The Secret of Life, the Universe, and Everything?

We interrupt our regularly-scheduled nerdery for a special message from HTHD headquarters.

I'm 42 today. Yeah.

It's been another whirlwind year of highs and lows, amazing surprises and existential dread. Oh, and some great games. Always with the gaming.

• We wrapped up SHADOWRUN: DISAVOWED, a game I'm particularly proud of. Not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but had some powerful episodes and great moments overall.
• We drifted away from our brunch-on-weekends place, the Westside, as the food hasn't been as good lately for some reason. 
• ...But we discovered Billy's Deli downtown, which kicks ass in a satisfying-your-tummy way.
• I continued to struggle along doing temp-work in lieu of a good long term job. The economy in this part of Ontario is pretty lousy.
• ...But I got a nice long term contract with the Ontario government which paid pretty well and let me work with nice people in a low-pressure environment. Awesome.
• And my friend Rob was kind enough to hire me on to do some freelance writing in the fall, working up a rough draft document of the augmented reality game he's been working on for several years now. Tecumseh lives!
• I got to trade e-mails with one of my favourite comic book artists, Tim Truman! And he's going to be doing a special illustration for the aforementioned ARG!
• The conclusion of Colin's long-running postapocalyptic game THE CORE. Farewell for now to Magnus and the gang. Sequel forthcoming?
• THE AVENGERS! 'Nuff said.
• I ran a satisfying second season of my Victorian vampire hunter game SUNSET EMPIRE, setting the stage for an epic finale this winter. 
• Apple fritters at the fairgrounds. *sigh*
• We got a terrific, super-tense new Andre Braugher series, LAST RESORT. Then they cancelled it. Argh.
• Rob has been running the awesome COLD CITY. I get to be a Russian killing machine. Love. It.
• Megan ran her first game. Holy shit!
• After many years of idle chat, I started actually working on putting together a real, honest to goodness podcast with my friend Colin and my wonderful wife Megan. Soon.
• Some other movies that I loved this past year: The Dark Knight Rises, The Cabin in the Woods, Cloud Atlas, Skyfall (I really think Ken and Robin missed the boat on this one). We also caught up with The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, which is older but fantastic.
• After a 20-year stretch as a guy with a goatee, I now have a full beard again.
• I have a brand new iMac! So happy.
• My parents bought me an iPod touch for Xmas, for the high tech double-double. So I now own a "device" that I can use for wireless internet, texting, all this stuff that The Kids have known about for years. 
• I have embraced this technology and gotten way, way more interested in things like Twitter than is good for me. Oh, yeah, and I started a blog. 
• I failed -- twice -- to get a RPG game going with the club on campus. Not enough player interest. 
• ...But that made me investigate online "virtual tabletop" software like Roll20, and now I'm planning to run a game for some old friends who are spread around the country and haven't gamed together for almost 20 years. Wow. Technology is awesome. 

Through it all, I have had great friends around me on good days and bad, a family that love me, an orange cat who is always happy to see me at the end of the day, a grey cat that pretends to scorn everything I stand for (but curls up on my lap and purrs when no one is looking), and a wonderful wife beside me who reminds me every day that I am the luckiest guy on earth.

Sentimental interlude concluded. Tomorrow I promise to write about something very, very nerdy that would get me punched and my lunch money stolen if I were in a high school cafeteria and not in a bully-proof bunker.