Well, seeing as how it has been almost a year since I last updated my journal and, according to it, it's about time I did something about it.

Seems like every year around this time, give or take a couple of months, I become scarce for one reason or another. This year, as in all years, the pattern held true. It might be that the high concentration of holidays with expectations of abandoning ones normal life to visit loved ones for a bit might play a part, but the root always seems to be something else completely unrelated. this time, it was a bit of good news on Starcham's behalf that caused me to go missing for a bit.

She's been looking to purchase a house here in New Orleans for going on three years and, finally, this last November she found a great house in her price range in a neighborhood that wasn't completely scary... just moderately scary like most neighborhoods around here. That left December for us to pack up the apartment, move it all to the house, gut and replace the down stairs bathroom, paint, fix things, pound our heads into walls, and still take a week long trip to Arkansas for the holidays. Toss into that a bit of delay in getting the internet back up and running and you have a great picture of what hole I happened to fall into.

I've finally started getting things back to where they need to be, but only just. I still have a mountain of back work that I need to get caught up in, an apartment attached to the house that I need to get into rental shape, and my work space currently consists of a mattress on the floor with a computer next to it completely surrounded by a sea of boxes, stacks of books and clothes where I've half unpacked just trying to find something, and disassembled furniture.

I've got a good little ways before I have things back the way they need to be but at least I'm finally back and cracking on that queue of mine again