I’ve given up on the idea of writing a coherent blog post to sum up the last 6 months. With each passing week, it gets more overwhelming to think about recapping, so if I don’t just start posting my usual random stuff here, I’ll never use it again. In no particular order, I have:

• Seen the launch of the new Shipwire.com in October, as well as many new features since then.
• Taught a two year old that "mooses" is the plural of "moose" after his mother laughed at me for not remembering that (despite the fact that I’ve never actually seen a moose, let alone more than one, so this is hardly relevant information).
• Tricked someone into redesigning my site for me, only to procrastinate on actually slicing the images and building it.
• Started taking guitar lessons again.
• Become obsessed with Rock Band.
• Decided to start a new genre called Agnostic Rock to compete with Christian Rock, including such bands as Unknowable, A Priori Objections, and Scintilla of Evidence.
• Wasted thirty minutes researching agnosticism to write that joke.
• Come to believe that people riding their bikes on the sidewalk is bothersome, but less so than people riding their bikes the wrong way in the bike lane.
• Ridden Rachel’s horse.
• Killed my Treo 650, thus getting an upgrade to a Treo 700 and giving me an excuse to purge my phonebook of people who I never call and who never call me.
• Come to terms with the fact that my musical taste leads to like bands who are younger than my brother.
• Received a USB humping dog due to contractual obligations.
• Rocked out in matching haiku shirts with Rachel and Allison.
• Spent my second consecutive New Year’s Eve in Minnesota, as well as many other weekends along the way.
• Been to see Cowboy Mouth, Melee, Matt Nathanson, Magic Bullets, Glen Phillips, Jonathan Kingham, and Will Hoge in concert.
• Attended An Event Apart in San Francisco.
• Voted for Obama.
• Started planning a trip to Hawaii.
• Lost 12 pounds on an office diet bet to avoid dressing as Santa.
• Partook in a Wii hunt during the holiday season.
• Forgotten many interesting and exciting things I have done in the past few months.

Question time for you, dear reader(s)! (Oh, the things I do while sick and waiting for a friend to bring me juice and medicine…)

1. Do you have a tattoo?
2. How old are you?
3. Are you single or taken?
4. Fish?
5. Do you dream in color?
6. Ever seen a corpse?
7. Hipsters or Hillbillies?
8. How did we meet?
9. What’s your philosophy on life and death?
10. If you could do anything with me, and have no one know, what would it be?
11. Do you trust the police?
12. Do you like musicals?
13. What is your fondest memory of me?
14. If you could change anything about yourself what would it be?
15. Would you cheat ?
16. What are you wearing?
17. Have you ever peed in a pool?
18. Would you hide evidence for me if I asked you to?
19. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?
20. Which do you prefer - short or long hair?
21. What’s your favorite day of the week?
22. What’s your favorite color?
23. If you could bring back anyone that has passed, who would it be?
24. Tell me one interesting/odd fact about you?
25. What was your first impression of me?
26. Have you ever done drugs?
27. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?

I’m back from Peru! The biggest flaw in the English language is that it lacks the words for describing the joy and excitement and life-changingness of my trip. I’ll be uploading photos and typing up my travel journal, so tons of stories and pictures soon. I missed you all!

I’m off to Peru in the morning. I’ll be back on 9/18. Hold down the fort in my absence.

Tonight I rode my bike to the store to get the lemon I forgot to buy when I was there on Monday. Four hours later, I looked down and realized I still had the right leg of my jeans rolled up.

Yep, it’s one of those “I haven’t been blogging” posts. I like to think of them as the blog equivalent of the sitcom “clip show”. Remember when….

• Over on the Dilbert Blog, Scott Adams blogged about a comic called Basic Instructions. I’ve really been enjoying go back through the archives. Some of my favorites include How to write a self-evaluation, How to explain a plan, How to use the universal comeback, How to create and wear a memorable Halloween costume, and How to pitch a movie idea.
• The new Matt Nathanson album Some Mad Hope came out yesterday (well, today, but yesterday is when my preorder arrived), and it is just fantastic. It has been in constant rotation ever since I opened it.
• I also bought Bubba Ho-Tep (Hail to the King Edition) from Best Buy. I love that movie ("They dyed me this color!"), and the packaging is excellent. The DVD box has a sleeve that looks like the Elvis shirt in the movie. Also, there’s a commentary of “The King” himself (Bruce Campbell does it in character). Fantastic.
• The new job is going great. I checked in my first files, which is always an exciting milestone. Also, my Mac is so very sexy. We have a fully-functioning development environment set up, so I can work even without internet access. Very nice.
• While working on this blog entry, I won $40-something playing online poker. I would have been more, but I let my focus slip while making some of the above links and made a dumb play. Still, it’s nice to be reminded that I’m okay at poker when I’m running bad and not playing as much.
• Of course, none of these things even hold a candle to Peru. Rachel and I leave in about 16 1/2 days for our 18 day trip. We’re both a little crazed with final plans and shopping and such things, but it’s shaping up to be the experience of a lifetime. If you want a postcard, make sure I have your address before I leave!

