I really hope people are checking out and digging my little travel diary/reminiscence thing and the photos.  I’m only just now getting into the mountains on my way out – there are dozens of pictures to share from NC to CA, in CA, and all the way back to MI.  I hope my “narration” has the intended effect of being entertaining and personalizing, rather than dull and tedious.  There are some really gorgeous photos going up, and more coming (of better quality, too…).  I might even work on some video of the trip tonight, if I have any captured. (Update – I do have plenty capped, but I don’t know if I’ll get anything done with it tonight or not.)

I also whipped up a quick change to the site design again, doing away with the rounded corners and making the rest of the content container look less like a giant Chiclet.  Apparently I have to track down a theme that can handle the nested comments feature in this latest version of BlogEngine and see what I need to do to implement it in my own design (or just find a design I like out there in open-source land).

As a sidebar to the whole California thing that I’m now engaged in documenting, the girl, Samara, who was half the reason I went…never worked out.  Last I mentioned her, she was AWOL and had reappeared a couple of months after I got back to MI.  As she had violated my trust and left me with little to no way of verifying anything she said about herself, I was a bit skeptical but gave her the benefit of the doubt and set a couple of ‘gottas’ – as in staying in touch through media other than World of Warcraft, letting me know enough about her so that I could track her down if she just disappeared (she says she’s been having some serious health issues involving major surgery.  I have no way of proving or disproving this, but had been trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.  As I had unfortunately expected, she stayed in touch for about three days and then stopped messaging me, disappearing completely from my IM’s again within a couple of weeks, so that drama is now over (and if/when I ever get time/money to play WOW again, I’ll be returning to <Identity Crisis>).  As much sympathy as I have assuming the stories she’s told me are true, she has repeatedly failed to demonstrate the level of interest in me or in our relationship for me to believe any longer that she’s interested in anything but attention online – hell, she can’t even be bothered to read this blog, as far as I can tell.  So that’s the end of that.  I grew tired of people who only care when it’s convenient for them a long time ago.

Also related to that trip, I’ve updated the main “Goin’ to California'” page on this site to include pointers to the five photo posts I’ve made already, as well as my last post from NC before hitting the road.

There’s a lot of material here.  I hope someone actually gives enough of a damn to read it and get some kind of enjoyment out of it.