Ahhh…the year-end wrap-up. Where to start? To be honest, most of the shit that happened to me I didn't post about. Why have I been maintaining radio silence? Who knows?

I finally joined the rest of the web-using world and started utilizing digg. I even dugg a post I posted here. Oh…I'm such a whore.

Today I'm bemoaning the fact that we're not a more regularly updated, noticed "blog." I mean…they could have sent us a couple of these, for fucksake.

I've spent an inordinate amount of time listening to Neil Young, lately. Mostly Crazy Horse material. It's speaking to the parts of the brain Brooksie and I have started activating for the new band. Speaking of the new band, it's tentatively titled "Birth Machine." We expect to rattle the foundation of a local venue this spring.

I guess the biggest news of the season is that i had to have Clyde put to sleep (the Thursday before Christmas; it made the holiday even more fun). Some of you long-time readers (if there's any left) will remember Clyde as my beloved cat of the past decade. She had a tumor on her chest that spread to her lungs. Toward the end she was having trouble breathing and would only eat fresh turkey and "catmilk" (speaking of which, I have two things of that stuff left, if anyone needs/wants it), which made us think it was all just some elaborate scam on her part. Regardless, we couldn't take it anymore and took her back to the vet. He gave us the dire news and we all endured a bit of pre-holiday heartbreak.
Needless to say, she's incredibly missed.

Clyde – 1996-2006

well, brian's hopped back in the saddle, while i've been slacking. i suppose that's about right.

my buddy paul finally got himself hitched to his wonderful lady and our former roommate allison. It was a very nice, simple ceremony, followed by a pretty kickin' reception. they had a live jazz band that was just superb, and paul and neil got up and serenaded the new bride in patented old man style. my wife and i managed to get several good shots, which i've put up in the gallery.

our summer of weddings is now over (a brief reprieve), and we've two more friends' weddings left this year (that I can remember), but i think they both fall on the same day, so we'll unfortunately most likely have to miss the one that sara's not a bridesmaid in.

the remaining major news is that i whipped together a site for my friends that i'm particularly proud of, for organizing a monthly movie night. i'd link to it, but it's really by invitation only, and there are currently no safeguards to prevent uninvited users from signing up. (scribbles on todo list) so, suffice to say, it's really cool, and i'll post a link to it in the future when i've got it somewhat protected.

oh, and my 1 year anniversary at work has just come and gone, and i'm still thrilled to be where i am. i only hope that sara gets a residency in town (or within reasonable commuting distance) so i don't have to test the loyalty of my company in a long-distance employment situation. i'm fairly certain we can work something out (the company and i), but i'd certainly prefer not to risk it.

wow. wordpress. i think i remember sending matt a retarded email like "have you seen this shit yet?" so long ago. of course, he had, and he had his own reasons for not wanting to use it, but those reasons have disappeared and here we are.

i've had an incredibly eventful past few days. i spent all of sunday being a production assistant on the shoot for the my morning jacket dvd. that was a lot of fun and i have a ton of photos. i'll actually post a whole diary type thing about that in a few days. i've also spent the past couple of nights hanging out with our friends from japan. they're here for vacation. we've been having a blast, drinking beers and speaking in broken english to each other. i've been snapping photos of the fun and you can find them here.

i'll do a real post soon, i promise.

added a whole slew of photos from the Black Cross show tonight. oddly enough, i wasn't able to get any shots of Black Cross. added were shots of Wolverine Brass and The Legendary Lords (original Lords line-up), reformed for two songs right before Black Cross played.

hell…the earliest two photos from the night were uploaded directly from my phone while i was still at the show. that's how big of a geek i am.

still playing around with flickr. I'm gonna start adding my joycam photos intermittently, just for something to do.

other than that…not much going on. i had fun hanging out with paul for his birthday on friday. good times.

hopefully someday i'll have a job where i make enough money to live on…

i've been messing around on flickr, adding functionality to blog photos from there and whatnot, so i thought i'd make a bipolar post about it.

i've added a bunch of photos, over the last couple of days, so if you're interested, check it out. i'm even considering mirroring my cameraphone gallery over there.

my buddy dan just reminded me that i forgot to mention our entries in this week's photo friday. the theme is "cool." mine is entry #371.

matt has set me straight on the gallery scripts, so the pictures from yesterday have been properly added. you can find them here:

braid

minus the bear

i didn't do much for the 4th. we usually have band practice on sundays, but since everyone was busy doing whatever, i just sat around the house and messed with the computer until i got hungry. i set out, intending to walk to q'doba for a burrito, then had a change of heart as i walked past za's. one calzone and a 22oz whitbread later, billy got off work and we drove around, looking for something to do. the lebowskifest guys were having a party at their office, so we decided to head down there for some beer and karaoke. after that, i just went home and went to bed.

wow. two days, two posts. is this the start of a new trend?

i doubt it.

today is my last sunday, here at work. i got a new schedule which has me (finally) working a monday through friday week. it's about time.

i took a ton of photos at the braid shows i attended and finally got them uploaded to the server. for some reason, matt's gallery script is broke/doesn't like them, so here's the raw directories:

braid: columbus; indianapolis

minus the bear: columbus and indianapolis

i'd email matt about his script not working but a: i'm too lazy and b: he never answers email. i wonder if he even reads it. i'm convinced all email sent to matt gets redirected to a junk mail folder. all of it.

yesterday i went over and helped joe knock some walls out of his new house. "new" is kinda misleading, i guess, as the house is over 100 years old. either way, we got to take sledgehammers and prybars and everything else under the sun to those walls, making a glorious mess. at the end of the day, though, there were lots of empty beers and nice big holes where those walls previously stood. and i was absolutely filthy. when i got home i walked straight into the house and into the shower.

the computer at home is finally fixed. we ended up just putting a new motherboard and processor into the damn thing. so far…no issues. it's nice to have a working computer again.

time to get back to doing as little as possible…