When the blogging slows down to a trickle, there's really no point in trying to fill in all the gaps between posts. Trying to remember it all is often pointless (for me, anyway, since years of sleep deprivation has fried my memory) and it is even worse when there is little to report. I'm going through the latter.

Not entirely true, of course. I went north last Wednesday afternoon to spend a nice long weekend with EF, coming back by train today. I could let rip with a bilious rant about Amtrak, but I'm already over it. That thing is never on time when making the return trip (going north is always on time or close to it), and not only is it late, but it's late by hours and hours. It's a good thing I was able to sleep through most of it, or I would have been seething.

The trip was nice and relaxing, as long weekends tend to be. Highlights include:

-Exchanging Valentine's gifts on my first night there.

-Spending quality time with EF and her mother.

-EF and I going into Pittsburgh a couple of times so that I could indulge my record store addiction. We hit Eide's Entertainment and Dave's Music Mine, where I went on a nice little buying binge like I haven't done in quite a while. I picked up The Essential Fishbone and two Prince discs from the latter (Come and The Love Symbol album, or "O(+>" as it is shown on iTunes), while grabbing Zatokrev's self-titled disc, SunnO)))'s Black One, Destroy Erase Improve by Meshuggah, Torture Killer's Swarm, and a tribute to the Melvins called We Reach, which features a number of metal's bigger names (Isis, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Mastodon, High On Fire, Pig Destroyer, etc.) at Eide's. I hope to hit Brave New World the next time I go to visit. I'm ripping all of the into the iPod as I type this. If I manage to find a spark for writing any time soon, more about this music and much more could be found on my music blog.

-Had a great dinner with EF, her cousin and his wife at DeNunzio's in Latrobe.

-Meeting up with a couple of friends of theirs after dinner for drinks at a private club near where EF lives. $0.80 drafts! Cheap booze on all levels.

-Brief text fun with The Driz on Saturday afternoon.

-Getting EF hooked on Guitar Hero (on the few times we were in the house long enough to actually sit down and veg).

And that's about it. Now I'm home, wishing I was still up in PA, and not at all wanting to go to work tomorrow. Same as always, eh?