Andy Gapin

I woke up this morning, on my thirtieth birthday, a milestone birthday, with a set plan for the day. Open my wife’s gifts, treat myself to a Starbucks vanilla latte on the way to work, blow off doing any work in the morning so I could closely watch online coverage of the Boston Marathon instead, get my obligatory birthday burrito for lunch, come home and go for my first run in seven weeks (injury, boo!), eat my favorite dish that my wife cooks, and then relax while forcing one or more of my cats to cuddle with me. I did most of my celebrating for my birthday over the weekend so I didn’t have any *big* plans for the day, just a few little things that I wanted to do.

Up through lunch, everything was going pretty great. I watched the elites run their race and then got my burrito. But just when I was about to finally start to get a little work done for the day to make up for not doing anything all morning, I heard the news. One of the communities that I call my own was senselessly attacked, people were killed and many were injured. My heart immediately sank and, with each bit of information that came out, it continued to sink deeper and deeper. So many things raced through my head. At first, these thoughts were mostly along the lines of not being able to comprehend what is wrong with people.

I thought about the runners and put myself in their shoes. As a marathon runner myself, I know the emotion involved in running a marathon. Every marathon is an accomplishment and there isn’t one that doesn’t earn itself a place as one of the best days of any runner’s life. And, above all other races, the Boston Marathon is the coveted Super Bowl of marathons, a bucket list race for most runners who will work for years to earn their place on that course. It’s THE marathon and many of us will sacrifice our social lives, jobs, and diets just to get there. I think about the runners who had this taken away from them. One of the best days of their lives, forever tainted. Some had the day ruined retroactively after finishing, some didn’t even get to finish. Many runners were in the last 2k of a 42k race, the finish line close enough to taste, and were unable to finish. I can’t even imagine the feeling.

On its own, that’s heavy, but if that were all that happened, life would go on…for every single person. But that wasn’t it. People were killed and many, many others were horribly injured. An eight year old child was among the two that were killed. Eight years old. It’s likely a safe assumption that he/she was there cheering on a parent, or a sibling, or an aunt, or an uncle. I’m not going to try to put this into words because I don’t think I can.

Photo after photo circulated of blood soaked sidewalks and people with mangled bodies. Limbs were immediately lost and others had to be amputated on the scene or at the hospital. As a runner, the idea of having either of my legs injured is terrifying, as a person, I can’t quite put it into words.

At some point, my wife reminded me that we could have been there. Last October, I made a serious attempt to qualify at the Chicago Marathon. I failed, but not by a lot. Had I succeeded, I would have been on that course today and my wife would have been at the finish line cheering. Given the time of the explosions, I would have likely been well done, by possibly an hour even, but after some races, I like to head over to the spectator areas and cheer on the other runners. If I can still stand, that is. We would have been very close to the explosion.

After all this, it’s easy feel that humanity is inherently awful and we don’t deserve to exist. It takes a conscious effort for me to not feel that way sometimes, but the person (or people) who did this doesn’t represent any real measurable percentage of humanity. There are many, many more people who represent the polar opposite of this person and I think we all need to remember that. And the running community is an amazing example of that. We are the kind of people who will sacrifice our own finish times just to help another runner who falls just feet from the finish line. We encourage and support each other. When we run races, no one on the course is an opponent, they’re all teammates. We care about each other and are compassionate. Humanity as a whole is like us, not the person who did this. I have to remind myself of this often, but I believe it. I really do.

Running will never be quite the same after today. Neither will marathons. Or my birthday. Yes, I will always remember my 30th birthday as the day the running community and our flagship event were horribly attacked. But we will go on. At this point, I’m more scared of people blindly blaming other groups and spreading hate. I fear those that will try to gain a political advantage or try to make us live in fear.

