to bring readers up to date

[Kragen Sitaker]

My last kragen-journal post was last March.  A lot has happened since
then, some of which I may get around to posting here sooner or later.

Jamie and I split up May 18th last year.  She had a tendency to
develop strong feelings about things and lose track of reality as a
result; eventually this made it impossible for me to be intimate with
her.

On July 7th, I met Beatrice Murch, an amazing, incredible, wonderful
person.

My family has visited me here in San Francisco several times.

I went to see Depeche Mode.

On July 18th, I got fired from KnowNow.  A few days later, I bought my
own laptop, which has been gradually falling apart ever since.

Beatrice and I drove from here down to LA, drove east across
California, Arizona, and New Mexico, and then drove back here, all in
a week.  We were able to visit many people --- most importantly, my
grandparents, who probably won't be able to visit us in California.

My father and stepmother finally got married, after ten years of not
being married.

For five or six weeks, I worked for another startup company, Alpiri.
They never got funded, and eventually laid me off.

My country has been attacked and gone to war.

Since September, I've been doing freelance work, not making nearly as
much money as I was when I was employed.  I haven't spent much time
marketing.  Still, I've been spending a lot of time reading, and it's
nice not to be working at a startup for a change.

On October 11th, Beatrice and I got engaged.  I haven't bought a ring
for her yet.

My roommate Alan gave up looking for a job in Silicon Valley and moved
back to Ohio to live with his parents.

I'm starting to think about selling my house in Dayton.

On December 30th, Beatrice and I moved in together at long last, in
the house she's inhabited for two and a half years.  My cat Slink is
having some difficulty adjusting to the presence of other cats.

On January 8th, I gave up cola, on the grounds that drinking it was
not beneficial, and many healthy things taste much better and are
cheaper.

I've been spending some of my spare time administering the FoRK
mailing list, but oddly enough, never got around to setting these
kragen-* mailing lists back up.

I've gotten to where I actually reliably use a calendar to schedule
things in my life.  I'm still working on using to-do lists.  For
example, as I write this mail, I really *should* be working on some
contract work for a client, work I hoped to get done some days ago.

I've been enjoying reading Mark-Jason Dominus's book as he writes it
and sending some comments; see http://perl.plover.com/book/ for more
info.