jesus, it's been a long day. (see technically, this is still the 22nd for me, so this is Saturday's post).

i finally decided (thursday) to take Sara up on her suggestion, and join her running team. now, mind you, i have no intention of running any races, or doing any of that really crazy stuff. if it's raining or snowing, my ass will be sleeping. but nevertheless, i got up at 8 am, donned my newly purchased running apparel (with that fancy "water-wicking" fabric, bought on sale at Tar-jay), got my ass down to the track at Seneca park, and proceeded to run/walk 3.something miles. ouch. my thighs still hurt.

afterwards, we went out for a celebratory breakfast at Bob Evans–her celebrating that i finally got off my ass and exercised, me celebrating that i did so and didn't keel over from a heart attack. then we went home for about… oh, five seconds… then ran out to meet our realtor to look at a condo and a house we were interested in getting second opinions on. her dad joined us, to help give us advice. turns out, both places were really not great, so we're now moving on to other possibilities. with each additional "unnacceptable," we're moving farther out from the epicenter of our target area, but y'know, there's not much we can do about that without winning the lottery or something. next step, a place sort-of out by bowman field.

i also finally got my papers from the military, and it looks like i'll not be eligible for the VA loan i was kind of holding out a dim flicker of hope for. so, now we gotta find out what exactly we qualify for. then, the "real" search begins.

after that, we chilled at my place for about… 15 minutes, then headed out to a birthday party for her little five-year-old niece. food, family, and er… fun-ish.

the last stop of the night was a birthday gathering for the inimitable puffin, at ZA's. we hung out until the early-to-bedder's (including my lovely fiance) had to beat a retreat, then proceeded to make fun of the ska and rap bands that set up to play a show. we were all getting pretty soused and having a good time, none moreso than neil.

a highlight of the evening was getting to hang out with brian for the first time in god-knows-how-long. but really, the whole evening was great, and i think the puffin could hardly have asked for a better birthday celebration. good food, good drink, good friends, and bad bands.

loverly.

oh, and my thighs are still sore.

the time rapidly approaches wherein my bachelorhood will find it's end. as i've mentioned before, the planning process is progressing, and gathering in force. my lovely bride-to-be, being in med school, has (however tentatively) handed over the reigns of this process to yours truly (and her mother), so i'm going to be hip deep in it for a while. my other projects will have to take an increasingly distant back-seat to the three big uber-projects that i have to undertake–1) planning the wedding (obviously), 2) planning the honeymoon, and 3) finding a place for us to live.

if any of you here in the 'ville have lines on a good, relatively cheap DJ who'll do a wedding reception without prattling on incessantly and trying to be funny, let me know about 'em.

a sub-project that's moving closer to completion is the website i'm designing to house relevant information and meaningful stuff–something to kind of mark the occasion for us and provide all the answers for the curious. i'm trying to do it without going off the deep-end of cheesiness, though i imagine that with a sentimental site of this nature it's probably almost impossible to avoid. nevertheless, the main point is to have fun creating something honoring our relationship. it's still far from complete, but i've posted some mockups, and i thought you might enjoy them.

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

those are real low-quality JPEGs to save on bandwidth–the actual site won't look so blurry.

comments on the design are welcomed.

so, Jan 2002 was the last time i did a year end recap post, and i've kicked myself every time i've forgotten. so, here goes…

setting the tone for a large percentage of the posts to follow (and the year to follow, natch.), my first post of 2004 (even worse than this one, at 17 days after the new year) jumped headlong into politics and razzing george w., and also mentioned some stuff about the gallery scripts, both of which practically became an obsession for me.

also, i think this was the first year where i've managed to post only once a majority of the months out of last year.

anyway, some major events happened this year, the first of which was deciding (not that i had to think very hard about it) to ask my girlfriend of 1.5 years to be my wife, then throwing down the bones for a ring.

of course, no sooner had i bought the ring, than my boss at work called me in to tell me the place was shutting down. luckily, i landed a new job before the last one was over, so i had something to come back to upon return from the trip to France Sara & i had been planning.

we left for France on schedule, me with a diamond ring hidden–wrapped in paper, taped to a fob on my keychain–so it wouldn't get lost with or stolen from the luggage, and so she wouldn't find it if she were to rummage through my carry-on. we had a first day in Paris that ranged from great to horrible, then woke up fresh-faced the next day ready (well, except that she didn't know about it yet) for the event that would alter our lives in subtle and profound ways. in the afternoon, i rummaged through my backpack for the ring, dropped to a knee, and asked her to marry me. of course, she said yes.

