Time to smell the roses. A comment that has been used so many times, and yet I never really gave it much thought. This past year I logged well over 40 thousand road miles. While this does not even come close to the airline travel I was logging in past years, it certainly is as much time spent.

In these drives I get alot of audiobook reading in, as well as podcasts. mainly technology based. I am learning all the time. Currently I am reading/listening to "Super Freakonomics"  a book I had downloaded from Audible.com I am a gold member with them and it has been a lifesaver. I find I consume more books now than at any time in my life thanks to this excellent service.  I do more frequently take time to stop and take picture now. I was recently in Halifax VA. I was actually off the beaten path back to a work location and got a neat picture that seemed to take me back to my childhood for a moment.

It was next to some railroad tracks and it was just an image that for a moment reminded me of Appalachia VA when I was a little kid. The building just looked like something out of the very early 1900's, and the area surrounding it did too. I'm seeing alot of this these days and frankly I like it. I just need to take more time to capture it, and think about it.  We all have very little time on this place. And much of what I do involves driving and downtime. I am making much better use of that time these days.

2009 seemed to race by. It was by far the first year in awhile that I seemed to miss so many more things. While my health routine certainly improved for the better, I also fell behind some on keeping up with old friends, and missed a couple of opportunities to travel and do just that. See some old friends. If it were for work or whatever the reason, I need to modify this a bit better this year.

This was definately the year for social media for me though. While I dabbled in it a bit in past years, this year saw me on Last.fm, Geeks, Friendfeed, Twitter, Blip.fm, LinkedIn, Yelp, Digg, Stumble Upon, and of course facebook and several others. facebook is likely my least used of all of these, and mainly due to the content it has added over the past 2 years. The games are ridiculous (and yes, they track your preferences while using these games), and the privacy issues are really getting out of hand there. More time spent here than in any year in the past combined. not a great way to spend time, but I certainly learned more of technology than in any year I can remember. I made some good smart Geek friends too. the good goes with the bad I guess.

So 1 day into 2010, and the break from work is over after tomorrow, and we start back in to the travel grind. I am certainly going to wear out my camera this year. I love my program "Aperture". I have had it for more than a year and just reallly started using it this past summer with any consistency. Iphoto is a fine program on the Mac, but Aperture just provides a bit more to push your photo management over the top.  Family this year too, needs more attention. This has been going on for as many years as I can remember. I think this year I chose more to avoid the holidays than in any other.  That said, I wish it did not have to feel that way. But I also don't feel bad about it. We all have important things going on in our lives, and sometime soon, we'll see each other again. Mom, Dad, Kelly! I Love you. 

Happy New Year!