Exactly 365 days ago, Veronica and i were married at the Brazilian Room. What a crazy affair that was. Since then, the newlyweds have bought a house, adopted two dogs, and otherwise turned our eyes towards the future. Let me summarize how domestified i've become ... the other day over dinner i was going through my wallet, found a receipt from Petco, and mumbled contentedly "hey, i saved $3 on dog food". But all kidding aside, this has been a great first year of marriage. Bring on the remaining 57 or so.

I wracked my brain over what a good gift for our "paper anniversary" would be, and i think i succeeded. We'll find out tonight over dinner at Left Bank in Menlo Park. A little taste of where we're headed later this month for our year-delayed honeymoon. Those plans are developing nicely ... we fly into London on the morning of August 28th, and spend three days there before taking a train down to Paris. We're spending four days there in a nice hotel on the Left Bank, only 300m from the Seine and the Île de la Cité (home to Notre Dame). After that, we hop on another train and ride off to a couple of days in Amsterdam, after which we head by rail to Cologne in northwestern Germany. We spend a final five days there, during four of which i'll be splitting my time between Veronica and the fourth annual meeting of the Society of Molecular Imaging. I got an extra ticket for Veronica so she can attend the meeting-sponsored dinner cruise on the Rhine and the gala dinner at the Gürzenich concert hall. Then we fly back to London and on to San Francisco (via Dallas). I'm looking forward to reacquainting myself with Paris after last being there in 1989.

A couple more errant events have happened in our neighborhood (late night shouting, police visits). We've been good about parking our cars behind the house, so nothing has directly affected us. It's disconcerting however, and certainly doesn't help you sleep at night when you're wondering whether some f@$#ing whacko is wandering around outside causing mischief. I doubt if we'll stay in this neighborhood for more than three or four years, but i don't regret the decision to start gaining equity by purchasing a house. However, couple that tension with the fact that Tara and Pepe are now regularly waking up two or three times a night to either cough and wheeze (Pepe), be let outside (Tara), or scratch themselves and make an unholy racket on the hardwood floors (both), and you can understand why i think i've only gotten a maximum of 3 hours of continuous sleep in the last 2 weeks.

I've been toying with a few site improvements. One is adding keywords to each journal post, to allow those who could care less about my soccer rantings to filter them. I'm debating whether that's useful or not, so it hasn't made it to prime time yet. Another is the continued tweaking of the music and stats interfaces. I'm entranced by the enlarging/shrinking pictures javascript i wrote for the music stats page, i'm contemplating how to expand upon that concept and make it even slicker. I signed up for an Amazon Associates account so i can link directly to Amazon searches and products. Kinda silly, but on the up side if any of you buy something after clicking on one of my links, i get a little cut from Amazon. Currently i've only got links in the album reviews section, but i'm debating how to expand their application. Like i'm ever going to see any of this money. In the meanwhile, my quest for content has been fueled mainly by several more album reviews. I'm really searching for the way to generate the most content with the minimum amount of effort. C'mon, you think genius like this just magically makes its way into print?

V has resumed painting our dining room, which is looking more even now that she sanded down the splotchy areas and put on another coat. One or two more coats and it should be ready for application of the gloss stripes. I got even more domestified last night when our toilet clogged and i was unable to plunge it into submission. I was forced to go to Orchard Supply Hardware and pick up a toilet auger (ie, a drain snake) and ram, twist, and turn this thing all the way down the toilet until it cleared the blockage. Our gardening labors continue, with even more foliage set to be removed from our front and back yards as i find the energy. We've got a few tomato plants that seem to have taken root in our back yard from incompletely removed plants left by the previous owner of the house. I've got to remove those before they resemble the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, which doesn't look far off.

That movie gets a lot of name-checking as the epitome of silliness, but it was actually quite funny. "Affairs got to the point where the mere mention of the word 'tomato' would cause panic." Cut to a smirking man reading in the middle of a library, who slyly looks up from his book and says nonchalantly, "Tomato.". And naturally everyone runs away screaming.

Am i the only one who does not and may not ever regard the winners of shows like American Idol and Rock Star: INXS as valid artists? To me, these sorts of contests trivialize the whole artistic endeavor. The INXS show is entertaining enough, but i don't think anyone will really accept the winner as Michael Hutchence's spiritual successor. This was highlighted on a recent show when one of the band members asked a contestant if she liked singing covers. Is there any correct answer to that question? Yes, i love singing other people's songs ... so you're a karaoke artist? No, i hate performing songs that i didn't create ... and you're auditioning to be Michael Hutchence's substitute? I think there's a motive question in music that dictates audience acceptance, certainly in my case. Yes, Green Day writes catchy songs, but i can't really take them at face value and hence they just don't gain my approval.