So, tonight is New Year’s Eve celebrations, meaning that we finally say goodbye 2009 and hello 2010, and while I look forward to 2010, the year which will undoubtedly be driven by the World Cup soccer celebration here in South Africa, I must say that looking back over 2009, it was a pretty good year after all.

Naturally, the year was pretty much dominated by the lead up to and the eventual wedding that saw Chantelle and I finally become husband and wife, probably the greatest leap forward in my life for many a past year. Of course this year also saw our first real holiday together, that being our honeymoon roadtrip up the country, as well as the completion of my first year in my new job here at Touchwork, a position and place of work that I’ve really come to enjoy and take pride in.

2009 also marked the year I returned to karate after my lengthy departure from the discipline, starting up in a new style and once again, all the way from the ground up. Thankfully though, the people at the Funakoshi dojo are simply marvelous and I enjoy each and every session with them all, so much so that it looks like this may very well be the first style in which I attempt to go all the way and finally get that ever elusive black belt! Already got one tournament under the belt and sporting green at the moment, so I’m off to a good start it would seem! :)

Outside of that, my hobbies all continued as normal, gaming, anime, manga and comic books, though the one thing that did slack off is my webcomic production, something I’ll have to look into kicking off properly again come the new year. Blogging continued at the usual frenetic rate and I finally got around to claiming my own vanity URL towards the end of the year, hence you reading this on https://www.craiglotter.co.za instead of the old http://www.codeunit.co.za.

2009 also turned out to be the year of spending money on the pad, and as such we’ve got quite a couple of nifty things lying around the house now, and come January next year, the brand new couches should be sitting looking nice and pretty as well! Sadly, this was also the year that Coco went missing in action and while he is still sorely missed, it also turned out to be the year of Achilles, as our playful ginger boy joined our family way back in January believe it or not!

Not much else is jumping to mind as I type this (being brutally honest as always), but looking out over everything I’ve already typed so far, I can safely say that on the balance of things, 2009 was a fabulous year for both Chantelle and I. In other words, it is with a fond farewell we bid to what was an excellent year in our journey together and we eagerly look forward to 2010 – who knows, it might just be the year to usher in a little Lotter if the awesome Craig has his way! ;)

Chantelle performing a kiss attack directed at Craig’s nose

“Honey, I can’t help but feel that there is something coming between us”. Sadly, the elephant was not amused.

Incredibly, the dogi does somehow manage to stay closed around that enormous girth I carry around these days…