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Yes, I’m still alive.

Dries — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 05:51:24 +0000

My word. I’ve been ignoring the Babblegator for nearly two weeks!

There’s a good reason for that, though. Jenny and I have now moved out of our Austin apartment. We were done yesterday (Friday) around 8 PM; she then drove to Cedar Park to stay with her dad for a few days and now I’m in College Station with my parents, unwinding before we meet up in Dallas and drive on to… *gulp*… California… on Thursday. I can’t believe it. The summer flew by. It seems like yesterday we got back from Europe, but I think the real adventure is finally about to begin.

It was an incredible pain in the ass trying to get everything packed. Our cars aren’t exactly spacious: I drive a Mazda econobox (thanks to Victor for that term!), Jenny drives a Hyundai econobox, and considering we have to move everything but our furniture (that is, clothes, kitchen stuff, computers, books, scores, etc. etc.) it was quite a challenge to cull our wordly possessions down to two cars’ worth of stuff. We had to throw away a lot of perfectly good stuff–including our microwave!–because it simply wouldn’t fit.

Anyhoo–I think we managed it pretty well in the end. I’m just going to enjoy unwinding in a nice, spacious house for a few days before setting off on our 1.973 mile Oddysey to California.

Moving etc.

Dries — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:08:31 +0000

Our move to California is coming closer and closer: Jenny and I will be leaving for the Bay Area (Emeryville, to be more exact) three weeks from today. We’ve been trying to pack for a few days now, but it seems that all we’ve done so far is turn our place into a labyrinthine trash heap.

My last two moves were in Austin, so I never felt a need to throw away anyting when I packed. I just taped my desk shut and wheeled it into the moving truck.

The result of that strategy is that now, nearly four years later, I have an absurd amount of stuff cluttering my room. Figuring out what can come with us to California and what gets to be trashed is taking a long time. Still, it’ll be nice to start with a clean slate once we arrive… and it should be much easier to keep our new place clean without all of that extraneous garbage lying around!

We’ll be selling off most of our furniture too, so if you should want a desk, table, chairs, futon, TV stand, or book case, and you happen to live in Austin, send me a note.

New theme!

Dries — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 19:28:32 +0000

So this place is coming together pretty nicely, I think! Jenny whipped up a logo in Flash and Photoshop and I coded around it a little bit. Stay tuned for actual, you know, content.

Why hello there.

Dries — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 03:16:16 +0000

This is the first post. Admittedly, I have made many first posts, most of which were soon followed by an unassuming last post. Let’s hope this first post will be different.

A little about me: my name is Dries, I currently work as a GIS analyst for a small company in Austin, Texas, and am moving to California in just a few months to start grad school at Berkeley. I’ll be getting a master’s in public policy.

Some important points regarding this blog:

I majored in music composition, so I’ll be blabbing about music a lot. Any and all kinds of music. You can find some of my tunes at my slightly more official website. I plan on putting up some sort of semi-regular podcast once I get a better microphone.
I’m also fairly… urm… political, so I’ll be blabbing about politics a lot, too. I’d be lying if I told you my choice of grad degree wasn’t informed by my political views.
And lastly, I was born in Belgium and lived there until I was 12, so I’ll be blabbing about things European a bit, too.

So there you have it.

Oh, and as for the name: I had no clue what I wanted to name this website, so I used a service by the friendly folks over at dotomator. Nothing nicer than a loquacious reptile with big teeth, I always say!