The year 2000 has so far been a pretty good one for me, but there have been two major disappointments as well.  The first disappointment was of course the collapse of the comics division of Big Panda House.  For those of you who don't know, Big Panda started hosting my website shortly after I got a book contract with Plan Nine Publishing, and soon after that, became the host for many other online comic strips, most of which are now here at Keenspot.   Big Panda's collapse is a very sad story, which I really don't otherwise want to get into at the moment.  The silver lining to that particular cloud, however, was the formation of Keenspot, which has been everything Big Panda could have been, and a whole lot more.  My main regret about joining Keenspot is that I didn't join sooner.

As for my other disappointment, well, I seem to have lost a good friend this year, and I don't know why.  This friend of mine is one whom I've mentioned in this column before.
 
 

Finally, in an item related to last month's Banter, the luggage that I lost on my trip to Atlanta in late June was returned to me a few weeks ago, thank God!!  Well, most of it was.  Apparently, somebody had been through my luggage during its travels, and they helped themselves to a six-pack of tube socks I had packed.  Thankfully, nothing else was taken.  But as my father observed, it doesn't say much about the value of the rest of my clothes when all a thief will take is my tube socks.  Still, it's a small price to pay, methinks, for the return of my stuff.