Well, despite the fact that I’ve mostly abandoned this site, I guess I can still do a quick little 2012 recap! I’m not going to get into length about much, but here goes…

Things started off pretty monumentally, the wife and I took our third trip to Disney! This time, we tackled the Goofy Challenge, a half marathon and a full marathon in the same weekend for 39.3 miles of magic! It’s a crazy event, but it was a ton of fun and we’re gearing up to do it again in less than two weeks!

Throughout the year, I worked on a Photo 365 photography project. While I stopped posting the photos here about halfway through, I did complete the project! All the photos can be seen on my Flickr page, with the exception of today’s which hasn’t been taken yet! I kind of had some doubts that I would be able to make it all the way through, but I did it and I definitely could see a solid progression in my abilities as a photographer. For the last few months, I was mostly just going through the motions, but looking back, I’m happy that I kept up with it. I gave me a reason to take out my camera every day.

In my own personal running world, I not only scored a new half marathon PR, but I also demolished my previous marathon PR in Chicago by more than 15 minutes. The Chicago Marathon was probably one of my favorite race experiences ever. I trained for it like I’ve never trained for anything before and it paid off. I missed my goal by a little bit and bonked towards the end, but I have to be pretty proud of the race I ran. I stayed on target and followed my race plan right up until my body couldn’t do it anymore.

I also planned a pretty sweet European vacation for us. We visited Berlin, Copenhagen, and Stockholm and had an amazing time. It was the biggest trip I’ve ever done and, while it wasn’t without a little bit of stress and a few scares, it was really worth all of the effort to put it together.

So those are the highlights from my 2012. I’ve also made some very big life changes that are going to take many years to play out, but I truly think they’re going to pay off in the end. 2013 is going to be a big year for them, but 2012 is where it all started.

Just like 2011, 2010, 2009, and every other year before it, 2012 was a big year and I’ve got a great feeling about 2013 too!

Normally, at the end of the year, I type up some long review for the year and look forward to the upcoming year. I’m not going to do that this year. Not because it wasn’t a notable year, it was one of the biggest years of my life, if not the biggest. I got married. I ran a marathon. I ran a half marathon in 1:33:05. While they weren’t the only things of note this year, they certainly took most of my energy and time and most other things I love took a backseat because of them. Still, it was an awesome year and I’ve got a pretty good feeling about 2012. I don’t do resolutions or anything like that, but I do have some goals for the year. I’m not going to mention them now, but I’ve talked about some of them already.

That’s it! That’s all I have to say!

Happy New Year!

This is kind of a spur of the moment post, a quick reaction. My wife emailed me an article from No Meat Athlete a little while ago (I don’t read his site, but I’m familiar with the content since my wife talks about it sometimes and even has one of his shirts) and it got me thinking. If you’re not going to take a minute to click the link and read it, the article is a response to a conversation he had with the writer of ZEN Habits regarding living life without goals and how maybe that’s a better way to live.

The point (or at least a point) from ZEN Habits is that if something isn’t enjoyable at any point, why are you doing it? Is achieving a goal what’s really important if the process of getting there isn’t enjoyable? Shouldn’t you be trying to enjoy every moment of life instead? No Meat Athlete seems to have a hard time fully agreeing with this idea and I’m with him on it. His example is ultramarathons, but for me, it’s just plain old marathons (you know, the easy stuff). These long races are painful. Doing them physically hurts. A lot. And training for them isn’t really all that fun all the time either. I enjoy running, a lot, but there comes a certain point, usually by mile 10 or 12 where I’m not really having fun anymore. Sometimes, that point comes way earlier…like say mile 4 or 6, but for the most part, I enjoy running up to a certain point.

If pretty much no part of running a marathon is really fun, why do it? As No Meat Athlete points out, I don’t need to run excessively for the sake of exercising, I can run much less and supplement with other fun activities as well. So I don’t need to run long races and the fun parts of running could still exist in my life without having a goal and doing the hard stuff.

