Well? - Well!

We have had an exciting couple of weeks.

During the blizzard (before Christmas) Abby threw up all night. Abby is just over a year, so it was a long, hard night. Over the next few days, all the rest of us got sick as well - the really fun kind. Throwing up, diarrhea, the kind of stuff that just makes you want to crawl under the bed and close out the world.

Abby ended up losing a lot of weight, which was scary. She was also (understandably) miserable. Christmas Eve, I took the 2 older kids to the candlelight service at church.

We canceled our Christmas plans - we had wanted to gather all our friends who were in town without family.

Christmas morning we all felt decent, which was a blessing.

Christmas dinner was spent with strangers at the only place that I could find in town that was open - Waffle House. During our meal I had several moments reminiscent of scenes from A Christmas Story. I actually called all the Chinese Restaurants in town and they were all closed.

After Christmas day we all started feeling better. I was shovelling snow and helping people get un-stuck on and off for the next week. I finally dug out our minivan in time for the second snow storm which dumped about a foot.

So far this year I have been very busy planning to re-launch Centerra's website. If you visit the URL right now you can see the temporary site we placed there a month or so ago. Western Ascent (my company) frequently works with One Tribe Creative and contracts some of their development work. Last year we worked with them on McWhinney's website. It's been a nice arrangement, Tyler and I bring the HTML and server-side programming expertise, and they work with the client to establish the design and content needs.

I've resumed life-drawing after a hiatus during the holidays. This is such an important part of my life and being away from it always leaves me wanting. This past Monday was good in terms of how things went creatively. Some weeks I struggle to get anything on paper that makes me feel as though I shouldn't immediately stop trying. This wasn't one of those weeks.

Lastly, I have discovered a new website, a new artist and a new musician that I'd like to share with the world.

The website is The Covers Project. Artists perform covers of songs from other artists. This led me to discover Joel Cage. His cover of U2's Where the Streets Have no Name showcases his great voice and superb guitar work. Be sure to check out his MP3 page.

The artist I discovered is Michael Dooney. Of particular interest are his portrait paintings. (his site is a little confusing, go to Fun Stuff > Sketches > Paintings)

I find so many things that are treasures on the web that I think many of you may find interesting as well. I'll try to start featuring art, artists, musicians and websites I find interesting moving forward.