5
As of 10/1/2020, the number of years I've owned my own company.
160
The number of seats in a standard movie theater around here.
9
How long it takes to make a baby, and also how long I've been under relatively strict quarantine.
Do you still call it a happy hour if it's 6 hours long?
My friend Ethan started a local DefCon chapter back in the early 2000s (2003-ish?), which eventually grew from being a small (5-7 people) gathering focused on security/hacking, to a much larger (50+) person general geek meetup. Somewhere along the way we switched the name to 'HRGeeks' (which in retrospect has caused so much confusion with human resources professionals), and I started 'hosting' - sending out reminders/invites, coordinating with the restaurant (nearly always Kelley's Irish Pub at Pembroke Mall, which is now gone), and nudging/pushing/personally texting/calling specific introvert/forgetful friends to come out for a bit. These meetups started around 6:30PM, and usually went until Kelley's closed at 2AM, and then continued on standing around in the parking lot until 3 or sometimes 4AM.
At one point, we had gotten so big that people were showing up to 'the geek meetup' that nobody new and weren't on any of the invite lists - friends of friends of friends had gotten word that 'fun geek meetup happens at Kelleys at 6:30 on the 1st Thursday of every month', and had just shown up in blind faith that it was still there (it was, for about 8 years!).
ShmooCon 2020 was a fun mix of business and pleasure for me. This was my 15th(!?!?!) ShmooCon, and the 16th in total. I don’t know that I’ve gone to any other event as often. It’s now been so many years that my group of friends has traditions: - Le Mirch for Indian at least one night - Krispie Kreme delivered on Saturday night around 1-2am for post party friend making - and staying up way later than normal, hacking on projects and chatting in the hotel lobby.
In March, we decided to build a raised garden bed in the center of the back patio, to give us a reason to take out the nasty, ancient rose bush that was there when we bought the house. That rose bush took a sawzall to remove - the 'trunk' was nearly 2" thick - more of a rose tree!
We finally settled into the new house. We hosted a few huge parties (80+ people), attended 5 weddings, made dozens of charcuterie boards, and cleaned out a backed up sewer line 4 times.
It was a relatively light travel year, with most of the trips (and nearly all of the overnight trips) being for pleasure - mostly to the 5 weddings!
I saw a bunch of concerts this year, after making a determined effort to 'just go'. 4 of my favorite bands toured for the first time in a long time (over 14 years for Pigface!), so it was very serendipitous.