I am happy to report that your CT scan showed no evidence of residual and/or recurrent kidney cancer.

I recommend that you have a chest x-ray and blood tests every 6 months. I have ordered these tests for you. I will also order your next CT scan in 2 years.

That's a good thing to read first thing in the morning. What a relief!

I'll see my urologist in January for the first in-person followup visit, but I can now think of myself as a cancer survivor. Which certainly beats the alternative.

My takeaway: Apple, more than ever, needs a Web evangelist. They don't talk to Web dev/designers, and they don't listen to Web dev/designers. It shows, and it's hurting them.

Just one example: Apple's HTML5 promotion may backfire (InfoWorld). Pushing Web standards (good) by blocking browsers other than Safari was just a bone-headed move—and it's only a small symptom of a much bigger problem.

Yes, I blogged about this 3 1/2 years ago in Apple, Hire Me. But at this point, it's pretty clear to me that Apple first needs to see that they have a problem.

Later that day, Dori was scheduled for a routine follow-up appointment with our family doctor, so I went along. When she was done, I asked the doc to take a quick look at me. He lifted up my hair, looked at my forehead, and said, "You've got shingles." I was on anti-virals an hour later, and the whole shingles experience, while not exactly fun, was minor. Friends and relatives that have had it have just been in agony for weeks or months; my case was over in a week.

Yesterday, I noticed something awry with Dori, and said, "Hey, I think you have [redacted for her privacy], and maybe [also redacted]. Let's get you seen by a doctor." She made an appointment at Kaiser via their Web site, and we went down there today; I sat in. After examination, the doctor told her that she had [redacted] and [also redacted]. The doctor left the room, and I pumped my fist and said "Yes!" Not that I was happy she's ill, of course, but it's a relatively minor thing. She'll need a brief course of drug treatment.

Dori looked over and said, "Congratulations, Dr. Negrino. I owe you a chicken."

I said, "Yes, you do. And I want it to be a rubber chicken."

Let it be known: my wife owes me a rubber chicken. Pay up, honey.

Thanks for all your kind thoughts and wishes, and keep ’em coming, please!

I'm doing well. I spent a total of five days in the hospital. We discovered the day I left the hospital that the surgery was a complete success; the tumor was the "right" type (i.e., it wasn't the "spread and kill you" variety). It was a bit smaller than expected (6 cm, not 7 cm). And most importantly, the pathology report showed "surgical resection margins negative for malignancy." That means that the surgeon cut out the tumor plus a margin, and he got it all. Let me share the important part of the pathology report:

I choked up when I read that; turns out there's a world of difference between "I'll probably be OK" and "I'm going to be OK."

So that's it. No chemo or radiation with this kind of cancer; there will be regular followups for the next five years, but now I'm in the 85% chance of a total cure category. It doesn't look like kidney cancer is what's going to kill me.

Recovery has been painful, and I'm really ready for it to be over. The wonders of Percocet and Vicodin have been plumbed, and found wanting. My side hurts less now, of course, but it's still not exactly a picnic. I've been back to work this week just a little; maybe a couple hours a day. It's no surprise that recovery from major abdominal surgery takes weeks, but I'm impatient for it to be done. I get tired easily, and almost always need an afternoon nap. Healing is hard work. Who would have thought?

Once again, I thank those of you who sent your kind thoughts, your best wishes, and your warm encouragement. It's really meant a lot to me, and I am deeply grateful to have such a community of friends and family.

If you would like to follow what's going on with me, the easiest way to do it will be to read Dori's Twitter feed:

http://www.twitter.com/dori

You don't have to use Twitter yourself to read that page.

I expect that once I'm on the mend, I'll be tweeting from the hospital from my iPhone, which will also show up on my Facebook account.

Thanks for all of the good wishes and kind thoughts. I really appreciate them.

Oh, I finished writing my part of our Dreamweaver book, so it's done. A friend tells me that after this, I should teach a community college writing class, and when some kid whines about his deadlines, I should lean in, and patiently explain to him that I've had a heart attack, and I've had cancer, and I still made my freaking deadlines both times. Punk.

Talk to you all soon.

I've had one of those days that I understand are quite character-building.

I was alluding to that old chestnut, "Adversity builds character." And what made me think of that was a phone call I'd received earlier that afternoon.

Around noon, I'd gone down to the Kaiser campus in Santa Rosa for a routine CT scan that was meant to see if I had any kidney stones. We switched our medical insurance to Kaiser in December, which meant a whole new set of doctors. I'd had some bladder stones removed in late November, and the protocol is to do a follow up ultrasound three or four months later, just to make sure that things are clear. Instead of the ultrasound, my new urologist wanted a baseline CT, because, he said, "It's the gold standard for finding stones."

