We made it to Portland. Left Apple Valley at around 2 PM yesterday and got here around 10 AM today. Drove all night. I’ve been up for about 30 hours. Proof of how tired I am:

We are at my sister’s apartment, just waiting until we can check into our hotel and get some sleep. And a hot shower.

It’s been a looooooong two days.

Time to Fly

Jess and I are sitting in the Southwest terminal at Lambert-St. Louis getting ready to fly to California!!! Well, first to Kansas City and then to LAX. I am so excited about this vacation! And Christmas.

It’s going to be fun!!!

Jessica and I had a fantastic Thanksgiving, and I hope yours was great too. Once again we made the trek out to Hurricane, West Virginia to spend the holiday with her parents. Jess’ grandma was able to be with us too for T-day and an early Christmas.

In three weeks we’ll be flying out to California for a West coast Christmas tour. My parents house is first, then we’ll drive up to Portland, Oregon with them just before the new year. My sister’s wedding is the first week of January, in Portland, and after that we’ll be heading home.

So, busy busy times ahead.

We’re also thinking about having a small Christmas dinner party with some friends. The school I work at gave the faculty and staff a turkey for Christmas. Well, with us leaving for the holiday, we’re going to have a turkey to get rid of and we certainly can’t do it on our own.

I am so ready for a break. I need to regain some mental health, I think. And I also have some designs to work on and some new projects to get started.

Hope you’re having a great holiday season.

What a busy few weeks. A lot has been happening, what with being accepted to grad school, work, the holidays coming up and NaNoWriMo. Yeah, not doing so well on my novel actually.

Work has eased a bit as I was able to wrap up two large projects I was managing at once. I was so excited to be done with those that the following day I designed and built out a new WordPress template for the blogs we’re starting to roll out. It’s pretty nice. So nice that I might modify it and release it for public.

Speaking of which, my Modern Linguist release was so popular (for this blog anyway) that I’m thinking about updating the old WordPress templates I created and putting them out for public release. That might be my January project.

My awesome wife Jessica has been doing great Etsy sales as the holiday season hits us. She’s also been running a bunch of giveaways on her blog. I’m hoping to redesign that site too at the beginning of the year.

We’re also praying for some changes to come in the next few months. I’m excited to go to my parents’ house in California for Christmas and then head up to Portland for my little sister’s wedding just after the new year. Then I start my first masters classes toward the end of the month.

Lots going on. How are you doing?

Wow.

After releasing Modern Linguist on Friday, Chris Coyier gave me a shout out on Digging Into WordPress. I got a ton of traffic from that, and I owe him some thanks. It seems like those who have taken a look at the theme really enjoy it. I had to make a few modifications after my word counts got entered into the NaNoWriMo site, but it’s working. I did find out that their API is a little slower than I had anticipated. Maybe that a future project to donate to the Office of Letters and Light.

I’m well on my way to the 10,000 words I need by the end of the week. Jessica and I attended the Southern Illinois regional kick-off write-in and I was able to get 3700-something words packed in in the first four hours of noveling. Not too shabby. I’m planning to write another couple of thousand tonight and pull ahead of where I need to be.

I am also considering prepping some of my past WordPress templates for mass release. Some of them need rewrites and I’m thinking that might be a good beginning of 2010 project. Releasing one has got me all into it.

In other news, one major project down, one to finish up. Two of my big day job projects are winding down too, which means I can devote attention to a couple of other major ones that have been waiting in the wings.

We’ve got plane tickets booked for Christmas, plans set for Thanksgiving. It just might be a good end to 2009.

Today I turn 25 years old.

25. Wow. That’s a quarter of a century.

Jessica bought me a straight razor and some awesome shaving soap. She also had some caramel/chocolate shipped in from an Etsy seller in Paris.

Tonight we’re going out for dinner with friends to an excellent restaurant. Then my wife is going to take me out to St Louis tomorrow to go birthday shopping.

All in all, a good birthday so far, with lots of promise.

Also, David Hechler informed me that today is both summer and fall (as it turns to Autumn around 5:something PM tonight). That’s interesting, I think.

I’ve been sick the past two days. I caught whatever illness plagued my dear wife Jessica over the weekend. It was unfortunate because I woke up Monday feeling so good. This morning I was able to get back to work but definitely did not feel awesome. I’d say that right now, at 7:09 PM I am at probably 85% on a wellness scale. Definitely recovering.

The second half of next week and first half of the following is going to be busy. First we’ll head off to Springfield, IL for our friends’ Sam and Melissa’s wedding. I am an usher and apparently that means I need to wear a tux (is that normal?). So a 2.5 hour drive and a stay in a hotel will be a mini-vacation before all of our favourite television shows come back on the following Monday while I am teaching a class (boo!). Tuesday the 22nd is my birthday (25 years!) and we’ll be going out to a fantastic dinner with friends at Dressel’s in St Louis that evening. Wednesday the 23rd Jessica is taking me out of work for a day in the city. I will probably be getting some new clothing for the winter and generally enjoying a day off with my wife.

Hopefully by then the air in Southern Illinois will have cooled down to a consistent mid-70s and it will actually feel like autumn the way it did a few weeks ago.

In two weeks’ time I should have one of my pending projects done (you can watch progress as it’s made here) and hopefully be working on a second one to be finished in October. Then it’s Jessica’s birthday, Halloween candy to pass out, and finally November shows up.

November means NaNoWriMo. And I am really excited about it this year. Mostly because I’ve had a whole year to loosely and mentally plan for it (as opposed to the -1 day I had last year when I first discovered it). I’ve got a sort-of plot ready and want to get it down on paper. You should totally do it too! If you sign up, let me know in the comments and we’ll all be writing buddies this November.

December means Christmas in California with my family and then in January we’ll be heading up to Portland with the fam for my little sister’s wedding. I guess it’s just busy all the way until 2010 comes around. Hopefully teaching this class will continue to be good as well.

How’s the end of your year shaping up?

Yesterday we probably had the best July 4th in a long time. Well, the best July 4th in the USA at least. Last year we were in Portugal on our holiday and I’ve been in both Mexico and in the air on the way to Hungary on 04 July in the past. But since Jess and I have been married we haven’t really done the whole fireworks “thing”.

The summer we lived with my in-laws we had a fun time on the fourth. We let off our own firecrackers and sparklers and whatnot. Growing up in California, firecrackers were illegal. So we settled for watching the professional shows on 04 July.

Last night we met up with my friend Ryan and his new wife Laura and grabbed dinner before heading out to the Arch for the fireworks show over the Mississippi. Special bonus: Train was playing a concert there. Which was cool.

In any case we braved the crowd and watched the fireworks under the Arch. It was pretty cool. In the 7 years I’ve been in the St Louis Metro-East, we’ve never been out to the city for the fireworks display.

This past year I’ve begun, through a lot of reading and research, to appreciate more the United States and its history. I’ve never been particularly patriotic. I’ve always worn Union Jacks and such as a tongue-in-cheek expression of … whatever. But this 4th felt a little more meaningful to me. Despite how I feel about our current leadership and policies coming into play, this national holiday felt different.

Not that I don’t still want to live in England or practically anywhere else in the world. Because I do. But for a few minutes last night it was good to be an American, I suppose.