BLUR Vol. 1 Has Arrived!

Still a bit bleary-eyed, unable to deal with computers or even watch TV due to the lingering blur of pinkeye (see my Wednesday post, below), after Marj headed out to work yesterday at 7 AM I drove myself down to our remaining two rented storage spaces. Determined to complete the final heavy task of summer, and knowing the cool temperatures and overcast skies of this week were coming to an end, I shouldered myself (and my car) into the four-hour chore of consolidating two storage spaces into one -- the smaller (and cheaper monthly rental) of the two. I worked up a solid sweat and got it done, feeling better for the physical exercise and duty done.

With my car carrying the second of two loads of boxes of books and comics I shuttled home, and greatly relieved that it would be the last such haul for this month, I was instantly rewarded with some goodies in the mailbox -- and a surprise delivery from UPS propping open our front screen door.

My first batch of copies of Blur Volume 1 had arrived!

It looks mighty fine, and orders are now being filled --

-- so order without further ado from Black Coat Press, pronto!

(Black Coat Press has a number of new releases available now, so take a moment to explore the site.)

There's nothing like holding a new book you've had a hand in, much less holding it for the first time. It felt -- feels -- good.

I spent a couple of hours scouring the text and wincing over the few things I wish I'd done differently, but it's still a cool little book and an accomplishment. As noted before, this is the first of four volumes of Blur, collecting all my weekly newspaper "Video Views" columns written and published 1999-2001; the second volume is about done, and CCS alumni and cover designer Jon-Mikel Gates is showing me Volume 2's cover this weekend, so there's already more on the way.

Here's the full cover spread, designed by Jon-Mikel Gates;

Jon-Mikel's website, bio, specs, blog and more awaits you here!

All this does is whet my appetite for the archival projects ahead. After completing Blur's four volumes, I'll plunge into Gooseflesh, an illustrated book series collecting all my genre articles, essays and interviews from the past two decades. With the winter months, I'll also be forging ahead with the final draft of We Are Going to Eat You! for FAB Press, and other projects, all the while savoring the third year teaching at The Center for Cartoon Studies.

More news later; I'm catching up on the two days+ of pinkeye aversion to the computer, including pressing workloads, so I'll be back here later today. I'm doing much better, thanks, though the eye drop treatment continues and I'm not sleeping much as yet.

Have a great Friday, and check in later today and this weekend for more on Blur... the books, not the infection.

Saturday Musings

Well, the move is over -- tried to post an announcement here yesterday afternoon, but for some reason it wouldn't go through. Maybe it'll post this AM.

Apologies for missing two daily posts this week. The move, the move -- and the down-to-the-wire Center for Cartoon Studies tasks (the move derailed my administrative paperwork chores terribly) -- kept me preoccupied.

_______________

There was also Thursday's trip to Middlebury College, to speak to Cole Odell's excellent comics class, among the missing time blog-wise -- Cole was a gracious and attentive host, we had some fun, and his class was great, a remarkable mix of students. If I had a photo of the group, I'd post it, because they really were a lively and engaging group; their questions were insightful, it made for a solid session.

I was invited to join the group for lunch after our session in the classroom, and we were joined by two professors (one of whom, Don Mitchell, I knew from my Breadloaf Young Writers Conference days and was overjoyed to see, though we didn't get to talk much) and I shamelessly showboated, answering any and all questions.

The drive to and from Middlebury was a treat, too, though loooooooong: having moved over an hour "closer" to Middlebury, I still had the same duration drive I used to have from Marlboro! Such is the "ya can't get thar from heyar" nature of roadways in Vermont, especially midstate. It's a two-and-a-half hour drive, I was told -- that said, I gave myself extra time and made it to Middlebury with time to spare. Two pancakes and two sausage patties worth of time, in fact.

The drive to was ravishing: it was two degrees outside and crystal clear; the air was so cold that the running rivers were steaming (a procession of uncanny, non-moving vapor wisps that hung over the water, which was and is churning too fast to freeze) and the vegetation on the immediate banks were bristling with whiskers of frost. Stunning, eerie, beautiful.

