At the time of this writing I am on vacation in Ohio visiting my sister Lisa and her family. (Or as they say in more civilized parts of the world, "on holiday".  And in less desirable company it's called "on leave".)  I'm having a great time here hanging out with family, especially my awesome two-year-old nephew Julian.  I desperately needed this time away from Nor-fuck and my job to do some soul-searching and also get in some much-needed relaxation.  Here's a pic of my sister and me.


My brother-in-law Dominic is also a musician.  (Check out his project The Art of Killing a Copy Machine on MySpace.)  Prior to coming here I had been very musically inactive for three months, but playing Dom's guitar and drumset has improved my technique and resparked my creativity.  Dominic is much better than me with the production/mixing side of making music, while I am a better guitarist and singer.  We probably won't have the time to record any music while I'm here, but we figured out how to collaborate later in spite of our incompatible software by emailing individual tracks as MP3s and mixing all the tracks into a single song.  I have two major demos which I started recording a few months ago but haven't done any work on recently.  When I go back to Norfolk I plan to finish recording those two songs (called "New Life Grows" and "Waging War with Mediocrity") and have Dom mix them for me.  I will definitely be posting the finished products on my profile.

In other news I am currently reading reknowned biologist and respected atheist Richard Dawkins' fascinating book The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution.  I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to better understand natural selection (by means of such diverse fields as mathematics, genetics, and geology) and the ancestry of the human race.

Lastly, in the unlikely event that anyone actually reads this, I have to give a shout out to my girl.  I love you, Jennifer!