New face for a new day. New outlook on the skyline. Warmth is in the air, and even the rain feels good because of it. The tree outside my window has youth bumps running up and down the branches, ready to burst into a sea of leaves. Said window is now found in the open position with some frequency.

April sure entered strong this year. For better and worse.

It’s amazing how much the world has changed since I last posted. Mitch Hedberg went quietly. That makes one favorite author and one favorite comic gone in the calendar year. But of course the big one would be his holiness Pope John Paul II, which had the effect of stopping all television news. One thing garnered from the thousands and thousands of hours of biographical footage was that he was a varied individual — more sides to him than I gave him credit for. Now the world watches as the Vatican begins the cryptically ancient process of selecting a successor. Even in death, there is rebirth.

And musically, it’s been a very exciting few weeks both live and in new releases. Queens of the Stone Age and The Benevento Russo Duo have blessed me both with new albums and live performances. Lake Trout delivered on the show and will have the album coming later this year. The shows begin to get more numerous as the month progresses, with the Jammy’s looming large on the 26th. How can one not get excited by all of this?

In fact, one might just run up to a total stranger and get into a screaming contest. Or perhaps a total stranger just rushes up to you and starts things off. Maybe even a cute as all get-out stranger. Yeah, there’s about as much a chance of that happening as running into someone you used to work with in the subway.

And who’s to say that these things don’t happen?

With all the sweeping changes that seem to be going on, it was about time to do some here on the web as well. The posting system has been changed over to WordPress, which I intend to hack to pieces along with the default layout. It really is quite lovely, but my personal site must scream from my soul. That creative voice in my head won’t rest until I have rebuilt the site in his image, and damn if he isn’t annoying.

This is the first visual representation of an effort I started back in November. After finding that splitting my old content into two separate blogs was a bad idea, I merged them back together. I also folded back in the last of my pre-MoveableType comments and gave those posts that were missing titles some snazzy eye catchers. This is the most complete the archives have been in ages, and it’s only going to improve from here on in. The technical switch was all done in about 2 hours or so, thanks to the ridiculously easy manner in which my hosting provider has made it to set up an installation of WordPress.

I’m also trying to get a bunch of work from my freelance business out the door. The ever present patience of one client with a serious musical slant to his site has to pay off soon. It seems like every time I finally find the time to work on his stuff, the bigger, more resource hungry company that I’ve been distancing myself from comes and weighs in on my time. Late night sessions where I burn through the night have become overly frequent, but somehow I would manage to get everything asked of me done.

Of course, it has to end eventually and one of the smaller projects slipped, with the work only getting half done. That was the sign I needed. I’m cutting back how much work they can give me in an attempt to even the playing field for my other clients. Once they were my employers. Now they’re a client. I think I like this arrangement better.

And we’ve come full circle. Sometime long ago it was decided that there would be orbits and rotations in the universe, and ever since spinning wheels have been a way of life. Motion is conveyed and time is propelled in these fashions, which means that you get to spend as much time looking at the sky as you do with your face in the mud. I’ve already had my taste of dirt, so here’s to drinking in the sunshine.

• Queens of the Stone Age – “Lullabies to Paralyze”
• The Benevento Russo Duo – “Best Reason to Buy the Sun”