Freakishly Happy

Hey All,

I decided to try to re-open user registration for everyone to encourage people to create user accounts and leave comments. We had to shut it down a while back because we kept getting spammers creating accounts and leaving comments about all kinds of nastyness. In order to try to prevent this, I have added a captcha that requires all new users to go through several human-authentication steps. Hopefully the spammers don't just captcha their own accounts... If they do, we'll have to try to figure out something else, and I appoligize know for any future obscene comments. Any such comments will be removed as soon as possible.

I am also looking at installing several other systems to prevent spam, but am too busy contracting to deal with it at the present moment.

Wow, there's a lot of catching up to do. It's so easy to throw some pictures in a folder and jot down a few notes, and put off blogging until later. But eventually you have to come around and catch things up again...

We're about a year behind. Last time I personally updated we had just arrived in Vermont and had gone apple picking and on a couple short jaunts of photography. Well one of the main things we did while we were there last year was to help Juli upgrade her kitchen and entryway. There are a bunch of photos of the demolition / construction in the bumming around / vermont / construction image gallery.

Before heading out to the east coast, Joni and I stopped by for a quick visit to Jaci's.  In this case, a quick visit ended up being a couple of days.

We started things off with a tour of her workplace, including a quick drive down in the mines.  We got outfitted with all the necessary equipment, including helmets, glasses and breathers (in case of a collapse).  As we drove down in her pickup, we had to back up for a huge dump truck, just about two lanes wide and about the length of a tour bus.  It was gigantic!

 The mine itself was incredibly dark, but had a strong steady breeze.  We drove around a bit and then headed back up to the surface.  Once outside, we looked at a couple of Jaci's projects, understanding a bit more about what she's building and why.  What a great tour!

 The rest of the weekend was spent shopping, hanging out visiting and a trip to the local arts festival.

Hey Gang!

Thanks for being patient for an update. I was building an extension all day so I'm too tired to crank out a good blog, but have some ideas for upcoming blogs, including (but not limited to), a quick visit to Jaci, our roadtrip out to Vermont, suprising the family, tearing down a porch, exploring vermont, a day at the orchard, hanging with teddy, and a photography outing. Also, I have a bunch of pictures, processed and ready to go, so hopefully, I'll be updating the daily picture, every day. So hang in there, and keep checking back.

I know a lot of people have been wondering where our blog entries are, now that we're both unemployed and living up the slow-paced, laid-back Vermont life. Well, I had an epiphany today! I think the reason we're not updating the site as often as we should, is because we're no longer using it as a tool of procrastination.

When I had to work long and hard on my dissertation, I always had time to take a break and upload dozens of photographs, whip up a little blog to go with them, and read up on comments. But now that I don't have anything so taxing to procrastinate from, I don't have that drive anymore. It could be that I see it as work, associating it with the boring, hard work of the dissertation, and previous things I procrastinated from. But now that I understand that I think that's what it was, perhaps now I can start fresh and start to view the site in its proper perspective of a wonderful way to document my life, and communicate to the people I care about the most.

Therefore, I vow to try to update the site more regularly and keep everyone informed of what is going on in our lives.

P.S. Sorry I can't upload pictures just yet. We loaded them on Joni's laptop and I have yet to transfer them over, filter them, touch them up, and export them in a proper size.