In the morning, we headed out for Miami Beach,  taking a leisurely drive toward South Beach. As we got there, it became more and more crowded, and it seemed unlikely that we would be able to find any parking, but we lucked into a space, hopped out, and began exploring on foot.

Check out the Whole Gallery

After wandering around the beach for a bit, we stopped for lunch at a local hotel restaurant, where I had a very tasty Cuban sandwich and Charlotte got a gigantic chopped salad with grilled shrimp. We then proceeded to wander south along Ocean Avenue, which is pretty much dominated by restaurants playing thudding club music while patrons sit in outdoor dining drinking out of ridiculous 32oz margarita glasses. It’s crowded, there are people constantly shoving pamphlets at you, and there’s a lot of skin on display from both sexes. Basically it’s like Times Square, only if everyone was wearing bathing suits, which surprisingly doesn’t make it much less awful than Times Square.

Eventually sick of the crowds, we threaded our way through the art deco neighborhood before returning to our car and heading for Downtown Miami … but that’s another photo-set!

Apparently while we were touring, the Sheriff’s office was also practicing their airboat maneuvers. I guess they need the practice, because they rounded a corner and slammed into a passenger boat, tearing off the back of it and sending several police officers flying into the swamp.

No one died, and none of the civilians were severely injured. One of the deputies, however, apparently lost his toe. Our boat driver was coordinating the rescue efforts on his phone while continuing to point out the sights for us, even as several helicopters, ambulances, and fire engines showed up on the scene.

Check out the gallery!

Very exciting. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the accident  scene itself. We drove by it on the airboat and Gabe was brave enough to photograph the three severely pissed-off looking police offers stained up to their nipples by swamp water. I was not.

I can only assume the toe ended up in some gator’s belly, and that gator now has a taste for man!

UPDATE: Gabe has sent along the pic of the soaked police officers. Here it is!

To Protect and to Serve

View the whole gallery over at Flickr.

We took some pictures. Here they are.

As is typical, I ended up with the pink drink ...

Charlotte wore a lovely deep-blue dress and lots of stuff that sparkled

Note that we managed to melt part of my hat over a candle.

I'm ... not sure what's going on here.

I love filament light bulbs so much.

Why NOT play all of our party favors at once?

There were a lot of dudes in jeans and sport-coats.

Double your champagne pleasure!

More noise making. Also, I seem to be wearing a tiara.

Nearing the end of the evening. Super cute!

Some drunk girl wanted to take our picture as we were leaving. She seems to be falling over.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

That’s all for now, but more updates coming soon!

Dart Publishing

Dart Publishing, Ltd. is the official name of the business I’ve been trying to get started with my friend for a while now. We’ve made huge leaps recently, thanks in part to having some extra time due to the Crispy Gamer implosion. I’m very nearly done with the first draft of the business plan, and will be sending it out to a few folks I know with way more business experience than I have, in order to get their feedback on it. From there, it’ll be revisions, and then probably applying for some local grants. Investor money is good, but free money is even better. Might as well look for that first, right?

Writing

Last month I finished not one, but two novels — my NaNoWriMo projects from 2007 and 2009, “The Broken God Machine” and “Morgan Skylark and the Monster Hunters,” respectively. If anyone out there wants to read the first draft of The Broken God Machine, it’s ready for criticism. Just get in touch. I still need to make some tweaks to Monster Hunters before I open it up for critique from the outside world, but that should be happening soon. I’m also making some progress on the second draft of the sequel to The Blood That Bonds, currently titled “Blood Hunt.” I expect work on that to speed up significantly once I’m no longer spending my coffee shop time filling out competitive analysis forms and burn-rate spreadsheets for Dart. Speaking of TBTB …

The Blood That Bonds

I haven’t had too many responses in my agent search, and so far the responses I’ve had haven’t been positive. I’m not particularly discouraged — people are still reading the eBook and sending very positive feedback — but I’m beginning to wonder if I should revise the first chapter a little to make it a bit more attention-grabbing right from the start. There’s a little too much opening exposition and I think it’s turning agents off. We’ll see.

Photography

Unfortunately, the broken 18-55mm lens that I fixed with superglue for a while has broken again, so we’re stuck only using a distance lens on our camera, which is a pain in the ass, so we’re not taking many pics at the moment. I need to get off my ass and either re-fix the lens using a better piece of plastic (and more superglue), or just cough up the ~$140 it costs to buy a new one. Why does everything have to be so damn expensive these days? Blargh! Rotten kids … GET OFF MY LAWN!

Cocktails

I went on a bit of a beer kick the past few months, trying lots of craft beers and really strengthening my understanding and appreciation of the different types available (turns out I am way more of an ale guy than a lager guy, with a particular fondness for brown ales, porters, and stouts). I’m coming out of that now though and getting back to crafting new cocktails. I’m still experimenting right now, but when I come up with something good, I’ll post it here.

Video Games

I went out and picked up BioShock 2 the other night at my wife’s urging (one of many reasons why I married her!) and have been playing through it. I’ll post a full review here when I’m finished, but I’m pretty far in and while I’m enjoying it, I’m kind of disappointed in how much more they’ve chosen to focus on combat. You’re constantly being swarmed with enemies, and while I’m not dying a lot, it’s just not a whole lot of fun to be in non-stop firefights. After BioShock 2, I’ll be picking up Mass Effect 2, and Assassin’s Creed 2 … apparently it’s all about the sequels right now.

Reading

Sadly, given how many activities I have going on, I haven’t done much reading since Christmas, when I burned through Bill Simmons’s Book of Basketball in a week or so. I’ve got three novels and a short story collection all waiting for my attention, not to mention a non-fiction book on real estate investing that I really should finish

French

Mon francais n’est pas superb … but it’s getting better. I do a half an hour of studying per day almost every weekday, and Charlotte and I are beginning to try to speak to each other more in French. We’ve also found some French cultural events to go to around town, and I’m about to start in on French grammar in addition to speaking/listening. It’s still a halting, frustrating process — I don’t like being bad at things — but all these little steps should hopefully add up to me being able to hold something of a coherent conversation with her friends and family back in the homeland, sometime within the next couple of years. Hopefully!

Travel

Speaking of the homeland, Charlotte and I will be making another France trip in May. Her sister is getting married in the south of France, which gives us the opportunity to fly into Barcelona in Spain, and spent the next week driving to Toulouse (actually, the nearby town of Albi), where we’ll attend the wedding, hang out for another day or two, and then I’ll fly back while she goes to Paris to take her finals for the French Lit program she’s working on. We’ve also got a trip to Florida happening in March, to visit my parents and sister, and a trip to Syracuse happening … sometime. Then as summer rolls into fall, we’ve got a wedding in New York City and a wedding in New Hampshire (I think) to attend. Yeesh!

… So that’s what’s up with me, in case anyone was wondering!

Anyway, here they are:

Christmas Food

Christmas People

Paris in Winter

Freezing Versailles

Enjoy!

Yum!

By the way, the title of this post is the most obscure reference in the history of the internet. There are only four or five people who could possibly get it, and I’m willing to bet I’m the only one who remembers it.

Hooray, hanging out in my bedroom and making up songs with my other teenage friends!

Oh, and here once more are links to my recent galleries:

• Cuse Trip
• Demolition Derby

And here again are links to my two galleries from our recent trip!

• Cuse Trip
• Demolition Derby