LIVE FROM THE ARCHIVES

Just in case you've missed any illustrations along the way, I wanted to point out i've added an Illustration Archive on the right nav bar. This has all the illustrations that have appeared in various posts, so check it out if you joined the Stringdom late or just want to flip through them again. Enjoy.

NEW ILLOS

Some new illustrations that I did as a Christmas present for my niece. Click on the image to see both of them. Enjoy.

O CHRISTMAS TREE

The past few years we've been out of town for the holidays, so we haven't bothered with getting a tree. Even though we're going to be out of town again this year, we were feeling the holiday spirit. So with the help our niece, Tess Louise, we picked out and decorated this small giant, all of 4 feet, which is about all our apartment can handle. We even threw on some Christmas music and made cookies just for good measure. So for the next few weeks we'll be basking in the fresh pine scent of our tree and vacuuming up fallen needles.

NOW DEPARTING FOR...

We've been belaboring the destination of our next trip abroad for a few weeks now. Seeing as we're trying to travel the middle 2 weeks of January, we're getting a bit of a late start on the planning. Originally we had intended on going to Argentina using airline miles, which didn't end up working out. Airline miles are vexing that way. Our next choice was buying tickets to New Zealand, but that proved wildly expensive. So with our first two choices off the table, we broke out the atlas and started playing the where should we go next game. We dabbled with some other destinations in South America, but since our last 2 trips were to Costa Rica and Peru & Bolivia, we decided to head to a different part of the world. I was intrigued by Moscow, but after a check of the weather we ruled it too cold. Kristin zeroed in on Egypt. I then became fixated with the South Pacific. Basically we were all over the place. So last night we broke out the wine and the laptops and invited our friend Andy over, who in his own right is a walking & talking atlas, and started searching the globe. About a bottle of wine down, we finally zeroed in on south east Asia and then after finding cheap tickets and hearing a good sales pitch from Andy we ultimately decided to get tickets to Singapore. We're also planning on checking out Malaysia. So should be a good mix of uber-modern city and then jungles and parks. Assuming we can avoid a caning it should be great. Can't wait.