happy thanksgiving! yeah, i should be in bed...but as usual, right when i'm about to go off to la la dream land (which my dreams almost always turn into full-fledged nightmares) i start thinking about too much, and i come back into the family room and start going to different message boards, tweaking some sites that i've finished but can't seem to let go of, etc.

this site is starting to bore me...the way it looks. yes, i know...i'm sure it's boring to you too, since i don't post like i should. oh well. that's life. speak of life...

we got a dog last weekend. a miniature schnauzer. really cool. he's a great dog...12 weeks old, really sweet. we got him for allie, so now we've got an eight year old complaining about the great weight of this furry little responsibility. sure, i know, she's only eight, but we warned her what it was going to be like. emily thinks that what it really boils down to is that allie is really a cat person. y'know...cats come and go at their own will with a whatever attitude. yeah, that's allie's style. oh...there have been some cool dog & cat incidents between corbyn and eowyn. i guess i should point out that corbyn is our dog and eowyn is our cat. eowyn is now bold enough to come out and parade in front of corbyn, and as soon as he goes to sniff her out and find out what the hell she is, FSSSSSTH!!!! FFSSSSHT!!!!! FFFFFSSSSSSHTTT!!!! HEEEEEHHHHHCHCHHHCHCHH!!!!!! there runs corbyn. if he had a tail, it would be tucked between his legs. it's pretty entertaining. yeah, i'm twisted.

my good friend corey is about to release a site that i set up for him. it's going up sunday night, so i'll try and remember to post a link. it's just going to be a cool place to post articles about music and movies and have good debates. the whole point of the site is that even if no one goes to it, it's a place for corey to just tell it like he sees it. kind of like this, but he wanted it to also be more interactive, rather than seemingly one-sided...since i do have places for comments...though no one uses them /;(

actually got away from the monitor today and went with schurl to install a sound system at a church. i spent the entire day up in the attic pulling wire. fun. i feel like i've had my ass kicked and then ran over. not cool to be in the attic of a cathedral ceiling with a roof-overhead of about a six-twelve pitch. it sucks. there were areas where my fat ass would barely get over duct work while my head was scraping exposed roofing nails. yet, there are those who wonder why i aspire to be a web-designer. but y'know...not many people can say that their personal hell is the attic of a catholic church, now can they??? ;D

btw...i'm still getting feedback about the heavywishing post that i did recently...you know, my novela. for those who still don't get it...get out there, break out of your own little box, and go see some different bands play! i mean...even go see some crazy country band play. see how they do it; watch to see how much fun other fans have watching bands you really don't care about. just take it all in...it's all good! go up and shake their hands afterwards, and go home knowing that you made their show twice what it would have been if you hadn't been there. really, you won't be struck down by the coolness police.

okay...i'm really going to bed this time. so happy turkey day.

here's a bad thing: i bite my nails. i mean, i really bite my nails. i've had this habit since i was five, and have only tried with never-lasting success to break it twice. those of you who are chronic nail-biters know exactly how far you can go biting...really freakin' far. my thumbs look absolutely horrible right now, and playing our show last night was just murder. both of my thumbnails split at the very ends of what is left of them and bled. We're not talking excruciating pain...it's just annoying pain, the type that won't let you ignore it. Yeah, it sucks. I really should stop...it's stupid to not stop really. Just one more thing to think about.

so i'm trying to drink a glass of wine every night, just because. you have to understand...i don't drink. i might have a bloody mary or a margarita every now and then, especially if emily and i have the chance to get out and have a drink, but other than that, i can not stand the taste. so now this...

i really can't stand it....

what we do to fight the futility of mortality. ***sigh***

the wooden man records site is up!!! check it out!

at this very moment i'm listening to some streaming cruces from the iuma.com site that i set up ages ago. i was surfing around some of the cruces links and came across it. i'm listening to sto'ree. what a great damn song. i was very proud of that song. i feel it's one of the best cruces songs that i ever wrote. why am i even taking to time to write this? well...i feel that i'm beyond it now, so i can reflect and express how i feel about the whole experience...even in small bit like this ---and i'm basically just typing to watch the words form themselves on my monitor...it's not like i can see you, so i'm sharing with all who probably don't even care.

the new heavy wishing site is up!!!

