Still alive

Yes, yes I realise I've been the epitome of "slack ass" with regards to posting new material. It's been exactly 30 days since my last post which makes April my all new record for minimum posts in a month from the conception of this blog. It's sad, very sad.

In the beginning I was just avoiding the blog out of guilt. While I was still taking pictures for Project 365 I just didn't seem to have the time to do touch ups and post to Photoblog as often as I liked. Surely if I couldn't find the time to work on my images then writing a blog entry of meaningless drivel would be a colossal misuse of my free time. Procrastination soon lead to indifference as my daily photos degraded to a whole new level of banality. Coming back every evening to snap a shot of whatever happened to be on the kitchen counter just sucked all the joy out of photography for me, so to my eternal shame I decided to break my resolution this year and postpone it until we decide to take a year long jaunt across Europe and North America. I stopped taking pictures on the 18th of April for anyone that might have been running a pool.

Aside from that it's been a busy month so I'll just skim through some 'highlights'.

Go
I've gotten back into this wonderful boardgame in anticipation of a rematch against Cel this June before the wedding. To prepare I've joined the local Go club in Brisbane, started playing online on KGS and Dragon Go and have read a few books on strategy and tactics. Probably still end up losing but I guess you can only try.

Here's my progress so far as ranked on KGS. Cel was about 9 kyu the last time I played him so I'm still a way off.



I've also always wanted a decent Go set and Cel's been kind enough to lug this lovely piece of kit over from the states. Oh can't wait to get my hands on it.

Lens
I got my act in gear to order my a Tokina 12-24mm F4 lens from an online retailer with the hope that it'll arrive before my birthday. Unfortunately I've discovered that the lazy bastards haven't shipped it and are awaiting some "verification information" from me. Would have been helpful if they actually let me know about it a week ago. Grrrr...

Beep beep
Probably the biggest news is that Alison and I have been looking for a new car for the past few weeks and finally decided on one. It was going to be a toss up between the Mazda 3 and the Honda Civic. We liked the interior and comfort of the Civic but couldn't help but feel impressed at the driving performance of the 3. In the end luxury won out and we signed a contract last night with a local Honda dealership for a brand spanking new Civic VTI-L to be delivered in about two weeks. A black one if you must know.

One of the things Alison was worried about was if the car would even fit in our puny garage so the salesperson arranged for us to take the car home for the night to try it out. Must say I did like the look of it under our roof. Even if it was just a loan.



So it's all happening. Going to be another busy month in May I think while preparations rush ahead to get everything done by June. Hope we'll have the energy to enjoy our honeymoon in New Zealand after it's all over and done. ^_^;