Enough anticipation for you? Well, it was enough for me. So much has happened since the turn of the year, but there's no good place to begin. Do I rehash my new years festivities, which run from a yurt being built to games of Mario Kart? Do I speak to the realm of writing, in which there lies both a miserable failure and a glorious success? Do I recount the tales of my friends, who are launching websites, teaching the masses, and joining cults? Do I bore you with long-winded descriptions of food?

    Maybe later.

    For tonight, I will talk about a house. My house. I moved in after returning from my New Years parties, and have also given it a name. Though not as alliterative as the Moldy Mansion, I am still well-pleased with my moniker for the new house. For Lo, I shall launch forth into the rest of my life beginning from this ridiculous residence:

          House Of The Rising Pun

    It will be a long journey, but my plan is to eventually make that name official, to the point where the post office will deliver mail to the House of the Rising Pun with no street address-- just a city and zip code. This, I expect, will take at least five years. But in the meantime, all incoming postal mail that I have sway over shall have House of the Rising Pun listed above the street address, to start training the postmen.

    In fact, the name is one that I like enough that I think I'm going to try to make it very mine. More on that later in the week. Not necessarily tomorrow, because for 2004, I've given up on guaranteeing six posts a month. Especially in a month where I didn't have Internet access for over two weeks, after which WSO (the host of this site and my method for updating) went down for a few days.

    But I digress.

    I was talking about my house. Or trying to. The problem is, as you might have guessed, that I don't really know where to begin. And I don't just mean in talking about it, I mean in living in it. Considering that I've lived here nearly a month, the house looks decidedly non-inhabited. There aren't curtains on the windows, unless you count a towel, a fleece blanket, and a few T-shirts strung up in a pathetic attempt to keep warmth in the house but which end up doing little more than making my living room look like a bizarre T-shirt crucifixion scene, although you'd still probably be better served to stare at my windows then you would to go watch Mel Gibson's "The Passion".

    There's also a draft in the basement. Half the stairs have been forced to go to war in Iraq. No, I mean it's cold. Damn cold. Cold enough that I can see my breath when I go down there, insofar as I can see anything, because some of the lights don't necessarily work.

    And I haven't really unpacked yet. Partially because I have nowhere to put everything. So I've got a bunch of bags half-filled with clothes on the floor, a few piles elsewhere, the usual stack of boxes which haven't been unpacked since three moves ago, and my computer on a pile of cardboard boxes (but hooked up to DSL!) because it really takes two people to move my table/desk upstairs. There aren't shelves. Not that I lack furniture-- my living room is replete with chairs. No tables, but chairs galore, ranging from a rocking chair that doesn't rock to a schooldesk chair, y'know, one of those ones with the desk on the arm that folds to the side upwards but not down.

    And I've completely failed to set up the kitchen. There's one dishrack that I've put some dishes in, but my countertops are covered with pots, pans, bowls, and various bits of food that I haven't sorted into the pantry* yet. The microwave door opens halfway before running into a jar of peanut butter, a can opener, and a small pile of garlic and shallots. I haven't unpacked my non-GeorgeForeman grill, or put anything in my kitchen under-sink cabinets.

    But in spite of the nonsense, my inability to focus on anything, the overwhelming feeling I get knowing that everything around me is in need of maintenance, the incredible amount of debt, and the constant fear that ninjas will break into my house when I'm not home and kick down all my walls, I think this year is off to a good start, and I'm glad to have a home base from which to do some of the myriad things that need doing.

    Now, where to begin...