Whelp.  That was a fast five years.

It was five years ago today that my life changed.  I took a voluntary layoff from Nortel and started blogging. What followed was hours of self-absorbed observations of both the ordinary and mundane, as well as lots and lots of pictures of adorable marmots.

So what have we learned?

• Everyone around me that I don’t actually know is either a douchenozzle or an asshat.
• The Pacific Northwest is awesome and it’s a mystery why I didn’t move there 4 1/2 years ago.
• Bird law in this country is not governed by reason.
• With beer, red wine and scotch, one need never go thirsty.
• Blogging once a day is hard.  Podcasting once every two years is almost impossible.
• It’s worth traveling 5300 miles for a pig sandwich.
• When you play the game of thrones, you’re gonna see a lot of titties.
• Cavemen apparently ate a shit tonne of coconut.
• I could literally eat my weight in Pacific oysters.  Literally.
• Don’t fuck with Heisenberg, Omar, Nucky or Tywin Lannister.
• You do have to make the last out of a World Series game in order to be awarded the trophy.
• The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland.  Both 1990s and 1890s.
• She didn’t really say that.
• Tip of the Day:  Don’t smash your face.
• Solitude is the great dagger of  the Lonely Moules Boy.
• The four worst things in the world:  Moving, The Holocaust, Pancreatic Cancer and pediatric AIDS, in that precise order.
• Here’s the Church.  Here’s the steeple.  Open the door and just eat all the people.
• A certain area husky is painfully photogenic.
• Don’t attend your own funeral as a guy named Phil Shiffley
• If loving Yu is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
• Duck fat rules
• The Miami Beach audience is the greatest audience in the world.
• M as in Mancy
• Don’t play black jack in Oklahoma.  But if you do, don’t be a pussy and play one $100 hand.
• Don’t believe JT.  The Westvleteren is fantastic.  But he was oh so right about Schweine Janes.
• Charcuterie and red wine can resolve almost any disagreement.
• Never underestimate the healing power of laughter.
• The Tioga Pass road is a national treasure. – the Sonora Pass road, even more so.

In no Particular Order, the Top 10 Events of the Past Five Years

1. Biking through Paris at night
2. Making snow-angels in the Sierra Nevadas in July
3. A deer (Norman Skeese) walking up to me in Olympic National Park
4. Pub crawl in Pittsburgh
5. Flying kites on the Columbian River in Hood River OR
6. Getting lost for an hour in Sequoia National Park
7. U Fleku
8. Biking down the Mosel valley.
9. Van Morrison in the Hollywood Bowl
10. Floating in the Mediterranean

Thank you for all who helped make this happen.

And now for another five years.