The auto-generated 2011 in Review post was from WordPress, talking about what my site did in 2011.
Here’s what I did in 2011 that really matters:
Everything else was just icing on the cake 
Happy New Year to you and yours, may your 2012 be as good as my 2011. And may my 2012 be even better!
As reported yesterday, April and I are now engaged Since then, we’ve been drowning in congratulatory wishes from family and friends, for which we’re extremely grateful. It’s a little overwhelming, and it’s had me a little verklempt, the amount of people who care about us — you sometimes forget just how many awesome people there are in your life and how many friendships you build up over the years!
I thought it might be a good idea to answer some of the frequently asked questions we’ve been getting over the past 24+ hours. All of these are from my perspective… if April wants to chime in with her perspective, she has her own blog for that 
Q: Was she surprised?
A: She knew it was coming sooner or later, because we’ve talked about it at length, many times over. She wouldn’t have moved her life to California if she didn’t know it was coming! And she suspected that the moment of truth was getting very, very close. But I caught her totally off guard when I actually popped the question.
Q: So how did you pop the question?
A: Long answer to a short question… I’ve had the ring since mid-June, and I had always targeted July 30th (today) as the specific day that’d I’d ask her. July 30th has a special significance — it was one year ago today that we first said “I love you” to each other. Romantic that I am, I thought there’d be no better day to propose. Originally, I’d wanted to surprise her with a weekend getaway, and as I was making arrangements in secret for it, April RSVP’d to another event for this evening. Plans foiled! I couldn’t tell her “No, we can’t go to that” without revealing why I had other plans for us.
So, I still had it in my head that I’d propose on July 30th, but had to think of some other opportunity to do the deed. And I was struggling with that. Every time I would try to come up with a plan, I got anxious. Not because I was nervous about proposing, but because I was scared to death of screwing it up! I was definitely over-thinking things. The more I would over-think things, the more anxious I would get.
Thursday night, we both had different plans. I had dinner with my parents, who were in on the secret, and they asked me, “So when are you going to… you know?” I said, “I’m still planning on Saturday.” At that point, Saturday was still the date I wanted to do it, but there was no plan at the ready.
When both of us got home after our respective dinners Thursday night, as the night got later, we were in our bedroom, chatting away about this and that, being a little mushy and cutesy… the usual. It was about 11:00pm, and we were both pretty tired — it was definitely time to go to sleep. But when April stepped into the bathroom to get ready for bed, I was struck with the thought, “Why not just ask her now?”
And that’s what I did. I snuck the ring under her pillow, and when she got into bed, I started telling her how much I loved her, and she mumbled back, “I love you too, and I’m sleepy.” She started to move to turn off the bedside lamp, but I held her back and asked, “Do you want to know how much I love you?” I pulled the ring out from under her pillow and showed it to her. Then I asked if she would marry me. And by now you know her answer
Q: Didn’t get down on one knee?
A: Nope, that would’ve been awkward to do when I was already lying down!
Q: For the ring, did you go to Jared?
A: No, I did not go to Jared! The ring was a custom design at a local jeweler, with a diamond that was my great-grandmother’s.
Q: Have you set a date?
A: No, not yet. We’re talking about it, and we expect to make a decision fairly quickly. We want to get the ‘when’ and the ‘where’ locked in early.
Q: Have you registered anywhere?
A: No, not yet. Does that mean you want to get us presents???
Last night, I asked April a question. She answered in the affirmative
I said yes! @jnassi http://flic.kr/p/a8bRAB—
April Kyle (@thisisnotapril) July 29, 2011
Yes, again, my blogging streak is broken. I was going to write something Tuesday night, but I wound up spending the evening out with April and her boss, and there was simply no energy left to write by the time we got home. Then Wednesday night, I went to the Los Gatos Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner — my mother is the Chamber’s Executive Director — and again, by the time I got home……
Excuses, excuses, excuses. I’m going to make up for it, though! Today you’ll get THREE blog posts from me, instead of my usual single post.
Stay tuned, more to come shortly.
I tried to post this last night, but the iPhone app for WordPress refuses to let me upload a photo. So, I’m going to consider this a post for Saturday, July 16, and I’m going to backdate the publish date. No reason for me to have my daily post streak ended because of a technical glitch!
Here’s me and April at Shoreline Ampitheater, waiting for the Eddie Izzard show to start:
April introduced me to the new Zynga game, Hanging With Friends. The problem with games like this is we wind up playing against each other… and we’re both a little, ahem, competitive.
This invariably leads to comments muttered my way like, “I don’t like you”, or “You suck”, or “I’m going to start using made up words, like how you’re a monkeybutt.”
It’s not that I’m good at these kinds of games, mind you. I suck at Scrabble… but I’m better than her
No, I’m not going to rap along with Eminem, but tonight, I’m cleaning out my closet.
