I made about 500 blog posts. I made it though another year crossing the TZ bridge. I finished 6 years working for Westchester County (on a 3 month contract). I started taking the TZExpress bus. I sold only four short stories and completed only three new ones. I lost no cats and acquired Hermie. I created gthread.com automatic blogging. I created the star finder pages. I wrote a web based GPS point-of-interest loader. I’ve read an average of 2.5 books a week since September. I just about broke even in poker. I’ve increased my internet income, but it is still not near enough to retire. My retirement funds lost a big chunk of change, but it was all funny money as the stock market was unreasonably inflated.

2008 was one of the bad years for most people, although I did not do as bad as others. 1972 was worse for me, and 2004 was pretty bad, but I can’t remember any other years this bad.

2008 has been much worse on other people than me. I just watched. I was going to buy a summer house, but that is now postponed due to finances. Many people lost their main house.

I was going to make “dead people cookies” for New Years, but it is a depressing tradition and I did not get to it. Dead people cookies are sugar cookies with the names of those who have died over the year. You eat a cookie in remembrance to them. It is a dark and depressing thing to do so you have to do it as a celebration, but 2008 seemed too dark and depressing to begin with so I did not bake them. There was not enough to celebrate in 2008.

2008 was particularly bad for Speculative Fiction. The Golden Age SF writers and artists are dying off, as well as some of the Star Trek originals. Here are a few good cookies:

Gary Gygax: March 4, 2008
Sir Arthur C. Clarke: March 19, 2008
Bebe Barron- April 20, 2008
John Berkey- April 29, 2008
Alexander Courage- May 15, 2008
Robert Lynn Asprin- May 22, 2008
Robert Justman- May 28, 2008
Algis Budrys- June 9, 2008
Thomas M. Disch- July 4, 2008
Pauline Baynes- August 1, 2008
Brian M. Thomsen- September 21, 2008
Barrington J. Bayley- October 14, 2008
Michael Crichton- November 4, 2008
Forrest J Ackerman- December 4, 2008
Julius Fast- December 15, 2008
Majel Barrett Roddenberry- December 18, 2008
Edd Cartier- December 25, 2008
Leo Frankowski- December 25, 2008