Merry Christmas!

Changes and more changes

Big new changes to report this time.

Firstly, this blog has finally been upgraded to new Blogger. It was in beta for ages but the scrooges at Google wouldn't let me use it. Now it is rolled out to everyone. This page probably doesn't look too different yet, though my disclaimer is now a little tidier :) I'll probably be adding some more content to pretty up the page over the next few months, as it is now a whole lot easier for me to do. Thanks Blogger!

Secondly, our new home for photos on Flickr is now semi-operational. You can find it here. There are three sets of never-before seen photos for you to check out:

Hannah, Gavin and Grace visit
Steph's aunts visit
Our Secret Santa party

Over the next few months I'll be migrating all of our older photo albums over to Flickr, before the old .Mac website expires in April. Hopefully viewing our photos on Flickr will be faster and more pleasant for everybody, and now you can post comments too!

That's it for now. Isn't that enough? Oh yes, and we are flying back to England on Saturday for Christmas. Look out family and friends - here we come! Woohoo!

Amos Lee

Last night we went to the Commodore Ballroom to see Amos Lee. You've probably never heard of him, and neither had I until recently. I actually came across one of his songs on an episode of ER, and ended up getting his debut album which was excellent. Now he has a new album and is touring.

I expected him to come on in a jazz hat and a suit and do some blues, but in fact the gig was much more varied than that. There was no jazz hat either - he was very casual but definitely charismatic. The gig really showed the musical variety in his songs, emphasized by some of the live arrangements which were different to what I'd heard on the album. There was a strong funk vibe throughout, but his songs ranged from blues to soul to rock to reggae, and even a bit of bluegrass and a 10-minute jam session! Amos's voice was on top form and sounded great, and his band were talented musicians who made it all look easy. Seems like most of his audience are young women, and there was much screaming and squealing, plus a good deal of singing along. Nice to be in a crowd so appreciative. We'll be buying his new album for sure.

In other news, we've been having a fair few Christmas parties! There was the Radical work party on Friday 1st which was great - lots of chatting and free booze. Then we had a Christmas dinner the next day round a friend's which was cool. Then last Friday (9th) was my team Christmas party at work (more chatting and free booze), and then on the Saturday (10th) Steph and I had a secret santa party at our place. We had a really good time and I think everyone else did too. The presents were a lot of fun, including a couple of nerf guns, an electronic voice changer and a life-size inflatable Spiderman. No end to the things you can do with that. There will be a few pictures coming - apologies for no photos as late, but I am working on moving our photo hosting from .Mac (poo) to Flickr (yay). No idea on the ETA yet - maybe after Christmas.

Talking of Christmas - not long now before we fly home! We are both looking forward to seeing our families plus a few of our friends :)