wow. i came home and thought i'd go ahead and write a couple of lines and found my blogger page gone! then i realized that it was hosted on the server that heavywishing.com was on with my old hosting service. i've been changing everything over to a new service and just switched my nameservers over last night. i'm redoing the heavywishing site, so i wasn't even going to worry about uploading the old site to the new server just yet. i am going to do that in the near future, so that i can have it be part of my portfolio, but i never even considered that it was hosting anything else of importance that was separate from the site. come to think of it, i have some other images that are hosted from that site ---actually from the cruces folder that was in the heavywishing parent directory. well, the entire cruces site will have to be uploaded again. oh well, it's low on the list of priorities, but i guess i'll have to do it soon as well.

i'm soooooooooo damn tired.

reno 911 is one of the funniest damn shows on television.

you know what sucks? summer colds...and i'm coming down with one. the back of my throat is scratchy and my nose is stuffy. blech!

we saw radiohead in st. louis sunday night, and it was totally awesome. i saw them in '98 at the galaxy in st. louis, which is a small club, so of course the umb band pavillion was a little different. last time i was hanging on johnny's monitor, this time i was in row RR, so you get the idea. still, it was a great show. leaving was a nightmare. it took us about an hour to get on the road. i hadn't been there since lollapalooza '94...my next draught may even be longer, since i have no love for the place.

i would talk more about the show, but i still need to throw on my work clothes...i still haven't talked about our trip to st. paul!!!

i shall return.

we're going to go buy THE TWO TOWERS tonight! i assume that we'll try and watch it, since allie is pretty excited about it. i'm sure that will blow her bed time, but she's been looking forward to the release for quite some time. i guess this means i won't get any work done tonight on the wooden man site..but oh well.

again...waiting to go to work. my head is stuffy...i wish it would rain, so i could stay home.
finally started work on the wooden man site last night; just graphics though. i think i have a background that they'll be happy with.
i need to write about our trip to st. paul last weekend. we loved that city!
oops...my dad is here, just heard him pull up. gotta go and sweat for eight hours. joy.

hmmm.

once again...i'm in front of the monitor @ six in the morning...waiting to go to work. work is sucking this week. however, it's only a four day week, cause we're driving up to st. paul on friday. i've never been there before, so it should be cool. going up to a friend's wedding, although i think emily is more exicted about going to the mall of america ---which reminds me: i haven't mapped that part of the trip out yet. i did get a three star hotel, the radisson on the river, for sixty bucks a night at priceline, just like the commercial said!!! yeah!!! i'm excited. oh well...gotta go make breakfast (translation: open a can of fruit cocktail.)

oh, btw...check out one of my latest sites i've been working on: theplusmusic.com

how many people do you know eat mash potatos and gravy with hamburger steak while reading the news at yahoo at six o'clock in the morning?!?!?! yeah!!!

got the new cure dvd "trilogy" this past weekend. thanks to chris for the heads-up on that and for waiting patiently for us to get our butts over to c'dale to pick it up. for cure fans, it's beyond words to watch them do "pornography" and even the two encore songs from "kiss me". go buy it!!!

it's august...i didn't blog (for this blog anyway) throughout the entire month of july! AAAAAAAAAK!!!! well, watch the same thing happen again for this month. i finished a site for a carbondale band, the plus, and powered most of it with blogger...so i was around behind the scenes...it's just that no one has seen me!

i'm working on my design site today...trying to get it live. i need to clean rohan's room also...it's a disaster area, and that's after he said he cleaned it. of course, he's only three, so what can you expect. and oh, how the potty (number2) training is going ---it's HELL.

oh, i've got a new trackball, and i think i'm finally used to it. it took several days though ---and got it as i was trying to wrap up a site. not a lot of fun...but i did it.

i would write more...but i just wanted to shout out that this blog is not dead...i am meaning to blog some stuff soon. i've got to get some more stuff ready before i'm picked up for work, so i've got to get off of the computer. I WILL UPDATE SOON. I PROMISE!!!