after this event, life carried on–settling into the new job, more politics, more gallery scripts, helping her cope with school, adjusting to the idea of being married, making wedding plans, making other future-oriented plans, looking for houses, talking about finances/money/retirement savings (sheesh). i'm startin' to feel all growed-up.

then of course, there was the travesty we called an Election…

and now Christmas has come and gone, and the New Year as well. it's time to hunker down and make preparations for tomorrow. time to think about the things we want in life, the things we can have, and how to correlate the two. don't make resolutions, just do what needs to be done, do what you enjoy, and do the best you can for yourself and others. none of us are at the mercy of our surroundings, rather, it's the other way around. grab hold of yourself and make this year a better one than the last. call up a friend, go to a movie, bake yourself a cake, quit smoking, just be happy.

seems like the last month has been a major upheaval, lots of crap going on, but it's mostly just busyness, frustration, and happiness.

the band's been practicing, and though i've totally neglected the site since before the last show, we're really not dead. in fact, we've a show coming up this weekend, which i've only just finished making flyers for, that i hope to get up around town tomorrow before practice. our second show with a drummer, and we've been coming up with ideas of how to change things around to make us happier… more on that later.

sara's and my wedding plans are proceeding apace, and we've actually been talking about the possibility of buying a house or condo prior to the festivities (once the lease is up at the current abode). we're getting ready to send out "save the date" cards, and she's been dress shopping. we finally finished "catholic wedding school" so that's thankfully out of the way, and we didn't even have to endure a great deal of that "natural family planning" crap the popesters like to foist on people. yippee.

add to all that fun the fact that sara's finally started back to school, and our schedules have been in major flux trying to adjust back into that whole routine. we're starting to settle in now, so i'm hoping to start getting some work done again.

which leads me to the next exciting thing (for me, anyway). i finally, after years and years of wishing, finally bought myself a swanky new laptop… an AMD Athlon 64 beast of fury and brilliance, that has caused me no end of heartache the past couple weeks mainly due to my insufferable need to wrest complete control over my machines from the great satan (Windows). So i got the machine and proceeded to poke and prod at it, uninstalling as much as possible and deleting a bunch besides. It was becoming a stripped down monster, but then i made some networking change trying to surreptitiously get a 'net hookup at work, and then i couldn't connect to any of my machines on the home network… so, a couple reinstalls later, a much more cautious takeover attempt, and i've finally got it in order again. i'm still installing some of the day-to-days, but it's mostly up and running. thus, this, my first blog post on the new champion. (named the hard drives after the members of Mudhoney, for those who wonder those things)

also, somewhere in there, i got to hang out with my brother who came up to the fair with the FFA, and i managed to get myself in to see the eye doctor, who told me absolutely nothing helpful. in fact, he said that, not only was there nothing that he could do about the problems that i'd come to see him about, but there is another issue that i wasn't even previously aware of, and which, surprise surprise, he also can't do anything about. some retinal specialist, eh?

and the last bit of life complicating news is that i managed to get started working on a little freelance project for some friends (and with an old Corvus coworker–ben), a thing which is currently moving slowly, but positively. i've been wanting to try to take on some freelance stuff, so this should be a good opportunity to see if i can manage to balance the leisurely bits of my life with actual obligations to others.

so, bunch of stuff going on, a lot of it just tedious, time consuming, and schedule wrecking, but thankfully enough of it happy and fun that i've not minded the other bits too much. so, here's to another 'bout of time wrestling.

my lovely girl and i took off for Paris on May 19th, and had a wonderful trip. we spent just over a week with my sister & her husband, and their insanely cute little self-propelled floor scrubber. the trip itself was awesome, and i'll write more about it in detail later, though not in as much detail as the last time i went, partly because i didn't keep a detailed journal like last time, and partly because, as infrequently as i update, i'm sure you guys don't want to be bored to tears by 8 days worth of interminably long posts. 'cause you know if i wrote 'em, i'd write 'em big.

anyway, the main reason i'll not write more about the trip in this post is because there really was only one event that i want to highlight, and it's possibly the most important event so far in my life (except, perhaps, for my birth). it took a lot of planning, and even some conniving and sneakiness, to pull it off, but i like to think i pulled it off with charm, character, and panache.

on friday, Sara and I headed out on our first full day in paris (we don't count thursday, 'cause we were barely lucid after staying awake for 36+ hours…) to the louvre, which is the only place i had regretted not spending more time at on my last visit. we spent several hours walking around the louvre, until the pictures started really blending into each other, our feet were demanding a break, and our lungs were clamoring for fresh air.

