Uh-oh! Missed a few days, so here's some random stuff

Not my family, but aren't they a lovely bunch of people anyway?
Hey, kid! Don't eat when you're picture's being taken!

Surprisingly, the blog didn't fall apart! Yes, after almost two months of getting a post per day up on the blog, I haven't done that the past couple of weeks.

For one thing, I didn't want to pressure myself while I was in Iowa. If something occurred to me to write about, I would. But otherwise, I didn't want to be sitting there in the morning saying "come on! Get something down so you can go continue your day!"

That's one of the benefits, I think, of my three regularly-scheduled posts per week. The blog didn't disappear while I was gone. I also scheduled the Christmas posts in advance so I didn't have to worry about them.

The ability to schedule posts has been a godsend for me, as I already have Star Trek and book review posts scheduled through mid-January. I hope you've been enjoying them.

I did have a good trip to Iowa. The travel itself was uneventful both ways, except for having a pack of 20 children (8-10 years of age) on the bus ride home from Seattle. That got a bit loud. Thankfully, they got off the bus at the first Canadian stop right on the other side of the border. It was a packed bus, so I did have somebody sit next to me for most of the trip. That's a first for me in my 10+ years of doing this.

It was great seeing everybody at home. Had a lovely (and wonderfully-long) get-together with some really good friends. It's always good to see them. It was nice to spend time with the family as well, and Christmas was really great.

Just as an aside, speaking of my friends above, it's amazing what power the Internet has. Back when I was doing my Livejournal blog, one night I got nostalgic and did a post naming some names of high school friends that I was wondering what had happened to them. One of those people responded, and I've been seeing her and her husband (who was also named in that post, as they were together when I knew them in high school) every time I'm back home since.

Maybe she can remind me of how she found that post. :)

Anyway, it doesn't always work (Jerry Miller and Melissa Stewart, where are you???), but if you're interested in looking up old friends, just post their name on your blog! They might find you.

Or, I guess you could do Facebook too (which wasn't around, or at least nearly so popular, back when this happened).

Anyway, a couple of other things. I'm really enjoying my Kindle Fire e-reader from Amazon. Nice to have something back-lit so I can read in the dark. It's a bit heavier than the basic Kindle that I had been using, but it's worth it. Have read two books on it, and now I'm a subscriber to the excellent e-magazine of fantasy and science fiction, Lightspeed! Didn't want to mess with it on my old Kindle because I wasn't sure if there would be images and all of that (which the Fire handles brilliantly).

I highly recommend it.

The wife loves her Nook, so you might want to give that a try too. If you're not dead-set against e-readers, of course (as I know some of you are!)

It's nice to be back. I'm going to try and keep up my post-per-day pace again now that I'm back and raring to go. But it's nice to know that if I don't, this blog won't be starved for content.

It's made things a lot easier.