Happy New Year!

Hope everybody had a great New Year's Eve. We hung out at Beth's sister and brother-in-law's house, eating great food, drinking great bevvies and playing really fun Wii games. Now it's time to put away all the new toys, games and books, undecorate the house and get back into the regular groove.

We've had a really good vacation -- the kids got all the things they wanted for Christmas -- a Nintendo 3DS for Owen, goldfish and Hungry Hungry Hippos for Amelia were the "must haves" -- we visited with family and friends, saw "The Muppets" and put on a show on New Year's Eve. Yes, the Brigahan clan has been bitten by the thespianic (new word for a new year!) bug.

Owen and Amelia have been really into "The Penguins of Madagascar" TV show for quite some time. They love to act out the show while watching. Owen got it in his head just before Christmas, that the four of us should act out an episode in front of an audience. So he chose an episode (actually just the second part of one called "The Helmet"), transcribed the dialogue off the Internet (which Beth then typed up neatly) and ran us through several rehearsals.

So last night was the Big Show. Our play only lasted about five minutes, but it was received very well by Beth's sister and brother-in-law, and our nephew. I'm really proud of Owen for his hard work in producing, directing, and starring in his first show. It was a lot of fun for all of us.

Speaking of creativity, I've been forcing myself to work on my long-ignored UFO concept album over the past week. I believe I started writing lyrics for this project six or seven years ago, although it seems longer. Honestly, my output has been pretty lame until this week. I'd only written five or six sets of lyrics out of a planned 10 songs before churning out some words this past week. I still have to write two more sets of lyrics, and then music for seven or eight songs.

I originally envisioned the album as telling a story, but four years ago I adopted the lyrics I had at the time and the overall concept and began writing a novel during National Novel Writing Month. So now the album is just a batch of tunes about aliens and UFOs and government conspiracies, but with no overarching theme.

My plan is to finish the songs (and record them) and the novel and package them together somehow. This is part of my 2012 resolution: to push myself on my writing projects. Yes, this is my resolution just about every year, but having published my short story collection late in 2010, I know that I can persevere and get it done.

As I've mentioned plenty of times before, I also have two children's books I plan to get to market in the near future. I'm determined to get these done, as well as the album and novel, over the next year or two. Feel free to ask me and bug me about these projects. I need the push.

Thanks, and Happy New Year!