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Life

Looking Back Over 2014

Farewell and good riddance 2014. That could be my comments on the year in its entirety but that is slightly unfair. So, to help me to look back over this year, I downloaded my Twitter archive and reread every tweet I posted in 2014.

January

This tweet took on unimaginable significance given how this year progressed.

I’d been doing WhatTheCast for years with the same crew of guys, but our lives changed. We moved. Changed jobs. Grew. And life changed around us. And so we made the decision to end the show.

February

A simple tweet that just shared the link to my blog post where I discussed grief around the loss of my grandmother. In many ways 2014 was a truly brutal year for me. I lost my grandmother and my father, while Katie lost her grandmother and her aunt.

Kudos to House of Cards for providing one of the most powerful moments of television of 2014.

Reblogged from my Magic Twitter account, because I truly enjoyed visiting Valencia and our venue was spectacular. I did do a fair bit of wonderful travel this year, including Valencia, London, Nice, and more.

March

Of course one of the most stirring international political incidents of the year, we can’t review 2014 without realizing that Putin launched his gambit this year.

teaching

My sister and I have always been fairly close, but this year I feel like we grew closer and definitely utilized social media for communicating more.

This tweet came after I made (and killed) a presentation at work.

April

This year is definitely marked by the fact we’re now homeowners. This is the first tweet I made acknowledging the process and in fact it was the day we put the offer in on the house that we would eventually close and move into.

May

Professionally this year was very much about learning to be a manager. Ed Catmull’s book was my favorite of the year that related directly to business and being a manager.

While this year was marked by loss, it was also marked by new life. I added both a niece and a nephew to the family, and it just so happened the niece was born as I was already flying to Atlanta for work.

This tweet encapsulates my love of Android tweaking and the World Cup. A good capture of the year.

June

How I announced that we had officially closed on the house.

This habit of dad’s was actually brought up by my nephew at his memorial service. It was a very endearing habit of his to click like on every post.

Facial hair is a subtheme of the year, with this shaving mishap and then my Movember beard it proved a diverse facial hair year.

I got very excited for the World Cup and USA’s performance at it.

Evidence my wife loves me very much, when getting cable set up in the new house they had some problems. It so happened the US Men’s team played that evening. She demanded Comcast get us set up and they sent out a cherry picker to fix the cable wiring.

Another tweet which is all the more poignant at the year’s end.

One of the first real big lessons which showed me how much I have to learn about being a homeowner. I couldn’t figure out why the washer was rocking hysterically, it literally damaged the floor it was on. As I learned, it was basically working with the parking brake on.

July

I did a fair bit of disc golfing this year, far from enough though. This comes from the arrival of two friends who moved to Seattle. I’ll have to look to do more in 2015.

From my trip to London, a truly awful selfie. But, I regret nothing.

August

Watched and read a lot of awesome things this year, including classics.

While not a member of family, given his improv background and his general omnipresence for much of my life, his death hit me pretty hard.

The biggest social movement of the decade, if not my life, happened in front of me and online. I am one of the unaffected but it still shocks me to see things like this happen in today’s world, when we’re supposed to be so sophisticated and, well, better than this.

As I mentioned above, this year professionally is about learning to manage as my team at work expanded to 7 in 2014.

The World Cup definitely fanned the already burning flame for my love of soccer, but I had several days like this where the entire day was watching soccer from around the world.

September

Work brought me back into the iOS world with a work iPad.

I bought the tickets back in 2013 and finally I got the opportunity to see Neil live when he came to Seattle in September.

October

Yeah.

Turned 31.

My buddy Drew flew in for my birthday and we went to the Sounders match that weekend.

As I learn to be a photographer here’s four snaps from a camera safari one day with Drew.

November

See, facial hair.

Moving into and customizing the new house continues.

December

The Sounders lost the western conference finals to Los Angeles, who went on to win the MLS Cup.

I could have kept the beard but decided to shave it off for the time being. It might make a return, we’ll see.

Some snaps from Nice, France.

Picked up a bug in France, and came back to the States feeling like crud.

‘Tis the season!

After a bunch of flying, and also headaches on various flights, it feels very awesome to finally get Gold on United. It brings a handful of benefits which are good, such as lounge access, but also picking seats (including extra leg room) at the time of booking.

Adding to the new tech of the year, an Asus Zenwatch!

And there we are, caught up to today, that’s the end of the year via my Tweets.