The Last Candle

Dear Internet Friends: I’m back from San Francisco! Hello.

Actually, I returned from the west coast a week ago, last Thursday, but regarding how completely dead tired I was after Wednesday’s return flight and resulting jet lag, most of my physical and ethereal body was still in San Fran. Too bad all of me couldn’t be there — the trip was lovely, lovely, lovely. Lovely in an oh-man-I-could-definitely-live-here kind of way.

Actually, I’m hoping to start looking for jobs in April, and after landing new work moving to California. That’s the big news. The bad news is that due to a restrictive lease that I stupidly renewed just two weeks ago, that April of prospective freedom won’t arrive until 2009.

But who knows — even after a year, the glow of a west coast abode will probably have worn off to a great degree, and I might rethink the whole escapade. But then again, something tells me that just looking at the 630+ photographs and couple hours ‘o video from this recent trip would rekindle the flame. Nothing is happening quickly for this move, that’s for sure.

On the bright side, during that year I’ll accrue another twelve months of resume experience — including an extra day, thanks to the leap year! — and twelve months of income to collect, all the better to assist a west-ward move and assimilation. Not bad, really, and besides, I have plenty of things here in Michigan to love at the moment. And besides, why San Francisco? Plenty o’ other nice Californian towns to consider too, although SF is a tough candidate to beat. In any case, the extra year of Michigan-nesse will be put to very good use.

I can’t stay away too long, though. Another San Francisco visit will take flight in late April, and then in June I’ll be off to visit family in San Luis Obispo. Needless to say, the funds gained through those ugly hours worked during the busy season (now over by about a month) are being put to a very good use.

As for an hour-by-hour recollection of the trip, I’ll let the multitude of photos do the talking for me. I’m currently sorting through and touching up the media, and a gallery is forthcoming within a week or so, and possibly within a few days. Some marvelous footage of the Sonata Arctica show is also on deck to be edited, but that’ll take a bit longer — I tend to fuss with these little video compositions for weeks, even if the original film lasts only a couple minutes.

But yeah — happy leap day. I am proud to announce on this tetra-annual occasion that my own Project 365 has grown up to be Project 366. Rejoice!

Actually, the only indications that the project was upgraded are the new album art, the button within the navigation bar on the right on this page, and the assumption that the gallery will end up with at least one picture for every day of this year (so far, so good). The name of the gallery is still Three-Six-Five — changing it to Three-Six-Six would require changing all of my current hyperlinks as well as blowing away the current RSS feed due to the way that the Picasa Web Albums handles identifiers, so screw it.

Three Sixty-Five, or Three Sixty-Six? Just like most art, it doesn’t really matter — choose what you like, and you’ll probably be wrong about it in one respect or another.

Pictures of the west coast due soon. I hope. Gah!