Dave's Den

2007 Recap

Now that 2007 is history I thought I'd post a quick recap. It was mainly a year spent watching the kids growing-up. Gina is almost 7 and has become a voracious reader. She also enjoys swimming and learning about animals and dinosaurs. Zach is almost 5, and his life revolves around cars, trucks and trains. He loves to push our buttons and test our limits, but also has a very sweet side we hope will come to the fore as he gets older.

I listen to a lot of music, mainly on my iPod at work. I signed-up for an eMusic subscription, and have discovered a lot of bands that normally would have fallen off my radar. I've also gotten a lot of good recommendations from Absolute PowerPop and CD Baby. While 2007 wasn't a stellar year for the music I enjoy, a few albums bubbled to the top:

• Fountains of Wayne: Traffic and Weather - Full of catchy hooks and clever lyrics, this is another in a string of great records from FOW.
• Band of Horses: Cease to Begin - Moody, interesting and atmospheric, this one is a real grower.
• Daniel Wylie: The High Cost of Happiness - Mostly acoustic based, but full of hooks and great choruses
• The Red Button: She's About to Cross My Mind - 60's inspired pop songs that stick in your head. Very Beatlesque.
• Steve Bertrand: Pain is a Megaphone - Solid effort from start to finish. Mostly mid-tempo rock ballads, but done in a good way.
• Bruce Springsteen: Magic - Probably the best thing he's done in 20 years. Doesn't approach the lofty heights of this work in the 70's and 80's, but it's a lively rocker that holds up to repeated listenings. I just wish he'd lighten-up with the preaching a bit.
• Rooney: Calling the World - A "big" record, full of loud pop. Lot's of throwback sounds from the 1980's, but with a modern feel.
• Crowded House: Time on Earth - A bit of a disappointment by CH standards, but still better than most of the dreck being spewed out nowadays. Neil Finn is one of the great songwriters of our time.

There were also some musical disappointments in 2007:

• The New Pornographers: Challengers - Their previous effort, Twin Cinema, was a killer collection of rocket-propelled goodness. This one, for the most part, is slow, dull and lifeless in comparison.
• Bleu: A Watched Pot - Bleu is one of my favorite artists. He's had this album in the can for over a year, and it still has not been released because of some legal wrangling. Here's hoping it will see the light of day soon.
• Eagles: Long Road Out of Eden - While musically perfect and precise, this is just a flaccid collection of unmemorable, dull songs. Even if you wanted to buy it, you could only do so at Wal-Mart. Inexcusable.

I also started to get more serous about photography in 2007. In May I bought a Nikon D40x with the 18-200mm VR lens. While far from being a great photographer, I've been learning a lot, especially when it comes to post-processing with Photoshop and Lightroom. I also joined the photo club at work and went on a couple of fall outings with those folks.

I took the kids on a couple of camping trips last summer, and we took a family trip to Walt Disney World in October. The kids are real troopers on the road, and we all had a great time out and about. I'm looking forward to more outings this summer.

My biggest news (no pun intended) of 2007 would probably have to be my weight loss. Between February and August I lost over 80 pounds and have been successfully keeping it off since then. It feels great not carrying all that excess baggage, and it's given me more energy for keeping up with the kids.

I don't know what 2008 will bring, but I hope everybody continues to be safe and healthy. Although trying at times, I love being a dad and watching all the little changes as the kids grow older and more aware of the bigger world around them. I enjoy explaining things and seeing it "click" when they finally get it. I also hope to spur their interest in things that I enjoy, like the outdoors, science and astronomy. Just last week I filled their bedroom ceilings with glow-in-the-dark stars that they really seemed to dig. The next few years should be the golden years of parenting, before I grow "uncool", so I plan to take as much advantage of this window as I can.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
- Frederick Douglass