Back to the Grind

Earlier in the year, my wife Brandi and I came to the realization that we hadn't enjoyed any significant downtime together since our honeymoon. Since we've been married for nearly four years, it seemed the time was ripe for us to remedy that situation. So we sat down and came to a consensus on a week we could both take off from work, and we put requests in at our respective places of employment to take that week off as vacation time.

That week, as it turns out, was last week. We pondered several different ideas for getting away, on both large and small scales, but in the end we decided just to spend the week here at home. Sometimes when you "get away," it ends up feeling like you didn't have any time off at all, and after toiling for so long without a break, that wasn't what we were after. So we stayed home, and it was phenomenal. We spent some time at the park, exercising in the mild spring weather. One day we went for massages. And we consumed copious amounts of alcohol, either going out for drinks or having friends over to the house just about every night.

Oh, and we also managed to find time to do our taxes. But for the most part, it was fun, it was relaxing, and it was awesome.

Thus it was that I found myself back in the home office this morning, catching up with what I missed while I was out, awake earlier than I had been in nine days, but feeling pretty good. Don't get me wrong: more time off would have been awesome, but firing up the iTunes and getting back into the swing of things wasn't all bad.

So yeah, I'm back to the grind. And now that I'm feeling refreshed, I'm going to try to turn some attention back onto this long-neglected blog as well. The operative word here is "try"; I'm making no promises, but we'll see. You'll notice some aesthetic changes that I hope will help spur and maintain my interest. There may be some further minor housecleaning details to come, but hopefully nothing that will significantly impede the blog's functionality (indeed, I've already noticed that the redesign makes it more palatable for viewing on a mobile device). I may lose some comments or some photos, but I'll preserve them if possible. If I can't, well, I suppose that's a small price to pay for making the site more visually interesting, as well as, you know, actually providing some new content.