Yes, I’m back in New Brunswick, for a few days at least. I got in last night, around 8:30 PM after what was a particularly long and boring drive. I did, however, manage to make it half-way to Truro before remembering that I had left the furnance on at my house and had to turn around to go back to turn it off. That was exciting!

We actually did our gift exchange last night at Rick’s place, instead of this morning, for various, mold-related reasons. Plenty of swag to be excited about. As soon as my mother remembers where she placed them, I’ll have two tickets to see David Sedaris in Boston, this April. My sister and her husband also have tickets, so it will be an adventure for all. I need to think of who to bring with me – I imagine that will all depend on how various storylines play out, over the next few months. Also exciting is my new The Wire boxset. All five seasons, bitches. Watched the first episode early this morning (while eating the aforementioned spaghetti) and really enjoyed it, so I’m very much looking forward to this series. I’m almost a little frightened by the prospect of it turning into another Six Feet Under.

Those are just a couple of the highlights. There were many others, including an automatic car starter, some really nice bakeware that I’m sure will get put to the test, and many a trinket that will be put to good use. Plus I still have Parrsboro waiting for me on the 27th, which is always pretty blush-worthy in its scale. All in all, a very successful, if non-traditional, Chrismahanukwanzakkah (which is my new favourite term for the holiday for us heathens).

Right now, I feel pretty lazy so I need to get up and get ready for dinner at my aunt Lisa’s (the giver of a very nice hand blender), this evening. In fact, I think I said I’d be over early to help, so I feel extra lazy and bad. So I’ll take care of that now.

(Oh my crap, I just wrote a blog post! Chrismahanukwanazakkah miracle!)

Stay tuned.

EDIT: Mostly back to normal. The footer needs some attention. I’ll get to it soon.

Yes, after buying two wireless routers, I’ve set up Rick’s Aliant-provided wireless modem and discovered that the modem at the asphalt plant actually isn’t hooked into anything. Yay for wastes of money!

I actually downloaded a tether app for my iPhone, so I’m still using my 3G connection, but I’m on my laptop. My cell phone bill will be higher than usual, if I go over 6GB, but since it’s a company phone, it’ll be punishment for sticking me in Hell for (at least) two days. I shouldn’t go over that amount – ’cause, y’know, that’s a lot. But anything’s possible, if you set your mind on it.

Not a whole lot else has happened, since last I posted, really. I went to bed much later than I had planned, even though I was ridiculously tired all night long. I signed off MSN around 9:00 or so, with the intention of going to sleep, but then realized that I wanted to see the House season finale and waited up to download and watch it. And yes, it was worth it. I did get a good five hours of sleep, though. Better than Sunday night’s 90 minutes.

Also, I’m about ready to go Tarantino on the radio in this place. It’s constantly set to Saint John’s country radio station, which refuses to play good country music. Only that pop country crap that makes me want to drive a pedal steel through someone’s neck. My only hope is that they might play one of the Dixie Chicks’ Patty songs, or that Dierks Bentley song that Patty sings on (which is still a terrible song, but elevated because of her voice).

I think I’m going to take advantage of my shiny internet connection and get some work done. Gasp.

What exactly is a day like today? Well, this morning, after finally getting to sleep at 3:45 AM, I woke up promptly at 5:30 AM and got on my way to the Coastal asphalt in Lorneville.

My primary duty here is to make sure the guy whose primary duty is to make “here” run doesn’t do anything illegal. Apparently, it’s better to pay two people to do one person’s job than to fire one inept employee. Never knew.

I’m not sure what time I’ll be out of here tonight, really. I think my best hope of getting home early would be a nice rain storm. Or some sort of Terminator-esque nuclear holocaust.

On the bright side, this isn’t nearly as boring as standing still on Harbour Passage for fifteen hours. So things could be worse. But Blundstone safety boots would definitely make them better.

I’ll admit, when I found out that the place was on Cranston Avenue, I was pretty sketched out. In fact, I’m still not crazy on the neighborhood. I do like being pretty close to a Dairy Queen. Though it looks like it would be perfect for a movie about an inner-city sports team that ends up winning both the state championship and our hearts.

Location aside, the apartment is ridiculously nice. All of the appliances (stove, fridge, washer/dryer, dishwasher) are brand new. The floors are completely hard wood and tile. The dining room has this really cool, back-lit display case, the possibilities for which are endless. Plus, the place is huge.

It’s actually a three bedroom apartment. But don’t get any funny ideas, people. Though I don’t have an issue with overnight guests, once in a while, I’m going to enjoy my roommate-less living for a while.

Internet will be hooked up on Thursday (writing on my phone) and hopefully the cable will be installed this week, too. I’ll definitely need it for Dollhouse on Friday.

Alright, well, Katelyn and I were volunteered to work at Classic tomorrow, so I should get some sleep.

So, last week, Katelyn and I took a road trip down to Portland, Maine to see Kris Delmhorst and the Indigo Girls (separate shows). How was the trip? In short, it was great! But why don’t we go into more detail?

I’ll be honest, I was slightly nervous about driving down. I’ve never driven out of the country before and I’ve always been wary of those crazy American drivers. But my father loaned me his GPS system, nicknamed Lola. This helped assuage my nerves a bit. Though, as we would later find out, there was no reason for it to calm me at all.

We left on Saturday morning and, before too long, we found ourselves in the long line to get across the border. Lola proved to be invaluable at certain times and completely useless, at others. We got the feeling she was mocking us, every now and then, just for her own amusement. For example, she couldn’t figure out where we were, when we were in the middle South Portland. What a bitch. I’ve been watching a lot of Battlestar Galactica and Terminator lately, so I was even more suspicious of her motives.

