Alan’s Annual letter to friends, family, acquaintances, and mistyped email addresses of random strangers (January 2009)
All,
It appears that another year has come and gone, so to keep you amused for the next few minutes, helping you keep your mind off the last 5 times you accidentally wrote "2008" in place of "2009", below is my annual letter.
Running low on creativity, I figure I'd try an alphabet theme for this year's letter.
A is for Anchorage Alaska where me, my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother-in-law, my niece & my nephew all met up this summer for a cruise down to Vancouver
B is for Brazil, where I spent the months of July & August, working on a fascinating M&A project with some wonderful colleagues
C is for Camera, a Nikon D90 Digital SLR I snagged as a birthday present in September, quickly transforming me from a casual shooter, to photography nut - feel free to see a few shots at http://www.flickr.com/photos/alancharness/sets/72157607758811506/detail/
D is for Diamond, my firm filled with great colleagues and interesting projects
E is for my Grandmother Esther, who left us back in September after her fight with cancer
F is for Five years as a management consultant, a few years longer than I would have guessed
G is for Grimace, the long forgotten purple McDonaldland resident who was Ronald's trusty slow-witted sidekick. I don't really have anything to say about Grimace, other than that in retrospect he may have been a precursor for Barney the Dinosaur.
H is for Heavy, referring to the extra 12 pounds I have on me versus this time last year - clearly not accomplishing my resolution of losing 35 more pounds
I is for the iPhone I switched to in September when my Blackberry unexpectedly died. Results are mixed, as the lack of unified inbox, and odd character recognition is offset by the plethora of applications, availability of music, and fast-internet to keep me amused in times of delays.
J is for Jury Duty which I'm serving this week
K is for Kitchener-Waterloo, my Canadian hometown, which I made a few pilgrimages to throughout the year to see family and friends
L is for Las Vegas, which is another city I frequented for poker but failed to increase my bankroll by more than a few hundred during my ventures to their poker tables, failing about $2.5K short of last year's resolution of winning $4K
M is for Married, which I failed to take the first step towards, missing my resolution of evolving a great personal relationship into a serious significant other relationship
N is for New Resolutions for 2009, including recycling my 3 unfilled ones from last year, and adding in one more to get one of my photos published in a magazine
O is for Obama, who was nice enough to write my mom a thank-you letter after she broke her ankle when working on his campaign
P is for Peace, Pleasure, and Prosperity, which I wish for all of you for this New Year
Q is for Quiznos, which I became addicted to for lunch during the latter part of the year (hey - Q is tough)
R is for the Recliner sofa I picked up, sadly my only accomplished New Years resolution. It had been on my list since my first annual letter in 2003, so there is still hope for other failed resolutions.
S is for Shawn, my Big Brothers Big Sisters little who kept me busy on weekends with lots of neat activities including baseball games, zoo visits, and ventures around the city
T is for my 201k, formerly my 401k, and like most of my portfolio, roughly half of what it was at the beginning of the year
U is for under an hour, which I intended to be able to run 7.5 miles in, but miserably failed on that resolution (only being able to sustain that pace for 2 miles)
V is for Vendetta, a movie I haven't seen yet, but it is sitting in my Netflix queue
W is for Whistler BC where I spent the last week of 2008 skiing with my dad
X is for Xenodocheionology - the love of hotels, which I had while holding top-tier status at Hilton, Marriott, and Starwood (Sheraton/Westin). With slightly less travel this past year, I'm dropping to 2nd tier "gold" status at all 3 chains and suspect that love will diminish.
Y is for Yinzer, what I'm slowly becoming after living in Pittsburgh for 13 years despite clinging to the idea that I'll eventually move to a place with more favorable weather and taxes
Z is for Zingermans, the Ann Arbor MI based gourmet store, restaurant, and bakery I frequented weekly for fresh bread to transport back to Pittsburgh for friends when working in Michigan on another fun M&A project.
And on that letter, I'll end this letter with a warm wish to all of you for a happy New Year.
All the best, Alan
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