it rained, so i had the day off. i was going to spend it playing around with photoshop...then i got side-tracked; started to disect a site of a band that i don't like, but it was interesting to see how they built their site. then i vacuumed the floors...gave rohan a bath, since some sort of rash decided to pop up all over his feet and legs...mopped the floor in the family room for fear that some stray raid spider spray had gotten near rohan's play area when i sprayed the threshold of the back door... decided to mop the rest of the floors when our friend who cleans our house didn't show...then windexed and pledged the french doors...started cycling laundry...fed rohan lunch...forgot to eat lunch myself...emptied the dishwasher, loaded it...cleaned rohan's room right after i put him down for a nap...went through about a month of papers that allie had brought home from school...straightened up our room and allie's room...then i decided that if i was ever going to try and get the mold spots off of all of the doors in the house i had better take advantage of my day off...so i scrubbed them for about an hour and a half with bleach water...did the same to the panelling in the family room...thought that the bleach might be too harsh, so then i pledged the hell out of the doors...and the family room walls...scanned a school portrait of allie into photoshop, did some retouching (she had ruined all the pictures that she had taken to school to trade by signing the backs of each one and then stacking them together before they dried, thus smearing the heck out of each one) then printed the whole lot out on some good photo stock...took a shower...emily came home...we went and ate at bennie's...i was starving, so i ate an order of lasagna and a full order of toasted ravioli (hell yeah)...got home...emily put rohan to bed...she browsed ebay...i cut the small wallets of allie with the paper cutter, much to her excitement...got allie set up on the atari...played through most of my newest ideas on the piano...put allie to bed...emily took off to go work out...started browsing mp3.com...then DECIDED TO BLOG AND HERE I AM NOW!!! WOOHOO!!! i think i'll go to bed now...i'm beat...six-o'clock is going to come too early...oh hey...emily just walked in the door...BYE!!!

HAHAHAHA!!! we're back online!!! i held out for cable...seems to be worth the wait. now posting will have to wait...got to go to bed.

i'm at the house of our friends, nate and amy. nate is at work, amy and emily just ran into town for a little while for a drink before last call, and i'm here sitting little norah while they're all away. so...i can blog! we still don't have a connection at home. there is a place that swears that they'll have wireless broadband for where we live by the first of june, and our local cable company says that a cable connection isn't too far from being completed. we'll see. i'm still checking email at my dad's; which i don't have any filters set up on his outlook express, so when i check every several days, i have less than ten legitimate messages, and over a hundred pieces of junk mail.

we've been in a huge period of transition in our lives, so i haven't even thought about booking any shows for heavy wishing. we had some rehearsals, which have been a lot of fun, but nothing beyond that. we'll probably play some beer gardens this summer though.

we went and saw "a mighty wind" tonight. it was great, as we had hoped. i'm sure once it comes out on dvd, we'll watch it enough to where we'll have some favorite quotes, but for now all i can say was that it was a worthy follow-up to best in show. also, it was great that one of the folk bands in the movie called the folkmen, we're the three primary members of spinal tap which was just awesome.

a sad note about our movie experience was that this is the last weekend that the varsity theatre in carbondale will be open. i had some friends of ours take pictures of us outside of the theatre for the fun of it. i know that the place doesn't have the coolest seats in town, no cup holders, no surround sound, but it holds a lot of memories. also, i may be wrong, but the main theatre is probably the largest in southern illinois...it's huge. it's where i first saw "raiders of the lost ark" in '81 and "return of the jedi" in '83. i even saw "the lord of the rings" in the upstairs shirley temple theatre when i was five in '78. i've seen many films at the varsity since then, but those were all memorable moments for me. of course, it's being closed, because of the newest multi-plex opening in town, but i could give a care less. it's just not the same. also, although i'm not a student at s.i.u., nor do i live in carbondale, this is the second and last theatre within walking distance of campus to be closed down in the last ten years. i don't know, i'm sure that the owners have valid reasons, and i'm sure that the maintenance costs on such an old building are unbelievable, but it will still be sorely missed.

i don't think i'm going to get an internet connection at the house until may. i'm trying to find the best available deal on a broadband connection. so far, not much luck.

well...i'm at my dad's house right now. why? i have no internet access. i called verizon yesterday to see if my dsl service could transfer to the new address. i was bounce around and put on hold for almost thirty minutes only to find out that they won't know about my service availability until next wednesday. they say that they haven't received my new records from engineering. all because i kept my same number from one address to another. i checked with another dsl provider, who really is just an isp that goes through verizon. they can't help, because of the fact that they use verizon. i then tried to call the cable company, mediacom, and their freakin' phone was busy for almost three hours!!!! i finally got through, but was on hold for over ten minutes, just to find out that they don't have cable access for marion, but may have it in three to four weeks. yeah, right. more likely three to four months...or years!!! i called one of the local satellite businesses, but all they offer is service from illinois wireless, and i know of two people that had absolutely wretched service from them last year. so...i'm just going to have to wait and see what turns up. financially, if i have to go beyond dsl, we don't have the money this month to invest in a new broad-band modem, nor any other huge start-up costs. it is highly unlikely though that i'll be able to get dsl. i guess i wouldn't mind cable, but then i'd be tempted to ask about a package deal with digital cable for our television, and i absolutely hate the interface of digital cable. i like package deals, because i'd rather pay one provider for several services, but i'd much rather have dss, instead of digital cable. ahh, the joys of the digital dark age in southern illinois.

