So what is new with me?
Well, a lot! In chronological order:

I watched some very good World Junior hockey games including both semifinals. The second semifinal between USA and Sweden was very, very good. Extremely fast and skilled players. Thought Sweden should of won that contest.

Got sick (ok I guess this part was not 'good fortune'). Had strep throat for almost two weeks, missed some work and had a low key New Years.

Tressa's luck turned around! She has had a lot of good fortune in 2010 including health, accolades and financial events. She is my lil' panda and I am very happy to still be with her.

I finished doing a technical review for the first round of editing of the upcoming book PHP: The Good Parts. It turned out to be more time consuming then I thought it would be, but was an honour. For my effort, I get some free books of my choice from O'Reilly and my name in the book, so that is very cool.

tressa is a good cook. she gave me two good reasons to learn how.

1. her meals tasted much better than mine - so I thought "I should cook too, then meals would always be good"
2. it is somewhat embarrassing to not be able to cook (and now I feel better since I can cook half a dozen good meals)

here is a sample meal by tressa - beef kebobs with a baked potato and caesar salad. yummy!

there are additional benefits - financial, convenience (leftovers), health

recently in saskatoon and throughout the province, we have experienced frigid arctic air and strong winds. this has resulted in a week or so of -30° C to -35° C temperatures with windchill of -40° C to -50° C.

this means frequent car starts if you work at a place without plugins, boosting friends, frostbite in a few minutes....mexico sounds nice about now. so does my automatic car starter getting installed in mid january (should of booked when the temperature was nice)

on the plus side, this is good movie watching weather.

I enjoy challenge. You probably do too. Without challenge their is boredom and routine. However, I have to qualify this. For challenge to be enjoyable:

1. it has to be solvable, or atleast appear solvable
2. you have to make progress every so often. be thrown a bone or two.
3. it has to be something that puzzles not a challenge because you are doing things the hard way or with an inadequate toolkit ie) rebuilding a car engine with only a toothbrush is not enjoyable

I made a herbed chicken parmesan with orzo pasta and baked broccoli, all from scratch. it was delicious!

I am getting all my recipes from a cookbook i bought called "cooking light: the essential dinner tonight cookbook". I recommend the entire Cooking Light family.