Kaiser is pretty darned efficient. I walked into the Medical Imaging department at 11:58 AM, and I was done with the CT scan by 12:08 PM. As I left, the tech told me that I should hear from my doctor with the results in a couple of days.

Two hours later, my phone rang, and my urologist told me I have kidney cancer.

Let's jump right ahead to the good news we've learned since then: the tumor is fairly large (7 cm), but it is confined to the right kidney, and hasn't spread beyond it. It hasn't affected nearby lymph nodes. And it hasn't invaded the major kidney vein, which would act as a superhighway to spread the cancer to other parts of the body.

On April 9, I'm scheduled for surgery intended to remove the tumor and save the rest of the kidney. About 30% of the kidney will be taken. I'll be in the hospital for four or five days, then back home to continue recovery. After ten days, I should feel well enough to start working again. If all goes well, recovery should take about a month, except for no heavy lifting for six weeks.

Kidney cancer (or to put it more specifically, renal cell carcinoma) doesn't respond to chemo or radiation treatment. As long as it's in one place and can be cut out, that's the way to go. There's no good way to know before surgery just what kind of cancer it is; there are different types of kidney cancer. If it is the most common type, removing the tumor is considered curative. Most of the time, there aren't many symptoms, and tumors are found incidentally when doing a CT scan for another reason, as happened in my case. For me, my right side aches a little bit, but not all the time.

For a couple of months, we've been working on Dreamweaver CS5: Visual QuickStart Guide, a revision to a book that is one of our main sources of income. Happily, our deadline was always set prior to what's turned out to be my surgery date, and even with the distractions and general freaking out since last Wednesday, we've still managed to get some work in and stay on track. It will be a relief to have the book done and behind us before I go into the hospital.

We're holding up well, I think. It's a frightening thing to learn you have cancer, that there is this literally malignant thing growing inside you. It's scary for me and scary for Dori, who has been wonderfully supportive. Our family and friends have likewise been completely forthcoming with love and support. I'm going public with this because I could imagine Dori tweeting something like "Arrived at the hospital for Tom's surgery" and taking all of our friends and colleagues who follow us on Twitter and Facebook by surprise. We don't want that. Better to let people know what's going on now.

• The Hurt Locker: 6
• Avatar: 3
• Precious: 2
• Crazy Heart: 2
• Up: 2

For those who are unfamiliar with me doing this, you can find previous year's Oscarblogging at:

• 2002
• 2003
• 2004
• 2005
• 2006
• 2007
• 2008
• 2009

Updates will be (mostly) placed at the end, so scroll down.

By popular request: as with previous years, I've got a live chat group going. If you've got AIM (or .Mac, or anything similar) join us at: backupbrainchat. Instructions:

For Mac OS X:

• Logon to any iChat account (AIM, Me.com, or .Mac)
• Select File > Go to Chat Room
• In the Go to Chat Room dialog, fill in backupbrainchat for the room name and click Go

For Windows:

• If you don't already have it, go to AOL.com and download AIM, and do what's necessary to get a screenname (AIM is free and you don't need to have an AOL account to use it)
• Launch AIM
• Choose People > Send Chat Invitation…
• Invite doriasmith to join you in the room backupbrainchat—you'll be transferred into the room instantaneously.

And here we go…

Huh... all the nominated actors and actresses come out at once? That's a new one. As is multiple hosts, so I guess it'll be an interesting night.

I love NPH doing anything, so I'm always happy to see the Oscars start off with him singing. Yay!

Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin descend from the ceiling. Nice touch, and nice tuxedos, as they introduce each other.

Okay, the two hosts thing works so far — I like the way they're playing off each other.

"Damn Helen Mirren."

"No, that's Dame Helen Mirren."

I wonder how much they had to pay James Cameron to use the sprites from Avatar?

Penelope Cruz comes out to present, and damn, that's a great dress. But then, she's always gorgeous. She announces the nominees for Actor in a SUp porting Role. I saw none of these films, so I've got no preference here.

And the winner is Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds.

Ryan Reynolds presents The Blind Side. Didn't they get rid of the best picture nominees getting this kind of treatment a few years ago? And with twice the movies this year, it may really eat up the time.

It says something about me that what really got my attention was the iPad advertisement. Now, as to what it says about me, that's another thing.

