Hooray! I’m not dead yet! But I did need to take a lengthy vacation. My computer had a nice time getting it’s brain replaced in Tennessee. I, on the other hand, wallowed on my roommate’s computer playing Sextris, watching films like My Own Private Idaho and To Kill A Mockingbird and listening to albums like Nada Surf’s Proximity Effect and Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. You have no idea how much blog fodder I’ve had to give up in the past month. I mean, Anna Nicole Smith died! When will I ever get to blog about something that huge again?

Anyways, I am really sorry I have been so scarce. I had no idea that it would be such a big deal, I actually heard from people saying they were wondering why I had stopped blogging. And it wasn’t the usual suspects.

Well, I’ve come up with a personal goal for the year (or at least the next three months). I am aiming for four updates a week, each on different subjects, and they will go as follows:

• Monday, marathon/personal blog: I had planned on writing about my progress in training for the Georgia Marathon but that just kind of sputtered right out of the gate. I’m still trying to remember to bring my camera to such exotic locales as Yokohl Valley and Rocky Hill so that I can share the sights and scene of my training experience. Just so you know, I’m progressing very well, and despite skipping this last weekend to accommodate my roommate’s birthday rampage, I am certain reaching my goal of a 4:30 marathon is within my reach.
• Wednesday, movie/music blog: There have been a few films I have seen in the past three months that are certainly worth sharing. If I haven’t seen anything good recently, I may reach back for some of those picks or I may begin to feature some of my less favored movie picks. Anyone up for a screening of Gigli (like I would Netflix something like that)? Also, I’d like to blog about some albums I’m listening to, so when appropriate, you’ll hear the music.
• Thursday, politics/news blog: Depending on what’s going on, I may pick an obscure story of the week to highlight or perhaps follow up on some obscure appropriations bill in the House. Someone’s got to protect the Pentagon’s right to relegate our liberal, San Francisco-values speaker to her connecting flight in Denver. This is when I’ll do it.
• Friday, news/California blog: On this day, I’ll feature the story of the week. Odds are, it will probably be local. For this week, I’m inclined to the (non) story of this girl who was missing for a few hours on Sunday that had webgoers at the Visalia Times-Delta Web site on the edge of their seats. Someone has to bring these stories to light because no matter how many Drudge tips I send, I’m dead to him.

And hopefully more than that. Sometimes blond women who can hardly be labeled as a model, actress or entertainer die and people like myself feel they have to comment as soon as it happens. Just to quench anyone’s thirst of what I might have brought to light in such a hypothetical situation, I imagine I would have composed a sonnet exploring her various “achievements” (Don’t believe me? It wouldn’t be the first time).

But I’ll start all that tomorrow. For now, I have to reformat my hard drive because despite sending my computer to get a new motherboard because the AC adapter was for some reason charging the battery intermittently, I somehow wound up with a bad hard drive. Wow…and something about a bad CD/DVD-ROM too…what the hell?

A bit of advice: Don’t hand your computer to strange postmen. You’ll end up regretting it.

Later