This has been an interesting year for me, as are most years. There were lots of up and several downs. I was going to review this year month by month but instead I think I'm just going to try and group topics together and take a look back at 2010.
This year started out with me being stuck in a horrible job working for a man who didn't understand the meaning of a schedule. I did get another job offer, a 2 month gig down in South Africa for the World Series of Soccer, but declined it as it would have cut into our vacation plans and SDCC. So I was suck with my current job, I wouldn't quit because, first of all I've only quit one job in my life and if I quit I wouldn't be able to collect unemployment.. so I suffered until April when finally he decided we could no longer work together and they let me go (happiest day of my life). Of course I didn't know then that I would be out of a job for 7 months and have to pull half of my saving out just to pay the mortgage and living expenses. But in October I did get a job with MTV, it's a very long commute but really good pay. And it lasts until August of 2011.
During my down time with work Harry and I did take a trip to the Pacific Northwest of the United States. It was 17 Days, 8 States and over 4000 miles, we had lots of fun, we got to meet one of my long time online friend Rick Moyer and his family and that was a highlight of the trip. We saw so many beautiful sites and got to experience some very cool things.
We've had our ups and down with our new house, we had our 1 year anniversary in 2010, we also finally finished remodeling/painting/decorating the inside of the house. We had snow here for the first time in years, it was only a few inches and didn't last the day but it was cool none the less. But we had several bad things happen as well.. Wildfires, we had several wildfires around us this year.. one you could see burning from our backyard.. luckily it was going in the opposite direction from us. And our well broke and cost a few thousands to fix. Of course there are the occasional leaks and battles with woodpeckers but for the most part this house has been great.
2010 has been a great year for The Guild and my Knights of the Guild podcast. The Guild released S4, several comic books and Lil'Gulidies all to raving reviews.. The podcast had it's 1 year anniversary in February, We took the podcast to a whole new level for Season 4 of The Guild and created Companioncasts which is a first ever for a webseries and podcast. It was a huge success and I hope to do it again for Season 5. Knights of the Guild was nominated for a People's Choice Podcast Award for Best Entertainment Podcast. We lost to The Fringe Podcast but it was truly an honor to be nominated among thousands of podcasts. We hit record downloads for the month of October, we had over 40,000 downloads that month. We've been upgrading our podcast equipment.. got a new computer and second monitor and it's made podcasting much easier.
It's been a great TV and Movie season, there have been lots of TV that I have loved this year like; Glee, Big Bang Theory, Clone Wars, No Ordinary Family, Doctor Who, and the resurrected old TV series V, which started off rocky but ended strong and I can't wait for the second season in 2011. As for great movies I've loved Percy Jackson, The Last Airbender, Ironman 2, Shrek 4, Toy Story 3, Clash of the Titans (remake), The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Kick Ass, Narnia 3, Tron 2 and of course Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 which was just phenomenal.
Read/Listened to some new book series and really loved them... The Underland Chronicles was a really great series that my friend Christopher suggested. And I'm almost finished with the Percy Jackson Series. The fifth book had some missing chapters on the CD so I had to stop an not complete it.. well not yet at least. I really loved those books.
Went to San Diego Comic Con for my seventh year in a row and had a fantastic time. Even though it gets busier and busier I continue to go and have fun. I get to meet loads of my online friends, which is always a major plus, the past few years I've gotten to help out The Guild booth which is fun. I don't go to get swag or see panels.. I go to hang out with some of the coolest and geekiest people I know and I love it. A highlight from this years con was going to Flynn's Arcade, one of the best experiences I've had in a long time.. Tron rules!!!!
I turned 40 this year and it started to make me thing about my health and weight issues so I bought a home gym and started working out 5 days a week.. I've lost about 13 lbs so far and working to improve my diet and overall health.
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened in Florida and I SOOOOOOOOOO want to go but because of the lack of job and money I have put it off until 2011. But I'm very excited about seeing this cool new park.
I've have some of the best friends in the world.. some are online and some are in person.. I love them all. I've also met some great people this year, one very important person that I've met this year is my Padawan Troy, It's funny how it can take years to get to know someone and fell that connection or it can take seconds like it did with Troy. I've only had that experience with a few other friends and they are some of the closest people to me.
Here are some odds and ends for the year...This has been the best year for PGA (Producer's Guild of America) movie screeners..I've gotten about 30 of them and some of really big name movies. Had a really good Tax refund (because of the house) which allowed us to survive a bit during my hiatus from work. Visited Vasquez Rocks which is a few mile from our house, beautiful place. My yahoo email account has been broken into 3 times this year, no matter how many times or how hard I make my new password yahoo is being hacked every time. Got my first gaming console in years.. we got a Wii.. we wanted a communal gaming system for parties and friends.. it's also a good workout. It's been a roller coaster ride with Prop 8 the ban on gay marriages.. it's been in the court system and was overturned again but was appealed and is now waiting for that process to start.
Overall this has been a year of changes, growth, and finding ones self. I've had lots of good times and some not so good times. My love of all things geeky has grown and I've developed very close friendships. I've delved deeper into the social media with Twitter and facebook and am really enjoying it. I'm also being listened to by 1000's of people a month, which is cool and kind of odd at the same time.
I suspect big changes for 2011, I hope to lose a significant amount of weight, become healthier and eat better. I want to see my friends more, hang out more of often and laugh alot more. I hope to travel a bit, to Florida for the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and hopefully a trip to England. What does the future holds I don't know.. but whatever it is.. I just have to enjoy every moment of it with the people that I love.
members. I packed everything up in my jeep and headed down. I had to stop off at Vons and get food and drinks for the party, later we would order pizza/pasta as well. We were expecting over 25 people so I have to get quite a bit.
I manage to get to Teal at 4pm as planned and to my surprise Jenni (my co-host) got there at the same time. I didn't expect her until closer to our start time at 6pm. So Teal, Jenni and I unpacked my Jeep and began to set up the studio and food. Around five Ali (Teal's boyfriend) came home and just in time as we found out that Macs internal cams have a issue with Ustream so we weren't able to get the video feed to work. After several tries we finally got it working (Ali has windows on his Mac) and I brought my webcam from home and we got 
everything working around 6ish. A few people started to arrive and we began to broadcast but we held out starting the actual podcast until 6:30pm.
Next up was No Ordinary Family, I was five episodes behind on this series. So Harry and I watched one after another. This is a fun series, some action, some character development. It was nice to not have to wait for a new episode because the story kept ending on cliffhanger type scene. I can't wait to see where they are going and the effects have been fantastic. Looking forward to the rest of this season.
Another series that I love is Kyle XY.. it only lasted three seasons and those too were on sale on Amazon so I picked up all three seasons.
Two more DVD's that I got were Princess Bride (which I was surprised I didn't have already) but I got it on Blu-ray and then my buddy Jeff got me White Christmas
And finally I got two of my all time favorite Scifi/Fantasy films from the 80's Willow and Krull
Like I said tons of DVD.. but I also got some Wii games (Star Wars and Harry Potter), socks, shirts and underwear. Several very cool Harry Potter items (ornaments, pins and a plaque). Oh and I almost forgot my Lord of the Rings Ring.. which is AWESOME.