Steve Carell and Cameron Diaz (with bits about how it was supposed to be Jude Law) announcing the best animated film nominees. I loved both Up and Coraline, so I'm truly torn. And the winner is Pete Docter for Up. Sucks to be a great animated film that comes out the same year as a Pixar release.

Amanda Seyfried looks amazing. Someone needs to tell Miley Cyrus how to stand when she's wearing a dress like that. They announce the best original song nominees, with the Oscar going to Ryan Bingham and T. Bone Burnett for The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart) from Crazy Heart.

It appears that they've tossed the old ban against "and the winner is." No more "and the Oscar goes to…," I guess.

Chris Pine presents District 9. I saw it and had truly mixed feelings afterwards—it's not exactly a film you can describe as "enjoyable."

Robert Downey Jr. and Tina Fey (with appropriate props from Baldwin) announce the original screenplay nominees. Downey, what the hell are you wearing? The blue bow tie doesn't really work, and the sneakers don't help. She looks amazing, and they give the Oscar to Mark Boal for The Hurt Locker.

Matthew Broderick and Molly Ringwald? I'm having 1980s flashbacks. Then again, I guess that makes sense given that they're talking about John Hughes. The rest of my 1980s nightmares then come out all at once. How many of these people still have careers?

Samuel L. Jackson presents Up. Why him, I have no idea.

Carey Mulligan and Zoë Saldana come out to give the short film awards. The best animated short Oscar goes to Nicolas Schmerkin for Logorama (amazingly, I actually saw it). The Documentary (Short Subject) Oscar goes to Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett for Music by Prudence, and the Short Film (Live Action) Oscar goes to Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson for The New Tenants. Wow, when your time is up, it is up—they even turn the mic off.

Ben Stiller, who I find consistently unfunny, comes out made up as a Navi. He gives the best makeup Oscar to Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow for Star Trek. No surprise there, as the makeup was both good and flashy.

Jeff Bridges presents A Serious Man for best picture. Tom wonders why he's standing in the middle of the audience. Good question.

Rachel McAdams and Jake Gyllenhaal give the award for best adapted screenplay to Geoffrey Fletcher for Precious (based on the novel Push by Sapphire).

Queen Latifah shows highlights from the Governors awards. Sean wants to know what she's queen of. Clearly, I've failed in teaching him anything about culture. Lauren Bacall and Roger Corman are shown as representatives of the winners—now there is an odd couple.

Robin Williams gives the best supporting actress award. I walked out of Up in the Air saying that both these women were going to be nominated in this category, and my guess is that they're going to split the vote (a shame, as they were amazing). And the Oscar goes to Mo’Nique for Precious.

Colin Firth announces An Education as a best picture nominee.

Sigourney Weaver comes out to give the award for art direction. Damn, that woman knows how to dress. The Oscar goes to Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg (art direction) and Kim Sinclair (set decoration) for Avatar. It makes me wonder—would she have said Avatar no matter what the card said?

Tom Ford and Sarah Jessica Parker give the best costume award. I know that SJP has this rep for always being well-dressed, but I have to say that I've never seen it and her dress here doesn't change my opinion any. The winner is Sandy Powell for The Young Victoria, exactly the type of film the voters love to honor here. I'm always interested in what the costume designers choose to wear themselves, and hers is an odd dress, but one that's pretty darn gorgeous.

Charlize Thereon shows Precious.

Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner announce a tribute to horror. She looks like the perfect little goth princess, doesn't she? Ah, a tribute to films that are otherwise not even considered Academy-worthy. A lot of these weren't solely horror, and there's way to many possibilities to include them all, but a nice quickie overview.

Zack Efron and Anna Kendrick give the award for best sound editing to Paul N. J. Ottosson for The Hurt Locker and for sound mixing to Paul N. J. Ottosson (again) and Ray Beckett for The Hurt Locker (again). That gives it three so far.

Elizabeth Banks gives the sci/tech awards its thirty seconds, followed by John Travolta presenting Inglourious Basterds.

Sandra Bullock looks lovely, and gives the award for cinematography. It goes to Mauro Fiore for Avatar.

Demi Moore presents the obituary section, which explains why she wasn't on stage earlier for the John Hughes bit. She introduces James Taylor, who plays In My Life over the film clips.

Jennifer Lopez and Sam Worthington announce the best original score nominees. Is this another opportunity for an Avatar actor to give the award to Avatar? Oh no—a dance routine! I thought those had gone the way of "And the winner is"…oh, right. It reminds us all of why they stopped doing these things. The Oscar (finally) goes to Michael Giacchino for Up, ending that little conspiracy theory.

