Holiday Letter 2010

Hello all, I know it’s been a long time since I’ve talked with some of you. I’ve heard from many people over the holiday season and enjoyed reading your holiday letters. Here’s a synopsis of my past year to catch everyone up!

I still work in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Although I still support the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, there is much more I could do and it has taken a back seat to other projects such as Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) and review of accessibility of Web technologies, in particular HTML 5. The work has gradually become more political and less technical, which is not my preferred focus, but it is still valuable work. We just got another 5 years of funding for my position, so I currently expect to be at W3C a while longer.

Work / life balance is very important to me, as even with the best job you’re still doing someone else’s work (unless you own your own business). I think I’ve gone a bit overboard with balancing activities this year. I continue to run and swim, though I’ve been less dedicated to them than in the past and haven’t done any races. I rejoined the Parkdale Orchestra so have a small amount of music back in my life. I took a pottery class, which has been a goal for years, and found I was good at certain aspects and not good at others. Practice makes perfect of course. I’ve been practicing a fair amount at chocolate making (i.e., filled bon-bons, not actual chocolate from beans yet!). It’s become an ever-more serious hobby and is getting to the point that I’ll need to sell my chocolates to support the habit! Of course I still do most of my cooking and baking and have been taking advantage of the growing local food movement, and in particular routinely make bread from locally grown wheat.

This year has been slower for travel than past years, and that’s all been for work. I had an intense trip to Boston than straight to San Diego in March, then in April went to England and hopped around London, Birmingham, and Bristol. In July was a quick trip to Boston, and November to Lyon, France (following a side trip to London). Lyon joins Dublin on the list of cities that I visited for work and didn’t schedule extra time but should have, so it’s on the “must return” list. From that trip I also came back with a taste for Chartreuse and a regional speciality dessert, almond-caramel tart.

I still live in my condo in Ottawa with my cat, Manji. For those who follow the question of romance, there has been no activity this year, not even “notifiable events” as one friend calls them. I’ve thought about moving to a bigger city where there’s a bigger gay community, such as Montreal or London (England), but it hasn’t quite made sense to make those big moves in a relative vacuum. Boston at least would be logical since I work there, but it’s still not appealing to return there. Anyway I still want to get my Canadian citizenship. My citizenship test is scheduled for early January so hopefully I’m nearly through that process!

Although it’s not clear if moving out of Ottawa is in the cards for the near future, I do think I’ll move out of the condo in 2011. It’s time to upgrade to a detached house with a fabulous kitchen, office, and spare bedroom (in that order of priority ☺). This will probably occupy a good chunk of my time and financial resources. It’s looking like a busier travel year for work also, and I have several personal trips scheduled to boot. I hope to see many of you on one of those trips!

Happy Holidays and good New Year to all!