my life, of course, is Jasna, and our rela­tion­ship is bet­ter than ever.

It’ll be a good year and dec­ade to come.