Been off for a couple of weeks again, haven't I? Time flies when you're offline.

What have I been up to? Well, I was still working on the kids beds, finishing them, and then moving on to staining. It all went well but for one thing: my asthma kicked in with a vengance. I forgot all about that before starting the projects, and the fumes played a wicked number on me. The upstairs of our house was basically off limits during these past two weeks. I'd go upstairs and paint, then leave all the windows open, and head downstairs.

Living was done strickly downstairs. I moved the kids downstairs to sleep in the sofa bed in our family room, so you can imagine what my family room's been looking like. Toys, video games, movies, books, and snack wrappers strewn all over. Enough to send my inner Monk into fits and seisures. My computer is up in my studio, hence my absence here. I do have my laptop next to my bed, but by the time I walked into my room, it was to shower and go to sleep.

Yesterday was a full one-day makeover for my bedroom, painted beautifully in a nice and relaxing tone of landscape green, and with a nice 'lil table-top cascading water fountain, it's feeling very Zen. :)

Winter break officially began here in FL, so my kids are home, back in their rooms, doing some major cleaning up. I decided to stop by and drop you all a note, and see how many messages I've got. Wanna know? Eh, just 714 new messages! Only 38 of those are spam. There's one list I belong to, but those messages don't amount to many. Not bad for two or so weeks, eh? I'm not sure how I'm going to reply to all of those, but I sure will try. So, if you've commented, and I haven't replied yet, I'm sorry. At least now you know why.

I still have the guestroom to paint and decorate, as well as the bathrooms. However, I'm back to some sense of normal. Now it's all about getting back to my daily routines, and spending some time playing with my kids. I had already begun a website overhaul here, behind the scenes, and I'm hoping to get back to that shortly. I'm aiming to be done with a total site redesign before 2006.

A little gift for those of you who like wallpapers, you can grab the picture below. I shot this one while on the phone with my friend and sister Debbie. We were both awe-struck with the beauty of this sunset. Now I just want to paint it, but I'm sure whatever I come up with won't do it justice. Click on image to embiggen; right-click and save to your computer.

Sorry, no voyages here. I just couldn't help myself. The Trekkie in me took over. Plus, I wanted to listen to Patrick Stewart in my head. Anyhoo...

We've been enjoying beautiful weather in FL, and tonight I took some time to shoot more pictures. I've been shooting pictures of the night sky three nights in a row. So what's up there that's caught my attention? Well, if you've been around here long enough, you'll know here at home, the kids and I are stargazers. Two night ago was New Moon, and I was able to enjoy Venus light up the night sky. It was SO bright, it was casting shadows. I saw Venus cast a shadow of my hand, my camera and my tripod. Very cool! No, I'm not just making this shit up, go read here: Science@NASA, and DigitalSky.org, SpaceWeather.com (check archives, date 12.02.2005)

I shot bunches of pictures, and I have a few to share. :o)

I hope you've enjoyed the pictures as much as I enjoyed shooting them. Some of the best shots happen with perserverance, others quite by accident. I do have a favorite picture; here it is.