…That maybe it’s a good idea to occasionally come here FIRST and put in an entry rather than leave it until the end of the day, then get too tired to actually make said entry.

With this in mind I WAS going to come here first this morning but we ended up having a fairly busy day instead – away from the computer as opposed to sitting right there in front of it. Having said that I’ve just finished typing up an entry which I then decided would make a much better “wrap-up” of 2005 rather than a pre-Christmas post. Subsequently I haven’t much to say right now as I’ve already said it in a past post which will now be a future post. :-)

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In case anyone was wondering what happened to the “comments” section of this site I had decided – during my time away from here – that there were a couple of things that made me rethink the whole concept.

First and foremost the time it takes to read and comment back. Don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed the positive responses that I received from people visiting here. I mean who wouldn’t? If I didn’t have so much stuff going on with my life I would happily reply to everyone but the trouble is that I just don’t have the time to. Already I have to plow through over 1000 emails a week and respond to several dozen of them. Thankfully though most of the emails are spam and can be quickly discarded with but I feel I still need to look through my auto-junk folder to make sure nothing important gets through. friends and family realize that it can sometimes take several weeks – even months – for me to respond…..and these are people I know and like! Although I only had to answer a few comments each post I could imagine that it would virtually be a full-time job for some of the bigger blogs such as Dooce and Wil Weaton!

On top of that I administer several websites which take up quite a bit of my time – especially this year with the major updates I’ve been doing! I also have a few big projects that I’m currently working on, web wise, my book writing and a musical instrument or two in the works – All of which will be talked about in more depth on this site in the new year. It’s a busy and exciting time on the work front.

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Had to do a bit of “bat wrangling” the other night. Yes, every so often – especially over the summer – we have a bat flying around inside late at night, much to Amy’s displeasure. I hardly ever “see him, or her, straight away but I have a “presense” of something there. A shadow, a flickering light, a high pitched “cheep” sound. Anyhow I “know” it’s there often before I actually see it.

I actually don’t mind the bat flying around inside though. He/she is quite cute really – like a pet mouse but with needle sharp teeth and leathery wings – and it’s very discreet and keeps to himself/herself. I actually marvel at the skill in flying and the stealth in which the bat goes about it’s business. The damn thing is so stealthy that that the dogs hardly ever see it, though they might hear it’s high pitched sounds. It really freaks Amy out though and she runs to the bedroom and cowers under the blankets. I’ve caught the little bugger a dozen or so times over the past few years and let him/her go again outside, but there must be something about the house that the bat really likes. I suspect it’s food – well that’s gotta be it really – but I always wondered whether or not there was actually enough critters in the house for it to eat. After I caught the bat and drove it to it’s new location 5 miles away, Amy jumped online a Googled “bats” and found out that they eat, amongst other things, mosquitos! What the hell? There’s nothing much to a mosquito you know, meal wise, but Amy found out they could eat 1000 mosquitos an hour and around 6000 a night! Now THAT would add up to a little bit of eating for sure!

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I’ve spent the best part of today cleaning the clutter from the house. It’s part of a HUGE ongoing thing that Amy and I have been doing these past couple of months – getting rid of all the excess junk from about the house and generally purging ourselves and trying to lead a less complicated life. It’s OK to have a little bit of “junk” here and there, but I tend to file everything away for future reference which, in most cases, never ACTUALLY gets referenced! Amy is the same on that score – “Can’t throw this bit of wrapping away because of sentimental reasons” or “Can’t let go of this….er….doobiewhatsit because it might come in handy one day.” here’s a clue peeps – It never will. It’ll just clutter up your life and the accumulative effects of such actions will undoubtedly lead to much frustration later on down the track. If you haven’t used it in XXXX amount of years then it’s a stretch to say it’s actually useful to you.

And how do you know when something has become superfluous? Well saying out aloud “Ohh I remember this” when looking through things usually means that it’s something that you’d completely forgotten about, don’t use on a daily basis, hadn’t seen in a long long time and, therefore, probably don’t need and wouldn’t lose sleep over if it were to go “missing” again.

