It’s hard to believe, but my blog started three years ago — April 15, 2005, just a couple of days before my son was born. How time flies!

The last line of my first post was, “There’s always plenty to talk about in Peoria.” Hope you all are still enjoying the discussion.

Sorry for the light posting of late. I’ve been recovering from the busyness of Christmas and getting reacquainted with my wife and kids. 🙂 Regular posting will resume before too long.

As another year draws to a close, this is a good time to say thanks. Thanks for reading, for commenting, for discussing. I really enjoy the conversations in this virtual living room where we gather and talk about the issues of the day. I’m looking forward to more of that in 2008. Stop by often and join in the dialogue. I learn a lot from you, and so do all the other readers.

I sincerely wish you a happy new year… and I sincerely hope you have a life and aren’t reading this at 11:52 on New Year’s Eve when I’m typing it.

As you know, each December my church (where I work) does a big Christmas production — Grace Family Christmas — and it monopolizes my time from the week after Thanksgiving until Christmas day, although I do usually find some time here and there to write a post or two.

Well, it’s that time of year again. Blogging is going to be light from now until Christmas. I’ll probably have a post up in the next couple days about all the Kellar Branch stuff in the paper yesterday and today. Other than that, please consider this an open thread for you all to talk about whatever topic you’d like. I’d also encourage you to check out the fine bloggers on my blog roll in the right column.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I’ve been blogging for about two years, and I’ve noticed that I go through cycles where I’m really into it for a while, then I get completely burned out. I’m in one of those burned-out parts of the cycle right now. Frankly, I just don’t feel like blogging. I’m sure I’ll snap out of it; I usually do. Until then, feel free to use this as an open thread to discuss whatever you wish.

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on my little blog here. Do you have any suggestions, critiques, praises, criticisms, preferences, etc., that you’d like to share? Here’s your forum! I promise to listen at least as well as the school board. 🙂

You may have noticed that the header for my blog has a new picture. I’ve been wanting to change it for some time, but just haven’t gotten around to it before now. The old picture was one was a great picture of the Peoria skyline at night that I found online. The new picture was one I took this evening around 5:30 at East Peoria’s riverfront park. The view of Peoria’s skyline from this park is really spectacular. I highly recommend it to all you shutterbugs out there.