Here is a brief year-in-review which I hope does not bore you too much!

My entire family is now working in Parsippany, with Jean joining David and me at PHS, Mark at Prudential and Andy at Embassy Suites. People have suggested that we should move there, but I like our house and location, other than the long drive, nor do I wish to pay several hundred thousand additional dollars for a house which might be smaller than the one I currently have.

My Chinese daughter is back in NJ teaching at Princeton, which is nice since we see her more than we have for several years. There is a chance though that she and her husband might be lured away by some other university (as near as CMU in Pittsburgh or as far as Utrecht in Netherlands). We’ll see what happens.

Because I was busier than usual this year, I did not get much writing done. Now that the Tibet book is finished, I want to begin serious research for the Route 46 book and the “Math Lab” story.

My favorite cds of the year were Richard Thompson’s Sweet Warrior and the Decemberists’ The Crane Wife. The former was Thompson at his folk-rock best, while the latter was an excellent progressive rock album.

My favorite books of the year were Iain Banks’ Culture novel Look To Windward and Steven Saylor’s historical mystery The Judgment of Caesar. Both of those are free-standing novels in long-running series, which are the type of series I enjoy reading rather than endless novels stretched over three to six books. I will definitely read more books in both series.