merry christmas... happy new year... quite embarrassed this site hasn't been touched in nearly 5 months...

no real legitimate excuses... and the more i think about it, being "busy" is never a real excuse for anything (all that reveals is one's lack of planning skills...). so, i just didn't plan real well. neat. check me out.

i'm actually on a plane headed for thailand right now. after four and a half straight months of foreign language classes for four hours a day, i feel pretty good about getting out of the country for a bit and enjoying some serious play and some serious rest. gonna be rock climbing in south thailand for a few weeks, where it's supposed to have some of the best, most picturesque climbing in asia, if not the world. though, i haven't climbed for some time now, and i reckon i might be a bit of a beginner again for the first few days... andy, tim, joe- i wish you were coming with me.

as for the rest of you, my friends, i hope that you had a very merry christmas and a happy new year. hard to believe it's 2004 already. i still remember sitting in class in 4th grade and being taken by the thought that in the year 2000, which was an unthinkable amount of time away, i'd be 25, an utterly unimaginable age.

yet now, after another birthday last month, and raising the count to 28, i feel good. life is good. and vacations help...