Day 901: Year in Review - 2001

To be completely honest, I don’t have a lot to say about 2001. It was a really strange year for me.


2001 was the year I pulled myself together and the year the whole world seemed to fall apart around me.


After a dismal 2000, professionally, that part of my life really turned around in 2001. However, once September 11th happened… having a job or not having a job seems pretty trivial. In fact… besides getting my first real job with benefits and 9/11… Off the top of my head, I couldn’t think of anything else that happened in 2001.


Well, unless you count ‘Gladiator’ winning best picture over ‘Traffic’ (Travesty!) But those movies were actually released in 2000, so they don’t count for a hill of beans in my mind.
So… I started searching for Year End Review videos online and stumbled across a series Anderson Cooper did on CNN. They are really simple and well done… and unlike other 2001 review videos it talks about a lot more than just 9/11… because well… at least Harry Potter gave us something to look forward to in 2001:

Day 900: Cowboys and Aliens

I am terribly confused, but this looks like a lot of fun!

Day 899: Final Destination – Islamabad

Day 898: Layover - Istanbul

Well… I’m on the road again.  Stuck in an airport… when there is so much to see.

Day 897: Who Are These Guys?

Day 896: Cookie Monster Auditions for Saturday Night Live

Day 895: A Decade In Review, Part 1

Wow.  Can you believe it?  Another year over.  Heck, another DECADE over!

Yes, I’m one of those annoying time keeping purists.  Saying things like ‘the 60s’ or ‘the 90s’ may be fun… but their misleading.  Decades don’t begin on years that are factors of ten… no… they END on those years.  The end of 2010 marks the close of a decade (a standard measure of time).

And yes, I was also one of those annoying bastards who back in 1999/2000 felt compelled to say, “Hmmm… yes, the Y2K bug is interesting, however, I will celebrate the end of the Millennium next year, thank you very much!”

But regardless of it all… it has been such a CRAZY year… and such a CRAZY decade for the folks here at SchutzHappens.  To think, at the start of 2001 I had only been out of undergrad for seven months and I was still trying to find steady work… doing something… anything!  2001 was actually the year I started at Cobb County.  At the same time Serena joined the Peace Corp and moved to Kenya.  We finally met Serena in 2005.  We became parents in 2006.  Joined the Foreign Service in 2008… which brings us to 2010…

It’s really hard to believe that we started 2010 in London… where Serena and I became parents for the second time.  (BTW: Gilliam started walking for reals last week… so calk that one up to another 2010 milestone for the Schutz Family).

Then, after London we were back to Belgrade, then Charleston, Atlanta, Washington DC, Islamabad, and back to Belgrade… This year, I haven’t lived in one city longer than four and a half months… and that just feels crazy to think about… and that’s what I do… I think about crazy things… so… I think it would be fun to do a series on ‘A Decade in Review’.

Now, it’s going to take me a while to get situated back in Pakistan, so I will still have the periodic random video to kill time… but I will also post my own little SchutzHappens perspectives on the last decade… I think it will be a lot of fun to look back and reflect a little.

And I promise… Once I am situated, I will finish ‘The Chair’… that is my resolution to you.  Working out more is my resolution to all the carbs and unhealthy food I was eating last year.

Happy New Year Everyone!