When I was running the Philly Marathon there was a spectator holding up a sign that  said “it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.” Seeing that sign was a kind of weird moment. It just kind of clicked in a way for me, I knew exactly what was meant by that. I could really feel the sentiment behind that sign. That sentiment kind of carried itself with me through most of the race, even in the last few miles. I was in crazy amounts of pain and, by most definitions, I was not having fun, but yet, what I was doing was still fun to me as a whole and I knew it would be fun after crossing the finish line.

It was fun to know that I was pulling off something a relatively small portion of the population has done. It was fun to know that after just a little more pain, I’d have this for the rest of my life. No matter what, I could say “yup, I ran a marathon.” Nothing could take that away. And it’s not in an “I’m better than anyone who hasn’t run a marathon” kind of way. It was more in the vein of how we all have something that makes us stand out or some accomplishment that we can be proud of, and this was both of those things to me.

That was my first thought as I was reading, my justification for why I put myself through something that wasn’t fun for the majority of the time I was doing it. But there was a second thought that came after that about why most of us have to have goals.

If life was reduced to doing only the things that were the most fun at the moment, I wouldn’t leave the house. Ever.

As I’ve mentioned, I truly do enjoy running, but that doesn’t mean that when I come home from work the first thing I want to do is change and head out the door to run. Really, what I want to do is plop down on the couch, have food handed to me, watch TV, and at some point have sex with my wife (hey, we’re being honest here, right?). I don’t want to go run. On the weekends, when I don’t have plans, I want to move from the bed down to the couch and just watch TV. I don’t really want to go for a run.

If you’re keeping track, I really just want to hang out on the couch and watch TV. But the thing is, I don’t want to do that! After doing just that, I hate myself. I feel like I’ve wasted my time when I could have been doing something else. But doing something else that I enjoy would be more work, at least to start. That initial work, without some other motivation, a goal, if you will, isn’t fun. If we’re trying to maximize fun and only do things that are fun from start to finish, then anything that requires me to put on pants is going to lose to plopping down on the couch.

This gets us to the poing, having fun is the goal.

Much of the time, getting to the fun part isn’t fun itself, but without it, there wouldn’t be fun at all.

Like I said, I don’t want to go for a run when I get home, but once I’m out there and a mile in and all warmed up, I’m happy. I’m having fun and I’m glad that I didn’t take the immediate fun (i.e. the lazy fun). And on top of that, the fact that I chose the delayed fun for my run means that I’m working towards being a better runner and therefore having more fun running in the future.

I know I’ve been doing a lot of running talk here, but there are other examples. I hate having to book vacations. You can just ask my wife about booking our honeymoon, it was one of the worst and least fun experiences I’ve had in the last year. But, vacations–especially, that honeymoon–are fun! If I chose to only be doing things that are fun from start to finish, I wouldn’t have chosen to plan a vacation…and I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to deal with TSA and the airport.

I have fun going to shows and seeing bands, but I generally abhor having to drive to Philly or, even worse, trek into New York City to actually get to the show.

I have fun going through my photos and discovering new favorites or realizing that a photo I didn’t think much of six months ago is actually really awesome. But I don’t have fun post-processing photos and tagging and organizing them so I can find them later. If I didn’t put in the not fun work, I wouldn’t be able to have the fun later.

I had a blast running the ZEN House and putting on shows in college, just thinking about the shows I did is fun. But doing the work to make it all happen wasn’t fun most of the time. In fact, it usually sucked.

Most of the time, you need to do things that are not fun in order to have fun. You have to choose the less fun option up front to have more fun in the end.

Having the sense of accomplishment from completing a long race or making a new personal record is fun. Getting there may not have been fun, but without doing the unfun stuff, I couldn’t have had this fun.

Having fun is the goal and to have the most fun, you must have a goal.

Yep, it’s true. I’m a husband, I’ve been for a week now. And it’s the first time in my life. For frequent readers of this blog, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise, many of the posts here over the last year and a half have made mention of my fiancée…now my beautiful wife.

