I figured if I was going to make an annual statement, I might as well go for the gold Not sure exactly what I ought to fill you in on, my imaginary readership, so I'll just ramble a bit.

2008, quite frankly, was shit. There's always been drama in my family - well, half of it anyway - but until the year prior there was always a great deal of emotional and geographical separation. These days it revolves around my mother. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but since she and my old man split up she's been with a pretty worthless guy, and she sticks up for him and ignores his faults no matter what he does to her or anyone else. I don't want to dredge all that up, really, but he's a deadbeat and in conjunction with keeping him around she's driven all of her other friends and family away, which sucks. I have gotten a pretty good laugh out of the guy lately though after hearing that he got a ticket for taking a piss while standing on a well-traveled downtown street, so I guess that's something.

The career side of things hasn't been going so well either. I got laid off last fall and have been taking it easy since then, but I really need to buckle down and find a job before my funds run dry. Hopefully prospects have picked up a bit since then, but with the economy the way it is I'm a bit worried. I guess I can keep imposing on my old man as long as I'm having trouble making ends meet, but I need to be able to afford food and pay the bills at least. I'm in a bit of a quandary as well - I don't want to go back into engineering, as I hope to get into programming sometime soon, but I have no credentials for that and I'm pretty sure the market is quite small here in Asheville. With my engineering experience I could get paid more, but the construction industry has been hit hard by the economic crisis and another engineering job wouldn't really be progress towards my career goals (beyond simply having one). But I guess at this point I literally can't afford to be picky.

It's not all bad news though - thus far 2009 is shaping up pretty well. My kid brother just moved in after getting extremely tired of Mom's boyfriend and all the bullshit and drama over there. It's been a lot of work getting his room cleaned out and such, but we're having a blast so far. I've also been using the free time I've had to do a lot more cooking, which I greatly enjoy. My old man appreciates it because he likes trying new things and doesn't have much time to cook himself, and I always have fun trying new recipes. I've found some good ones so far, but the pizza we made last week blew them all out of the water. It used a homemade crust, a bit of cream, mozzarella, pancetta (a sort of Italian bacon), zucchini and chunks of roasted garlic cream cheese. So now I've been enlisted to cook for quite a few family friends once the weather warms up.

I guess I ought to get some sleep at some point, so I'll leave off for now. See you next year?