This cracks me up:

Jason has tagged me with this, and I can never resist a good tagging, so I thought I’d play. Some of you probably know some of these, but I don’t know if most of you know all of them. Not that they are especially secretive, as this ended up more of “8 facts that define me” than “8 things you didn’t know”. The result of rambling while so tired, I guess. And away we go:

1. I have a tattoo on my right upper arm that says “Winter Pays For Summer” in a Celtic font (picture here In addition to being the title of the Glen Phillips album containing the song, the phrase comes from the song “Duck and Cover”. The line is “One way or another / Winter pays for the summer / Won’t get what you wanted / What you got’ll be good” (full lyrics here). It very much reflected what I had learned in 2005 about the unexpected nature of change, but that good can come of just about anything.
2. Related to my tattoo, I do my best to not regret in life. I will make mistakes and/or be the victim of unfortunate circumstances, but I can’t find a single decision in my life where the weight of the negative repercussions can even begin to approach the positives. This sounds very strange when I type it, but it has served me well.
3. When I was in high school, I formed a rogue organization to revolt against the dictatorship of the computer club. We were called P.R.O.Z.A.C., which was the People’s Resistance to Over-Zealous Andy Chow. We were quite an eclectic cast of characters and had our ultimate victory when I was elected president of the computer club when Andy graduated. I ran on a platform of “I don’t like Andy Chow.” I was removed as president by the adviser a few days later (who though my platform was a cause for concern).
4. I have had two knee surgeries, and have the ACL from a cadaver in my left knee. I like to think this makes me “undead”, even if only in a small percentage.
5. I want to spend at least one year of my life living somewhere that has 4 distinct seasons. I have yet to work out the logistics given that the bay area is where all the jobs are, as well as most of my people, but some day I’ll figure out a way to make it work.
6. I am what Butch Walker called "slow-convert pescatarian" (vegetarian + fish). Originally, the decision was for health reasons after reading The China Study and Eat to Live. I’m starting to come around on the moral aspects of it as time has gone on. I just wasn’t ready to process that at the time, but now it’s starting to sink in. I remember when I couldn’t imagine a day without meat, and now I don’t miss it. Even fish is something I eat less and less.
7. I plan to name my first son Raisin so that his nickname can be “The Roof” (Raisin “The Roof” Kujala) and my first daughter will be named after Meadowlark Lemon, my favorite Harlem Globetrotter. (Okay, so this one isn’t true, but who actually thought I could go this long without making one up?).
8. I’m leaving Yahoo! on Friday. (Look how sneaky I am, combining two blog entries into one!) I’ve accepted a job with Shipwire and start next Monday. It’s a very small company, which is something I’m excited about after being at a big company for the past two years. I’ll be working on the frontend of the site and will be reporting into Evan, my manager for my first year at Yahoo! I am sad to leave the Autos team behind, but I am excited about my next adventure.

Those who I wish to tag next: Rachel, Steph, and Katie

Those of you with a Wii, let me know so I can add you to my Wii address book so we can… I don’t know. Whatever doing that does. Share a Mii or something. Mine is so lonely.

It’s bonus blog entry night! This has been half-written in my drafts for a long time, but the book was so fabulous that I’m going to just post what I had written so it doesn’t get lost in the pile of half-written memories.

Based on a recommendation from Pamie.com is reading when I was at the library because it sounded neat. It’s called “Love Is A Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at Time” and is written by Rob Sheffield, who is a music critic for Rolling Stone, and it’s his memoirs, but he uses a series of mix tapes he’s made to relive those times. The first chapter talks about his wife dying after 5 years, 10 months of marriage, and it is him listening to a mix tape she made and he’s staying up all night listening to it over and over. “I now get scared about forgetting anything about Renee, even the tiniest detail, even the bands on this tape I can’t stand - if she touched them, I want to hear her fingerprints….I count on the music to bring me back — or more precisely, to bring her forward.” I just freaking love that, probably because I see myself in there so much. Music is like that for me. We were just talking about that at lunch the other day, how a song can bring back such a vivid memory. A specific moment in time, a person, an emotion. So many songs remind me of so many things, and that can never be replaced. The book goes on to tell the story of their relationship and his life after her death, and uses various mixtapes to do it. It’s really a beautiful tribute to someone that obviously impacted his life in a huge way.