Being married isn’t usually one of those things that just come out of nowhere. The average engagement is something like 18 months, so there’s plenty of time to think and reflect about your upcoming life as a married person. Still, when it happens, it’s a bit of a whirlwind and, sometimes, it’s still hard to believe. It’s hard to believe that the day has finally come and gone. It’s hard to believe that we made this happen. It’s hard to believe how lucky I am to have found someone as amazing as my wife. And it’s hard to get used to calling her my wife, but it feels awesome.

Many who know me have heard me say this on numerous occasions, but I finally understand why people stress and fight so much over wedding planning. I’ve drafted multiple blog posts about this topic before, but decided to hold off on posting each of them.

It seems like it’d be easy to plan a wedding if you’ve got a year and a half to do it, right? Pick a date, pick a venue, book a photographer and DJ, rent a tux, pick out a dress, pick out some wedding bands and flowers.

Done.

Not quite. These are really only a handful of the things that need to be done and each one is surprisingly way more complicated than their existence as items in a list would suggest. Once we broke things out, the complete checklist of things for us to do was probably close to 200 items long. Maybe more. I don’t even know.

Picking a date is easy, for the most part, but you need to be a little flexible, especially if you’re doing a short engagement or choosing what may be a very popular date. We chose September 10, 2011…or 9/10/11. A rather popular date that would have been even more popular (not quite 7/7/7 popular) had it not been for the fact that it was the night before the 10th anniversary of 9/11. The first place that we looked at and really liked was actually booked already for this date. This was the third venue that we had looked at overall and we had put a hold on the first by this point. This venue being booked turned out to be a pretty big blessing for us and changed what we were looking for a bit. When we finally found the venue we chose, I knew it right away, even if my wife was a little hesitant because of the cost. I convinced her that we should at least try to talk them down a bit and we were surprisingly successful. I think this was our first win over the course of planning, but it set the tone for us for the everything else.

Now, I’m not going to go into detail about each and every step of the planning, but I will just take another minute here to drive home the fact that some of the simple things aren’t that simple. Choosing a photographer means meeting with multiple people to find the one that’s right for you, after you’ve already put some thought into what you want from the photos and what kind of style you’re looking for. Sometimes, the vendor you’re schedule to meet with doesn’t even show up. That happened to us once.

After you’ve booked a photographer, there will come a point where you need to come up with a list of all the shots you want to make sure happen. This generally means spending some time online looking at photos from other weddings to make sure that you don’t miss anything. Time consuming if you’re going to be thorough.

Every step of the way is similar to that, if not worse. Even things like save the dates, invites, dresses, and getting a hold of person at the hotel where everyone is staying can turn out to be mind-numbingly complicated. Sometimes you find yourself with a back up of things that you can’t do because they’re all waiting on you and your wife to do something that should be stupidly simple like finalizing the exact colors you want. We spent weeks trying to pick out the proper shade of green which held up flowers, tuxes, bridesmaids dresses, favors, invitations, and probably a dozen other things that I’m forgetting.

So I’ll stop there and we can agree that the work that needs to be done is absolutely insane and what I’ve told you so far still makes it seem far easier and simpler than it really is. For us, tack on the fact that we both work full-time, my wife was also taking classes, and we’ve both been training for various half marathons and a marathon. Oh yeah, we also moved. Time was at a premium.

Did I mention that in the midst of all of this, you also need to plan a vacation? Right. Don’t forget the honeymoon. This became the bane of my existence for months. I had my heart set on the Maldives. I couldn’t let it go, but I also couldn’t figure out how we were going to afford it. I tried and tried and couldn’t make it happen.

Eventually, I gave up on it and we chose a resort in Mexico, Banyan Tree Mayakoba. It is at this resort that I am relaxing right now and typing this (note: I typed this a few days before posting it) and it is absolutely amazing in every way, especially the food. It was another huge win for us, but it was also something that nearly caused dozens of fights, as I, the man, was being a huge pain in the ass about where we went. It had to be perfect. And it has been. But it’s a good thing we’re not the kind of couple that fights easily…or ever. If we were, it would have happened, a lot.

