a birthday, various travels, and back to work

Greetings. I am back in Berlin now after some miscellaneous time away - my friend Bain came in from Canada and we spent some time in Amsterdam (doing what one does in Amsterdam), here in Berlin and down in Prague - doing what one does in Prague, which is mostly walk around and drink extraordinary beer. What a phenomenal city! I have been there a number of times now but it seems to just keep getting more and more beautiful. Also, the general feeling seems very upbeat - more so than ever before, I think - people are smiling and there seems to be a lot of energy in the air. Hard to put my finger on but there it is. Here are a couple of Amsterdam pics:

... and a couple of Prague pictures:

Then I turned 35. Yikes. I mean, I can't pretend it was unexpected, I knew it was coming, and it wasn't all that wierd really in the grand scheme of things, but time does march along, you know? Anyway, Athanasia and I took a long weekend away for the occasion, and went down to the Sächsische Schweiz (I hope I've got that right, it's almost as hard to spell as to say) - Saxon Switzerland, a strange and wonderful landscape of sandstone mountains, pillars, cliffs and gorges on the Czech-German border south of Dresden.

Here are some pics from the Saxon Switzerland:





Finally, we are home, and back at the grind, which for me involves some very rushed rescores for the next step in the Broken Saints oddyssey - the DVD has been picked up for pretty major distribution and they need a few changes made to the content, so I am doing some minor work on that. Also, I am continuing to work on ways to 'get the word out' using various online promotional sites - including MySpace and UBL (the Ultimate Band List, which ties into ArtistDirect somehow). The links take you to my pages at both.

I'll try to keep more regular updates here - things are actually moving pretty fast - so I'll sign off now. Can't stare at screen any longer...

Further musings on marathon madness

This is mainly an excuse to post a couple of further pics from my Marathon Experience. I have largely recovered, despite enjoying quite a few more alcoholic refreshments than usual on a short three-cities tour (Amsterdam, Berlin, Prague) with a visiting childhood friend over the last week. I have begun to run again, which was rather tough at first - you just can't believe how deep into the muscle tissue that pesky lactic acid gets - and did my first 10k yesterday, still feeling pretty stiff. I am quite sure I will run another marathon, and am looking at the calendar to try to find one I want to run in a time-frame that makes sense. The feeling of accomplishment has not worn off, and will probably outlast the stiffness and fatigue in my legs. So, that's that...

(... sorry these are marred with the copyright notices of the event photography firm, Action Photos - consider it an advertisement for their fine services, as opposed to, well, me not paying for the images. Maybe I'll buy prints and scan them at some point...)