Journal: News & Comment

Anniversaries

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This year, 2004, will mark some important anniversaries in my life:

• In June, I'll turn 35.
• In February, 20 years will have passed since I helped start The Plague, a silly and sometimes-controversial high-school newspaper that eventually found its way across the city, then even had satellite editions published across Western Canada, before petering out sometime in 1986–87. It was my first well-known editorial byline.
• That same month in 1984, I helped found the Apple Alliance, a computer club for which I also edited the newsletter. (My techie and publishing interests coincided early.)
• Fifteen years ago in March, I played my first gig as a drummer, at a very drunken "Last Class Bash" for UBC's Science Undergraduate Society. The band was called the Juan Valdez Memorial R & B Ensemble, and one of the guitarists and I are still in another band today—still playing many of the same damn songs.
• In March, it will be 10 years since my first date with a woman I'd known off and on for six years before that, and who is now my wife. We went out for Mexican food.
• That same month, I quit my job at a university to become a full-time musician. I spent much of the next two years driving in a van around British Columbia and playing in grotty bars for not much money—but my wife agreed to marry me anyway, which was nice of her.
• Five years ago, she and I thought we knew enough about raising our daughter (who was not yet one) that we decided to have another. Somehow we didn't quite understand that, while parents get a break when a single child has a nap, two children rarely nap at the same time. And then they stop napping altogether anyway. But there is school.
• Two days ago, I slipped on a strip of unshoveled sidewalk near our local post office and landed hard on my butt. It still hurts.

Check back in 10 years to see how things have gone. Or sooner if you like.

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