A lot of things have made me happy lately.

• I hung up a bird feeder for the first time in a long time, and never get tired of watching cardinals out the front window.
• Joanne has been involved in Powderhorn 365, a community photography project for the Minneapolis neighborhood where we live. The idea is to take a picture every day for a full year to give a feel of the neighborhood, the people that live here, etc.  Not all of the photos are fantastic (and it’s probably not nearly as interesting for somebody that doesn’t live in the neighborhood), but it’s again reminding me why I love the neighborhood I live in.
• I wasn’t sure that the Obama inauguration would have much of an effect on me, but it has been making me smile when I think about it.  It seriously feels like a cloud has lifted and things are beginning to make sense again.  It remains to be seen if he’ll be a great president, of course, but for now it feels good to have a fresh start.
• A lot of cool things happening at Collabora, and I’m really enjoying my work.  I’ve been hacking on telepathy-related stuff lately as well and have really enjoyed it so far.
• Watching my little girl grow never ceases to bring me joy.  She’s jabbering on about everything, learning new words every day.  Who knew that pronouns were so difficult?  She’s constantly mixing up ‘me’ and ‘you’ (e.g. asking me to “pick you up”, etc).
• I’ve been on a roll with cooking lately.  Joanne is doing a costume design for a local theater, and the show goes up in february, so I’ve been making lots of big meals and freezing the leftovers so that when things get busy and we don’t have a lot of time to make meals, we can still eat relatively well.  There are times when I don’t enjoy cooking all that much, but I’ve really been feeling it lately.
• Tom Waits ‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’ is possibly the most perfect song ever written.