back out in the daylight, we wandered for a bit through the courtyard, then out towards and into the Jardin des Tuileries. some of you might recall the garden as being the location of my favorite view of Paris. when we reached the end of the Jardin, near the huge gate connecting the gardens to the Place de la Concorde, we went into the little bookstore set into the wall, above-which was the spot–my ultimate destination. of course, i'd told sara several times about the spot, and the view of the Parisian skyline that it afforded, with the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Egyptian Obelisk in the large open plaza.

the bookstore was filled with gardening books, and was really just a delaying tactic, though a completely explainable one, considering Sara's mom's gardening/landscaping hobby.

still, there wasn't much of interest, so we left the bookstore and headed up to the spot. hand in hand, we trudged up the incline to the top of the wall. we walked up to the fence and stood there for a minute or two just kind of taking in the scene and hanging onto each other. then i told her i wanted to get some pictures, and i handed her my backpack, so i could dig into it for my camera.

i reached in and rummaged around for a while, long enough for her to get curious as to why it was taking so long. just about the moment, she said "ah… wha…", i set the backpack down to the side, dropped down to one knee, and, with ring in hand, asked "will you be my wife?"

after taking the briefest of moments to recover from shock, she said she would. we hugged, she cried a little, and we just enjoyed the moment for several minutes. i'm certain the french couple sitting on the bench nearby had seen the whole thing, and were either watching us intently, or trying intently not to watch us. we walked over to another bench and sat for a while, talking, and just being close. then we got up and took a few pictures to mark the occasion.

after taking in the view one last time, we headed out of the Garden and onto the streets, walking down to a restaurant in the Marais district that my sister had picked out at my request especially for this evening. we enjoyed the night air, had a great dinner at a classy-yet-cozy little French restaurant, and then made our way back to my sis's place.

i couldn't have asked for a better day, and i couldn't have hoped for all the little plans i'd been working on for the proposal to have gone any better than they did. and i couldn't have hoped for a better girl to have that day with or make those plans for. so, after 20+ years of waiting to find the right person, the countdown has finally begun to end my life as a single man. in June of next year, we're not sure exactly when yet (though, probably on the 11th for all of you who're expecting invitations), we'll get hitched and get started on our long lives of bugging the crap out of each other and laughing about it later. wish us luck.

personally, i can hardly wait.

» France 2004 Gallery

it's kind of funny how things have a way of happening. last post i promised to write a longer post "later"… a month later is later, is it not? needless to say, however, 'twas not my intent. however, in light of recent events, i'll have to forgo the post that was "brewing" and write the one that has and is happening.

on about the 27th of last month, after events i'll have to provide the details of some other time, the big boss-man called me into his office and let me know that—once again—the company was in dire straights. we'd exhausted every available line of credit a year and a half ago (the last big closing "scare") and had been relying entirely on hard income since that time. Amazingly enough, the last (fiscal) year, we actually made a profit! so, i really didn't quite expect this new announcement of vulnerability.

i suppose i should've seen it coming… the only thing i'd been working on (except very small fix-it jobs) for the past couple months had been either internal projects or client make-work that i'd started on my own. in other words, as far as i could tell, there were no new paying jobs coming in the door. should've been a clue right there, right? well, no, i just kind of assumed that the paying jobs were coming in the door and sitting in the planning and designing room for a while. little did i know that pretty much all of us were sitting around twiddling our thumbs.

nevertheless, the time had come, we'd finally reached the point where our expenses were projected to outweigh our income, which meant we were no longer viable… it was all part of the deal our boss worked out with our parent company last time.

of course, as far as i knew, it was all still hush hush, so i wasn't able to even talk to anyone else about it until later in the week, a couple days before my co-worker was about to head out on vacation (as i'm doing this wednesday). we were both a bit disoriented, but, since "the scare" had happened before, we were a little more prepared (in an emotional sense, if not a job-hunting one). I reluctantly started work on a portfolio site, and on dusting off my resume.

the next week, the boss let it be known that everyone's last day would be on the 7th, the end of that very week. however, because i was one of the only ones who still had some work to do (a signed, but uncompleted contract), my own last day was extended to the 14th.