The point is, I now understand where all the fights people have while planning a wedding come from. There are so many things to fight over. But maybe that’s also kind of the point? Maybe the wedding planning is supposed to prepare a couple for their future life together and all of the tough things they’ll have to work through. If so, we’re golden.

I mentioned money in terms of the honeymoon, but let me not gloss over the monetary aspect of the wedding itself. These things are expensive. Insanely expensive. We set our budget a bit below what we researched to be the average cost of a wedding in New Jersey (which is higher than the national average). However, in addition to that, we set two additional stipulations on that. First, we could not touch the existing savings that either of us had at that time. Second, we could not end up even a penny in debt because of the wedding. So the entire wedding had to be paid for with money that we saved while engaged. This meant living like poor people for a year and a half, but we did it.

This was another area that we got a huge win in. Not only did we come in $60 under budget overall, but we got a lot more help from my wife’s family than we had expected, got more in gifts than expected, and saw the Apple stock that we own perform beyond our expectations. I’m still having trouble believing it, but we’ve actually increased our house buying fund significantly from just our initial savings that we said we wouldn’t touch. Even without any of those unexpected things, we kicked ass at saving and still would have come out with a little more in our savings than we had when we started.

I don’t mean to brag and I know I may be getting dangerously close to being tacky about it, but I’m still pretty excited by this and very proud of ourselves.

Overall, we were unimaginably lucky through everything. Our wedding day went off flawlessly. We had braced ourselves for something to go wrong, something has to go wrong with that much going on. Nothing did. The only thing that was even close to going wrong was that the limo was ten minutes late picking us up and we didn’t get to take all of the photos outside that we planned on. Not a big deal though, we still took a lot. There was one other thing that didn’t go according to plan, but it actually turned out for the better.

The weather forecast was calling for rain all week leading up to our wedding day. It turned out to be a beautiful day. Not a single drop.

For the last week, we’ve been trying to figure out how everything went so well and how the day was absolutely perfect. We can’t figure it out.

And it wasn’t just perfect, it was the best day of my life. The feelings I had as I watched my wife walk down the aisle toward me were unlike anything else I’ve ever felt. Even though we had already seen each other because we did photos beforehand, I wasn’t prepared for it. I couldn’t tell if my heart was going to explode out of my chest, I was going to puke, pee my pants, or cry uncontrollably. It was an amazing feeling.

With all of that said, I’m still a bit on Cloud 9 about everything.

Photos of both the honeymoon and our wedding day will come soon. Probably.

Welp, we got a second cat. I don’t know what we’re thinking, but we did.

We’ve actually been kind of looking for a little while because even though Leela is going to make this very difficult and feel very threatened at first, we think it’d be good for her to have a companion while we’re out and at work. Additionally, we kind of wanted a cat that would want to cuddle more since Leela mostly only does it at night while we’re sleeping.

So when a couple friends found a little kitten under their deck and were looking to find him a home, we kind of took it as a sign. The kitten is only four or five weeks old and very tiny. He’s about the same size that Leela was when I got her, but whereas she was all ears, eyes, and paws (a clear sign of the size that she was going to grow into), this little guy has beady little eyes, little paws, and a short tail. He seems like he may have been the runt and have been kicked out of the litter or something. It’s hard to know.

So far, he’s been cuddly and fun. He’s timid at first, but when he comes out, he loves people. Right now, he’s locked in the second bedroom with everything he needs. It’s going to be a few days of this before we let him and Leela meet, but I don’t know how well that’s going to go. Leela has been pretty upset since we got this guy home and has been very defensive/aggressive towards me because of it. Leela is a very temperamental and territorial cat. She’s got an ego and she’s easily threatened. You have to do everything on her terms. I really hope she gets over it and they can get along though.

