So yes, happy anniversary to me. It was one year ago that I decided to give the blogging thing a go. I had been poking my webhosting with a stick for a few months, trying to figure out what to do with it besides host a list of my CD collection, some random photos and mp3s, and after checking out Vic’s blog, I thought a similar exercise in self-indulgence might be fun.

The first iteration of the blog was pretentiously titled Universal Truths And Cycles and run on/hosted by Blogger. That lasted a week – keeping two autonomous sites running didn’t make much sense to me so very quickly I was using the FTP function to publish directly to the Chromewaves site. You can still see the old chromewaves.blogspot.com site. Ahh, memories.

Since then, things have gotten more refined here. Blogger was ditched for the much slicker Nucleus CMS. The secondary blog title was also dropped. I found my feet, figuratively speaking, in regards to writing style and deciding what and what was not blog-worthy. I’ve been gratified to see my readership increase exponentially over time… A very validating experience to be sure, even if half of it is from people doing Google searches on things that I’ve never ever talked about. I’ve met many new and interesting people, both online and in real life, and made some good friends. It’s been a great time, thanks to everyone who’s been part of it.

I should note that I’m writing this post from the couch in my new apartment. I’m considerably unpacked, the remaining boxes can’t be unloaded until I get some more shelves and a desk. The place is looking alright, if I do say so myself. Four days of moving has finally mostly come to an end, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I will take some pictures of the new place in the next couple days – I’d prefer to have some shots of it all laid out proper like instead of barely contained chaos.

I have no food. I have to go get my bike. I’m tired. But I am MOVED. Yay me.

So congratulate me, already.

I am so tired. I don’t want to move any more boxes. But if I don’t, I won’t have any clothes. And that’s sure to come back to haunt me at some point. I think I still have one more load of stuff to move tonight… I have to go back to my new place anyway, since I need a wrench to disassemble the coffee table and I have apparently already moved my wrench. MY WRENCH. I don’t know how my wrench got moved and the rest of my tools did not. Actually I do. Fuck.

Two things have come to my attention today. I’ve realized that A) my new digs are squarely within the University Of Toronto ghetto, and B) that it’s Frosh Week. Utilizing my highly developed engineer math skills, I’ve combined points A) and B) and determined that there are likely to be numerous instances of drunken students wandering my street going, “Whoooo!” for no reason. Goddamn students.

Radiohead has been rescheduled for October 15 at the Air Canada Centre, or so my sources would have me believe. This may not be any more accurate than the last resched date I posted, so take it with a grain of salt. Or better yet, find out if it’s true and then let me know. I wonder how they will handle the assigned seats with the new venue? Fairly, I hope. What I’m more curious about is whether Stephen “My crappy-ass website only works in Internet Explorer” Malkmus will still be opening.

Deposed indie queen Liz Phair brings her MILF-rock dog and pony show to the Guvernment November 15. It will be interesting to see who shows up to this – will her old fanbase, feeling dissed and abandoned by her latest album, show up to praise her or bury her? Or will they not show up at all? And considering Liz Phair has sorta tanked, will that highly coveted ‘mainstream’ come out to see her? Questions, questions.

Happy Labour Day to all those Labour-minded people out there. Me, I’m on vacation. More moving on tap for today.

Death Wish-er Charles Bronson dies at age 81. A moment of silence for the ugliest man to ever inexplicably become an action movie star.

Barring catastrophe (meaning as long as the cable guy shows up on time and I’m online), tomorrow I will be celebrating not only moving into my own digs but the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the Chromewaves blog. That’s right, I’ve been spewing inanities and bringing you the best in news that’s of interest to me and me only for a full year now. What sort of festivities do I have planned? Well, probably nothing. Not even a half-assed ‘best moments from’ clip show. Just some thoughts on the past year of blogging and an open invitation for people to wish me well. If I wasn’t knee deep in moving, I would have done up a new interface or something but the truth is, this current one still doesn’t bug me, even after a few months, which is unprecedented.

But if you’re looking for something new, Largehearted Boy has given himself a September 1st makeover.

np – The New Year / Newness Ends

Geekent went to the Neil Gaiman signing at Chapters yesterday. While Gaiman was and is one of my favorite authors, I would not have had the patience necessary to have met the man. Read about Graig’s experience at the signing.

One nice thing about moving? You find stuff. Case in point – my guitar slide, which I lost… god – three, four months ago? And I was just about to go buy a new one. That alone makes this whole exercise worthwhile.

Thanks to the help of Will and his minivan, I was able to get the bulk of my crap moved to the new place this afternoon in under two hours. Fantastic. I brought a largish piece of carpet for the living room which had been sitting in the storage locker for about five years, and has about that much dust caked into it. My allergies are having conniptions. I am going to have to vacuum that mofo like a… mofo. What’s left on the moving itinerary? Tomorrow I head back home to grab my microwave and kitchen supplies and probably bring that and clothes to the new pad, probably the computer and remaining guitar shit. Tuesday morning my dad will show up bright and early with the van to move furniture since I have to be there between 11 and 2 or some such nonsense to wait for Mr Cable Guy. Dragging this whole experience over four days may take longer, but I think it’s greatly reduced the amount of stress involved.

np – Steve Earle / Train A Comin’

I have the keys.

I went by my new place this morning to pick them up and take a look around, and the cleaners were still there. Good thing too – the place was in a sorry state. I dropped off a couple boxes and told myself it’d look better after it was cleaned up. Went back this afternoon and I was right – the cleaners did a bang-up job and the place looks pretty sharp. I took a few more measurements now that the previous tenant’s stuff is all gone. The absence of many right angles in the living room may make things tricky, but I’ll figure something out. It’s so hard to gauge things before you actually get your junk in there.

But there you go – I am now the tenant. Wow. I will take some pictures when I go back. Not being able to get my furniture moved till Tuesday is turning out to be a real pain – I can get all my other belongings over there tomorrow, but have nowhere to unpack to. That’s a problem.

Also this afternoon I went and played Scrabble with some folks who actually know how to play. It’s certainly a different game when you play by the rules.