it's going to be lights out for the next several days...maybe longer. i won't know until monday whether or not i can get DSL at the new place (btw - got the keys this morning) and i don't have a dial-up modem in my box, so we'll see what happens. if i can't get DSL, by god i'm going to get some sort of broad band if it kills me. I AM NOT GOING BACK TO DIAL-UP!!! you just never go back, and that's all there is to it! so i'll be back sometime next week, hopefully!

well, we never got the keys today. hopefully i'll get them tomorrow. it would really make things easier if i could get all of the small boxes over into the garage before saturday. then i would only have to focus on furniture.

we've signed the lease...we haven't gotten the keys.

grrr...

WE GOT THE HOUSE! we're going to sign the lease this morning.

i've been shorn. it was my decision though. i was sick of it for many reasons...the same ones that make me do it every time. oh well. spring is here, which feels like summer in any other part of the country, and of course our summers are miserable. it was definitely something i had to do, and it was something that emily hated doing. it is good to have a stylist for a wife though! also, it will only take fifteen months to get it back. :)

going to look at a house for rent in less than an hour. i really hope that we get this one. you'd think that it would be a renter's market, but here in marion that isn't the case. every property seems to be managed by a realtor and they all do credit checks. emily has great credit, but mine sucks. i had an exorbitant amount of credit card debt from my previous marriage, and several years ago i put it on a debt negotiation program. although the program saved me a lot of money, i got bad credit from the whole deal ---something that i was aware would happen beforehand, so it didn't come as a surprise. anyway, we keep losing out on houses that we want to rent, because of this. i just think that's nuts! i mean, i'm coming to the table saying that we own our own business, we live in the apartment above, but we've outgrown it. i tell them that i previously had lived in my father's apartments which i managed. we're also currently landlords ourselves, with a basement apartment in our building that we lease. you would think that they would take all of this into consideration! we sound like great prospective renters! it's just driving me crazy. i'm at my absolute wit's end over this. i realize from a property owner's point of view you have to be wary of the riff-raff out there, but we meet every standard of responsible tenants...

other than my blasted credit.

well, i'm going to go get the car washed and head over there.

i sure haven't been blogging like i should. those who really know me know what's up though. for those who don't, i'll just say that emily and i are dealing with some major issues. fortunately, we have each other, and i believe that we'll be past all of this by the end of april. the cool thing about our marriage: i'm married to my best friend, and when you have to deal with a lot of shit, it's best to do it with your best friend. so...coming into the summer, you're going to see a much happier cook family. i guess that's all i really want to say about it now. for those who even read this, i'm just saying all of this so you don't read too much into us being pretty low key right now. to our closest friends, thanks for being so cool and supporting us with your friendship.

fact: on average, i probably spend at least five minutes everyday updating my message rules in outlook express to handle the enormous amount of spam that i get. that's over thirty hours a year. if time is money, that's about six hundred dollars for me. six hundred bucks that i'm not ever going to give to anyone that sends me spam.

finished up a job last week, so now i'm home indefinitely for some time. this will give me more time to get tax stuff together. woohoo.

rohan's nose won't stop running, and he's taken to wiping the snot from his face with his hand which leads him to smearing it into a big slimy mess.

it's a lot of fun.

the show saturday night went great. we had a good time, and the recording from the evening didn't turn out half bad. i've uploaded several tracks to mp3.com, but they've yet to approve the songs.

rohan is distressed at the moment...he can't find his jesse doll (from toy story) that allie gave to him yesterday...

well, i'm going to join in on this search for jesse.

i'm just laughing at something emily just said, only because i can relate: "i'm tired of stroking people's egos where there shouldn't be egos...it's just ridiculous."

yeesh...do i have a headache.

the kids have eaten dinner, but they pretty much wiped out everything that i fixed, so after emily gets off of work she's going to have to run and pick something up for the two of us.

i just got through cleaning rohan up...now he's fallen somehow in the living room...

he was fine, just as i thought. oh...what now...

i'm back, after scolding rohan for screaming at me. he wanted to drag a hot wheels race track in to the living room, after i told him not to, he screamed at me in defiance. yeah, i wonder why i have a head ache...

i posted the friday five, but blogger at it, so screw it...i feel like ellen feiss.

