Hello from Carlsbad, California, a beautiful town just north of San Diego. I’m here on a freelance job with my friend Mark doing some graphic design, photography and video editing for a medical company’s conference. It’s a good time – there’s a decent amount of work to keep us busy but we still have some free time to get out and enjoy the warmth. Our hotel is on a hill that overlooks a lagoon and the ocean. We’re probably about two miles in from the coast, but I’m hoping to go for a run here in a little bit and make my way down to the beach.

My flight out was interesting after a layover in Detroit, it was a four-hour flight to San Diego. Of course, it was 80 degrees on the plane the entire way, so I ended up nice and sweaty by the time we landed. Extended periods of sitting in a warm environment is just way too conducive for back sweat, and I hate back sweat. It’s quite unstoppable, though. Additionally, I sat next to some interesting people with weird stories that made me uncomfortable. Good times.

Anyway, here’s where we’re staying. It’s so nice to see some green and blue.

And here’s Mark posing with some of the creepy statues that are all around this resort. I keep thinking I’m seeing real people, but then they just end up being statues. Maybe they come alive at night, like that old kids’ show Today’s Special. If that’s the case, I’m staying in my room and locking the door, because I don’t trust those statues.

Sometimes the hardest thing about writing a blog post is getting off to a good start. You can write some kind of funny greeting, use a news headline or write about how hard it is to start a blog post.

Well, it’s a new year and I’ve managed to make some minor tweaks to the blog to clean it up a bit. It’s always an adventure for me to start working with CSS and PHP, and inevitably I end up with a browser window that has about 23 separate tabs open.

I had a great holiday in Cincinnati and New York, and I thought I’d share just a few pictures of the Liberty state.

My friend Reid and I ventured into the city early one morning to watch an Arsenal game at Nevada Smith’s, a soccer pub in south Manhattan. Unfortunately, I got to Lake Champion at about 1am after driving from Philadelphia in thick fog, and we woke up at 4am to catch the train to the city. It was a long day and we were incredibly tired when we got home.

Lake Champion was, as always, beautiful.

With beautiful sunsets.