I put my new resume out a couple places, got a response from a staffing company almost immediately, and had an interview scheduled for the monday of my last week. in the meantime, i was spending almost every free moment working on my portfolio site design and construction. on thursday, i had a telephone interview with my potential employer, and because of my impending vacation, scheduled an on-site interview for the following monday, the 17th.

i continued spending every available free moment working on the portfolio site, and finally, at the hour of reckoning (way past bedtime sunday night) put the final finishing touches on an incomplete but releasable version of the site. if you're interested, and i know you are… check out my portfolio.

when i walked into the interviewer's office on monday morning, practically the first thing she asked me was if i had some type of online portfolio site. so, it was an entirely fortuitous thing for me to make sure i'd finished it beforehand. the interview itself went well—it must have, considering they'd called to offer me the job barely four hours later.

so, from a potential long unemployment period, i now find myself with a new job, even before the old one's completely over (i did come back in on monday to attempt to finish up a few things.) as i said earlier… things have a way of happening.

and now, to top it all off, i'm heading back to France this week, but this time with my favorite girl in tow. we're ready, and certainly even moreso now with today's news, to go enjoy the City of Lights as much and as freely as possible. and i should actually be able to relax when i'm up there, since i won't be having to obsess or worry about having a job or having money when i return… sometimes, things just work out alright.

though i have to admit, it's not something i'm used to.

i fully intend to write a longer post soon, as i've had one brewing for a while, but no time to actually sit down and write it. 'til then, how's about this:

i finally got the Lucifigous Prick online store up and running this past thursday night, and, as simple as it may be, i'm pretty damned pleased for it to finally be in operation.

also, for another shameless plug of a commercial project, i'm getting my first poetry book re-printed by a professional printer, and i hope to have those available in the next 3 or 4 weeks (i should be getting a proof copy on monday or tuesday). so again, i'm really excited about this as well.

coffeemonk.com hasn't been updated in a dog's age, but it looks like i might have to move that up on the timetable a little bit (most recent project schedule had coffeemonk.com being updated some time in the next 100 years or so).

ok. enough with the gross commercialism.

Go Buy Something! (ok, now that's really enough)

hi. uh… my name's matt. you might remember me from such hits as "posts on a semi-regular basis," or "lies, lies, and more lies." needless to say, considering the time of year, quite a bit has happened since my last post. i'm not going to try to go into it all in one post, but here's a summary, in the form of an ordered list:

1. visited nathan in bloomington over a weekend
2. followed, almost as i predicted, the fun the Courier-Journal was having with Ernie Fletcher's stupid transition team choices, and his lies about them not being lined up for jobs. he hadn't even been sworn into office yet, and already his making questionable choices and getting reamed for it by the liberal media.
3. got to meet sara's new niece Emma Rose
4. got a new cell-phone, but had to wait a week for it to work, because of the whole number-portability thing
5. went home for thanksgiving and finally got to meet my new niece Emma Ruth
6. made some modifications to the MP3 of the moment thing… anyone notice? — for a while, i was uploading the mp3 directly from WinAmp to the server, and the magic script gnomes were providing a link to it for you to download. i scrapped that in favor of…
7. more modifications to replace the previous modifications — now, if you see the little "listen (x)" link after the MP3 name, (on my side anyway), you can "tune in" to my bipolar radio stream.
8. even more modifications that basically entailed me taking the javascript that was driving the MP3otM thing, and converting it all to PHP. — oh yeah, and, it doesn't show up at all if it's been more than 30 minutes since we last listened to anything.
9. finally managed to get around to buying christmas presents, spent way too much, but found some cool stuff.

sara's working on her 1st semester finals this week, so i've been trying to keep her sane. i'm just looking forward to the rest of the month, at least until she starts her 2nd semester. it'll be nice to be able to hang out with her without her worrying about a test or having to study 90% of the time.

i'm looking forward to this next week as well. christmas with the fam is always an enjoyable time, even if i'm somewhat of a anti-social hermit while i'm there. i've been getting better over the years, we'll see what happens this time.

btw. winamp5 has been officially released.

well, after almost a month of little-to-no internet connection at the ol' homestead, we've finally switched to evil cable broadband access. seems pretty good so far… and it works, which is a big improvement at this point.

it's been a busy few weeks beside, with me finally taking the time to start entering comics into the database program after over a year of neglecting the task. (which i did pretty-much simply because i had no 'net connection at home, thus no ready distraction).

i also finally managed to get out of the house long enough to go visit my friend nate (a formerly frequent commenter who's been too busy trying to make people call him Doctor to pop in for inane chatter.) it's been a while since i've seen him, and we had a good visit where we did next to nothing but watch TV and video games all weekend, which, in and of itself was pretty much an off-continent vacation for me, as little as i do either of those things.

and the most wonderful event of the past weeks has been the celebration of my one year anniversary with my incredible girlfriend. i've never managed to maintain a relationship for more than 5 or 6 months at the most, so this is a major accomplishment for both of us–her, for putting up with me, and me, for not screwing things up. being with her has made this the best year of my life–one that i want to repeat and improve upon as many times and as much as possible.

