Lately, I’ve been looking through photo albums of trips gone by, and it’s really making me want to leave, to travel again. I found this photo from Budapest last night, taken from the top of the funicular on the Buda side of the Danube, looking out over the river, and across to the Hungarian parliament building. Must go back. Must see more of the world. First, pay for house renos. I guarantee that the very millisecond after that’s done, I am GONE. In the mean time, I’ve put that Budapest shot up on my photo page. Seeing these images from my past travels has caused me to compress, coil up. Stored energy for an upcoming adventure.

Reading a Brian Keene novel now. Dark Hollow. Not bad. More supernatural than King, less so than Barker. It’s sort of a guilty bit of brain candy after a steady diet of Frank Herbert, Guy Kay, and some historical non-fiction these last few months. It’s nice to be able to plough through a hundred pages in a sitting, instead of re-reading a paragraph two or three times in order to extract all of the subtle nuances.

Today’s track is Criminals by Katatonia. Live version. Katatonia is a Swedish death metal/atmospheric metal band that started off with the growly death metal vocals, and eventually switched to clean vocal styles because Jonas Renkse lost his ability to sing that way consistently. Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth covered the vocal part on one of their tours at one point. They’ve been getting me through this week quite nicely.