2009

2009 got off to a sad start. Dorothy Ann Russo, my "adopted grandmother", who has been with me throughout this 50-day journey through time I'm writing, died in January. She was always some sort of reference point, a touchstone, that I could come back to. I read the end of The House at Pooh Corner at her memorial. We adopted her cat Mary.

What's next? Another memorial. Keith Kennedy, chairman of the MSU theatre department, died. At the memorial, Tim Greeson, Kermit Medsker, and I did a song from Strider, which Keith directed.

I was busy for much of this year wrapping up The Gym Teacher from the Black Lagoon and The Scrambled States of America Talent Show. The latter was a particularly time-consuming affair. A nearly 20 minute film, which I did completely by myself. Over 60 characters. I remember losing a lot of sleep.

At some point, we got goats, Buddy and Milo. It was around this year.

Our cat Petunia had kittens! There were three: Indy, Jack, and Shadow. If there had been four, we probably would have given two away, but since there were only three we kept them all. I'm glad, because if we'd given one away it probably would have been Jack. He was a fussy kitten, but turned out to be my favorite cat since Ambrose.

I got involved with the Quaver's Marvelous World of Music project. I puppeteered the bust of Beethoven (built by Brian Hull and Co.), and also began doing a string of animations for them.

I turned 46. Burton turned 9. Laura turned heads.

At the end of the year, I started working on Magnetic Dreams' Iron Man: Extremis project. This was the first time I had to regularly "report for duty" at a location other than my own office for quite a while! But I had a great time, and feel like I made valuable contributions to the project.

That's 2009.