Good morning, friends!

Well this past weekend was great! I was able to get my paycheck early so that I could leave about the time that I wanted to in order to get to Maryland earlier. Since it was raining during parts of the trip and I wasn't familiar with the last 1/3 of the trip I wanted to leave earlier to increase my odds of not getting lost.

As it turns out, the trip is quite easy and I had the path down so well that I did not need any directions for the way back. The trip is approximately 177 miles each way (not doing the metric conversion!) and took roughly 3 hours each way. Although the trip back felt like it took only an hour. Over time I may find a more direct route but taking the PA Turnpike allows me to do an average of 90mph (do the metric yourself!) which I love!

Since it was the weekend more of her family was over. So I got to meet even more family members. Unfortunately Saturday welcomed a massive headache just this side of a migraine so I was much more quiet than I normally would be but when we all went out to dinner on Saturday night I had a great time despite dealing with the pain that even the strongest pain reliever I had with me couldn't alleviate. But I was still laughing heartily. I would have joined in with my normal humor which would have fit right in but I was concentrating on not ejecting the food from my stomach due to its tossing around caused by the headache. But I felt right at home as I think there are enough similarities that we get along well.

And then there were the kids. After months of hearing all about them, seeing pictures of them and semi-talking with her daughter on the phone (being 2.5 years old they aren't really conversations) I was sure I'd love 'em. And you know what? I did!

They are so adorable. Her son, who is younger than her daughter was all over me right off-the-bat. Her daughter took a little longer to warm up but by the time that their bedtime came along she was sitting in my lap and feel asleep on me. I had to carry her to her race car bed and put her to bed which was so cute!

Her son's fake tantrums are funny (although he can really WAIL when he chooses to scream!) and her daughter can be downright unbearably adorable when she chooses not to be EVIL. It was fun watching them go after each other and when I was kicking their asses with the toy lightsabers she'd bought them for Christmas (she wanted to give them to them and was unable to hold off until Christmas to give those two presents to them earlier).

It felt great being around them!

By the time that I had to leave on Sunday in order to get home in time for work that night I was saddened by having to leave. She told her daughter to give me a hug before I left which she did..plus she gave me a little kiss. She told me the next morning that her daughter asked where I went after I left. She told her that I had to leave for work. And that the next morning her daughter asked where I was and she told her that I was still at work. It's cute...great...to know she was wondering where I was. I just gotta try to get myself down there more often.

So that was my weekend!

And on the agenda now is calling the Foundation office to schedule an appointment to discuss the new position she'd like me to accept to help the Foundation further sometime this week, I assume.

Also, I am going to begin work today on a new site idea that I had. It will be a fully dynamic social site but based on gaming. Won't give away all of the secrets. I am not sure how long it will take but I don't think incredibly long. I am putting my blogging system on hold for right now because I want to get this site going. However, there are a ton of things that I learned by figuring out how to make things work with the blogging system which will come in handy with the new site idea and speed up its opening.

Very soon I will be getting server hosting for the band's site but the hosts at which I am looking offer unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth and the hosting of at least multiple domain names so I can get this site its own domain name and set it up on the band's server.

Of course there's more to this but I will let it out over time =0)

And lastly...I wanted to share something with you. It's about the Gremlins! That, and the Goonies, were hugely influential movies while I was growing up. The video below combines both! An aspiring filmmaker had an awesome idea about Gremlins invading other movies and the TiVo-like idea that acts as the catalyst of the video is a great idea. You should check it out!

And the second video is the making-of the first video. It's amazing how much work went into it. It definitely made me appreciate it even further! And as I was watching it I was wondering how everything was done. The making-of video is subtitled but it really is fascinating how it was all done and to see/hear the drive and motivation he had to have had while making the 'film'.

Gremlins invade other motion pictures! (opens in a new window)

Making-of video (also opens in a new window)

ENJOY!
Shout back!

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So here's my new layout.
Hard to say exactly how long it will be in place as it is obviously a very specific theme. But I can't even begin to explain how incredibly thrilled I am that the Phillies season ended the way it did so that I could actually create a design such as this!!

I am working on a new blog elsewhere. It will not replace this as it is an entirely different type of blog. It is a technology review blog. If you just can't contain your curiosity you can check it out @: http://tech-reporting.blogspot.com

I will eventually have some more stuff about that but it's new. Brand. Spankin'. New.

I have a handful of things I am trying to get done this week. I have my weekend-long trip coming up to Maryland to see Kelly and this kids. I know. I've not mentioned anything about any of such related stuff previously so that'll mean nothing (other than I wouldn't expect a post this weekend if I were you) (but then again that's nothing new as of late, eh?) but I fully intend to mention far more about it in coming posts.

Recording went well on etheracide's very first full-length album last Friday. Although we didn't get quite as far as I had anticipated beforehand the drum tracks we laid down were SUPERB. We did lay down half of the guitar tracks and the lead vocal track for absolved. We're taking this weekend off. I will be gone and that plan came about because our drummer is unavailable this weekend.

So we are looking to have a three day recording marathon the following weekend to see how much we can get done. If scheduling goes as planned we should have all the tracks recorded and at least get a headstart on the mixing.

It should be superamazing!

That is it for now.
Enjoy the new design.
Talk to me!

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