We Survived 2007… barely.
[INSERT TYPICAL UNAPOLOGETIC APOLOGY HERE FOR LACK OF POSTING]
What a crazy year.
After working for the same group of companies for nearly 20 years, in the past 18+ months since we moved to CT, I’ve been employed with THREE different companies. The most recent one I just started at the beginning of December and it seems to be a good fit so far, but I’m not as naive as I was 18 months ago either. Not to mention this uncertainty has caused us to start our own search engine optimization firm for small companies.
2007 wasn’t all bad, we still did a lot of great stuff despite being highly uncertain about current or future income. Our back-up plan was basically to sell the house (or attempt to), pack up our stuff and move to North Carolina: if you’re going to be unemployed, you may as well do it where the cost of living is low, the jobs are plentiful and it’s warm the majority of the year. It didn’t actually get to that point; lucky for me as one prospect was winding down another would rear its opportunistically ugly head and I’d go all in. But we still like NC very muchly and hope to spend more time there at some point soon. Maybe someone can find us a little radio studio in a downtown part of Wilmington - like that little station in Gross Pointe Blank, and we can resurrect 80s Airwaves!
And now, two years after the death of the 80s Airwaves, I can reveal an important factor in our decision making: Yes, it was getting expensive to run: after nearly 18 months we had worked our way up to about 500 listeners a day which does occupy a lot of bandwidth. Yes, it was time intensive and required Aimee’s time during the day to handle request and much of my early morning and evening hours. Yes, functionality of the website was being hampered by spammers (which still continues on today with this blog). And yes, there was no money in it - though that was never the focus really. One of the MAJOR contributing factors was that we had to begin to focus our sole efforts at finding a new career for me. Things were changing and getting pretty ugly within that group of companies where I had spent almost my entire working career and I was able to see during the Summer of 2005 that I really needed to move on. As many of you know, finding a new position, especially a new position in a new part of the country is a FULL TIME JOB. It became impossible to treat the 80 Airwaves listeners fairly and still be certain about our financial future at the same time. And something had to give, which is why it isn’t surprising that within six months of pulling the plug on 80s Airwaves, I had a new position on the east coast. The events since have been some bad craziness, but we’ll take that over staying comfortable with a “lifer” position in a failing company in the Midwest any day. Even with the chaos, confusion and some sleepless nights - we wouldn’t change a thing.
Some of the high-points of the year included trips to the cape, beaches in RI, a week-long adventure with some of our old Wisconsin neighbors to North Myrtle Beach, meeting Edge at a charity auction in NYC, being in the audience for a Letterman show (with Will Ferrell), having my 40th birthday at the Waldorf and upstairs at 21, friends and family actually coming east to visit us, lunch at Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant (THE BEST) and of course Aimee crashing her car AGAIN. Avenue Q was just as funny as Spamalot. And for our 10th anniversary in October we did keep our promise, despite the income situation, and spent a week cruising around the Hawaiian islands. We found a couple of places we would love to go back to (Lahaina in Maui being at the top of the list) and we met some very cool people - including two lesbians from Cleavland we zip-lined with on the last island day. In December we killed WAY too many hours with Excite Truck on the Wii (we did beat the platinum level, but didn’t bother going for the mirror option). We also renewed our Key Sunday Cinema Club membership and saw some really amazing pre-release movies, the top of the list was The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Though Juno is excellent as well and will be easier for people to find (see the movie THEN buy the soundtrack)!
The last day of 2007 ended with Aimee and I having dinner and walking out of very fancy (but not really very good) restaurant in New Haven and as she was opening the big doors she started to fall down the steps and grabbed me. She ripped my shirt wide open - we’re talking about a good 12″ rip on the opposite side of the buttons, leaving me bare-chested and very hulk-like on new years eve 2007. While we had talked about going out after, we went home to watch the ball drop as a very sad Dick Clark counted down the end of a pretty treacherous year. We kept the expensive but now useless shirt after taking a black Marks-A-Lot to it and writing “We Survived 2007 (barely)”.
Things are going great in ‘08 with a new job the suits me well and a CEO who seems very appreciative of all the I’m doing. Aimee just returned from a week in Seattle helping her best friend who is going through a divorce and needed to pack-up everything in a week; they did it! Next month we’re destined for Las Vegas for my 41st birthday and a quick trip to see the Grand Canyon - one of my life-long “to-do’s”.
Okay - before I go, I have made a resolution to write more. At least ONE weekly blog post (500-1000 words), but most likely it will not be on this site. It’s my intention to revamp my music DVD review website at some point this month. So bookmark that one if you’re so inclined. I’m also working on a Blu-Ray news/review website, but I haven’t found a name yet that works. Yes, the HD format war that I ranted about previously is now over and Blu-Ray Disc is the victor.
More to come… hopefully.
-pjc