Leela has a serious claim on the master bedroom so keeping the new guy in the second bedroom for now should help him claim that room as his space which should help. And considering that it seems as though he’s not going to be nearly as big as she is when he’s fully grown, Leela should have no problem asserting her dominance over him. I think once that’s established and she knows that everyone else knows she’s in charge, they’ll be okay.

So what did we name this little guy? Well, Leela is Leela, as in Turanga Leela, and all of my computers and gadgets are named after Futurama robots. We went with the obvious and named him Philip J Fry. And if the dynamic between him and Leela works out the way that I think it will, their names will be very fitting.

And here are a few photos of the little guy.

Clearly, my updates here aren’t what they once were. Without having the radio show anymore, I no longer have that minimum one post per week guarantee that I once had. It doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten about this site, that couldn’t be more wrong. I have a few photos to post later this week and I’ve been updating the running log (that doesn’t show up on the main page). I’ve drafted a few posts, but none have made it all the way to getting posted. Mostly, it’s just because they haven’t been very good and were kind of just started for the sake of trying to get a post out and that’s something I really don’t like to do (does this post count as that?).

For the most part, I’ve been busy with various wedding related things and random other little time consumers. Most of the things I usually post about here haven’t really been in my life much recently. I haven’t been buying any new t-shirts, mostly on account of the fact that my rotation is already more than three months long and we’ve been trying to save as much money as possible for the wedding and honeymoon. I haven’t been going to the movies as much recently and I’ve had little time to listen to new music. I’ve been getting new stuff to listen to, but it’s been hard to find time to really listen to it as anything more than background noise and that doesn’t make for a good basis for blogging about it.

I would say that I’m going to try to get some stuff posted, but that’s probably a lie. Still, when there are things I want to blog about, I promise to get them up.

Besides making terrible music, Jon Bon Jovi is also into saying just blatantly stupid things. Apparently, he blames Steve Jobs for the downfall of the music industry. His words:

Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it..

God, it was a magical, magical time…I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’ Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.

Really, Jon? Really? I’m not here to glorify Steve Jobs, but let’s take a moment here and look at this. Steve Jobs did not invent digital music. Steve Jobs did not invent illegal file sharing and the pirating of music. Steve Jobs did not make shitty music.

What Steve did do was help put together a device for listening to music and a music store that gave the music industry a fighting chance against illegal downloading of music. The iTunes Store was the first online music store that caught on and part of the reason that it did catch on was because of the success of the iPod. Without iTunes making it, other online music stores would have almost definitely failed when competing against FREE.

When given the choice between paying for something or getting it free, most kids are going to go with free. Steve never gave the music away.

The problems with the music industry are many, but I think one of the biggest is the fact that their products suck. The mainstream music industry doesn’t put out records worth buying. They haven’t in a long time. Independent artists still get the concept of putting together albums, but the mainstream industry that complains to no end that they can’t sell records fails to understand that, with few exceptions, they aren’t producing anything worth buying.

Then, you have the fact that the music industry which very clearly is just pissed off about the fact that they lost their chance to profit from digital music by fighting against it for years. Instead of trying to embrace their fans, they treat(ed) like criminals. Had they not sued the pants off of their own customers and instead tried to get onboard with digital music right away, you’d be looking at a different story.

Pirating music and illegal downloading is definitely not good for the big name record labels, but it, nor Mr. Jobs, iPods, or iTunes, are the reason for the music industry being a mess. Shitty music and a big ol’ finger-to-the-fans is.

And let’s be real, the music business will never die, Jon, just YOUR music business. Music will always exist and people will always love it and enjoy it. Things may never be the same, but while music as a whole is still transforming a bit because of the internet and things haven’t really solidified yet, it will not go away. There will always be people that love making music and make great music purely for that reason.

If Jon Bon Jovi was really the idealist that he claims to be, he wouldn’t still be selling his music via the iTunes Store while making comments against its visionary.