Gerard Butler and Bradley Cooper give the visual effects Oscar. As usual, this is the only category in which I've seen all the films. The winner is Avatar, which has now tied The Hurt Locker with three.

Jason Bateman presents Up in the Air.

Matt Damon gives the best documentary Oscar to Louie Psihoyos and Fisher Stevens for The Cove.

Tyler Perry comes out to give the best editor, doing a (very) mildly funny bit. The Oscar goes to Bob Murawski and Chris Innis for The Hurt Locker.

Keanu Reeves presents The Hurt Locker. Once again, why did they pick him?

Pedro Almodovar and Quentin Tarantino give the best foreign language film award to The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) from Argentina. They thank the Academy for not considering Navi to be a foreign language.

Kathy Bates presents Avatar, saying that it's the largest-grossing film of all time. I hadn't realized that it had already hit that mark. And that's before it's even gone to DVD?

And the best actor award… I don't understand why the two actors and three actresses just came out. Ah, I guess it's "suck up to the actors" time. Michelle Pfeiffer talks about Jeff Bridges, Vera Farmiga for George Clooney, Julianne Moore for Colin Firth, Tim Robbins for Morgan Freeman, and Colin Farrell for Jeremy Renner.

Kate Winslet looks amazing and gives the award to Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart. He gives a nice speech with lots of credit to his parents for getting him into the business in the first place, and to his wife for 33 years (it's nice to hear about a Hollywood marriage that's lasted).

Another five come out for the best actress nominees; this time it's Forrest Whittaker for Sandra Bullock, Michael Sheen for Helen Mirren, Peter Sarsgaard for Carey Mulligan, Oprah Winfrey for Gabourey Sidibe, and Stanley Tucci for Meryl Streep. It's her 16th nomination, making her the top nominated woman ever. Sean Penn starts off with a bit that makes no sense and then gives the award to Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side. That one was a shocker, but I think that she's the most surprised of all.

Barbra Streisand comes out to give the best director award. Will Cameron and Bigelow split this and best picture? The Oscar goes to Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker. It's great that a woman finally won, but it's pathetic that the Academy thought I Am Woman was the best song to play her off.

She gets the last laugh, though, as Tom Hanks almost immediately brings her (and The Hurt Locker) back out as the best picture winner.

Tonight's big winners: Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker with six Oscars. Baldwin and Martin were more than adequate; nothing terribly memorable, but no gigantic gaffes either. More Neil Patrick Harris would have been nice, but we can't have everything.

First, some preliminary reading: This report from the 3D Vision Blog is a rundown of the three 3D systems in widespread use in the US.

Right after it came out, I saw Avatar 3D in Santa Rosa using the Dolby 3D system, and then in February at the Metreon in San Francisco using the IMAX 3D system (this is a real IMAX theater, not a dinky IMAX Lite theater). Afterwards, I struggled (still am, actually) to quantify the difference. But I enjoyed the movie both times.

OK, the IMAX screen is way bigger and the sound was better. But we were a little too far off center axis, so the 3D effect was probably not as great as it could have been. On the other hand, I noticed a lot more detail in the frame than I did the first time. Perhaps that was because the image was so large, or perhaps because it was the second time seeing the film, so I wasn't quite as overwhelmed with the action. I noticed in IMAX that if you raised your glasses you could tell how much brightness was being washed out of the picture, due to the different polarization method used to achieve the 3D effect.

I was also amused by the constant smell of pot smoke in the IMAX theater, but I can't pin that on James Cameron or IMAX.

One thing that I should have expected, but was surprised when I saw it, was that the movie did not take up the entire height or width of the IMAX screen. Instead, it appeared at the bottom of the screen, with black bars above and to each side. In retrospect, this is obvious, as it was shot to be shown in regular movie theaters. Interestingly, IMDB states that it is distributed and displayed in two aspect ratios:

1.78 : 1 (IMAX 3-D version) (2K 3-D version: constant image width venues)

2.35 : 1 (2-D version) (2K 3-D version: constant image height venues)

The first time, with the Dolby 3D system in a normal sized theater, was perhaps more immersive. We had perfect theater position, and the Dolby system provides excellent, better color reproduction and a brighter picture. I remember thinking, about five minutes in, "Damn, I've gotta see this movie again."

