Once again I’ve fallen into a bit of a torpor. My attention to the vast world of the Internets has dimmed. Every few days I start up NewsFire only to be overwhelmed by the sheer mass of new posts I’ve ignored. Typically I just mark all of them as read and close it again. I just can’t bring myself to be interested lately.

I’m going to give it another go, and try first to start with this little blog of mine. While I’d never expect to have something to post every day, I’d really hate to abandon it.

So, catch up time: Since last we spoke I did manage to secure employment. It’s a second shift position — less than ideal, but better than nothing. I start in a little over a week. I’ve gone and completed my physical evaluation, gotten another vaccination, and picked up an ID badge. I’m hoping a job brings some kind of sense of purpose.

I haven’t let the past few weeks go completely to waste. I have a few new projects to post as soon as I’ve mounted and photographed them. One of these is a particularly impressive bit of cross stitchery that has been about a year in the making (more on this later).

Most of my time, however, has been spent on Dragon Quest VIII and Super Mario Galaxy. The former I picked up some time last year without devoting much time and the latter was a Christmas gift. Both are excellent.

It hasn’t been all video games and cross stitch. My other, other out-of-work obsession has been vegan cupcakes. Here’s my latest, and prettiest batch: Chocolate Mint Cupcakes:

God dammit! It’s August? And I have not posted here since June? My deepest condolences, dear reader, for having abandoned you for so long. I wonder what you must have thought, scowling at your computer screens in disgust.

“Just who does he think he is? Has he better things to do? Better company? Flesh and blood friends? What sort of blogomeister does he think he is?” (Blogomeister: I just made that up, from the German bürgemeister, feel free to use it.)

I don’t, gentle reader. My excuses are lame, and serve only to further illuminate my laziness.

God, I’m such a slacker!

I might, for instance, blame the heat. The upper-90’s and above summers replete with back-stickening humidity of central Virginia drain all the life out of a fellow. Coupled with my newfound love of cycling I desired little else than to collapse into a seat directly in front of the air conditioner once I returned home.

Or, perhaps, I might blame Square Enix. They developed the inexplicably addictive Kingdom Hearts II, which I recently completed last Friday. No, I did not fill in Jiminy’s fucking journal. That little asshole. They also developed Final Fantasy XII, which I have also started playing again. I only got a few hours into it the first time, as I got distracted by the Wii.

But we all know the true culprit is none other than yours truly. I let my responsibilities slip from my mind, and off into the realm of distractions and laziness. I apologize.

Hi. I’m not dead.

For the past few weeks, having totally recovered from my surgery, I’ve been slacking off on my online duties. That’s not to say that I haven’t been away from the PowerBook. I’ve been working — very slowly — on a redesign for my friend’s label Bop Tart Records and hitting my head against a wall on the design. I know what I want to do. I know that I want to use mootools to do it. I just don’t know how to get there.

So my routine has been to load up the mootools docs, the mootorial, and TextMate and bang away at a few things that never quite come together. I know I need to just get the basic functionality in place and then worry about the style elements but it’s difficult to be inspired by ugliness. So, I just give up after a few hours and pledge to try harder later.

I also need to change this site from the prototype and script.aculo.us setup I’d put in place to mootools. Unobtrusiveness is particularly needed. I just. . . keep slacking off. I want to make progress on the label before doing too much to my own site.

For you, gentle readers, I will make every effort to do just that. My apologies.

I haven’t posted anything in, like, forever. What can I say? I’ve been busy

I promised that yesterday I’d post something a bit more positive to lighten the mood after my post-Christmas rant. I didn’t forget to do that, I just ran out of yesterday in a hurry. Then, there was the unpleasant business of the perpetually mixed-up health insurance bill I thought I had taken care of four months ago. Apparently, after all the frustrating phone calls to person after another who claimed it “wasn’t [her] job” to help me out, after a destroyed phone book and a pile of very bill-like letters that said “THIS IS NOT A BILL,” each with a new total amount I owed. Apparently after all of that, my insurance still managed to not do the one thing they’re supposed to do.

So, I wasn’t much up for positives last night. . . Hopefully as the end of my sentence at work approaches I’ll be in better spirits. Right now, I’m just exhausted.