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Amy and I did the ol’ Thanksgiving thing again this year (well Amy has to really. It would be un-American of her not to). Anyhow, she prepared pretty much all of the food (I think I’m suffering from a bit of burnout? I just wanna relax and do nothing these past few days) and we made our way over to my mum and dad’s house on Thursday afternoon.

It was really a last minute thing to have Thanksgiving over there, otherwise we would’ve invited the whole family – Faye, Wayne, Melissa etc. Amy and I were always going to have it but, with a few days to go, we asked mum and dad if they wanted to have it at their house. Being a free meal and prepared by someone other than themselves what answer could they give but “yes”. Plus they seem to like our company – Yeah, I know! After all those years as me for a son! It surprises me too!

Then again there’s Amy. Everyone loves Amy!

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To read the full and illustrated story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, click here.

I’ve decided to try and make the “Speckled Band” page a bit more prominent if I can? By this I mean the Sherlock Homes story, rather than the blog itself. The reason why I want to do that is because I’ve noticed that I’m number two on most of the search engines for “The Speckled Band” so I kinda feel that people actually looking for the story might get a bit peeved about finding someone’s blog instead. Anyhow I’ll see what I can do over the next few days to direct people to the story page rather than the blog. I might even have to put up a “sticky” post…..though I’m not sure if that can be done in WordPress or not?

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I’m still here and I’m still code crunching away. I’m doing some websites for a couple of friends so I’ve been brushing up on my css and html skills. I’d only dabbled a bit in the css previously so there’s been a bit of a steep learning curve there. That on top of all the other website related stuff I’ve been doing at the moment. I envisage that I’ll be doing it for a while to come as well.

I’ve also been doing a bit of woodwork and cleaning up around the place. I have several “abandoned” projects I’m now managing to get out of the way slowly but surely. This pleases Amy no end I should add – mainly because she’s the recipient of some pretty cool “household” type items….and some for her studio too. I just still have quite a bit of exotic timber about the place and it’s finally time to clear some of that clutter. With this in mind I have plans for some home made Christmas presents this year (as I alluded to in my last post).

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Well it’s been a LONG time between drinks I must say! All productive I might add – just not of a “blogging” nature. In fact I’d have to say that I’ve been so removed from blogging that it’s gonna take a little time for me to get used to how WordPress works again. I think I might’ve broken a few things with it when I was last here – for instance I notice the archives aren’t working right – so I’m gonna have to do some maintenance over the next few days or so – maybe even a fresh install? I’m not sure if I’ll be writing every day – I predict not. I will try to make an entry once or twice a week though to update what’s been happening around here. When you’re getting over a thousand emails a week – as I do – It’s a lot quicker for me to write one or two updates and have people catch up when they can and in their own time.

One thing I can say with confidence is that I got used to NOT having to blog every day and I quite enjoyed it. I’ve never kept a diary or journal of any sort so I’m not exactly used to the “write every day about your day” kinda thing. Still, The Speckled Band is a fairly efficient way to get whatever news out to a wider readership (friends, family etc.) so it’s already proven itself there. Sorry I dropped the ball on that over the past few months but there’s been a lot happening around here!

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It’s official! I have lost my Blog Thunderdome battle and I’ve now been banned from posting for a month. It was supposed to be a two month ban but the judges capitulated and reduced it down to one. It was the right decision to ban me based on the observations that the judges made about both blogs. In fact there’s very little in the verdict that I don’t agree with, and it is true that I had a somewhat lackadaisical attitude to the outcome of the bout. After all it is an online bout so it’s nothing to actually get too uptight about! Now it has been argued “Where’s my battle spirit?”, but you don’t really want to say that to a descendant of a psychopathic Highland Clan – lest you end up with your privates cut off and shoved down your throat, your stomach cut open and stuffed with rocks and your body then sunk in the murky waters of some forgotten swamp. Blog Thunderdome? Ne’er erd o dem. Loch Sloy! ;-)

I am, of course, kidding…..but I wanted to illustrate a point that there’s been enough brutal killing in my ancestral past to not have to worry about “the passion for battle” for some millennia to come.

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