Happy another year, everyone!

Over Christmas I had some fun, and I also had a mildly productive break. I’m excited to show you the changes I made and the times I had, so let’s jump in!

Ah yes, my old friend Winona Winslow. We go way back, she and I.

I had quite a drive–1,500 miles–to see my mom and youngest sister. I discovered something rather unfortunate during this drive, and that is I cannot listen to audiobooks. My mind wanders like crazy and far too many times I had to rewind a couple minutes to re-listen to what I glazed over. After 20 times of that I had to quit. Somewhere in Arizona I turned instead to music and I was pleasantly surprised. I was looking for a classical station, but instead I found classic rock. It’s a pretty cool station called 96.7 The Wolf. They have an app you can use to listen to even if you’re not in northern Arizona. Give it a listen! Anyway, I finally got to Little Rock, Arkansas around 1:00 a.m. and the next morning my mom drove us up to the northwest corner of Arkansas where my sister lives. I’m excited that I had a chance to meet my nephew for the first time! He’s a very happy little fellow, as you can see.

(mirror)

 In other news, I have another YouTube channel for reasons I’ll divulge in a couple weeks.

 I also got to see my best canine buddy in the whole wide world, Thor. Say what you will, I think he’s a very handsome young man. I stayed for about two weeks and finally got back to Nevada two days ago where I’m writing this now… wait, I’m confused. Let’s see, I’m writing this on the 4th and the post is going up on the 6th. OK, I’ve got it! I got back two days ago and wrote this in the past! As for the culinary possibilities, I made sure to visit every restaurant I could think of that we don’t have in the west, including a frozen yogurt place in Memphis, TN called YOLO. Yes, you read that right.

Oh yeah, I also went to Memphis. You see, my sister works there so we visited and brought her lunch. I’m sorry to disappoint you Instagrammers (or whatever you call yourselves. Insta-grammarians?) but I took no pictures of food. I was far too busy eating it and contemplating what a Buddhist or Hindu would have to say if informed that “You Only Live Once.” Also, now that I think of it, the next time I go to YOLO I’m going to bring along a copy of Ian Fleming’s You Only Live Twice to read whilst dining. It’s not every day you get to be reminded of every action’s permanence and man’s inability to take back mistakes by living again–by a yogurt shop, no less. Afterwards we drove past Graceland and I got an Elvis song stuck in my head for the rest of the trip.

For Christmas I got a box of tissues with a gift card hidden inside, but the gift wrapping around the card was itself heavily wrapped in masking tape. There’s a capital idea for you devious gifters out there. (Here’s another.) Personally, I’m a fan of the box-in-a-box-in-a-box, but this worked well too. And I must say, hiding it in the box of tissues was marvelous!

I can’t think of anything else of note that happened on the trip. I just had some time to spend with the other half of my family for the first time in two years. I bravely tolerated driving a car with an automatic transmission for 3,000 miles because they’re worth it. Oh man, you have no idea how happy I am to be back to my stick now! And just because my sister’s mind is always in the gutter, I must clarify that I’m referring to the car’s stick shift.

And now, for the second half of my post! I must show you what blog stuff I’ve done over the break. I’ll just leave this one last photo from the drive:

I have a road!

All right, now for blog stuff!

I made quite a few cosmetic changes on the blog, most of which I showed you in my previous announcement. Beside these changes at Blogspot, I also made a major, major change to my original blog at WordPress, in that I’m updating it now. That’s it. That’s the change. From “This blog has moved” to “just kidding.” All my posts from now on will be simulcast on both sites, so if you’re reading this on WordPress and got confused, sorry about that. Oh yeah, that reminds me. I’d like to give a shout-out to my newest follower, Rachel Kanev. She has a really cool WordPress blog called “Globe Drifting” with a lot of interesting articles about different cultures from around the world. I recommend you check it out.

So what do you have to look forward to in the coming weeks? Well, I’m going to do a few more Games Appreciation articles, seeing as how I haven’t done one in quite a while. I’ll also be posting the first chapter of my latest story as soon as I can get myself to actually sit down and write it. Always with the thinking and pondering and the procrastinating. Oy vey.