We also saw Coraline 3D and Up 3D in the Dolby 3D format, and the main thing that I took away from that was how Coraline used 3D to push stuff out of the screen at you, and Avatar and Up used it more often to create more of a sense of depth within the screen, as though you were looking through a window. I like the latter approach better (I hasten to add that we still loved Coraline)

So: I'm glad that I saw it in both places. But what I mainly learned was that the IMAX 3D experience was not that much better that it is worth a special trip down to San Francisco just to see a movie. If I'm in town (we were there for Macworld Expo) and a movie I want to see is in IMAX, then it's worth doing. For me, I'd say that with 3D movies, a brighter picture and more vivid colors trump screen size; as long as the screen is big enough, super big doesn't make the experience that much better.

I verified that the problem on my machine was with the Hoefler Text font by using Font Book to disable the font, then opened the problematic document in Pages. No crash, though of course the text that was in Hoefler Text now appeared in a different font. Turning the font back on in Font Book made the problem reappear.

Some people suggested that the solution was to replace the version of Hoefler Text that ships with Snow Leopard with a version that shipped with a previous version of Mac OS X, and they provided such versions for download. I didn't want to do that if I didn't have to, so I did some more digging. Here's what worked for me:

1. Restart your Mac.
2. As soon as you hear the startup sound, hold down the Shift key. This tells the Mac to do a Safe Boot. Instead of the regular startup sequence, you'll see a progress bar in the lower third of the screen. As part of the Safe Boot sequence, the Mac is doing a bunch of things (see this Apple support document for more detail), but the key here is that it is trashing the user font caches, which will be rebuilt automatically.
3. When the progress bar finishes, you'll see the Login screen (even if you usually have it turned off). Enter your password, login, and wait until you see the Mac desktop.
4. Restart again, this time normally (i.e., don't hold down the Shift key).
5. Fire up Pages (or whatever program is giving you trouble) and see if the problem has gone away. It did for me.

The main reason for the iSight cameras on Macs or Apple monitors is to do video iChats (yes, I know about Photo Booth, which people use once, go "Huh." then forget about). If you were to try to do video chats on an iPad, held in your hand, the video would shake and move all the time. And that's a bad user experience. Apple doesn't do those. You can fix the problem some with image stabilization software, but probably not enough for a 10-minute chat using a camera forced to have a narrow field of view. And a stand would be a simple solution, but they've mostly come out of the gate positioning it as a device that allows you to do anything you want to do with it while you hold it in one or two hands.

I have no doubt that there are prototype iPads with cameras in Apple's labs. But I'm guessing they haven't licked the problem of shaky hands to their satisfaction yet. Give them a year or so.

However, if you want to be taken seriously as a web pundit it seems to be a requirement that you put in your own two cents, so here's mine.

If you've seen me at any web-related conferences in the last few years, you've probably seen me wearing a button like the one on the left (if you want your own, you can get them here).

I wear it because I think the state of "web standards" has been horrendously screwed up for several years; not just this year or last year, but for a good long time. I'd date my frustration as beginning with the W3C's announcement of XHTML 2, which was, imo, a solution in search of a problem. The W3C hasn't had their act together since then (did they ever?), and I don't expect that to change any time soon.

Initially, the WHATWG and their rough HTML5 spec looked promising. With representation from Apple, Mozilla, and Opera, I thought they could really accomplish something positive—if Microsoft could/would join the club. When I asked that question a few years ago, I got a very straightforward answer from MS: the WHATWG doesn't have a patent policy, and so long as that's the case, MS can't join. If you don't have the vendor with the #1 market share at the table, you're just wasting your time.

I became more hopeful when it looked like the W3C and the WHATWG might be able to work together on HTML5. But so much for that—the W3C architecture astronauts couldn't leave HTML5 untouched, and apparently the WHATWG may have drunk a little of the AA Kool-aid as well.

And now? The WHATWG have picked up their ball and gone home. They've scratched the number off of "HTML5," so it's now just HTML. No more version numbers—we're now in the "versionless" future, what ever that means. For web designers and developers (Remember them? Funny, the W3C and WHATWG don't) it means they can never again hold browser vendors to a promise to support x version of a spec. For tech writers, it means that they can never again say their book, article, tutorial, or video covers up through y version of HTML.