The ride home meant taking another route (I'm exploring this part of my home state every chance I get, having a fresh geographic orientation now to all points), which involved a steep climb up Route 125 from Ripton, a route I chose for sentimental reasons: it takes me right by the old Breadloaf Campus. I love that place.

Cooler still, though, were the deep-frozen brooks and streams along 125, which were spectacular; the play of light and shadow midday, with the sky just easing into overcast with the occasional peek of sun, was mesmerizing. I stopped at one point and pulled on my boots to wander down by the brookside and savor the frosty tableaus. Winter, at last.

Cutting down Route 100 -- the road I grew up on and know so well -- I saw a sign saying "Bethel: 18 miles" and thought, "Huh, that'll cut me over to interstate 89 in no time!" Sure enough, where 100 and 107 meet/split (depending which way you're headed) in Stockbridge, I cut up over to Bethel (driving by the ever-alluring Advanced Animations sign; it's not an animation studio, but a remote VT business that builds all the life-size animatronic creatures and dinosaurs that tour the world, including the popular museum "Dinomation" exhibits) and was on 89 South in record time.

Home again in a little over 90 minutes -- a faster route to Middlebury, when it isn't storming! Cool!

Once home, I was scrambling: Dave Gabriel and his brother Mike were working here (wait until you see the shelving work they've done -- photos, soon!) and we were scheduled to complete the platform and assemble the flat file before they headed home. That meant ripping into Windsor and picking up some last-minute supplies needed for the task, which I did, and before Dave and Mike were out the door, my flat file was assembled in the basement atop its new platform (in case the basement ever floods) and ready at last.

This means I can now file my artwork, all of it, and clear my small studio room -- and bring in my drawing board and light table. This means this week, amid all first-week-of-the-new-semester CCS hubbub, I'll be able to chip away at finally setting up one portion of my new home. It's been weeks; I'm eager to get into it.

__________________

With the conclusion of the movers work at Marlboro yesterday afternoon, I took a few moments after the truck pulled away to wander the house, say goodbye to one of the sweetest homes I've ever lived in: the first I've owned, too. It was indeed kind to us, and we were kind as we could be to the house, rebuilding it from the shell it was when we first saw it. The new owners are excited, the closing is on Monday -- they have heady plans for further reworking the house, making it into the home they need and want. Ah, I love change, transition: it's always an agonizing process, but necessary to life.

I took my last walk through the house, seeing the rooms empty, completely empty and open for a new family, for the first time. It's never been completed as a house and empty before, in our experience. We were moving in as the work was being completed back in December 2001 to April 2002, so I'd never seen the house empty, clean, free of the clutter of our lives (and, ahem, my enormous quantities of shit). I went outside and walked around, took one last, lingering look from the back yard across mid-Marlboro, and then I was off. Met the movers in Ascutney, we unloaded (into my rented storage space), and that was that.

Then, back to work at home. All in all, a most eventful couple of days.

I finally wrapped up my syllabus work this AM, and Marge offered to help me set up my CCS office space in White River Jct., which must be done by Monday night -- so, with that, I'm off. Got bookcases to pick up from the storage space, work to do in my Verizon Building office at CCS -- see ya here tomorrow.

The move...

...is over.

At last!

(January 19th, final move with Dartmouth Moving & Storage and last of my hauls in my Toyota to our Windsor home; said goodbye to the Marlboro house and hit the road after locking up. Closing on the sale Monday AM, the same day CCS's new semester begins.)

Ratchet-Ass Bissette

Not posting much today; too much to do, with crunch-time here on many obligations the move/house purchase/house sale and all attendant duties has back-burnered. The move concludes -- at last! -- on Friday; our closing on the sale of our Marlboro home is Monday. Soon, this'll all be behind us...

But what's ahead today is what's essential. Two meetings today, one decidedly Center for Cartoon Studies intensive, etc. -- and contractor Dave Gabriel is back in the saddle here today (at last, the flat files will be up by tonight!), so I've got to be ready for him in about 15 minutes -- but there's always time to touch on making sense of our President's behavior.

First up, comics amigo Howard M. (morning, Howard, good to hear from you!) sent me

this link concerning another possible rationale for the Negroponte move, and one that "is more logical than Cheney resigning" to his mind (though he's no fan of Novak).