in other news, the kentucky gubernatorial race has been really ticking me off. personal attack ads are (unfortunately) not uncommon in political races, but usually they're at least defensible. the Fletcher campaign has been participating in quite a bit of it's own misrepresentation (of the candidate himself, and of his opponent), but the most egregious example has been the ads put out by the Republican Governors Association. most of these ads have been denounced as outright falsehoods by every responsible media outlet in the state, and some of the statements made in them have even been denounced by RGA members themselves. but don't take my word for it, pick up a newspaper, i'm sure you'll find mention. or better yet, a page on Chandler's site collects several quotes from papers around the state. to top it off, the RGA isn't even authorized by the Fletcher campaign to place these ads (though of course, he doesn't ask them to pull them) which are also not paid for by campaign funds. is this legal? unfortunately, yes. what it amounts to is "legally" untraceable donations to a political campaign. what it amounts to is soft-money spending to promote a political candidate. they've taken steps to ensure that the ads are technically legal (they never say "vote for Fletcher" or anything like that). and now, it's prompted similar assistance for the Chandler campaign. but at least we know that Chandler is capable of acting independently from his party and any special interests, which is something Fletcher has shown no ability or desire to do.

Restoring Truth is an interesting (if poorly constructed–hey, i'm a web developer, it's a big deal to me) site run by the Chandler campaign showcasing many of Fletcher's misrepresentations, and outlining how his political speeches don't necessarily reflect his voting record. on one of the pages of this site, it mentions that it was put together for about $50, which is pretty believable when you consider the number of typos and misspellings i caught while going through it. the navigation leaves a little to be desired as well, but the information is valuable and worth the effort to retrieve.

one of the things that Fletcher constantly tries to push on Chandler is an association with the scandal-ridden Patton administration. for anyone who actually believes this line of bullshit, i'd recommend you read (at least) this page outlining Chandler's Ethics Plan. overall, it outlines Chandler's commitment to government ethics, and in several places lists supporting evidence from his years as State Auditor and Attorney General. like specifically, how he has cracked down on members of his own party when they've done wrong.

in the end, you need to get out there and vote for who you most agree with. and keep in mind while reading that a "spin-free" forum doesn't exist. Chandler applies spin, Fletcher most certainly applies spin, i apply spin. try to get the facts, and when you can't build a complete picture, at least be aware that you can't.

i'm going to vote against Fletcher because i don't like his politics, i don't like his ties to the special interests, and i don't like his lying to the public. i'm going to vote for Chandler because i generally (though not totally) agree with his politics, i love his ability to break from strict party loyalties in pursuit of justice, i like his committment to ethics in government (self-policing and watchdogging), and i like how he's tried to run a "clean" campaign (if you disregard that mess during the primaries) promoting his own merits and outlining his opponent's record without resorting to snippy and erroneous personal attacks (as far as i've seen).

but again, to reiterate, read shit for yourselves, get the facts, make your own decision. what's right to me may not be for you, which is what democracy is all about.

i've gotta say that i'm pretty excited right now. my sister just gave birth to her first baby, my first niece. i haven't been able to talk to her about it yet, since she's in France and 6 hours in the future (and thus most likely asleep already after her certainly grueling day), but i'm excited nonetheless.

my first thought was that i have to get to the baby store and buy something for the little one. i plan to be an uncle of the "spoiling rotten" variety for as long as i can manage. only on occasion will i pull out the "mean as a snake and twice as ugly" uncle role, a part so well played by my own uncle "Red"–a man who, even in his (probably) late 50's to early 60's, still makes me fear the "titty twister," toe yank, ear grab, or good old-fashioned chase-down-bear-hug-tickle-of-death (the tickle-of-death usually consisting of very firm and painful pressure to the ribs and/or large chunks of skin… not so much a tickle as an attempt to break something).

now that was a hell of a sentence. sometimes i surprise even myself.

anyway. i'm excited. i'm an uncle. pictures to follow as soon as they're received.
**Update** as you may've noticed, pictures have been added to the picturebar at the right there, and i've even added 4 *more* pictures since adding the first batch. check out the growing devlin family gallery

now, in other news, i did finally get the pictures from gallery for some shots of the beautiful bride and the reception.

yes, they're a bit dark. i, being a person who generally hates flash photography, neglected to bring my flash along, and the lighting just wasn't up to the task. this was also, of course, before getting my swanky new digital camera.

i also threw up a second new gallery from the same roll of film, this one of my and paul's cats Zoe and Harriet.

last but not least, i finally updated lucifigousprick.com with information about the last show, which, while fun, was also quite frustrating in many ways. more about that later, perhaps, or just go to the site and you can probably piece it together.