Besides, when was the last time Bon Jovi was even a relevant artist anyway?

Yup, still alive over here and still hardly posting! There just hasn’t been much going on to post about. I haven’t seen any movies besides The Green Hornet (I’m probably going to go see Gnomeo and Juliet this weekend), I haven’t been allowed to run because I’m trying to get over my ankle pain, I haven’t been taking many photos because I need to finish getting through my Disney ones.

Excuses!

Oh, and part of what’s slowing down the Disney photo processing is the file server meltdown that I’ve been dealing with at home. Long story short, all my media is kept on a home server and it’s been having problems lately so I don’t really have much access to it until that’s sorted out.  My MacBook Pro is running out of hard drive space for stuff that I’d normally keep on my server (gigs and gigs of photos, music, and video) and making sure I’ve got two complete backups of all my data before blowing the server away and reinstalling Windows Home Server starting fresh with Amahi Home Server has been a two weeks and counting process. I’m getting close though. Also, because of that, I haven’t really be able to put any new music on my iPod in a while so I’ve got nothing to post about on that front either.

Anyway, I’m just about done with the photos (they’re been processed, they just need to be tagged), which I’ve already posted many of on Facebook, so I’ll post those here in the next week or so probably. If you’ve seen them on Facebook, then you’ve seen a larger, but less organized selection than I’ll be posting here.

I’ve also been meaning to add more to the nerd post count here by doing a Lifehacker-style “what I use” kind of thing. Maybe I’ll actually finish that and post it too.

And lastly, I’ll be hitting up the first day of the Don Giovanni showcase on Friday so I’ll probably have some photos or something to say about that.

Alright, yeah.

Since I normally do a year review type thing, I guess I’ll squeeze one in now while there’s still time before 2011 hits. 2010 was a very interesting year for me. There were ups and downs all over the place. I’m going to keep this one short though.

I started off the year with a pretty big bang, I got engaged…in Disney World…in Cinderella’s Castle. It was awesome. It was such a nerve-wracking experience, but I’m so excited to be planning a wedding with my amazing fiancée and knowing that we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.

2010 was the year that I ran my first half marathon and really started to become a runner instead of just being someone that likes to run. Over the course of the year, I became a much stronger runner and it became something that’s a part of me. I set new personal records for myself at every distance I ran and even became a minimalist runner and got a pair of Vibram Five Fingers.

Over the past year, I immersed myself in a new hobby. I spent hours and hours taking photos and reading about photography, I think my camera is about to hit 10,000 shots on it in the next few days. Not bad! I’m excited about my growth as a photographer and I will probably spend as much, if not more, time taking photos in 2011.

In 2010, I ended my radio show, The Playlist, which I had hosted for seven years on 90.3 The Core. It wasn’t my first show on the station, but it was one of the longest running shows ever on the station. Ending my show was the final piece to putting my life at 90.3 The Core behind me and moving on.

As I mentioned, there also downs this year. I’m going to keep negatives mostly out of this , but unfortunately 2010 wasn’t a great year for my family in the health department. I won’t go into the details, but my last remaining grandparent, my grandmother on my mother’s side, passed away after a two and a half month roller coaster ride in the hospital. That’s all I’m going to say about that, but it hasn’t been an easy month.

Lastly, 2010 was the year that I moved out of Highland Park after living there for the last five years. My fiancée and I got a wonderful townhouse in Somerset, NJ, just a few minutes from where we lived in Highland Park. After two months here, we’re very happy with it and haven’t really looked back.

So those were the major highlights of 2010. Many, many other things happened (I missed Halloween), but I said that I would try to keep this short. With less than seven hours to go in 2010, I think I’ve had a pretty full year, but I’m really looking forward to 2011. 2011 will be the year I get married and…I have no idea what else, but we’re starting it off with another trip to Disney World which will include a run in the Disney Half Marathon. Woo!