Howard adds, "What pisses me off most is why there is no debate on why the Bush plan doesn't included diplomacy. As bad an idea as the military surge is, if there was also a diplomatic surge (like the ISG recommended) to get the Iraqi's to resolve their political differences it would be hard to argue against. Better still would be to do that while withdrawing but that would make too much sense. But all the Congress can manage to say is that sending more troops is a bad idea. The level of "debate" is pathetic..."

Agreed. Alas, though, as the past six years have demonstrated, Bush doesn't 'do' diplomacy. I know, he said he didn't 'do' nuances, but clearly diplomacy falls within that category (in the mind of the man unable to sort out strategy vs. tactics, leading us all into an international war on a tactic). Pathetic is far, far too kind a word.

This in hand from truthout.org, compliments of HomeyM this AM. (Have a great Wednesday, see you here tomorrow with something less depressing, I hope):

New Oil Law Means Victory in Iraq for Bush

By Chris Floyd
t r u t h o u t | UK Correspondent
Monday 08 January 2007

Surging Toward the Ultimate Prize

The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.

At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," says the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. "It would allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil companies in the country since the industry was nationalized in 1972." If the government's parliamentary majority prevails, the law should take effect in March.

As the paper notes, the law will give Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and other carbon cronies of the White House unprecedented sweetheart deals, allowing them to pump gargantuan profits from Iraq's nominally state-owned oilfields for decades to come. This law has been in the works since the very beginning of the invasion - indeed, since months before the invasion, when the Bush administration brought in Phillip Carroll, former CEO of both Shell and Fluor, the politically-wired oil servicing firm, to devise "contingency plans" for divvying up Iraq's oil after the attack. Once the deed was done, Carroll was made head of the American "advisory committee" overseeing the oil industry of the conquered land, as Joshua Holland of Alternet.com has chronicled in two remarkable reports on the backroom maneuvering over Iraq's oil: "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil and "The US Takeover of Iraqi Oil."

From those earliest days until now, throughout all the twists and turns, the blood and chaos of the occupation, the Bush administration has kept its eye on this prize. The new law offers the barrelling buccaneers of the West a juicy set of production-sharing agreements (PSAs) that will maintain a fig leaf of Iraqi ownership of the nation's oil industry - while letting Bush's Big Oil buddies rake off up to 75 percent of all oil profits for an indefinite period up front, until they decide that their "infrastructure investments" have been repaid. Even then, the agreements will give the Western oil majors an unheard-of 20 percent of Iraq's oil profits - more than twice the average of standard PSAs, the Independent notes.

Of course, at the moment, the "security situation" - i.e., the living hell of death and suffering that Bush's "war of choice" has wrought in Iraq - prevents the Oil Barons from setting up shop in the looted fields. Hence Bush's overwhelming urge to "surge" despite the fierce opposition to his plans from Congress, the Pentagon and some members of his own party. Bush and his inner circle, including his chief adviser, old oilman Dick Cheney, believe that a bigger dose of blood and iron in Iraq will produce a sufficient level of stability to allow the oil majors to cash in the PSA chips that more than 3,000 American soldiers have purchased for them with their lives.

The American "surge" will be blended into the new draconian effort announced over the weekend by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: an all-out war by the government's Shiite militia-riddled "security forces" on Sunni enclaves in Baghdad, as the Washington Post reports. American troops will "support" the "pacification effort" with what Maliki says calls "house-to-house" sweeps of Sunni areas. There is of course another phrase for this kind of operation: "ethnic cleansing."

The "surged" troops - mostly long-serving, overstrained units dragooned into extended duty - are to be thrown into this maelstrom of urban warfare and ethnic murder, temporarily taking sides with one faction in Iraq's hydra-headed, multi-sided civil war. As the conflict goes on - and it will go on and on - the Bush administration will continue to side with whatever faction promises to uphold the "hydrocarbon law" and those profitable PSAs. If "Al Qaeda in Iraq" vowed to open the nation's oil spigots for Exxon, Fluor and Halliburton, they would suddenly find themselves transformed from "terrorists" into "moderates" - as indeed has Maliki and his violent, sectarian Dawa Party, which once killed Americans in terrorist actions but are now hailed as freedom's champions.

