Dear Blogosphere,

On this, the eve of Christmas eve, I bid you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. My gift to you is a concise Christmas letter – scannable and brief. So grab some ‘nog and settle in, or just move your thumb briskly up the side of your phone’s screen.

2009

The highlights:

• By the grace of Max , I squeezed a great, if not butt-kicking, press trip into the year and just saw the fruits of my labor published last week. It’s a nice feeling to see a project come full circle, especially when it was a project on which I made some great friends.

• I hob-nobbed with some very cool people, largely through the burgeoning social media scene. Dozens of TweetUps , EatUps, and one PodCamp later, I am the proud friend of a slew of business owners, dynamo Web gurus, a best-selling author or two, pioneers of hyper-local journalism, and perhaps most notably, people who can hold their booze. This is a very important trait in the social media scene.

• I got back on stage, and it was for a very good cause.

• I continue to have the best friends in the world, and I’m eternally grateful that they put up with me.

The lowlights:

• I’m still battling the never-ending war of Jax vs. her stress-induced stomach issues. Dear stomach: Quit it.

• Clearly, the economy still blows.

• Lost my mother-in-law, my uncle, and a friend from high school this year. Amidst a sea of celebrities passing on in the public eye, these lives moved on more quietly, but left no less of a legacy.

Onward we go … see you on the flip side.

jax