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Wow! It seems like Jackson was just born a few months ago and now he's the big 0-2. We opted for a smaller party than normal this year as Kirsten and I are both sort of exhausted these days.

: )

Even more pics are in the Photo Albums section at the top right of the screen.

One of my favorite bands, LA-based Willoughby, is touring the West Coast this week and I was lucky enough to catch their late-night set in Seattle last night. They played a great show including some new material from a future release in addition to a live early-morning performance on KEXP. Willoughby freaking rules.

Aidan walked his butt off at the Walk-A-Thon fundraiser for his school today.

We've been listening to Priscilla Ahn's EP while we wait for her upcoming full-length album release. Something magical happens to Jackson when he hears the song Dream.

Scrubbed and peaceful.

Aidan spent some quiet time today testing out his Diego Bubble-Blowing Machine. It got a little competitive as Aidan tried to see if he could outperform Diego.

Mr. Short Pants and I tend to frequent our local Guitar Center these days as a way to kill time while giving Mommy some well-deserved quietude. Here's Jackson scoping out some gear that caught his eye.

Check out these action shots of Jackson powering down some ginormous Banana Walnut Pancakes at Kona Kitchen.

I took my first trip to New York as an adult this month and had an awesome time visiting some friends there. My Dad grew up in Brooklyn, so one of the highlights of the trip was when my friend Steve drove me over to the right part of town and we found his old building. It was in great condition and guarded by a nice, yet intimidating, doorman. We showed him a vintage photo of the building and explained my Dad's history there, and he was nice enough to let us go up to the 11th floor and snap a photo outside the door of the unit where my Dad lived.

Another high point was when Steve and Amy, John and Steph joined me for the New York stop on Sia's North American tour. It was truly breathtaking. There were large, burly dudes getting teary-eyed all around me. I hope she keeps making many, many more albums like this!

More pics in the Photo Albums section at the top right of screen.

This was inside the terminal at the Detroit Wayne County airport during my stopover at 5am. So...I don't know who's in charge of this sort of thing, but if you happen to be reading this, we NEED one of these wicked INDOOR ELEVATED TRAINS in the SEATAC terminal. In mean, look. It goes right OVER the gift shop. We NEED that.

Steve and Amy are expecting a little Cirbus here shortly, so we had to work that out.

My Dad's building!

I sort of felt like I was getting away with something here, but I didn't realize I looked quite this sheepish.

Steve had the idea to try and recreate the angle of the original archive photo for comparison. That's a monument to the soldiers who fought in the Civil War in the center of the plaza. We're taking this photo from the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library. (The original was apparently taken from the roof.) The lone building off to the right is my Dad's building, now covered by a row of trees in the current photo.

NERD UPDATE: If you play the newly released, Grand Theft Auto IV, where they essentially rendered all of New York for you to drive around in, you can visit the virtual version of this exact spot.

The Brooklyn Bridge! Off to the left, across the water, is the platform where Will Smith sends his daily radio broadcast in I Am Legend.

WOW! Times Square is a real place? YATA!

After postponing the Disneyland pilgrimage no less than twice in recent years, we realized it was finally time to get the Griffin boys to the Happiest Place on Earth at all costs.

Both boys had an awesome time and it was a truly magical experience for Kirsten and I to watch their faces as they tried to process what they were seeing for the very first time.

Aidan is already busy planning the next trip!

More pics in the Photo Albums section at the top right of screen.

Jackson's first airplane ride!

Whoa! Walking past The Pirates of the Caribbean, I ran into Mike Harris of Olympia, WA-based Fool's Play Improv fame. What are the odds of that?!?!

Jackson could be singing the Pirates song here. He's also wearing a 1st Time Visitor button if you look closely.

Kirsten's sister Naomi drove all the way from Oakland to spend the day with us. Thanks Naomi!  : )

Aidan rocked it at his end of season basketball tournament. He played two games in a row and was a great sport and very active on the court the whole time. We're so proud of him!

More pics in the Photo Albums section at the top right of the page.

Ok, this is trippy. Last August, Aidan (a passionate clock collector) got into watching YouTube videos about clock sales and repair. We decided it would be fun to let him make his own little video so he could watch it along with all his other favorites. I sort of forgot about it for awhile. I just took a look at it and, as of the date of this post, it's now received just shy of 1,300 views. Here it is, in case you'd like to see what all the fuss is about. : )

Watch Aidan's 1st Clock Video 

Strangest of all is that Aidan's homemade 3 minute video demonstrating the chiming of his favorite clock has captured roughly 300 more YouTube views than this trailer which I spent 6 - 8 hours on LAST JANUARY for my friend Steve Cirbus' award-winning indie thriller, Darwin's Privy. (Sorry Steve. Try to incorporate some sort of chime clock into your next joint.)

 Watch Darwin's Privy Teaser Trailer

When Windows crashes, you get the infamous "Blue Screen of Death". Well, as it turns out, my beloved Xbox 360 has an equivalent that it's managed never to show me in the 2+ years we've been together. It's called the "Red Ring of Death". This wonder of nature is accompanied by a complete failure to load or start up in any way. If you've never had the joy of witnessing this remarkable sight, here's a picture of what it looks like.