So Bush will surge with Maliki and his ethnic cleansing for now. If the effort flames out in a disastrous crash that makes the situation worse - as it almost certainly will - Bush will simply back another horse. What he seeks in Iraq is not freedom or democracy but "stability" - a government of any shape or form that will deliver the goods. As the Independent wryly noted in its Sunday story, Dick Cheney himself revealed the true goal of the war back in 1999, in a speech he gave when he was still CEO of Halliburton. "Where is the oil going to come from" to slake the world's ever-growing thirst, asked Cheney, who then answered his own question: "The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."

And therein lies another hidden layer of the war. For Iraq not only has the world's second largest oil reserves; it also has the world's most easily retrievable oil. As the Independent succinctly notes: "The cost-per-barrel of extracting oil in Iraq is among the lowest in the world because the reserves are relatively close to the surface. This contrasts starkly with the expensive and risky lengths to which the oil industry must go to find new reserves elsewhere - witness the super-deep offshore drilling and cost-intensive techniques needed to extract oil form Canada's tar sands."

And this unholy union is what Bush is really talking about when he talks about "victory." This isthe reason for so much of the drift and dithering and chaos and incompetence of the occupation: Bush and his cohorts don't really care what happens on the ground in Iraq - they care about what comes out of the ground. The end - profit and dominion - justifies any means.

Another Day, Another Load --

-- and at last, the end is in sight for this move!

Yesterday, three of the CCS crew still here during vacation break -- Jon-Mikel, Bryan and Joe -- accepted some cash, lunch, beverages and dedicated their day to helping me pack books and comics and zines down in Marlboro.

This utterly bizarre winter weather meant we drove to Marlboro in almost 70 degree comfort and arrived to find -- mud season. I'm a seasoned vet mud driver, but we still scraped bottom for a stretch and the mire almost sucked the Toyota to a dead halt at one point, but we got through and to the old hacienda. I think it threw the trio with me, but better this muck then three feet of snow, drifts and below-zero weather for the move. This completely screwy winter thus far is unnerving and scary, but has been an unexpected and unpredictable boon for Marge and I and the demands of the move. I'm counting our blessings, folks.

We got a lot done, and I think with the additional time I put in later this week and one more push with three more folks next weekend, we'll at last be done. (I'm pretty fried, though, so likely I'll scrape up the dough for professional movers to move the boxes in one shot thereafter -- I have to complete this process, and soon.)

Still, the new owners-to-be are excited and have been great to work with. They've enjoyed popping in at the house, which we encourage, and are already measuring and making their plans for their soon-to-be new home. We close the sale before the last week in January, and they're eager to move in -- just as eager as I am to be out! Marge, bless her, is done with her part of the move, and has made our new Windsor home just that -- a home.

When Jon, Joe, Bryan and I got back to Windsor last night, Bryan and Joe's wives Amanda and Becca were here, and Marge had a delicious supper waiting for one and all.

It was a great way to cap a busy day, and a real treat to entertain in our new digs. Good food, great company, good conversation and the highly entertaining feline hi-jinks of Tuco and Lizzie (Amanda had 'em both leaping like they were in a circus arena, playing with the cats and their new toys) made for a memorable evening. Thanks, one and all!

I finally fell down around 10:30, after everyone had headed back to White River Jct., and slept soundly till 6:30 this morning, which is late for me these days. Then I was up and out for one more packing stretch and carload haul -- before the weather turns nasty tonight. Sigh.

Time to get back to painting the viewing room -- hopefully, sometime soon, I can begin my own process of "nesting" (as Marge calls it). I'm looking forward to it -- maybe soon...

Have a great Sunday, all.

Another Day, Another Moving
and Packing Marathon...

... someday this, too, shall pass.

On more vital issues:

Remember:

Troop Surge=Escalation

Vietnam, here we come.

With the official US military body count now above 3,000 -- not counting, of course, the possibly half-a-million Iraq dead, the uncounted wounded, and the uncounted independent contractors and employees handily ignored in all the body counts -- we have finally arrived at the approximate body count that prompted our leaders to get us into this lunacy: 9/11.