However, despite Lola’s intentions, we did eventually arrive in Portland, safe and sound. We checked into the hotel, ate a regrettable meal at Denny’s, and then headed to One Longfellow Square to see Kris’s show.

The venue itself was actually quite pleasant – pretty small, good acoustics, and a decent audience. I wasn’t too jazzed about the opener. I got the feeling that she had talent, but she just wasn’t my style at all. My biggest complaint about her was that she was pretty boring, with all of her songs sounding the same. She was only on stage for a short time, though, before Kris came out and started her set with “Riverwide.”

The rest of her set was pretty much ideal. With the single exception of “Everything is Music,” she played all of my favourites, even the ones that I was certain wouldn’t get played (”Bobby Lee” and “Broken White Line”). As Katelyn mentioned, Kris is great to see because she seems to genuinely enjoy putting on a show. A nice surprise was meeting my friend Nicole at the show. I’ve known her for years from the Patty Griffin board and I’d seen her at a Patty show, earlier this year, but I’d never actually *met* her before. After the show, Katelyn and I talked to Kris for a few minutes, before heading back to our hotel for the evening, where we watched a small, independent arthouse film called The House Bunny.

The next day, Katelyn and I headed over to Maine Mall, mostly to drool at the Apple Store. I was quite impressed with my ability to restrain myself. Apart from lunch and some excellent lemonade, I don’t think I made a single purchase at the mall. I didn’t even buy anything at Newbury Comics! Though I did come across a bumper sticker that I really was tempted to buy. It had a large rainbow, with “We are everywhere” printed underneath it. Katelyn did try to convince me to buy her something at Victoria’s Secret with the company credit card, just to screw with my mother’s mind, but I resisted.

After dinner, we started walking to the Indigo Girls show. I had looked up the venue on Google Maps and chosen our hotel because it was only a five minute walk. Except, not so much. It seems that Google Maps uses the location of the venue’s box office headquarters, instead of the actual location of the venue. That was a slightly frustrating experience. We ended up discovering Lola’s usefulness, when we drove to the venue. Parking was slightly annoying, but it was still only five minute drive. Unfortunately, we didn’t budget our time well enough and ended up missing the opening act.

The Indigo Girls show was great. Katelyn had really only listened to “Ghost” before, which has become one of her favourite songs, so we were really hoping they’d play it. I think she was genuinely surprised how lively the audience once. There was a lot of audience participation and dancing. And the setlist rocked. I know that the more devout fans, who see the Girls ten time per year, are sick of hearing the “hits” at every show. But, speaking as someone who sees them once every few years, I love hearing “Closer to Fine,” “Galileo,” “Power of Two,” “Shame On You,” and “Get Out the Map.” Plus, they played “Devotion,” which I really wasn’t expecting and was quite excited to hear. We were disappointed, when they finished their main set without playing “Ghost.” But then they came back for their encore and it was the first song they played, followed by an incredible rendition of “True Romantic” and then, of course, “Galileo.”

The next day, we woke up and went for lunch at Burger King, before getting back on the road and heading home. All in all, it was quite a successful trip. I’m trying to plan the next one. Peter is playing at Longfellow Square in a few weeks, but I think that might be too soon. Madeleine Peyroux, however, is playing a free show in Freeport, at the end of June. Definitely a possibility…

For the most part, I’m rather happy with how it turned out. I’m really happy to be using sIFR. It looks beautiful when it works and it degrades fantastically, when Flash and/or Javascript are taken out of the equation. This is, of course, old news to anyone who has been using it, for the past few years. But I’m a new convert, so indulge me.

I’m also really happy to be back on WordPress. *So* much better than TypePad. I also hadn’t used WordPress since before they redesigned the Admin area, and it’s really quite nice now. Much better than before. It’s quite interesting to have a website that is based entirely around a CMS, which is a first for me. Even my TypePad blog had some pages that were basic XHTML.

I’m going to try to keep this design for at least a year, with many upgrades along the way. I have a terrible habit of redesigning my personal site, only weeks after uploading a new design. It’s a rather time-consuming habit. Hopefully, I’ll have enough clients this summer to curb that impulse. Right now, I think I have about four projects lined up for the summer. Should be interesting!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new look. If you notice any bugs, feel free to let me know about them and I’ll try to fix them. I still want to throw in some minor updates later today, such as some RSS buttons and whatnot. At some point in the future, I may restructure the whole code, so that everything degrades a bit better.

OK, I need to stop thinking about coding and start revising for my exam on, well, coding! Yay!

Update #1: Rather than writing endless posts on the progress of this site, I’m just going to edit this one a lot.

I’ve got just about everything worked out, for Firefox and Safari. I like the footer, comments are working… it’s all going smoothly. I need to add some post navigation at the bottom of the template, but that’s not really a big deal. I think I might add a section for my resume, at some point.

IE7 still looks like it’s going to be a nightmare, and I’m really avoiding it.

I’ve yet to fix the IE7 problems, unfortunately. It should look fine in IE8, but the problems in IE7 have been too numerous for me to even begin to contemplate, with my exam this evening. I’d also like to add a real footer the site, but that isn’t really a big deal. What I have now will hold me over… … probably until later tonight.

I’d also like to add a bit more functionality on the WordPress side of things. I don’t have Categories enabled in my sidebar and post footers and I haven’t made the template widget-ready yet.

Now I need to go study for my Social Psychology exam in three hours. Fantastic.