This has been a busy, challenging, taxing year, and I haven’t taken the time to note any of it here. A quick summary, for anyone interested, in no particular order:

• I moved to Astoria, Oregon, in May, after becoming enamored with it a couple of years ago. A small window of opportunity opened itself up for this move. It wasn’t easy, but it’s one of those things that may never have happened if I passed it up this time. Along the way I learned that there are professional pet movers who will load up your cats in a minivan and hustle them halfway across the country in a couple of days, that my 20-year-old pickup can make that same distance, across the Rockies, albeit at a slower pace, and that being 20 minutes from the beach is pretty damn neat, as is running most weekends along the Columbia River.

• For the record, I do miss things about Lawrence–including, but not limited to, Johnny’s Tavern, Biemer’s Barbecue, Horjesi Family Athletics Center, easy access to Saint Louis, the Kansas City Ruby Meetup Group, and Ad Astra Running.

• I’ve had some personal/family challenges that have consumed a lot of my time and energy. If you know me personally you know what they have been. They’re taking longer to resolve than I’d hoped, but we’re getting there.

• I was promoted to senior software engineer at O’Reilly Media, and hit my five-year anniversary there in July.

• I appeared as a guest on three Ruby-flavored podcasts: Ruby Rogues episode 353, My Ruby Story episode 58, and the Ruby Testing Podcast episode 3. I don’t think I have a voice for podcasts, but I did enjoy the experiences.

• I didn’t talk about it publicly, but I started and abandoned a new book idea (my first since my Rails testing book). The new idea wasn’t working as a book, but may as a video series. We will see. Winter nights are long and rainy here, so I’ll have time in the coming months to experiment with ideas.

• Speaking of the book I did write, I pushed out a larger-than-expected update in August, in spite of my current misgivings about the diminishing returns of evergreen content.

• I’m getting involved with a small Meetup group of software developers in and around Astoria. Last week I reprised my talk The Git Historian for the group. It’s very small at the moment, but I’m glad that I don’t have to drive hours to Portland or Seattle to engage face-to-face with other software professionals.

• I’ve run in four 5Ks and one 10K since my last post here, with another 10K coming this Sunday across this bridge. I’m not any faster (probably slower), but what I lack in speed I make up in persistence. I’ve got nothing scheduled after Sunday’s race, and I’m already feeling anxious about that.

• Seriously, Astoria needs a good running store and more barbecue options. I often say I’m going to do something about the latter, but don’t hold me to it. I’m just joking, ok?