EngelFish.Net

While movies and TV shows make it look like married guys go crazy when their wife leaves town, reality is far different. Between office work, photography jobs, and dealing with the wreckage of our mid-demolition apartment, I’m too busy to throw Old-School style parties and unleash my inner party guy. One stereotype is true though. I miss Taryn every time she travels. Her abscense unbalances things. Even the cats pace the apartment in the mornings looking for her.For those of you keeping track, we’re still house shopping. Lots of possibilities, but nothing that grabs both of us. We’re even considering building something custom. As I hinted at above, the renovations at our place are still going on. As I left for work yesterday morning, a young guy in a dust-mask was going ballistic on the wall surrounding our circuit breaker panel with a ballpeen hammer. Good morning to you too, Buddy.The basement studio is no more … long live the studio. It’s looking like the space Kurt and I were talking about is going to work out. We’ll know more in a week or so, but he’s pretty confident that we’ve got it. I’m really looking forward to moving into a less ramshackel space. It’s exciting to have an opportunity to make a space to work and be creative in. I plan on spending a lot of time there, so enlightened self-interest will probably inspire some DIY upgrading and decorating.

Have you ever heard of Pandora.com? It’s a streaming music site, and I’m totally digging it. I’m working late tonight, with the lights off, and as I work on my tech-geek tan I’m also rocking out to Imogene Heap and Cake radio. Beat the heck out of commercial radio. It ranks up there next to Aurgasm.us for musical goodness.

For those of you who remember me talking about the Challenge: Portrait the Raleigh Flickr Group did a few months ago, we have news. The schedule at April & George is full through the end of the year, so we’re planning on having the show sometime early next year. I’ll be working with the group to work out the printing and framing, and share the opening night announcements when they’re ready. In the meantime, there’s that pesky book I was working on…

IMAGE: Taryn and I were driving the beltline the other day, just running errands. She had her el cheapo sunglasses on that we’d picked up in the mall a while back. The weather was beautiful and we had the top down on the Cabrio. I just dug the reflections.

I’ve realized that I’m (A) too busy, and (B) that this blog is pretty unfocused.  As such, I’m switching to a once-a-week posting schedule, with guaranteed new posts on Monday mornings.  I may put up the occassional midweek item, but they’ll be the odd job.  So until Monday…

IMAGE: Whiteboard + Cameraphone = Bad Cartoons

I haven’t quite figured out how to do surveys/polls in WordPress yet, so I’ll ask the question in a post instead.  What is your daily “online life” like?  How often to you get on the web, and what do you do when you’re there?  What kinds of blogs, sites, etc, do you go to… and why?  Personally, I check probably 20 sites/blogs daily, and spend anywhere from 20 minute to an hour plus reading them.  Another question I have is, what motivates you to leave a comment?  I can see from my hits-map that I’m getting daily hits from around the world, but I get very few comments.  Why is that?  Just like my post from a few days ago, I’m thinking about what I can do to make this site more dynamic, interactive, and interesting.  Thanks!

 Today’s Photo: To celebrate finishing her exam’s, Taryn and rode up to to Dalat for dinner… with her shiney new helmet!   And I got a Flickr Gang Sign out of her too!

The original intent of EngelFish.Net (the site formerly known as goatrodeo.com) was to keep in touch with my scattered friends and family, but with all the change (a new hosting service, new blogging tools, etc…) I’m taking some time to reconsider it’s purpose. I have never had a “mission statement” or anything similar for my site, and I’ve got two other sites going up (chrisengel.com for my commerical photography and veiledlight.com for my portrait/wedding/family photography), so I’m still thinking this will be more personal. I would really like to hear from you folks, my readers, what you’d like to see. What have you liked in the past, and what would you like to see in the future?Most of you know about my main interests, photography, movies, travel, running, food, books & short stories, podcasts, and DIY projects, so you know where I’m most likely to gravitate. Would you be interested in reviews of movies, books/audiobooks, and podcasts I’ve tried? Discussions of things photographic or fitness related? Recipies and commentary on restaurants in the area? Plans and reports on various DIY projects I’m working on?  Or just more of the same musings and reportings of what’s going on in my world?  So don’t just drop in for a quick read and leave unheard. Speak up and leave a comment I’m not asking for a dissertation on the fruitlessness of vanity websites, just a quick one-liner sharing your thoughts on what it takes to make a webpage part of your daily online life.  Thanks!

I broke up with old hosting service, and now I’m with a new one.  The site will go through some changes, that’s for sure.  Keep checking back to see how things grow!