Holiday Letter 2008

I've received a few holiday letters and thought maybe it was time for me to do my own. I apologize that I'm not a reliable correspondent, but at least this way I can catch people up with the main things going on. Of course snail mail is très passé and I'd probably miss a lot of people, so I'm doing it as a Web page.

As my airline miles card shows, I've done a fair bit of traveling this year (even though less than most of my colleagues).

  • January took me to Raleigh, NC, a state I've never been to. It's a quiet and discreet place. The Farmer's Market and genuine Southern food (which some of my recipes try to replicate but without the background experience) was a treat.
  • I returned to Venice, Italy in February and discovered that stone buildings don't heat up much. It was fun figuring out how to navigate in that twisty turny city. My culinary souvenir was Pasta with Radicchio and Gorgonzola, a specialty of the region.
  • I escaped the usual March travel this year, so my next trip took me to Seattle, WA in June. That was mostly work out in Redmond, but I did get downtown for a BBQ at Cynthia's place. It was great to see Wendy, whose job I took over when she had her son. On the way back I stopped in Toronto for the Pride weekend, and also got to run the Pride and Remembrance Run, a great way to start off the weekend with something a little different.
  • In July I went to Linz, Austria to deliver a keynote address at a conference (which fell flat in spite of all my preparation. Home to Johannes Kepler and the Linzertorte, Linz is a much better organized city than Ottawa in spite of being 1/3 the size. We took a trip into the Austrian Alps to tour through the ice caves and ride a cable car to the top with spendid views straight out of the Sound of Music.
  • August took me to London, England to visit Colin on his 40th birthday, and take a bit of vacation staying with him and Anthony. I had the opportunity to do the London Pride run, a 10k race that was organized by the London chapter of the same run club I'm in in Ottawa. Considering I wasn't particularly trained up for the race, and had had 3 hours of sleep and a hangover, I did all right. I also went to Edinburgh, Scottland for the Fringe Festival (which is on the fringe of but has vastly overtaken the Edinburgh Festival). I went to a comedy string quartet and it was really quite good, proficient musically and funny. In the main festival I saw an English translation of Semtana's opera The Two Widows put on by the Scottish Opera. Unlike my experience in the Konzertgebau a few years ago, here I was disappointed to find the European audience was no better behaved than a North American audience.
  • October took me to Boston for the only time this year. I worked out of the MIT office a couple days but was mainly there for a meeting in the 'burbs. I managed to time this trip to attend the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus 25th Anniversary. It was great to connect with Harvard types but also a reminder that I have a different path than many of them. While there I saw Jake, Ruth, Ken, Carolyn, Lod, David, and Scott, so it was a very packed schedule.
  • October also took me to Mandelieu-La Napoule, France (just beside Cannes) for a massive set of meetings. The meetings went well, but was so busy that I never got a full night sleep, never mind catching up from jetlag. The area is beautiful, and full of private jet airplanes. On Saturday the meeting took place on Île Saint-Honorat, an island with a grand view of the bay and a monastary producing wine and honey.

Nearly all of this travel is in service of work. One of my main projects, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, finally became an official standard on December 11. I've put a little more information about that in a separate entry. I'm also working on Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) 1.0. Though I very much lack the experience needed to create a technology like this, the skills I do have play an important role. It's neat working on these standards and hoping to see real benefits come out of them. The work I do is much more like project management than the creative technical development I would prefer, but at least I contribute to real results.

I value work-life balance highly and try to maintain a plethora of activities that round out my experience. As has been the case for the past few years, running has been a major activity. I've run a few races, including the two Pride runs, a half marathon, and a 10 k. The problems I've had with Plantar Fasciitis from the marathon a few years ago have mostly (though not fully) subsided, thanks in large part to a lot of work at the gym (aided by an expensive personal trainer). With all this, I haven't been swimming this year, though I keep saying I'm going to get back to it.

The physical activity helps to keep me healthy, but I offset it with my culinary hobbies. Though I love cooking of all types, I'm clearly a pastry chef at heart. I took an interest in cake decorating and try to find excuses to practice those skills. This has supplanted the baking of pies, which used to be my specialty. One extension of the cake decorating skill is the gingerbread house. I learned a lot from last year's house, which I'm applying to one to make during this holiday season. I'm not yet one of those people that makes gingerbread houses throughout the year for sale or competition, but I might be heading in that direction! In addition to baking, I also work on candy making, with a focus recently on chocolates. I think this originated with my attempts to create the perfect cherry cordial—I'm much better but still haven't become perfect. I've learned a lot about working with chocolate, and am beginning to spread into other moulded and dipped chocolates.

This year I finally picked up my French Horn again, after 10 years of not playing. I've been a ringer for the Parkdale Orchestra, a community orchestra. It's been great to get back into music and to see my skills gradually return. I notice I concentrate harder on a rehearsal than I ever do at work—too bad music doesn't pay these days. If I can find the time and discipline, I'd love to add a small amount of practice time to my daily routine, I think a modest amount would keep me in decent shape. But I think I need to find something to practice for, such as a woodwind quintet or something.

As you may know, my cat Kofi died about a year ago. I now have a cat Manji, who is much more demanding and greedy than Kofi was. He's also more affectionate, though I still miss my Kofi. Andy and Terry usually take care of him when I travel and call him "the whirlwind".

In spite of all the above activity, I find time to read a fair bit. Airplane travel helps with that of course. Beyond the usual cookbooks—er, candy books—I read a couple books about how the brain processes music, and a few about how food as we know it evolved. Various works of modern literature jumped out at me, and of course I read lots of sci-fi as well. I participate in two book clubs, one that reads mostly GLBT-themed literature and another that reads the year's prize winners—and for the past two sessions was able to get the authors to come speak. That is certainly a neat way to get extra insight into the book, though it makes having a frank discussion impossible. I have been surprised by how differently people sometimes react to the same book, and hearing those perspectives certainly broadens my own understanding of the book.

I don't make much of an effort to "blog" or put much content on this Web site, aside from recipes that I like to record when I've worked them out the way I like them. I also don't do a great job of corresponding, even though I'd like to, because I don't like talking on the phone and I don't usually want to sit and write after a day working on the computer. Still, I hope to do better, and certainly do want to stay in touch. I do enjoy the opportunity to see people when my travels take me to your region of the world, and hope to see many of you in the upcoming year!