Phew! Busy times lately, and I don’t know why this is always the last update I ever send out. Meh, guess I’m not cut out to be a blogger…ah well.

So I suppose the big news at the moment is Stephanie is down for the count at the moment after having her wisdom teeth removed on Monday. She had all 4 removed and though the dentist thought it was going to be pretty hectic, it turned out fairly painless. She’s pretty damn swollen up at the moment (which, in its own way is sad but fairly amusing) but getting better by the day.

Along the same lines, Stephanie finished her course to become a real estate broker and passed with flying colors. She took a position with Prudential NW and her office is only a few minutes away from the house. So hey, if you’re looking to buy/sell a house, you know who to talk to! We went out and looked at some open houses the other day, and I must say I wish I could afford a $500K house – very nice places.

Me? Well, winter is thankfully coming to and end so I’m cleaning up the fishing/camping equipment and looking forward to getting out in the forest for a while. I’ve got 4 dates coming up where I’ll be DJing and I’m pumped about that, of course. There are 2 big festivals in the area this summer, so I think we may try and limit ourselves a bit so we have time to do other things too. Last summer there were tons of outdoor events, and we were left wishing we had time to do other things too. So this year – we will!

Happy 2007! Whew, it was quite a year, eh? Let's see, what are some memories from 2006 - Got a new job, played numerous psytrance tracks, got a cat, figured out what the deal was with Oregon City, Stephanie went through a couple jobs, spent some quality time with friends in Japan, spent some quality time with friends in the states, drank a grip of coffee, hung out at the dentist, went off-road in the Subaru, moved to a nice little house. Whoa, sounds like a year!

An amusing note - browsing through the traffic logs for gorilladust, it seems the top referring search terms lately have been 'older Japanese man', 'waffles', 'tribal ariane' and 'gloomy'. Excellent, I never knew the site was so varied.

Checks and Balances are back in action today - welcome back Dems! Remember what you promised?

Happy 2007 and Year of The Pig (or boar, depending on how politically correct you are). Now get to work!

Strange article...from an Indian website.

Harassed Indian woman seeks help

Karachi, December 24
An Indian woman married to a Pakistani and settled in Peshawar today accused her neighbours of duping her of her jewellery worth Rs 9 lakh by using "black magic" and of attempts to frame her in a kidnapping case.

Sheela, who hails from Bangalore, got married to the Pakistani 14 years ago in Dubai and made her home in North West Frontier Province in May this year.

Sheela said her ordeal began in November when, she claims, Palwasha, 19, who used to run a beauty parlour in the neighbourhood, visited her home to show her some ornaments.

"The moment I took those ornaments in my hand I was under a spell of black magic and they ordered me to bring all my jewellery and give it to them which I did," she alleged.

The woman said she lodged a complaint against the teenager, her mother Farzana and their accomplices after "she came out of the spell 12 hours later".

Sheela alleged that instead of helping her, the police was "being pressurized" to register an FIR against her for kidnapping Palwasha, who, the Indian said, has been seen roaming around in the city. — PTI

It's A Miracle!

I think this is worth reading:

Wise men testify to dragon's virgin birth

A clutch of four Komodo dragons that hatched at London Zoo this year were all the result of virgin births, according to research that could help scientific efforts to protect the world’s largest lizards.

Whew – it’s almost December for the love of god! Can’t believe it. I haven’t updated the blog much because…well, not a whole lot to say really. It took us a while to recover from the Japan trip for a number of reasons – It reminded us about the importance of travel in our lives, it made us rethink the whole moving back to America business and we had to hit the ground running as soon as we came back. Stephanie’s job has been hectic lately and taking up an unusual amount of time and effort. My job is pretty much the same, though now it involves a bunch of travel for the same salary. I don’t mind traveling to, say, the beach, but when I have to go to suburban corporate offices on the other side of the country for a few hour visit, it’s not so peachy. Plus, the wonders of Oregon City no longer make it such a thrilling place to spend my days.



I’ve come to the conclusion lately that I have a hard time working for other people in a cubicle these days. Though I often griped about the job in Japan and wouldn’t be happy doing it right now, it was mostly because of the company and not about the students or the job itself. IT related jobs used to be entertaining for me – you could sit and mess with a computer all day, the jobs were relatively hands-off as far as management went and in the web-design end of things you would at least have fine, finished products to look at every month or so. The issue now is that I work on a single product all the time, and it’s just not that mind blowing of a product – think working on MS Word on a daily basis. Sure, new features will roll out every once in a while, but there’s only so much excitement generated from a new search interface.



Anyway, the cat, Stephanie and I are all doing fine otherwise. We recently let the cat out to wander around outside, and he’s taken to that like a champ. Stephanie is about to finish her real estate licensing tests and studies, so that will be a glorious relief. It’s taken her about a year because she’s been working and doing other things at the same time, but she’s just got a few chapters left and then the final tests. Soon! GorillaDust.com has a new face these days and though it’s pretty simple, I’m happy with it for now. I recorded a new mix last night, and it might be ‘The One’! Eh, it’s good for now. New Years is coming up too, and I must say that I’m pretty excited about it this year. And….AND….it’s snowing today! Good luck to me driving the bug home….



We may have a fine event coming up towards the end of February too – stay tuned!