sitting here waiting for emily to get back with the car from an oil change, so i can clean it out. today is such a great day to be outside. of course, i had no choice, since i work outside, but i'm sure that my point is well taken. we're going ot nashville tonight with some friends for the weekend. it's been a year since we had a weekend without the kids. it's going to be soooooooooo great. however, i'm sure that by sunday i'll be dying to see them again.

wow did we have a great time playing last night at the hangar. there were just a lot of friends there that hadn't seen us yet, and it was just a good time hanging out after we played. i wish ryan had played with us, but i'm sure florida has its good points too. he'll be back to play with us there on the 15th though, so i'm really looking forward to that. i was really surprised at how well our music was received, since it really is so contemporary. i'm thrilled to death of course, but still surprised.

i'm burning cds to give away at tonight's show. i hate having to buy new cd labeling software. every time i turn around, the labels that i'm using aren't available any more, so i have to buy an entirely new labeling kit, since no two label templates are the same.

i really have nothing to say. i'm looking forward to tonight, and i have a lot of stuff to get ready, but i thought i'd take a break and post...but i just feel dazed. i need a nap. that's my new motto. "I NEED A NAP!" yeah, that's sounds good. it fits me well.

well, i didn't post yesterday...the day was too long, and i was too tired. i've got rehearsal tonight and a show tomorrow night. i'm yawning as i type. not much to write anyway. it's the final night of "i'm a celebrity, get me out of here!" which emily and i have been watching every night. i usually hate reality shows but i love this one. i like the three celebs that are left, so i don't really care who wins. everyone i talk to either hasn't seen the show, or just plain hates it. oh well. we're just strange i guess. hmmm...i think i'll go practice for tonight.

i took rohan to the doctor today for his two and half year wellnes check-up today. it cost 61 dollars to find out what i assumed: he's alive and well and doing fine. i really need to get us some health insurance. our last policy sucked balls. rohan wasn't covered for anything until he was nineteen. isn't that lovely? like i said, it was a really good policy.

i've begun work on a huge geneology table based on the works of j.r.r. tolkien concerning middle earth. the ones that were included in the lord of the rings and the silmarillion are just way too consise. i'm trying to get emily to read the silmarillion and i know this would be a great reference material, rather than flip back and forth between several books and whatever tolkien encyclopedias i have around trying to remember who came from who and what family they were from, etc., etc., etc. however, the possibility of her actually reading the silmarillion is not very good. she reads hundreds of books every year, and although she read the lord of the rings several years ago, i don't think she's up to reading this book. so maybe someone else could put this table to use after i'm finished with it. it's also another reason not to really start on our tax stuff. :)

oh yeah, we did watch mean machine the other night. i highly recommend it, it's a lot of fun.

ahhhh sunday. what a great day for doing nothing. this isn't always the case of course. sunday is usually the only day to get anything done, since there isn't any time during the week. i do however need to work on preparing the books to take to our accountant for taxes. it's all so unorganized from august on. procrastination is king too much in my life. i'm still not working on the stuff today though ---ha! i think i'll take a nap.

we went out for chinese last night. it was actually good. then we went to blockbuster and rented several movies. master of disguise for the kids (i saw half of it before i had to go pick up my dad at the hospital), my big fat greek wedding (nice movie, more entertaining than i would have thought) and mean machine with jason statham and vinnie jones, who are mostly known from the cast of snatch. we may get the chance to watch it tonight.

we went to the mall today. we didn't really buy anything spectacular. emily bought a book of norman rockwell paintings, allie bought j.blume's superfudge (that makes you feel old), and i bought a couple of magazines. oh, we also did some housewares shopping at target (babywipes, some new frosty mugs, and a usb cable for our new printer). talked a bit with some friends of ours that bought the party shop. then we came home, sent the kids to bed to take naps. i read about the new children of dune mini-series coming this month on the sci-fi network. i guess i need to get our dish working again. we've been without since late january 2001. i just feel that it's too much money for such crappy programming. i wish that you could order only the networks and channels that you wanted. emily fell asleep, she's snoring right now...i may lay down after i finish this.

