Winter Break & Break from Blogging

Entirely unrelated: Burg-Eltz Castle in Austria. Looks cool; I like castles.

You know, I really haven't done as much blogging as I thought I would. I've been home for several weeks now and the blogging just didn't really take off. I've been busy nearly every weekend and I've somehow managed to fill the rest of my time with entirely useless activities.

Break has been pretty good. I've seen J a bunch, which is awesome. We've gone swing dancing, ran around the city, hit a museum, and saw Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I also took her around to some of the stuff out here in "boo foo land." I later found out that she liked it here more than she thought she would. Guess she'll have to come back sometime soon!

Quick thing on TSO: the show was awesome. Shut up, J, I did not sleep through any portion of it. I'm sorry that I only had like six hours of sleep. We watched two of the greatest movies ever, remember? Men Who Stare at Goats and Hot Fuzz? Yeah, it was kinda late when we went to bed. Anyways, TSO puts on killer live performances. Lights, pyro, lots of movement on stage, etc. Really fun, really entertaining. This one was titled The Lost Christmas Eve and the storyline component of the show revolves around an angel trying to find the human who is most like God's son. It develops in to something a bit more interesting, though, so if you haven't seen it... I'd recommend it. Word of warning: don't let the word "orchestra" fool you. It's loud. My dad said something along the lines of "If I had known it was going to be that loud, I would have brought earplugs." But if you're in to orchestral rock... well, it's probably right up your alley. (For those interested in seeing more: http://www.trans-siberian.com/)

Oh, and one more thing before I sign off. Since I last posted, you'll most likely have noticed we now have fancy artwork. I've got the tiny version in the upper right there and the bigger version as the blog background. A friend of mine is a programming student and he helped me out with a little HTML to keep the background fixed rather than scrolling. I think it looks better this way. As for the image itself, I used GIMP (akin to Photoshop, but free) to create it. Dark gray background... downloaded some fun brushes... had J pick out a nice color combo... figured out the font... and there you have it.

I really hope someone finds my excessively long posts entertaining, though. J is under the impression that less is more and I might be inclined to agree... but at least I give people something to dig in to. I also actually post on this thing, so y'know... there is actually stuff to read.

At any rate, late as it is... Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Hope everyone had good times!

- E.