the following things are interesting:

Dear readers, hello. As you can tell, we're just kind of getting things off the ground with this here "weblog," but yes. If you're reading this, thank you. We'll try not to be too boring.

So basically, my girlfriend Kristine and I are going to be leaving for a two-and-a-half-week vacation to Europe in a couple of weeks (headed to the three most obvious capital cities to visit, London, Paris and Rome because we're incredibly original), and we got to talking about setting up a travel blog instead of bombarding people will inane emails making references to places they've never been and waxing pathetic about how weird the food is there and how much they miss everyone; rather than forcing our blatherings upon your friends, we figured we'd let our friends determine how often and to what degree they wished to be blathered to. So here we are. Are you feeling it?

But now that I've spent a couple hours arranging shit and fussing with a colour palette on this thing, I find myself thinking it would be kind of cool to just keep this page going as a blog in general. This was an odd thing to find myself thinking, seeing as I have historically dismissed this medium as too disposable and masturbatory, and especially seeing as I already write a far more disposable and masturbatory column called Life After Gretzky for Vue Weekly, Edmonton's independent news and arts magazine. God knows the last thing I'll probably feel like doing is writing when I get home from a day of more writing--and paid writing at that--but hey. For some reason, I think it's "neat," and frankly, I've done a lot stupider things for that reason than set up a blog. Like stapling my dink to a chair, for example. Or voting NDP in a federal election.

Anyhow, long story in four words: me giving blog try. So join us, won't you, as Kristine and I traverse this swirling fantasia of joy and excitement that is life in the hinterland, albeit a swirling fantasia briefly punctuated by the actual swirling fantasia that will be my first trip overseas. When we get back, everyone gets birthday cake. Every day, for the rest of their lives.