i guess we'll watch that movie tonight, after the kids re-watch theirs, of course. maybe we'll junk food it. that's always fun...but that means that i'll have to make a kroger run, but we need alcohol anyway, so i need to hit the liquor store on the way back. saturday nights just the way i like them. of course, i'm not a drinker, never really have been. i'm almost thirty, and i'm just starting to try to acquire a taste for beer. i hate it really, and only just recently have i been able to drink one whole bottle at any given time. i just think the shit is nasty, and i never really cared about it when i was younger. and to those of you who think that you know me, but have watched from afar, i've never ever tried smoking, and i've never even tried any sort of drug. now, if taking mini-thins before a show count, then i did that, but only because driving ten hours between shows can have its effects on you, and i never did more than two at a time. hell, i remember one night after a show in wichita, i was going to drive the first leg home (schurl would always take over for me past st. louis), so i took two mini-thins and drank two 20 oz bottles of coke...i was out an hour later....schurl had to drive the whole trip. if i'm tired, my body doesn't care what i've shoved down my throat. anyway, i digress...i like bloody marys (of course around here, they're the best at the cellar in carbondale) and then margaritas that aren't strong. i think tequila has a chocolate aftertaste (yeah, yeah, i know ---call me crazy) and i drink it for the lemon lime flavor, so when we're at home, i drink them virgin. seriously, i think that cuervo margarita mix tastes like a lemon lime mister mistee from dairy queen, and i've never wanted anyone putting chocolate in my mister mistee, so you can at least see it from my point of view...at least if you squint really hard.

interesting factoid about me...i have 20/400 vision in my right eye, and 20/600 vision in my left eye. when i can't find my glasses, it's a site to behold, i'm sure. i look like a hounddog with my nose inches above whatever surface i'm checking out.

i might check in later.

i have a headache...what's new? emily worries about them, but i think that it's the scratched up lenses on my glasses. i absolutely hate wearing contacts; at least the disposable ones that i've been buying for the last two years. i've worn contacts for almost seventeen years now, and even when i used to wear them for weeks at a time (lazy high school days) they didn't make my eyes feel tired like these do. of course that effect is only amplified in smoke-filled rooms. when wearing, i never leave home without re-wetting drops. anyway, yeah ---i hate contacts.

so what to do tonight? i guess we'll rent a movie, stay in with the kids, chinese take-out actually sounds good...although i don't really enjoy any of the chinese food in our area. it just all tastes that same. it's almost as bad as ordering "stir-fry" from, like, say a truck stop. if you haven't had the pleasure of ordering something like that from such a place, don't. the best chinese restaurant near here is in paducah, ky, about an hour away, called chong's. it's incredible, so i highly recommend.

the friday five!

1. What was the last song you heard?probably the last one that clean ray played last night...which i was at the bar talking. and then there was all of the busy music over the mains after the show. i'd say the last one that i really payed attention to was i think a built to spill song while we were setting up. i'm pretty sure it was them, because it sounded like doug marsh's voice anyway.

2. What were the last two movies you saw?i think i said it this past week: mean machine & my big fat greek wedding.

3. What were the last three things you purchased?cd labels, a disposable camera, hp glossy photo paper.

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend?have fun, have fun, have fun, have fun.

5. Who are the last five people you talked to?in order from last ---my dad, emily, jesse from the plus, the door guy at the hangar, robbie stokes.

february twenty-seventh will always be a sad anniversary now for me. i can't believe that fred rogers is no longer with us. it's amazing how sad this is for me. the last time i felt like this was when charles m. schulz passed. i hate losing childhood icons. i'm reminded too much of mortality...as much as near relations passing. i know it's the effect that television and the media has on us...an imprinting on our psyche, if you will, but i seriously feel that our deepest emotions, those rooted in our childhood, are for our generation (at the least) inevitably connected with television. i don't feel that is horribly superficial in any way. i mean, sincere feelings of any extremity have reasons for being as they are a part of our human condition, and their associations are just as true, no matter what they are ---they are not false. and to be tied to something that is simple and joyful is a wonderful thing i believe, and that's what makes for the best childhood memories. that is the connection for me. i mourn the loss of something simple, since nothing seems simple any more. i miss that.

my first post.

i think i'll enjoy blogging. why? i feel that i almost do it anyway. it seems like all of the online bulletin boards that i post at have slowly died to where no one posts any longer. i still post, but now no one really reads. i'm sure the same will happen here, but here i can post without trying to stay true to forum or thread. this will be my supreme area to scream, complain, rejoice or whatever about everything that's exclusively happening to me.

so who am i? my name is derek and i live in a small town called marion, located in southern illinois, a little less than 6 hours south of chicago. i love living here, unlike most people that i come in contact with. however, at this time i'm not going to go into detail about marion.

i'll turn 30 this summer, i'm married, and have two kids, allie who is 7 and rohan who is 2, and was born on my birthday.

i'll keep it simply like that. if any one even reads any of this, you can learn more about me as this blog grows.

for now,

cheers.