I just noticed that my title image looks horrible. I think the chips look fine but the blue is all pixelated as it goes from darker to lighter. Not to mention it goes from light to dark to light again. How did I never notice this?

*UPDATE*
On second glance (from my home computer) it looks fine and thus it must be because my monitor at work is set at 16 bit instead of 32? Unfortunately I have to have it like that or the software I use won’t really work. Nicely designed.

I’ve actually been trying to gear myself up to start writing again and really expecting that no one would see it. This time I wouldn’t try to tell my friends that I was writing, or writing again. I’d just write for myself. Hopefully I will actually do that.

But then someone goes and ruins that plan by actually commenting on my blog after another two month hiatus.

We’ll just have to see what this means.

For starters, the most exciting thing about to happen in my life:
My girlfriend will be moving up from Austin, Texas to beautiful Minneapolis sometime in the next 4-8 weeks. I’m quite excited about it.

As one of my good female friends said: “Finally, Brenden, one of your girlfriends is moving *toward* you instead of away from you.”
Yep, that’s right. Thanks.

Hehe. Actually, I thought it was funny. I’m not as bitter at St. Louis (the current home of my last two girlfriends) as I once was.

Since my last post I’ve been to Texas three times; I bought a Nintendo DS Lite; my company has hired two new employees, one of which works under me; and my girlfriend has graduated from grad school and had a birthday. That’s a whole lot going on!

But instead of trying to recap everything I’m going to keep it simple with a little story from tonight.

My parents and I were out on the back porch having a delicious dinner of spinach ravioli and broccoli when we started to hear this popping noise in the woods behind us. We all looked up with confused looks on our faces wondering what it was. My mom thought that maybe it was some kids setting off some firecrackers. I thought that it sounded like something was happening to a tree.

The popping subsided and we resumed our dinner. But then the sound started up again. This time it kept on going and we got up to try and look for the source. Then we saw a big tree swaying a little. It was falling down! The thing was huge and with a number of giant heaves and pops it finally tumbled down back into the forest. And left in its place was a giant “hole” for more light to come in.

Our neighbor walked over into our yard to talk to us about it and we all headed down to see. Lo and behold was a giant oak tree, that could have been 100 or more years old. Broken off a ways up on its trunk and fallen to the ground. I had brought my camera along and here is what I saw, with my 5′ 9″ dad standing next to it for scale.

Pretty darn exciting and sad at the same time. The tree looked healthy and had tons of leaves on it. It didn’t look rotten where the trunk had split and there weren’t any bugs or termites pouring out of it. We thought that maybe it had been struck by lightning in one of the huge storms from last Friday, but there didn’t appear to be any burn marks. It may have just been it’s time to fall.

I went to see Franz Ferdinand and Death Cab for Cutie last night. I must say that it was a disappointment.

It was dee-lish!

But let’s get to what we all enjoy about Easter…Peeps in surgery (from Peep Research) and burnt Bunnies (from the Bunny Survival Tests homepage).

There go some tumbleweeds through the ghost town that is the world of Just Plain Chips.

It’s not that my life has been uninteresting. It is just that my muse has left me for a while.

The most exciting of news over the last month or so is that I have a girlfriend. It’s true! I’m very excited. She’s awesome. The only thing wrong with her that I can think of is that she lives over 1000 miles away. We’ve been dealing with it pretty well though, at least I think so.

Well, I just wanted to say hello to all of my faithful readers out there. I’m glad you’re still around.

I remember reading the sports section of the Star Tribune every morning before going to school. Checking Kirby’s box score. Recomputing his batting average and comparing it to some of the other players in the league to see where he stood. I collected baseball cards and coveted his most of all, I probably have 20 or 30 of just him.