Back from the great unknown... AKA "I've Been Doin' Stuff"

Well, it has been over three months since I posted here... and I figured it's about time that I got back on and started writing again. I do this for several reasons, really.

The way I figure, writing here is good exercise for me... mentally, and more specifically, creatively. It's nice to blow the dust off the old gears and get the machine cranking, and it lets me get stuff out of my head. The fact that no one really reads this is fine... I just do this for the hell of it. Plus, I enjoy writing, and I hope to be doing a lot more of it... not just blogging. I'm still trying to decide how I'm going to go about that exactly though...

That being said, I've been up to all sorts of crazy shenanigans these past months. I pondered how to cover it all - should I give a bunch of little snippets about what I've been doing, or should I do a series of posts that cover each thing in greater detail?

Well, I suppose it may be helpful to do both... this way, I can do a quick catch up, and then I can elaborate and sprinkle in some accompanying photos and whatnot. After that's all done, I can return to writing posts about the present, even though technically, that's would be right now. So actually, I'll be writing about the future (at least in terms of the present), although it will be current when I get to it. I'm not sure if that was profound or not... it both confused me and made sense, all at the same time, and that scares me a little bit...

So what have I been up to? As I said, I'll be brief for now - and go into them more later:

• I finalized re-financing effort (just last week as a matter of fact) - and have taken one more step towards eliminating my credit card debt. My monthly payments to credit companies will finally be less than what I was paying... which previously rivaled the national budget of several underdeveloped third world nations.
  
• We got a new cat - an apple-headed seal point Siamese (not to be confused with a cotton-headed ninny-muffin.) Her name is Maggie, but I like to affectionately refer to her as "Shithead," because it's more suitable.
• I went to San Francisco, where I attended a training seminar on web usability run by the Neilsen Norman Group. I learned a lot of great stuff, not just on usability. For instance, I learned that I can walk at a forty-five degree angle for several hours and only be sore for three days afterwards.
• I have been customizing again, after not doing much on that realm for a few months. I've actually been doing quite a bit... and should actually be posting some on here in the near future (the original intention of this blog, mind you.)
  
• The biggest thing that has happened, and is continuing to happen, is that my wife and I are expecting our first child together. She's now in her second trimester, and I got a chance to hear the heartbeat twice now (VERY surreal). In another month, we'll hopefully be finding out the sex. I'm hoping it's a cyborg.