so, what have i been up to the past couple weeks…

well, amazingly enough, i've been planning for a trip to france to visit my sister (who hasn't updated her blog in quite a while…). i've finally managed to drag out the Berlitz "Basic French" cassette learning program i bought on remainder at Hawley-Cooke a couple years ago, and i've been listening to them regularly for the past two weeks or so. the first week, i think i probably heard four times as many words in french than i heard in english. now, my big project is digitizing the four tapes in the program and making MP3s out of them, so i can take them to work and listen without having to drag a cassette player and headphones everywhere i go. of course, i've primarily been just listening and figuring out the sound of french. i haven't gotten into the writing or vocabulary study yet. so, if anyone gets the bright idea to write me an email in french… i'm not quite ready for that yet. but hopefully, by the time July rolls around, i'll have at least a passable knowledge of the language. i may look like a fool in france, but at least i'll look like a fool who's trying to be polite.

i also finally finished the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which i kicked off with "The Hobbit" back during christmas at my grandmother's, and i just cracked open the introduction to "The Iliad."

i've been hanging out with brian quite a bit more recently, which i enjoy. we've actually been throwing around some ideas for a screenplay, since we have a commitment from a friend of ours to "shoot whatever" we write. of course, then we also had a conversation with another person a "playwright" apparently, who was asking us all kinds of questions about sub-stories, and plot-driving stories and all that jazz. this is something i'm rather torn on. i can't say that i've ever consciously tried to write anything using sub-stories, but have relied more on the primary story and the characters themselves to drive the plots… such as they were. anyway, i think we've come up with some good ideas, now we just need to corral them into a story.

my band and i have finally buckled down and gotten a digital recorder–rent-to-own style. after talking with some knowledgeable friends, i'm more satisfied that we made a good choice picking up the one we did (being the only one presented to us and immediately available) and that we'll not regret the (ongoing) purchase. hopefully, it'll allow us to finally make a decent recording and get some demos out to whomever the hell it is that books shows around these parts. also, it's entirely conceivable that i might throw a couple tracks on the site (probably once we get to the permanent server) so that anyone with a healthy masochistic bent can listen to "the prick" all they want. also hopefully, it'll allow us to get some gigs and actually start playing out. if we get really lucky, maybe we'll get Old Man (paul's band) to let us play with them (or vice versa).

ok. y'know what? it's late, and my boss bitched me out this morning for being late, so i'd better close this up and get my irresponsible ass to bed.

au revoir! a bientot!

bet you thought we were gone forever…

well, don't count on it, sweethearts.

we found out around the 9th of Jan. that the ISP that controlled our host's 'net connection was about to remove it. it was supposed to happen on the 14th, so i thought i had plenty of time to sit down and write a post to let everyone know what was going on. (you know where this is going) so, of course, things aren't quite working right the entire rest of the week leading up to the deadline, FTP server's up & down, the whole site's up & down, and then, on Sat. or Sun. i guess it was, the plug gets pulled.

well, thanks to the boys at wraithsys (our once & future hosts) things were already in the works to get everything back up and running. now we're set up on a temporary server until such time as the final arrangements can be made. and hopefully the transition from this temp server to the new permanent server will go much more smoothly, since we can actually plan for this one. wish us luck.

this is just a quick note to let you all (those of you who can actually reach the site at this point… DNS is still propagating right now) know what's been up, what's currently up, and what will possibly be up in the future.

oh, and i'd like to say thanks to tim from sounds from a heart murmur for actually noticing that we were MIA. it's good to be loved!

more tomorrow. now, i sleep.

ok. so, technically, i missed the deadline for the end of the year blowout post. we'll just have to make do.

the new year is already on us, and i can't help but feeling that i barely noticed the old one passing. if it weren't for the fact that i have to put my coat on just to go out and smoke, and that even inside the house, my fingers are always cold, i'd be hard pressed to believe you if you told me it was winter. top that off with the fact that the seasonal depression that seemed to have affected me every year for the past 6 or more never did really grab hold of me this year, and things are just that much more surreal.

the only really major event in my personal life this year was the move out of the casa de bipolar, and into a newly christened casa de coffeemonk. one would think that such an event would have been enough to really drive home the concept of the passing of time, but the transition was so smooth and uneventful in itself, that i hardly noticed the change. of course, the unfortunate side-effect of the move has been the loss of hang-out time with my compadre brian over there to my left. on the positive side, i've been enjoying increased hang-out time with the old crew and getting to be closer friends with them all over again. and i've made some new friends that had formerly been (to me, anyway) outside of my normal circle, and welcomed them into the family.

on the romantic front, this past year has just been a continuation of the same barren wasteland of the year before. so, nothing to write about in that arena.

i hesitate to make any sort of new years resolution, not having ever made one before, but i believe that my life has reached a point where i will either have to make some drastic changes, or simply accept that there are some things over which i have no direct conscious control. i've let my writing slip for such a long time, that my typewriter and i are hardly on speaking terms anymore. i've been so remiss in maintaining my reading habits that the same 15 books that were sitting unread on my bookshelf at the beginning of the year are still there looking particularly unhappy. i've also become astoundingly lazy. but, my friends, changes… they are a'comin'.

already over the christmas break i read three books, so the reading muscles are once again getting primed to tackle those paperback copies of the Illiad and the Odyssey. I took my laptop to my grandmother's house over the break, and this time, i actually managed to turn it on, re-read some of the writings i'd been working on, and even to endeavor to add some lines to the story. the laziness thing will really be the tough nut, but i think i'm beginning to get sufficiently pissed off to the point that i'll soon be able to chastise myself into action.

so overall, the past year has been very very… blah–for the most part. but i have high hopes that this year will prove to be more fulfilling.

stay tuned.