2008

2008 was the year of the book at the Timmerman household.

January: signed contract to write book and hoped like hell I could do so before April. I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal.

March: Our only trip of the year, we went to Utah for my bro’s wedding

January to April: I was absolutely no fun, unless your idea of fun is watching someone slave away at the computer. Annie was a saint. I don’t think she complained once about the evenings and weekends I spent plugging away. I turned in my manuscript on time. Hooray!

Summer: Went on one vacation water-skiing. Reviewed, revised book. Road-tripped to the DNC where I learned that bird watching is bird porn.

November: WAIW? was reviewed in TIME Magazine. The issue was almost impossible to fine because it was the Obama-is-our-next-President commemorative issue.

December: Book released and book pimping began.

Although it may have been the year of the book, another story stole the shoe – the pending arrival of baby Timmerman. We were hoping she’d arrive this month for a number of reasons, including Annie is sick of being pregnant, and a host of grownup reasons (as Annie puts it: “Goodbye tax deduction, Hello new deductible!).

2009 will be the year of the baby (unless something happens in the next few hours) and, because of that, I don’t think I’ve ever look forward to a coming year more.

So, Happy New Year! If you want to keep up-to-date with baby Timmerman’s arrival whenever that is, follow me on Twitter. I plan on tweeting the big event.

Globalization Haiku

From a poetry blog titled metamorphosis

Top Posts of 2008

I wrote over 50,000 words here in 2008. Here are the most viewed posts of 2008:

Hot Girls Make Great Clothes

Nikes Marty McFly Hyperdunks

Sweatshop-free Obama Onesie

Nike’s Factory Flowchart

Dov Charney on SNL

A still boobless Mrs. Butterworth

Blood sweat and T-shirts

Budweiser: Belgium for Beer

Pepto Bismol is calling

Introducing the Where am I Wearing? cover

A holiday tradition…Victoria’s Secret

Today and tomorrow I plan on wrapping up 2008 and welcoming in 2009. While I was browsing last years thoughts on 2007 and 2008 I came across a post I would like to make a holiday tradition wherever I’m blogging

Victoria’s Secret: a non-pervs quest to buy his girlfriend underwear

It’s about my first and last attempt into Victoria’s Secret to purchase Annie a “comfortable” bra for Christmas.

Waiting for our world to change

Annie’s official due date is tomorrow. We were hoping our first child would arrive before then for a long list of reasons, including Annie is over being pregnant, we’re excited, taxes, insurance, and I already foolishly bought her some December birthstone jewelry. Oh well, I guess we’ll keep waiting…

A stylist on the economy and the importance of sustainable style

Rebecca Luke is a self-proclaimed “garmento” (not sure exactly what that it, but I like the word). From a recent post on her blog:

My advice is to yes, buy local if you are going to buy, but also consider buying smart. Take the time to look at your local designers that can create a custom fit piece for the same price as 70% off a designer department store piece. Buy higher quality investment pieces such as jackets, coats and shoes. Stick to classic silhouettes for yourself. Refurbish, alter and repair good items from your closet. Purchase from smaller local boutiques who carry high quality and high design ~ Mario’s, Butch Blum, Lola Pop and Polite Society are my favorites right now ~ Does this all sound familiar? If you work with me, you know this is how I have approached wardrobing for over ten years and what I teach through Sustainable Style about how to dress sustainably as well as stylishly.

Dalton, a natural politician

Dalton Zahir is a prominent figure in the Bangladesh chapter in WAIW?. He’s the reason why I became an unwilling undercover underwear buyer. Dalton is now getting into politics, which suits him perfect. He’s a natural schmooze.

He announced on his blog that he is a candidate in the 2008 Parliamentary Election for the position of Secretary of International Affairs.

I have no doubt that soon he will rule all of Bangladesh with his just hand, and, shortly after that…the World.

The best I can tell, his campaign motto is “We want Democracy, not plutocracy” which seems like one I could get behind. (Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy; I looked it up so you didn’t have to.) Kind of a “Change” message really, isn’t it.

I think that his campaign icon might be a fish.

Here he is healing the sick…

I’d vote for him!

My vote for world’s most dangerous job…Labor Leader in Cambodia

There are 800 garment unions in Cambodia and only 300 factories. When I was there in 2007 a union leader had recently been murdered. No one was for sure who did it. It might have been a factory, an opposing union, or even, some speculate, the government.

More than one union office has memorials like this one…

Human Rights Watch is calling for the release of two fellas imprisoned for a murder of a union lead in 2004. Apparently, there’s little evidence against them, and a witness claims that they didn’t do it.

The ILO report’s findings, which could affect the future of Cambodia’s important garment industry, noted that during the ILO mission in April, the government “demonstrated an unwillingness to engage in fully frank discussions” and “provided no concrete indications” that it would act upon any of the ILO’s recommendations.

A union leader getting shot and killed is bad. A union leader getting shot and killed and two innocent men being jailed for the crime is worse.

This is Cambodia in a nutshell: Innocent men are jailed for crimes they didn’t commit while leaders of the Khmer Rouge who are responsible for the deaths of thousands run free.

The Internet…not just for scientists

Andrew Sullivan selected the clip below as his YouTube video of the year:

Expecting

The other day Annie and I went to church with her parents. Their preacher performed our wedding ceremony that took place in my parents’ backyard. He appears briefly in “Where Am I Wearing?”

I tried to pay attention to the preacher, but I couldn’t stop staring at the approaching storm clouds. There wasn’t a plan B. If the storm arrived, we would have to move into the garage. I pictured Annie, makeup running, hair flattened, dress drenched, standing between Dad’s air compressor and workbench. It wouldn’t have been pretty, especially considering that the outdoor wedding was my idea and the only one I contributed to the day. “Don’t worry,” I had told Annie. “September is the driest month of the year.”

I found that it was a lot easier to pay attention to his sermon when we were indoors and weather was not about to doom our wedding, especially when much of the sermon seemed directed at Annie and me.

His sermon was about expecting. He spoke about how Christmas is a time of expecting and compared the expectations of the season with those that expecting parents have. He had a long list of things parents don’t expect: the mother gains weight, the pain of child birth, the lack of sleep, the lack of free time, etc. He must have gone on for about five minutes listing the things that new parent’s don’t have a clue about.

Annie is nine months pregnant and mid-sermon he turned to Annie and me and apologized. Obviously, he wasn’t expecting us.

Overall, the sermon was interesting, well thought out, but par for the course when it comes to people addressing expecting parents. Because when you are an expecting parent, the one thing that you can expect is people who are parents delighting in telling you that you don’t know what to expect.

When we were engaged we got a similar thing from people, “Enjoy your last days of freedom.” Now it’s, “Enjoy your last days of piece and quiet.”

I expect that I don’t know what to expect when it comes to how the daily ebb and flow of our lives will change, but there are many things I expect I’ll experience while being a father:

I expect to understand the world better. For awhile I’ve suspected that much is done in the name of our children. When I was in China I saw parents working 100 hours per week with the hopes of sending their children to school. While I’ve see children’s futures being the motivation for all sorts of people all over the world, I know that I don’t know the full magnitude of the motivation. I will soon. I look forward to knowing. I know it will change me as a person and a writer.

I expect that leaving the country for my next book will be more difficult, but the homecoming much sweeter.

I expect for Annie and I to become even closer.

I expect to laugh more.

I expect to cry more.

I expect to have my heart stolen.

Annie’s official due date is 12/31. Soon I’ll be a dad, and I expect that when I talk to expecting parents, I won’t talk about the struggles of being a parent, but the joys.