Exiting 2008 With As Much Grace As I Can Muster...

Last year I wrote a post that called 2007 "my personal 'Annus Horribilis'". Looking back now, 2007 seems like a dream year compared to 2008.

Since losing Wren to suicide on September 28th, I have to admit I have been in a weird place both personally and professionally. There have days when I consider quitting blogging and cooking all together because he encouraged me in both endeavors. Other days, I consider quitting my day job as an audio engineer/sound system designer to make writing and cooking my full time profession. There have been days that have been near impossible to drag myself out of bed and other days that I wake up feeling like I did on September 27th, even though the person I was that morning no longer exists. Those days are starting to out number the former thankfully but it has been and will continue to be, as my therapist says, "a process" to figure out who the new me will be. I will be working on that "process" quite a bit in the upcoming year.

Originally, I wasn't going to write a year end wrap up post but as I thought about it, I realized that so much has happened that I couldn't not because there are so many people to whom I owe a "Thank You" (You know who you are), especially those of you have continued to read The Sour Dough during the past few months and written me with such kindess and support. Actually to ALL my readers over the years. I can't tell you how much it means to me to receive your comments and emails.

Did you know that 2009 will be the beginning of my sixth year of blogging!

I started The Sour Dough back in December 2004, at the urging of Wren, as a place to explore my passion for writing. Originally, The Sour Dough was a general topic blog that featured my hobby of cooking/baking but by May of 2005, again at Wren's urging, I made the shift to a single focus, cooking with an emphasis on baking, specifically bread baking.

In December of 2006, I registered "Breadchick.com" and in January 2007 I kissed Blogger goodbye by moving The Sour Dough to my new webpage, self-hosted on the Wordpress format. Breadchick.com lived on our server farm that occupied our front parlor in our house in Cambridge, MA. Unfortunately, in October, I had to shut down those servers as part of settling the affairs Wren's estate and moved The Sour Dough back to Blogger until I can find a new hosting company and take the time to re-setup my templates, etc. Which is probably why some of you are having some problems with your RSS feeds! (Note to those who have wondered why you don't get notification of new posts, change your RSS feeds to breadchick.blogspot.com)

As I move into 2009, I have a few things planned for The Sour Dough with the most important to get back to a self-hosting format. I also want to get the pictures to my older posts back up. I've been slowly uploading them to my Flickr page so I can go back into the posts and reset them. I also have a late February trip to Paris, a return to the Shenandoah Valley in May, and I'm quite sure some interesting business travel that always results in food posts.

LB , who's snoring so loudly right now I can hear him over the blower for the heater, will be back in 2009 as well. He'll be hosting Weekend Cat Blogging regularly and who knows, may even find the time to set up his own blog. He is becoming quite the feline computer expert and gets about half the "fan mail" sent The Sour Dough.

So, as 2008 fades into black and the curtain on 2009 opens, here is to greeting each day of 2009 as if it is the first day of a New Year.

May you and yours have a safe, healthy and prosperous New Year.