Just wanted to send a great big Shout Out and say a warm, heartfelt Thank You to all of the wonderful Xenites who made our Best Frakkin’ Goram Road Trip In The Known World, Phase One, such a resounding success. Quitting my boring, soul-killing job and taking this long, free-form road trip with my beloved Abby Dawg were two of the best things I’ve ever done. I had such fun sharing laughs and stories and good times with my fellow Xenites; we hit it off as if we had known each other a long, long time. (And, of course, in some cases, this trip actually did mark a ten-year anniversary: I met some of you back in 1998 on the Universal Studios NetForum. Ahhh, the good old asbestos-wearin’ days. Heh.) I just want you all to know how much it meant to me to finally meet you face to face and I am proud to call each and every one of you my friend. I guess traveling and meeting new faces helped me gain some perspective on my life. Now we’re home and I feel re-charged and inspired, aching to get back to my many works-in-need-of-progress (finally!) and also on some new ones that have begun to take shape as a result of this experience. I feel an urge to make music, to write, and to stretch some and try something new. More on that later.

I’ve got the trip photos backed up on DVD and on my new external hard drive now. I ain’t takin’ no chances on losing all my photos again. So I’ll be writing about the trip itself soon and posting some photos along with it. And I’ll be writing about the time spent with my fellow Xenites too. There are certain accounts already posted on the XOC, but I want to delve further. Stay tuned for updates as this idea takes on an ever more concrete form.

Well, even though Abby and I got home Tuesday night, Wednesday has been very full for us, taking care of business and running all over town, having lunch, and later, dinner with my friend Cindy; getting reacquainted with Birmingham; getting help with my laptop. The young man who helped me advised against my plan, btw, which was to install XP on my second partition–I had spent hours transferring files off of it in preparation for the Big Install–so I could have a dual boot system. He said, don’t do it; Vista and XP don’t like each other. What about Linux, I said. That would work great, he said. Yay, I said, cuz I can get Linux in a free distribution and install it myself. I hope. We’ll see.

So I didn’t spend the dinars I was gonna spend today, but I did spend all my energy. And Abby Dawg’s too. She’s asleep on the floor at my feet now and has been for hours. I’m staying at my friend’s house tonight and Abby Dawg is gonna be thrilled to see the ferrets in the morning when she wakes up. :)