It has been quite awhile since my last blog post. Almost seven months. I haven't kept up with my YouTube channel either. What have I been up to? Everything and nothing.

See, I totally burned myself out with an unreasonable schedule. I thought it was reasonable at the time but I didn't really think it through. If you didn't know, my schedule was three YouTube videos each week on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and two blog posts each week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That doesn't sound difficult, right? What I didn't take into account was that this meant I had to come up with something creative every single day of the week. And, to be honest, I wasn't all that happy with the content on the YouTube channel. I was able to come up with some lovely blog articles that I am very proud of but the YouTube channel was filled with unboxings and makeup challenges that I just wasn't into. And I was having issues coming up with good topics to blog about. My mind started unraveling.

So I decided to take the summer off.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the relaxing downtime I needed to refresh myself. But I did get to chaperone my daughter on another trip to the Technology Student Association National Conference in Nashville, TN. And I got to watch her play some awesome tennis. And listen to her play in the summer band. It was some good family time.

When I was getting ready to "come back," there was a suicide in the family that knocked everyone for a loop. It's been a little over a month and things are still somewhat difficult. Things will definitely never be the same. It will just take a lot of time for this to be the new normal.

Then school started. This is my daughter's first year of high school. There was quite a bit of transition to go through. But I think, on this end, things are good. My daughter has gotten into the groove of high school and the difficulty of honors classes. She's good at this stuff.

This brings us to today. I'm still not sure what I want to write about or put on my YouTube channel. As a result, you might see some wacky things showing up over the next few weeks as I try out new things and see what I like the best. Please feel free to leave a comment with any ideas you may have. I'm always open to new ideas.

In the meantime, thank you for sticking with me through all of this. I hope to have some awesomeness coming in the future.

Title: Honey & Clover Broadcast dates: 1/8/08 - 3/18/08 Genre: Romance, Slice of Life Cast: Narumi Riko, Ikuta Toma, Harada Natsuki, Mukai Osamu, Narimiya Hiroki Plot: A group of art students try to make sense of life and love. What is good: The characters seem a bit more human this time around. What is bad: The first half of the show is still pretty boring plot-wise. Letter rating: B - Overall: I've now watched the anime version, the movie version and the TV version of this franchise. Of those three, the television series is definitely the best version. I believe that is because the writers gave a little more humanity and depth to the characters. Ikuta Toma, who played Takemoto Yuta, is a great comedic actor. As such, he was able to make all the crappy things that happen to his character seem a bit less apocalyptic but the big changes still had a big impact. Also, Narumi Riko's Hagu has a lot less creepy than any of the other versions. I'm not sure how she did it but she took a very creepy, little-girl-looking character and transformed her into a shy woman who is plopped into a strange new world. So, while I'm still not a huge Honey and Clover fan, I'd definitely watch this version more than once.