2011 was hands down the best year of my life. Here are some highlights:

EDIT: I forgot something awesome that happened in January that I am including below.

In January I got tickets to The Wright Stuff, a screening of all three Edgar Wright movies (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) which was attended by Wright, Simon Pegg, Lucy Davis, and a number of the Scott Pilgrim cast. Jason and I drove down to Los Angeles on a Saturday afternoon and went to the screening, which was super fun. Being 10 feet away from Edgar and Simon felt unreal.

In March I went to New York for about a week to see the final LCD Soundsystem shows. I had a wonderful time and fell in love with the city. I spent a large portion of the year plotting to move there, which has since cooled but I think about it from time to time.

In April I went to Coachella for the first time. It was an amazing experience and I saw an unbelievable amount of live music in three days. I repeated that experience again in August when I went to Outside Lands Festival here in SF and then Treasure Island Music Festival in October. I still want to do a separate post on shows from this past year so I will leave it at that for now.

California Extreme happened in July and included an awesome chip tunes/video game cover concert. It had been a couple years since I had gone last but I am very happy I went back.

In August I went to PAX for the second time. I finally got to meet Eden and Zannah for the first time! I also met a bunch of Seamonkeys who I got to know on Twitter after signing up to go on JoCoCruiseCrazy this coming February which was awesome.

October saw the release of books by my two favorite authors, Haruki Murakami and John Hodgman, within a week of each other which seemed like a cosmic gift of some kind. Both books were amazing.

In addition Hodgman went on tour in November but was not coming to the Bay Area (but he is very soon!) so I took it upon myself to go to see him in both Portland and Seattle because I am crazy obsessed. While in Portland I got to hang out with Maria and Taylor and then in Seattle I spent an evening with Sara, all of whom I met at PAX for the first time as well.

I would be remiss to not mention that Vic moved here over the summer with her husband, and has led to much hanging out with them and Mattie. And most importantly I have wrangled them into a band with me, which is crazy awesome.

This year I was able to get back into reading. I read 19 books, not a lot but certainly more than I was reading in past years. Part of this was fueled by buying a Kindle in February before I went to New York, as the convenience of having it lead to a lot more reading while out of town all year. At the same time I just devoted more time to books instead of manga or video games.

When I think about my life as it was a year ago, and I can very clearly remember how I felt about things then, it amazes me that things have come so far so quickly. I can only hope that things will continue to improve or even just maintain my current level of satisfaction with my life.

I think I am on the right track though, I have a lot of plans for this year already which should help. In January there are a number of awesome shows part of SF Sketchfest, then in February is JoCoCruiseCrazy which I am unreasonably excited for. After that is PAX East in April and Coachella the very next two weeks, and finally MaxFunCon in June. So I am going to be very busy.

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