FINALLY the road construction has cleared up enough to allow drivers on the Walt Whitman Bridge to use the ramps that connect directly to/from the Black Horse Pike. That shortens my commute even more than it already was. Now it's 11 miles on the way in, and 10.9 miles on the way home. It's great! :o)

I've been listening to Sunny 104.5 in my car. They have been playing nothing but Christmas music since shortly after my birthday. Personally, I think the middle of November is a TAD early to start with that theme... but on the other hand, I genuinely like the songs and we NEVER hear winter-related music after Christmas. As my friends and I have discussed, even songs that are winter-oriented but completely unrelated to Christmas, like Winter Wonderland and Let It Snow, vanish from the airwaves the moment Christmas is over. So to make a long story short, I'm listening to Christmas music on the radio every day.

It's kind of nice, actually. It also improves my disposition while I'm driving. It's kind of hard to make that mental leap from singing "Peace on Earth" to yelling "It's not gonna get any greener!!!" at the driver ahead of you. ;o) So I'm arriving at work with lower blood pressure these days.

Speaking of things that deserve the exclamation, "FINALLY!!!", the Verizon DSL connection is up and running at last! Happy freaking new year! I celebrated by e-mailing out some hockey game pics that I've been waiting to send to people. Man, I'd forgotten how much of a pain it is to e-mail photos with a dialup connection! One or two e-mails sent that way convinced me to just postpone e-mailing pictures until the Gremlins were evicted from the broadband connection.

It also makes it easier to upload pictures to clubphoto.com albums, which I'm going to be doing a LOT more of in the near future. I'm trying to coordinate the sharing of my hockey game pics with some of my fellow Phantoms fans who want prints, and posting them online is by far the simplest way to go. I created a clubphoto.com account specifically for hockey photos, and I'll be adding it to the list of links on the weblog ASAP.

Speaking of hockey... the Flyers are playing the Minnesota Wild. I'm going back to watching the game on TV.