What's next? My crystal ball is fuzzy, but my guesses:

• Browser vendors are going to start doing whatever the hell they want. Why shouldn't they? With no way to hold them accountable, and no way to measure their compliance with a standard, it'll be just like the bad old days.
• Side note: when is the Mozilla Foundation going to realize that they're dead? Most of their income comes from Google searches by Firefox users—and now that Google's got their own browser, why keep paying? If I was a Google stockholder, I'd be interested in the answer to that question. Even non-profits need business models, and Mozilla doesn't have one.
• Book publishers are going to freak the hell out. Not right away, but when they get it, it's gonna be ugly.
• Your average web designer who just wants to know how to do something is going to go insane. Looking at the specs won't be useful, as browser makers can ignore them. Trying to find how-to's online will be a PITA, as they'll only be useful for the one moment in time that they were written.
• Life will be very good for Adobe—so long as they can update Dreamweaver often enough to keep up with the browser maker's zigging and zagging. Adobe BrowserLab will be huge.
• In the long run, a new group will arise: a web equivalent of Underwriters Laboratories. A vendor wants the seal of approval for their browser? Gotta meet this list of requirements. If you don't, fine—but after enough pain, governments and corporations will start requiring it, so it's better to get with the program early.
• Thinking about starting a group like this? My advice: don't allow browser vendors to join. Even better: don't allow W3C or WHATWG reps to join. Keep the decision making about the requirements list completely separate from the spec designers and the browser makers, or the tail will end up wagging the dog.
• That requirements list may or may not have anything to do with some version of HTML—and that's okay. Much of the interesting stuff on the web in the last decade has come from vendors, not standards writers. If it shipped, and cool stuff could be done with it, web builders pressured other vendors to implement it too. That method has been working, and that's okay.

And at the end, it all comes back to that slogan on the button—all that really matters is what actually ships and what's actually usable. There are some lovely theories in all those XHTML and HTML specs that will never see the light of day, and that makes them completely irrelevant to 99% of us.

Let's stick with figuring out how to make the stuff that does work, work for us.

Building Better Documents with Pages

Pages, part of Apple’s iWork suite, makes it easy to create great-looking documents, whether for print or electronic distribution. Because Pages is both a word processor and a page layout program, there’s a lot of hidden power and flexibility in the program. In this hands-on, beyond-the-basics lab session, you’ll learn how to create Pages documents that get your message across with clarity, strength, and excitement. By harnessing the power of Pages, along with practical layout and design tips, you’ll leave the session knowing how to build better documents with less effort.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• The best tool you can use to begin creating your documents
  
• Advanced text handling tips to add professional flair to your pages
  
• The ins and outs of creating and using paragraph and character styles to speed your document creation
  
• The best ways to structure and manage longer documents
  
• How to use Pages’ graphics tools to prepare stunning images
  
• How to adapt Pages’ page layout templates to fit your needs
  
• How to find and use third-party templates to save time and break your documents out of the pack
  
• All about using Numbers data in Pages to add terrific charts, do mail merges, and more
  

The Macworld Expo folks have set up a special promotional rate for this session; it's only $199 if you sign up by January 10. If you want to learn more about Pages, I hope to see you there!

Today marks a big milestone for us: we've lived in this house for 10 years. We moved in December 23, 1999 (only four months later than the builder's original promise!). Dori reminded me of the original site we did to document the move (we didn't call it a "blog," as the term hadn't been invented yet).

Since then, we've grown to appreciate what a special community this is. We love living in Healdsburg, in the middle of the Sonoma wine country. We've had some great experiences here and made some great friends along the way.

Aerial image courtesy of Bing maps

This is the first house I'd ever bought, though Dori had owned before. We've been through some minor (though they didn't seem that way at the time!) remodels, and I'm happy to say that we like this house more now than when we bought it.

Friday will be our eleventh Christmas here, and we're looking forward to many happy years after that.

To accompany the yummy appetizers, made by our friends Marc and Stormy (a peanut curried chicken in crispy cups and a cheese mixture around asparagus hearts), we opened a Toad Hollow 2007 "Eye of the Toad" Pinot Noir Rosé. Light, but very tasty.

For the white wine drinkers, there was a Hawley Vineyards 2006 Viognier. I tasted this after the meal, because I'd been drinking the reds, and it was really good.

With the turkey and the rest of the main meal, we opened the 2007 La Crema Anderson Valley Pinot Noir. I pretty much love everything La Crema makes, and this was no exception.

Finally, with dessert, there was the 2005 Paradise Ridge "Ode To Joy" (review) Late Harvest Russian River Valley Sauvignon Blanc dessert wine, in the 375 ml bottle. We got this because we are wine club members at this winery, as I recall. It seems to be difficult to get except at the winery. It was very good. Tasted like honey in the glass. I'm happy that we still have a bottle of the 2007 here!

Thanks to our friends David and Care Morgenstern for hosting and providing the dinner and a fine evening.