New Year

This is my first post of the New Year and it's already January 18th. That should tell you how busy the year's been already!

I have mixed feelings about 2009. The promise of new beginnings is still there, just like any year, but this one is already tainted with media rumors of the worst recession since the Great Depression and massive jobs loss. At IBM, they're only predicting a 4% reduction of staff, but at a company of 386,000 employees, that's a whopping 16,000 people. The ax should drop sometime in the next two weeks. Lucky for us, that's no where near what some other tech companies are reporting. For instance, Microsoft may cut 17% and no one seems very excited about the new Windows 7.0.

On the good news front, since the year rolled over, my 401K losses don't seem as depressing. I've only lost 5% since the beginning of the year, instead of 37.94%. My bi-weekly commute to North Dakota now costs me $30-40 one way instead of the $60 it did last year. Best of all, people are not buying useless things like the one-click butter cutter or faux sky lights that seem to exist only to clutter our houses and hurt the environment.

As for me, I plan to tackle my pocketbook by living a little more sustainably. Nathan and I are ordering a vegetarian cook-book to reduce our meat consumption and I'm pondering buying this, which will turn my bike into exercise equipment and a small power generator. I think it's going to be a good year.