On the Edge of my Seat

Soon, VERY soon, we'll be living in Salt Lake City. Well that's actually a bit of an exaggeration. We'll be landing in Salt Lake City, and promptly driving 45 minutes north to Ogden Utah. Now I don't know much about Ogden, but looking up their top 10 nightspots online, I found that they had only listed 6. That could be taken as a reflection of their very high standards when it comes to describing the "top" spots for evening entertainment, or they might only have a few places to go. At the very least I'm guessing they won't be as neat as, let's say... Raleigh NC.
I feel that Raleigh has been good to us, though I can't place my finger on why I feel that way, exactly. We havn't had a fantastic experience at any of the restaurants, grocery stores, boutique's, comic book stores, or public restroom's we've used. In fact we sat a very nice restaurant last night for 20 minutes before we decided we didn't want to wait for water and a menu anymore. But I like the town anyway. It's familiar in a not-creepy way, and similarly different. Okay, truth be told it's awfully familiar, but I like the tree's, the weather's been great and our hotel is nice. Is that enough to always remember Raleigh North Carolina as a "heck of a town"? Time will tell.
Gussie and I will be visiting some of my relatives this weekend, which means this job has allowed us to collectively visit 5 people we're related to which we would otherwise not have seen for many, many years. Thank you Nielsen Media Company.

13 hours in a car? Please.

Not only have many months passed since last we updated this here blog, but additionally we've relocated ourselves from the greater Nash-Vegas area to the shining city on the hill that is Raleigh/Durham North Carolina.
On our journey from Champaign to Raleigh yesterday we passed through 7 of the finest states in the Union. And here they are with descriptive adjectives thrown in;

Illinois - Awesome
Indiana - Sweet
Ohio - Amazing
Kentucky - Fantastic
West Virginia - Stupendous
Virginia - Stellar
North Carolina - Unbelievable

This past Saturday was my 27th birthday, for which I must thank my friends and family who made the entire weekend fantastic. There was food, drinking, and to the great relief of everyone involved, ZERO dancing. If that's not a great way to start what may be the most important year of my entire life, then I don't know what is.

Shazam! Birthday magic!

It's a scant 5 days until Gusser's birthday! I'm excited - there's likely to be Indian food thrown into the procession someplace, and I'm a big fan of it. What will we do? Where will we go? I'm going to take a look in a few moments and see if I can't find the coolest place ever. Red Robin. A fantastic chain restaurant that serves both beer and burgers...
Alright, she would kill me, so I'll be avoiding Red Robin and try and find a nice place to have a steak. One year the restaurant we were in lost power, and all our meals were free. That was the best Gussers birthday ever...
Michael out

Two thousand what?

What a beautiful season... the sky is steel gray, the ground a sandy brown. Everywhere we look there are Wafflehouse restaurants and high-rise hotels. That's right, we're in Nashville TN. By an airport.
When I look at a map of the United States I often assume that there is a linear range of temperature from North to South. Using that skewed logic one could guess that if it's 80 degrees in Florida, and 30 degrees in Wisconsin, then Illinois should be in the 40's, Kentucky in the 50's, Tennessee in the 60's, Georgia in the 70's ect. Dumb weather pattern notions aside, I was shocked to have driven 7 and a half hours south and found it to be just as cold here as it was in Chicago.
I'm attempting to get back into the wide world of oil painting! I got a travel easel for Christmas, and have it all set up. I've even got a canvas primed and ready to go. Now I've got to figure out what to paint...

Beachfront!

Well la-dee-da! We're on the beach!
We've switched hotels and now have a beach-front spot. Our balcony is facing the ocean, and I just watched a beautiful sunset. Sadly I was alone - Gussies still out there working.
I expect she'll be starving when she gets back - to alleviate that I have located a restaurant which I believe will be good to eat at. I want to eat out tonight because;

A: I like eating out, except for the paying part.
B: We don't have a lot of groceries - we really need to go. Will we go tonight? Maybe.

We head back to Illinois on Saturday. Yeah! Then Christmas. Yeah!

Gloating just aint my style (He LIES!)

Now I aint gonna lie; if I had a choice between an ice-storm in Illinois and 80 degree weather on Florida's beautiful Gulf side, I would have to choose the Gulf. That's just how I feel about it.
And as it so happens, the Gulf of Mexico is exactly where I'm at. Gussie and myself have been here for about 5 days, and until today it's been beautiful and gorgeous and all that. Today was stormy, which was neat in its own right, but prevented us from canoing, as we had so desired.
Christmas is approaching fast, which is exciting and terrifying. It's funny to be down here enjoying Christmas lights and music while heading for the beach. It doesn't feel right...

Well we entirely skipped posting for the month of November. Turkey was at the core of that decision, I believe.
We now (all of us, everywhere) find ourselves in December. I'm in a coffee shop called Cafe Kopi in Champaign, IL. It's fantastically cold here, and as I type I'm wearing knit gloves. This makes typing a slight pain in the ass, but my computer was in the trunk of our rented Ford Focus for about 3 hours, and is now as cold as a block of frozen ice. Maybe colder.
I'm taking a short break from my game-making work to report exciting news. Gussie and I got word today that we're off to Fort Myers Florida from now until sometime around Christmas. This is fantastic news for us, as we both would pick warm weather over cold, thunderstorms over ice storms, sandals over snowshoes, ect ect. We like warm, and if the weather channel isn't lying, that's exactly what we're going to get.
In cataclysmic camera failure news, our most recent replacement camera has gotten sick and been dropped off at Best Buys, so we havn't taken photo's in awhile. Soon though, we may have another faulty camera to use for a few weeks before it mysteriously breaks (or gets dropped off a cliff).
Next updates should be from the Gulf of Mexico. Cheers!