Here is the little bit of Whipping Post Dreams that I recorded of David's band playing. Enjoy.

Okay so any hope I had of convincing Ali to camp out in the in-laws backyard has vanished. We keep a bird feeder on the back porch hanging from a 4x4 thingy. Usually it is brought in at night, but with winter that rule was not strictly adhered to. With spring approaching it probably should have been; some time in the middle of the night a bear came and ripped it down to get to the bird seed in the feeder hanging from it. Before and after. Now I know the broken piece of wood doesn't look like a 4x4, but it was cut out to fit over the built in bench on the porch.

The cake I made for my mother in-law's birthday turned out pretty good. The icing was a little thicker than I intended, but all in all I was quite pleased with the result. We had a small party for her tonight, and I would publish a video of us singing happy birthday to her if I weren't worried about being sued by the copyright holders.

Well I hope y'all are doing well, and that you don't get mauled by a hungry bear looking for bird seed.

Ali and I went down to Winston-Salem this past weekend for David's 30th Birthday party. We had an ominous warning not to go when Ali had a semi-blowout earlier in the day while coming home from Walton. We persevered and made arrangements to get a new tire at Sears, which is a little over an hour away. Driving on the donuts for that long is not a lot of fun. This was on Thursday in case you were wondering. We got out of Kingston about 7pm that night and drove until about 1:30am stopping in Woodstock, VA for the night. Driving that night wasn't much fun as it rained a lot and there was a lot of traffic. At some point near the end of drive that night, one of the windshield wipers seemingly slipped and readjusted itself lower onto the peg that causes it to go across the wind shield. This resulted in the wiper banging against the car each time it came down. Fortunately it had mostly stopped raining and we were able to get by with minimal use.

I've been busy ...

I have started two new blogs, one for house hunting, and one for cycling. I added a new side bar section called "blogs" to make for easy navigation between them.

I will do my best to keep the house hunting one up to date as we go and view properties. I may not always have a lot of pictures, as usually the residence of the house are home while we are looking at it, and I find it awkward to take pictures of someone's house while they are there.

Recently I have been listening to Some Devil by Dave Matthews. There is a song on the album, which I like, but hadn't taken the time to process the Lyrics. There was one line that reminded me of my wife and myself. She sometimes talks to me, and it could be minutes but eventually I'll respond, and then she'll have no idea what I'm talking about. Anyway that is irrelevant to the overall entry.

I'm going to start with the Lyrics to the song, which are mostly complete, there are two words near the end I have been unable to make out, and apparently no one else has either because they don't show up on any of the lyrics sites out there.

Reverse Engineering Stream of Consciousness

I was driving to the Saturn dealership this morning and found myself thinking about drug use and why we should or should not care if someone decides to use them, and all of the implications that go along with it, abuse, addiction, how to support the habit, and so on. At some point venturing down this path I realized I was thinking about it, and I wanted to know how I wound up at that point. This would be the reverse engineering part, and it is sometimes something I do when I catch myself thinking about seemingly random things.

Ali and I are starting to get serious about finding a place to live. We made a trip to Pennsylvania and two places in particular, Hazleton and Allentown. I wanted to see what it was like as housing and taxes are much cheaper there than New York. Hazleton is the town my grandmother grew up in, and I thought it would be neat to go see it. Allentown wasn't a bad place, but it is about 3.5 hours from Ali's family, and I think I would like to be closer to them than that, so we've pretty much ruled out Pennsylvania. This whole notion of being close to her family is interesting, as it has a lot more to do with proximity. In particular I don't think I would have a problem moving out West to Utah, Montana, or Oregon, but I am more reluctant to move a few hours away. I think it is because I believe living three hours away or 25 hours away, that I would see them almost the same amount. As such it would be ashame not to take advantage of the proximity. I know it sounds absurd, but experience has shown this to be true.

I talked to David today, he called need some information on a server issue he was having. We got to talking about the party on the 24th, Ali and I appear to definitely be going (although I haven't asked for the time off yet). Anyway, we were talking about jamming, which made me want to play my electric guitar. I hadn't gotten it out since we moved last May. I couldn't believe it had been almost a year since I played it. I have been reluctant to get it out because I don't want to disturb our gracious hosts with my obnoxious playing, but I finally caved. The other catalyst was I finally found the box that contained the cords, wah-wah, and stuff that would allow me to plug the guitar into my amp, which I hadn't been able to find until earlier this week.

All of this is to say I'm really weak on the electric now. I'm going to try and get some practice in between now and Dave's party so that I don't make too much of a fool out of myself when I jamming with who ever is willing to play with me.

David, HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY! I can't wait to see you!

I hope to see you there too.

So I'm trying to learn how to meditate. Often when I'm traveling for work I have trouble going to sleep, and I thought I would learn how to meditate to help myself fall asleep at night. My main problem is my mind is typically racing with all of the things I've just done that day, and all of the things I will need to do on the coming day. When I was in college I didn't have this issue. Ali and I would go to bed and we would be chatting and inevitably I would fall asleep mid-sentence or while she was talking, and I mean like 30 seconds after we laid down. It was probably 6 to 12 months after graduation before I started having trouble falling asleep at night. Up until this point I have been having Ali tell me bed time stories, my favorite is her version of Jack and the Bean Stalk. She has about 5 that she tells me, they are all based on children's stories, and let me just say she has become quite the story teller. A couple of problems with this: 1. she often falls asleep in the middle of telling the story, and before I fall asleep (falling asleep while telling the story after I've fallen asleep is okay, for obvious reasons). Two, she never goes with me on business trips and so I'm left to fend for myself. Often I try reading, but I love to read, and I'm usually so caught up in what I'm readying that I don't put it down. In the end, I'm left with the same problem, I stay up too late. This also happens if I watch TV.

It's official the Savvy Traveler site updated on Friday (the date of their would be next broadcast) with a message that they were truly gone. I was trying avoid reality and make myself believe that they were joking, but alas I can no longer do that.

Here is segment that I particularly enjoyed recently. (It is in real audio format.)

I also find it interesting how some things we just won't believe are legitimate until we see it on the web. Me with the Savvy Traveler and Stacy with her whole Amway (or should I say T & E International) sleuthing.

Well I must go sulk a little more.