2007 Letter and Pictures
(Scroll down for pictures)
To my friends, both real and imaginary,
I have to admit, after last year's letter, I've been somewhat dreading writing this. It seems the troubles of 2006 channeled some unknown writing ability. Not bad considering I got to skip a year of brooding and wearing black like my artist friends searching for their voice. I didn't even end up in rehab. Anyway, this is an engineer's story, so low expectations please.
Looking back, 2007 was again dominated by life with two little boys. Life with kids feels like a reality TV show, or perhaps since there's a writers strike; it's a really well done marketing campaign to develop future AA members.
This year Halloween wins the award for good ideas that took on a life of their own. Alisa and I kicked off Halloween in
From there we returned to
And to wrap up the holiday, there’s the annual visit from my wife's sister and family with 3 kids. We seem to have settled into a yearly ritual where they visit us for "Halloween with the Heathens" and we reciprocate by visiting them for "Christmas with the Jews”. Normally their 3 kids plus our 2 little ones all under 4 years makes it …. memorable. Well, this year my brother-in-law wins an award from the President of the
Now, I'm still thinking I was set up. How do you respond to that? I mean I'll need to win a Nobel Peace prize to just to drop my kids off for a few days at their house. Good thing I'm not the competitive type. Great job Peter!
http://www.upmc.com/Communications/MediaRelations/NewsReleaseArchives/2007/November/RubinAward.htm
Alisa began the year training to ride the Hill Country Ride for AIDS 50 mile bike ride (canceled due to sick kid). It was followed with successful training for the Capital of TX Triathlon (canceled due to flooding). She did have some success with a personal trainer (fired after 6 weeks for being wacky) and briefly had a nanny (made it all of 4 days with us). So I guess it’s not really a surprise she raided my old college stuff and is starting a Cure/Morrissey phase. Despite those disappointments and being a stay at home mom, she’s recently kicked off a “self improvement” project that started with dying her hair black with streaks of red. Fortunately our look of desperation plus a few extra checks got Nate into preschool early, so things are looking up.
Ethan’s about to turn 4 and continues to be a very active child. Some of our adventures include fishing (quickly followed by crisis when we caught a fish), camping at Ink's Lake (well, sleeping in a Westie outfitted with A/C), and ranching with his friend Rafe (ranching an unexplainable
Nate just turned two. He's a peaceful soul, the quiet type of trouble. . . He does have a weakness for animals. His favorite part of Disney World was watching the birds roaming about with the airport tile mosaic a close second. He does enjoy traveling with his friends. Recently he insisted we take the cat with us shopping. The result was a 2 hour outing to PetSmart while the kiddies "walked” her a bit in between fighting over whose turn it was to hold the leash. Actually, it was more like cat tobogganing with her happily sliding on her back down the newly waxed floors. Note to PETA, the cat was wearing a harness and no animals were harmed (just kids and they heal quickly since they are made of rubber at this age). As for why the cat ran away from home 2 weeks after the adventure and was never seen again. . . I chalk this up to her being a stray to begin with and it was just a 7 year itch. Alisa said coyotes ate her, but that’s just that Cure phase kicking in.
We also had our first ER visit with Nate. Given we have a combined total of 6 little boy years, it's amazing we made it this long. Remember what they say about walking with something in your mouth, well on page 528 of the parent guilt manual it clearly says not to let your kids eat corndogs while dancing on a curb to holiday music on the Trail of Lights. I met them at the ER an hour after the event and Alisa was still in shock. Nate's fine and was more interested in making turkeys out of the ER gloves than worrying about his blood trail.
As for me, I'm starting to have some hobbies again. We've managed to see a fair number of movies. I'm going with Charlie Wilson's War as my favorite since Philip Seymour Hoffman clearly rocks in everything he does. I'm still hooked on dark dramas; Battlestar Galactica, House, Life, Dexter…. Dexter season 2 shows the most promise and while being a serial killer seems reasonable, am I the only one who doesn’t buy the sister and the FBI agent? As for the longest 90 minutes of entertainment 2007, that would be our family outing to the Chipmunk movie. Strangely the kids and in-laws loved it.
On the professional front I spent the first half of the year wrapping up my term as President of the Austin Chapter of the Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO). EO's a great adventure that continues to exceed my expectations. I've also joined the Board of TexChange and have been active in a local angel investment group (CTAN) as well as attending an alphabet soup of events in Austin (ATC, Bootstrap, TiE, RCIC/ETF, ABJ, MIT, RICE Alliance, YPO, Texas Round-up, CCAPC, AEA, Leadership Forum). For continuing education, I’ve finished the first of three years as part of the EO/MIT Entrepreneurial Master's Program where I learned it’s not wise to drink with Aussies.
My other activity is the Design Verification Club (www.dvclub.org). Thanks to all the speakers and volunteers who helped make this happen. We added chapters in
Life at our little startup, Obsidian, is kicking off year 11. We had a great 10 year anniversary party last spring. It was a bit surreal; I remember the early days in my house like it was yesterday. Oddly, not much really changes. I’m still up in the middle of the night typing away with my cats Tcl and Perl on my lap. I guess the only real difference is they don’t let me write code anymore.
My Obsidian partners Rob Gowin and Becky Cavanaugh continue to live in interesting times. Becky is expecting a little boy next year. I hope he's really wild! We have lots of really loud toys that I plan to put new batteries in and pass along;) Rob is also enjoying parenthood mixing tutoring math and driving to soccer games with trips to Fry's and hacking his Eee PC.
I also have a new company, Silicon Elite, with two new partners, Rob Keist and Nathan Sheeley. We've decided to change the rules in the engineering consulting business. … tune in next year for that story… Meanwhile, we're looking for a few gifted engineers to help with the quest.
I hope everyone had a wonderful 2007 and the New Year is starting off on a positive note. I look forward to catching up a the adventure continues.
Eric at Hennenhoefer.org