As the Bush Presidency enters that rarified realm of beseiged Hitler Bunker mentality,
we are no doubt entering more dangerous times.
A cornered Bush is a dangerous Bush.

Back in the Saddle Again...

It's amazing how completely life has changed in the past week, marking 2007 as a genuine New Year from Day One. Marge and I live in a new home, and though I'll be preoccupied with the final dregs of the move for another couple of weeks (including clean-up), we do have buyers for our Marlboro home (the closing is before the end of the month) and all is well. The great financial risk paid off, and the move that made so much logical and logistical sense, personally and in terms of social responsibility (Marge has barely gone through a half-a-tank of gas in over a week, where we used to both fill up multiple times per week; we'll be consuming far less gas once the move is truly behind us), is remapping our emotional landscape in unforeseen ways.

Windsor itself is a very cool town -- though, like all towns, it has its underbelly, which is apparent, too. We've been gravitating here now since mid-October, when our house-hunting began in earnest, and the sense of this potentially being "home" has matured into this being home in a remarkably brief interim. Windsor is nestled just north of Mount Ascutney, a lone mountain strangely apart from the Green Mountain chain here on the eastern edge of the state, and that mountain now plucks a pleasant nerve whenever I see it.

Growing up in northern VT, my formative years and teen years were landmarked by Camel's Hump, that beautiful mountain in North Duxbury that's visible from interstate 89 from a variety of views. My heart still flutters when I first see the Hump en route north, and it remains one of those geographic life anchors one never outgrows and forever finds surprisingly, profoundly moving with every encounter in an uncanny, primal way. I hiked the Hump many times each year from age 12 to 22, and knew much of the mountain well. For the first third of my life, Camel's Hump was the center of my universe, such as it was.

Since 1980, Wilmington and Marlboro have been my home -- where Marlene and I lived through our married life together, where my daughter Maia and son Daniel were born (at home) and raised and grew into adulthood -- and the mountains there (Haystack and especially Hogback) became orientation landmarks with their own gravitational pull. I lived in their orbit for a little over two decades, and hiked Haystack a number of times. Though I never grew as intimate or connected to those mountains as I did to the Hump in Duxbury, they're nevertheless sights and climbs (whether via car or foot; Route 9, which I drove daily, cuts up over Hogback, embracing a positively breathtaking 100+ mile view from the roadside) which never fail to move me.

Since the decision to move from the area really took hold this past fall, that drive moves me differently than ever before, the sights of both mountains pluck different nerves: I'm saying "goodbye" to the mountains that sheltered my family, in which I realized my life goals (in comics) and then changed my life completely, where met my new soulmate (Marge), which I shared with her as we fell in love and bonded (we used to drive to the top of one of Wilmington's back roads and watch the sun set behind Haystack), which nurtured my children until they left the mountains to move to the town and begin their own adult years.

Now, Mount Ascutney is the center of a new orbit, a new life phase. As I drive every other day from Windsor to Marlboro and back again -- down with an empty car, back with a full car -- my heart lifts a bit when I first see Ascutney just north of Springfield.

"I'm almost home!" I think, and it's true.

Almost home.

___________________

A very, very good, funny, dear man I had the rare pleasure of working with at First Run Video before my departure from that employ two years ago is on his death bed in Townshend, VT. He was diagnosed with cancer this summer, and is now in his final weeks (perhaps days), discharged from the hospital and at home with his wife. In the end, they could do nothing for him.

It's heartbreaking -- why do monsters like our Vice President live so long, do so much harm (oh, excuse me, "service for their country"), while humble, productive, responsible, forever upbeat men like this fellow die? There's no reason to or for it; that's life. That's death.

This is a real heartbreaker; I shan't say more, as it's nobody's business but his and his family's, but it's too sad and shaking not to note this morning. This has colored much of the month for me, too, and is really having a devastating impact on those I once worked closely with, daily. A prayer for my friend, please.

