My sites: Hands On Throat Welcome to Oregon! Our Happy Home! My music page A little about me... Live and let live Bikes = Wonderful Let's...Go...Climbing! Other Sites: Dearric Winchester Photography Your source to find out if that forwarded email is full of it May The Farm Be With You... Billy Bragg Lucas Brunelle Tenui Nec Dimittam A great band you never heard... Mighty Joe Castro

Holy mother of all that is good...we're back up. Whew! It's good to be (somewhat) back up and running (none of the "my sites" sidebar links work right now; I'll address that soon). How bizarro: first, seanrule.com went down around Christmas Day. Then, we got 'er back up and running, only to have my laptop fry (apparently, it's a Dell Vostro 1500 thing). In unrelated (but similarly freakish) news, the TASCAM which housed Hands On Throat's entire second album...fried. Maybe the Mayans were off by a couple of years with their 2012 prediction. Anyway....my original plan was to work on this site from school on Fridays (yeah, sure. Since 90% of COCC classes don't meet on Fridays, that's when meetings occur. Lots of them). So, instead, I've scrapped together a terminal at home consisting of a 1998 - era desktop running nothing except Picasa and Picture Resizer. Can you say slooooooooooooooowwwwwwwww? That way, at least, I can get pictures up for you all to check out, and then, if time permits (and the planets are aligned, and the moon is blue), I can get some video editing done in the wee hours at school. So...let's catch up, shall we? Max's second Christmas has come and gone. What a whirlwind! It was totally cool, because he had all of his grandparents out to visit! It really, really felt like Christmas, I tell ya...and not just because of the house lights! No, having everyone here to do things like make a gingerbread house, check email, cheer you on while you ski, bake yummy December-ish type food, do a little fix-up work, go look at some model train displays, or even just sit around after a shower...that's what makes the holidays great. Here are a few looks at the Christmas time festivities: The kitties, also, liked having everyone around: Before Christmas, we ventured down to the cyclocross nationals, held in Bend for the first time. For the uninitiated, cyclocross consists of girls and guys on road bikes acting like they're on mountain bikes. Pretty ridiculous. Then, they race when the weather is as poor as possible. Perfect. When they do race, it's in tight little circles so the crowd can laugh at you multiple times. Here you go: We also had our second annual pilgrimage to Deschutes National Forest to cut down the ol' Christmas tree. We actually got one that had been cut a few times before (by my count, at least 4 times). Of course, Max helped to decorate. It's "winter" here now...it snowed a little teeny weeny bit in December, but now it's raining. A lot. I believe in that whole Seasonal Affectiveness Disorder thingy. Sigh. Apparently Mother Nature hasn't gotten the message that we're the high desert. However, you may have noticed from the some of the opening pictures that Max is skiing now! We've had a lot of fun with him as he learns. The first couple of times took place at Wanoga Snow Park, where we would cross country ski while Max napped in the trailer, then get him all dolled up for some downhillin'. Pretty soon, though, it was off to Bachelor, for some runs down Carrousel: He digs it. Last time out, he did 7 runs (and I'm wayyyyy thankful we can ride the lift, which he loves, instead of having to haul him up the hill each time, like at Wanoga...I'll get him into backcountrty skiing later). And it just wouldn't be an update without the usual smattering of the Maximo: I tell ya...it feels good to get something up on this page. It's been too long! I will do my darnedest to get some more video (my laptop actually croaked while creating a cyclocross video for you all). I will also slowly get the other pages up (the ones in the "my links" sections). It just takes time. Thanks for bearing with me! Talk to you soon!