karl.tsakos.us/blog

Well, the blog redesign is coming along well. I have the bulk of it overhauled, now I just have to fine tune the bits and pieces.

Outside, it’s very white. White with snow that is. According to the weather channel, the greater NY area has had more snow so far this year than Anchorage, Alaska has. That’s a lot. We have had snow on the ground continuously since Christmas Day. I don’t recall there not being a rain or thaw that reveals the earth underneath for years.

Last night before I retired for the evening, about 11 PM, I glanced out a window and thought it was really foggy outside. When I took a closer look, it became clear there was a blizzard outside. This morning it was clear that the storm lasted the entire night and ended shortly before I woke up around 7:30 AM.

I love snow, I love to look at it, I love the sounds it makes and how it is always so quiet when it falls. Not just the snow falling is quiet, but it absorbs all other sound and creates that amazing winter stillness. I love when snow starts to get dirty and then it snows again, leaving a fresh coat of white.

Lately I have been thinking I was coming down with a virus. I have had weird aches and pains in my limbs. My arms have been aching in places they normally are painless. Muscles feel pulled when I haven’t done anything to harm them. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have been shoveling a lot. Every couple of days to be exact. It dawns on me the muscles that are hurting are the ones that never get used except when I shovel snow. Of course it could be worse, one of my friends got himself a hernia from all his shoveling.

There was so much snow last night that I gave up my pride and borrowed my neighbor’s snow blower this morning. There was no way I could clear all that snow. Especially at the end of my driveway where the plows have been busily piling up snow and slush.

All the whining aside, I love winter and I love snow.

What gives you query? I’ll tell you what gives. I’m mucking about with the look and functionality of this site. It will be changing and morphing into something that is better than this current look and feel. I’m doing it live because I don’t care what it looks like while I do it.

So there.

As most of you know, I suffered a stroke in July. I have not blogged since then, not because I have had nothing to say, but because I felt I should start by talking about the stroke. Well, I’ve decide that it’s not going to happen. Maybe someday I will discuss the stroke, but not today.

Suffice it to say, I have almost no lingering side effects from the stroke and am living a normal life. And now, I will continue with blogging as part of that life.

Sorry not to have any updates this weekend. I’ve been a bit busy with the Orthodox Easter holiday and family events.

I’ll have something up this week.

Well that wasn’t very nice of me. I had a couple of weeks where I posted two fairly decent entries a week and then I just up and stopped. My apologies to those whose hopes of regular entries were dashed. While I realize that group probably encompasses just me, I wanted to say so anyhow.

Well, there is more to come. I’ve had a coupe of things that I needed to take care of that had more precedence over posting entries. That being said, I do have several posts planned. I will be answering the question of what I didn’t like about the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies. I will have an ongoing series of entries on my vegetable garden (which I need to get started before the weather gets to much warmer). I also plan on drawing from my musical past and present the five songs a band I was in recorded (as in we recorded them ourselves). Oh, I also still plan to go on the 5 boro ride around New York City so I will be writing about that of course.

There you have it. I do have things to eventually talk about. I just have to get around to actually talking about that stuff. Oh, and of course, there will be those items which crop up or catch my fancy that I don’t even know I will want to write about.

Talk to (as in “at”) you soon.

Just a quick note to patrons of this humble site. I’ve changed the comment approval process. Now, comments will be posted without approval as long as the poster includes their e-mail address. I don’t collect the information, it is just used for authentication.

Also, please keep your language family appropriate. I retain the right to remove content I deem inappropriate to the site.

Thank you.

You know, there are certain things I want for my site that it just being a blog isn’t doing for me. I want to have better galleries and places for other content. Right now I can’t (easily) put that content here. I have plans to change that.

The blog isn’t going away. No, in fact it is still an important part of the site. The place I can put new written content. But it will become just a component of the site. The main portion will be more static and therefor doesn’t need to be as “live” as the blog.

Before I went with the blog I designing a new site. When I go back and look at it, it is a design I still like. I also like the way I designed it to manage my content and how I managed to integrate the photo galleries from Aperture into it fairly seamlessly.

Ultimately, it means the blog will get a new address which mean the RSS feed will change. So, that’s the real reason for this post, to give you a heads up that the change is in the works.

Stay tuned for more.