We did play it quite a bit over the holidays there. Hmm... So apparently, if you play video games too much on the Xbox 360, it breaks. Good information to have going forward, I guess.

*sigh*

Microsoft will repair it for free under their warranty program, but the process will take at least 3 weeks. They ship you a special box (ground), then you ship your unit back to them in the special box, prepaid by Microsoft (ground), then they repair it (1-2 business days), then they ship the unit back to you (ground). For some reason, they won't give you the option of paying extra for expedited shipping. Maybe it sounds silly to want it back in less than a month, but hey, the 360 is also my DVD player, so...we can always read books I guess.

OR...

I can pay extra and ship it to a 3rd party company that does nothing but repair Xbox units that display the RRoD. This process will take about a week and a half.

Can you guess which one I chose?

Ok, I don't do it every year, but about every 3 years or so, I usually find an easier or better-looking way to spruce up eyeonjohn.com, now going into its 11th year of helping my closest family and friends keep an eye on my shenanigans.

This time, I've migrated over to the Windows Live Spaces platform. This is something I've been wanting to do for awhile now, mostly because of how easy they've made it to customize your space. But I couldn't make the switch until they started supporting custom domains, something they just started to do about 6 months ago. So I took some time over the holidays to make the big move. If you're interested in doing something similar, this guy wrote up a pretty good account of what it takes to move an existing blog site and associated e-mail account with a custom domain over to Windows Live. Check it out here. Naturally, I didn't find this article until AFTER I spent all day figuring it out for myself. : (

If you're one of the savvy cats who has subscribed to the RSS feed for my blog, you'll want to update your feed reader to point to the new location for the eyeonjohn.com feed which is:

http://johncgriffin.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

Thanks for stopping by and Happy New Year!

For what I believe may be the first time in our adult, married lives, Kirsten and I did not travel at all for the holidays. We just stayed home and partied quietly in our little corner of yuletide bliss. Staying home for the holidays was a HUGE BLESSING and seriously needs to be a tradition from now on. : )

Check out some of the highlights below. There are more pics tee'd up in the Photo Albums section.

Aidan reading the part of Joseph in the Christmas program put on by his Sunday School class.

Elf on the loose.

My sweet family. The best gift of all.

ZAP!

Jackson took a little coaxing, but he got the idea.

Aidan got a very cool remote control moon that hangs on his bedroom wall and goes through the lunar phases in sync with the real thing.

After months of rigorous Guitar Hero and Rock Band training, Aidan graduated to an actual guitar. He now joins dad on the long, slow road of sore fingers and wounded pride. ; ) He was totally into it though, so I'm not too worried.

In case you can't tell from the photo, that is Jackson opening...you guessed it...a very small toddler-sized interactive guitar from my folks, successfully rounding out the year-long guitar theme. Grandparents rule! Kirsten's parentals got stuck working over the holidays this year, so watch for some photos from their visit in time for Epiphany (aka. the 12th Day of Christmas).

Merry Christmas and we look forward to spending some wonderful days with you in the New Year!

Seriously, I feel like we just finished packing away our Christmas decorations. (Ok, we did just finish.) But this year still warped by like some sort of crazy, fast...thing.

Anyway, check this cuteness from a Christmas fair we hit yesterday.

After spending the past several months attempting to coax anything pleasant out of my guitar, it was pretty humbling to spend the evening in the presence of one of the greatest guitar players in rock history. Chuck and I went to the Van Halen reunion tour with David Lee Roth at Key Arena last night. Watching Edward himself play every famous Van Halen song we could think of, with his son, Wolfgang, playing bass was an extremely special experience.

Here are some crappy camera phone shots that at least show what the stage layout looked like. In some of these, you can kind of see what's happening on the giant video screen at the back of the stage. If you're interested, better photos are at the band's official site.

(And yes...they played Jump as their finale.)

The good folks at EA saw fit to release, Rock Band, (one of the most anticipated video game releases of the whole year) right on my birthday. So I was fortunate enough to turn 34 surrounded by friends at my favorite Seattle restaurant (Kona Kitchen!) rocking out to this groundbreaking new rhythm game, birthed by the same folks who created the Guitar Hero series (which I became heavily addicted to earlier this year, thanks to Aaron Jacobs). A lead and bass guitar, similar to Guitar Hero, are combined with a drummer and computer-judged karaoke singing to create a complete band experience. Soooooooo fuuuuuunnnnnn.

This was one of the best evenings I've ever had with a group of friends and several of the folks who turned out were asking when the next one would be. Yuji, the owner of Kona Kitchen, promises regular Rock Band Thursdays each month from now on. YEEEEEESSSS!!!!

 

P.S. Jackson and Aidan wasted no time in figuring out what to do with this new gear.

Check out Aidan going for it at his first day of basketball practice!

The local end-of-season tournament for Aidan's bowling league was at a bowling alley up in Bothell that was so huge I was tempted to believe that it survives in the wild by eating other, weaker bowling alleys. You could basically paint airplanes inside this bowling alley.

Here are a couple of Aidan pics. He kind of got robbed in the final game and ended up with a fourth place ribbon, so he's doing his best to look fired up. (We're practicing good sportsmanship.)