^__^ Thank you all! Your words and images, your thoughts and sounds, they mean so much to me ... I'm very grateful.

My last journal entry was January of '07, and I had winter vacation on my mind. Now that we're finishing up '08, and winter vacation is just over the horizon ... I'm glad to say I'm definitely in a better place than before. If nothing else, I've actually posted things! That I wrote! MAGICO!

I've a boatload of poems up, and likely some more on the way ... we'll see. This semester, I'm taking a short fiction class and a verse class, and golly if I ain't putting out more product than before! Funny, I know. As for my next and final semester, I was unable to get into a poetry class but DID get into another short fiction course ... boo-radley-yah.

As it falls, I DO have some short stories written, which I could potentially throw onto DA in pieces ... once I've edited the everliving guts outta them, of course. We'll see how that unfurls as we go along.

If I'd said it before, I'll say it again: I'm way loving that I'm back on the reading train. If there's one thing I'm hoping to get from the English department, it's a solid habit of reading on a regular basis. Doesn't even have to be mad-dash classics all the time; I loves me some genre as much as the next Sherlock. But as long as it's a bona fide story ... something REAL, in the Lupe Fiasco sense ... then I'm all onboard.

Nothing major under the sun at present. Fiancé's down in Southern Cali with her family for the week, brother's back from Chi-town until January. I'm feeling good vibes, being back with the family, I'm feeling the fair weather of the mind even when it's a brilliant blue-white brrrrr outside.

Shoot me a question if it's cocked and loaded. Shout if you know what I'm feeling. Keep it sweet.

Benjamin Octopus