I’m a month away from moving my lady love to California to live with me, and I really, really, really need to make some room for her and her things. Including her dog.
I’ve been going through the accumulated junk in my house, getting it ready to be picked up by my favorite throw-money-at-the-problem-to-make-it-go-away service, 1-800-GOT-JUNK. There are old computers and monitors being e-recycled. My 5-disc CD player that I bought in my senior year of high school. My 2-tape cassette player that I bought even before high school!
Zip drives. A CD-R burner — not a DVD-R, but a CD-R! Dead hard drives. Dead routers. VCRs that mangle VHS tapes.
The empty boxes to computer components that went into the one and only computer I ever built myself — with an assist from Mike Garcia.
Notebooks from old jobs.
A recliner chair that didn’t recline anymore.
Television sets that were purchased before anyone had ever heard of “high definition”.
Furniture that’s old and busted, turned on its side and being used as a stand for one of the television sets that’s going away.
It’ll be good to get all of this stuff hauled away tomorrow, but even then, I won’t be done. I’ll just have made a significant enough dent to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Cancer sucks.
We all know this, we’ve heard the rhetoric, we’ve done our part for charity.
We all know someone who has suffered from a form of cancer.
We all know someone who has lost the battle.
We all know survivors.
Today, I received news about two of my friends.
One friend was lucky, she found out her biopsy results were benign. She lives to fight another day. While I haven’t known Stephane all that long, she’s a fighter through and through. I know this because she’ll challenge you to a fight if you cross her in any way, shape, or form. Don’t be rude to her, don’t be a racist, don’t root against the Patriots, and you might… MIGHT! … avoid getting called out for a fight with Stephane.
Another friend, sadly, couldn’t fight any longer. Andy’s fight against lung cancer was a valiant one, and he put up a more determined fight than anyone could have hoped for… unless you knew Andy, how he would never give up, how he handled adversity. It’s not fair that a good man could be taken by lung cancer at the age of 35, leaving behind a wife and a young son. Even less fair when you find out that Andy was not a smoker.
I first met Andy when we were in the seventh grade. We hung out throughout middle school and high school, and then lost touch after we went off to our respective universities. In 2004, we reconnected when we were both groomsmen in a mutual friend’s wedding. By then, Andy was living in Los Angeles, working in the Hollywood machine, most recently on the crew of the television show Criminal Minds. I was going back and forth to LA frequently at that time for business, and I made it a point to meet up with Andy and his wife-to-be on each trip.
Unfortunately, when my trips to LA for business dried up, my visits with Andy did as well. We fell out of touch again. And now reconnecting with him isn’t an option.
Thanks to Andy’s brother Tim, I followed his fight against cancer from afar, rooting for him silently, thinking about him, hoping for him. I’m sorry he’s gone, but I’m happy that he’s no longer in pain.
Rest in peace, my friend. You are missed.
Additional media coverage of Andy.
Update: A photo of Andy and Jen at the premiere of “Swan”, a documentary about Andy. Photo courtesy of Sherry Sims, via Facebook.
Photo credit to Sherry Sims, via Facebook
Blogging while on vacation is harder than you would think. Remembering to take a few minutes to jot down something and post it. My usual blogging time is around 8pm or 9pm, after I’ve gotten home from work, had dinner, talked to April, started laundry, etc. But while I’m in Lake Tahoe for a long weekend with the guys, my timing is off.
If you missed it, I blogged something very short around 11:30pm last night. Apparently, if I post it from the WordPress iPhone app, it doesn’t automatically publish to Facebook and Twitter like WordPress.com’s full admin panel does.
Anyway…
A couple of days ago, after I finished reading a book, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to read next. I turned to my social network to see what suggestions would come through:
Recommend one book that you think I would like to read. Ready, set, go!
Here’s the results, with a little bit of commentary from me:
Since I’ve already read Blink, and also had another Malcolm Gladwell suggestion, I decided to go with “The Tipping Point” next, instead of any of the recommendations.
There are a few others on the list that I have a copy of already, planning to read someday, like “Replay” and “A Confederacy Of Dunces”. Some are ones I’d never heard of, but look pretty interesting to me, like “Let the Great World Spin” and “Tattoos on the Heart”.
I’m keeping all of them on an Amazon list to reference later, if I’m looking for ideas from my friends.
As with yesterday, I still got nothing. I’m pretty sure I’m coming down with something, a nasty cold, the flu, something like that. It’s making my head pretty fuzzy, which made it difficult to get through work today.
So, rather than write anything, I’ll share a picture I modified the other day. April had posted on her co-worker’s Facebook wall:
I just had the best idea ever. We should breed a red panda* with a bunny. Red bunny pandas!
At which point, I fired up Pixelmator and Google Images, and made this:
*April’s a little obsessed with red pandas.