___________________

This just in from Molly Bode, beloved wife of Mark Bode, from away off in California. A couple of years ago, Mark and Molly moved back to the West Coast from their 1990s life in Northampton, MA (drawn there, pun intended, by the allure of the Tundra publishing experiment); their now-adult daughter Zara is still in the Northampton area, and making her own kind of music:

"Just sending out a reminder for you not to miss Zara's show THE SWEETBACK SISTERS at:

The Elevens
140 Pleasant Street Northampton
Sunday, January 14
413-586-9155

About The Sweetback Sisters:

The Sweetback Sisters, a group of pie-eyed plunkers, perform an incredible array of old time honky tonk music with sweet girl-on-girl harmonies, sure to warm the hears of any of you. The lavish and lovely voices of Zara Bode and Emily Miller plus an all-star band: Stefan Amidon on drums, West Virginian, Jesse Milnes on guitar and fiddle, Joseph "Joebass" DeJarnette on upright, and last but not least our rolling thunder himself, Ross Bellenoit who highlights the night with electric guitar riffs, mandolin and lap steel guitar.

So get your ass in gear, grab a beer and swoon while we croon the country classics.

Check out

this link

for a taste of the music."

Molly concludes:

"And somebody please videotape it and send it to me!!!!!!"

BTW, there's also a Brattleboro, VT connection: Stefan Amidon is an amazing percussionist, brother of Sam (accomplished musician on many instruments and actor) and son of the Amidons, who are a fixture of the folk music scene in Southern VT. Stefan blew me away years ago while he was still in high school and performing as part of the "Stef and Jeff" percussion duo on the stage of Brattleboro Union High School; he has since performed in a number of bands, including work with his family.

If you're in the Northampton area, check 'em out!

Already in the Thick of 2007...

Hope you all had a great New Year; we did, with friends showing up as planned before the midnight ritual on the 31st and spending the night here as our first-ever house guests. This meant that Marge, miraculous Goddess/woman she is, had actually not only unpacked but had completely set up the living room, kitchen, dining area and guest room/office by the 31st! Amazing.

I, on the other hand, am still struggling with the move's logistics and tasks, with daily (as weather permits) trips between Marlboro and Windsor still necessary as I complete packing and moving of my libraries and collections. Here at our new home, I'm also painting a room (the rest, blessedly, needed no painting), which I've almost completed (two coats on some walls) and prepping the basement for its renovation into the needed library and writing space(s). Thankfully, David Gabriel accepted the contractor job for construction of the shelves and spaces necessary to my master plan, and it's all falling into place -- though this means I'll be staggering around the debris of my collection and library for some time to come until all the work can be completed, moving the boxes from place to place around the work areas until it all takes shape and permits unboxing and shelving. Sigh.

The biggest flaw in my master plan involved my art flat file cabinet, which needs to be mounted on a platform in the basement before I can re-file my 35+ years of artwork. Alas, that plan involved moving the platform constructed in 2002 for the Marlboro basement library/office area -- which I had specifically requested be built to be removed/moved if necessary down the road. Well, now that I'm down that road, damn it but we find on moving day this past Thursday that the platform was constructed fully attached to the wall -- and could not be removed. Shit! Thus, my comfy drawing studio here in Windsor is unusable for the time being, the floor covered with carefully-wrapped-in-plastic and stacked decades of Bissette art and such. Until the new platform and flooring is in place, the flat file is in pieces, not a workable unit, here in our Windsor basement.

So, I've taken to drawing in my sketchbook in the meantime -- so be it. It'll be some time before I can move my drawing board and light table into the new studio room, and that's just how it is.

Luckily, though, my upcoming CCS duties this semester do not require the extensive daily access to my collection/library the fall semester classes absolutely revolve around. I've been pretty good about packing and keeping in reach what I will need for this semester, and thus far haven't found any fatal gaps in my shuffling from one local to the new home as far as my upcoming CCS semester is concerned. Wish me luck on that remaining true...

More later today, as time permits. I've got the long drive to and from Marlboro ahead this morning and at least five hours more of packing/moving ahead, and hear Marge up and about downstairs -- she returns to work today. So, off to the morning rituals and to hit the road myself.

Have a great January 2nd, one and all.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, one and all!

Just an early AM post, before the day's labors continue (I've already prepped a room for painting; this is break-time), to wish you all the sweetest kiss-off of 2006 possible, and most fantastic opener to 2007 imaginable.

Of course, it will suck for some of you -- but I don't wish that for you.

It's only the best I'm sending out to ya --

Happy New Year!