2001

Now the millenium arrives. This was a big, unsettling, but important year.

I continued to sing in Alfredo's.

Total Training by this point had relocated to upstate New York, but I continued to work for them remotely.

I launched my personal website, www.grundoon.com.

My friend Jerry Hunt had a connection with Reading Rainbow, with the idea that we could create animated children's book segments for them. He picked Roberto the Insect Architect as a sample, and I animated the first couple of minutes from it.

Thanks to a referral from Deke McClelland, I began to review graphics software for Macworld magazine. I also conceived of the idea of converting Deke's Photoshop for Dummies book into a Photoshop Elements for Dummies book, which was published this year. Suddenly I was a writer, reviewer, and co-author!

I sang a number from Milton Granger's Tale of Two Cities musical in a concert at Seaside Music Theater this summer.

Another wonderful event this year was the big Memphis State Theatre Department reunion. So many people came, and it was great to see so many old friends. I'd kept in pretty good contact with many, but it was especially good to see John Dye there, after 16 years.

Burton turned 1. I turned 38.

At the end of the year, George Harrison died. Half the Beatles gone.

9/11 happened. As a pretty direct result, Disney got rid of a lot of entertainment in the parks, and there was no more entertainment in Alfredo's. It's nice to look back on that and think it was definitely for the best; at the time, it was pretty scary. But I did take the bull by the horns, and decided to pursue animation seriously. I began scouting around for schools to attend, looking far and wide. Laura didn't much like Orlando as a place to live, so she was glad it was looking like we were going to leave.

I grew my beard, the same beard (in goatee form) that I still have today. And I started growing my hair long, too. Goodbye, Disney!