It is the heart of the holiday season, the festive week of Christmas to New Year’s. It is time to reflect and be grateful for what we have and not miss what we don’t have.

Last year this time we all were feeling doom and gloom. The market was down. There were no loans to be had. People were losing jobs left and right and the aura and psychology of the market and the overall economy was really bad.

As we close on 2009, I must confess that the year was one of goodness and counter intuitive wins mixed with sadness.

I am most grateful for the health of my family and friends.

And the Washington Capitals had a magnificent twelve months on the ice and off the ice. We had a really great record. We finished last year strong and won our first playoff series in 10 years and we are now well positioned for this next year. We also sell out all of our games. We have a backlog of people awaiting season tickets. We were able to raise our prices and we have very happy customer satisfaction levels. Who would have thought we could be that successful in this economy? I am very grateful to you all.

The Washington Mystics also grew quite fast and became one of the best performing teams in the WNBA and turned their on court performance around as well as we qualified for the playoffs.

Revolution Money grew fast; built out its platform; and – as was reported in November – was acquired by American Express at a healthy return to investors. We await final approval by the government but I believe this deal will close sometime in Q1 of 2010. This was the third largest acquisition of a new media payments platform ever behind PayPal and Bill Me Later (both by eBay) so it was a big win for us all and I am very excited about helping the American Express Company in the future as we roll out this platform into a new series of great consumer beneficial products and services.

SnagFilms and indieWIRE continued to grow and fast! As I have reported before, we now have more than 1,000 films in our library. We have 55,000 affiliates. We reached 1.5 billion pages and we stream millions and millions and millions of minutes of films every month. All while raising monies for charities. I am very proud of SnagFilms and all of the people that work there.

Clearspring Technologies and AddThis continued to boom, too. Comscore recently reported that we had grown to more than 600 million unique monthly visitors.

I am so pleased to have finished my book called The Business of Happiness during the year, too. The book will be available in book stores in February of 2010. Thank you to John Buckley for all of his help.

I am also pleased that I worked on a new documentary film as producer. We await news of where it will be accepted at a film festival and if/when it will be bought and screened by a network but I feel really good about its prospects. Rick Allen teamed with me on this new project. Way to go Rick! This new film is another example of “filmanthropy” and I am honored to have worked on this project.

I was also honored to have our film, Nanking, win the Peabody Award and an Emmy Award. All I can say is “WOW.” And thank you.

I also got involved with a few new startups and one in particular, Groupon.com, is growing like crazy and is a huge hit.

And I was pleased to help our friend Scott get off of the streets; get an apartment; and a job. He “Rocks the Red” at all of our games. We are all proud of you Scott!

All in all, it was a much better year in terms of goodness and growth and business than I could have predicted this time last year.

But the year also had its share of losses.

We lost a great friend in Joe Casella; our local little village will never be the same without him.

Mr. Abe Pollin passed away. The community lost a great man and he is missed by all. We send our prayers of respect to his family and friends.

The Hoop Dreams charity was forced to close their door which is a terrible loss for the students and young adults of DC.

Several friends have lost their jobs and are still looking for gainful and full time employment. There is nothing worse for a person short of death and bad health than the loss of a job. We are all doing what we can to help in these tough times.

I am blessed to be with my family this time of year. I know how lucky I am. Have a wonderful Christmas and holiday season.