Wow. I had a lot of work to do this month. Between the three stories for Physician's Money Digest [www.pmdnet.com], stuff for the National Rosacea Society (including developing the script for this year's VNR and beginning the redesign of rosacea.org), working on the Huff Report redesign and taking a class on interpreting and reporting statistics in medical writing, I barely had time to think about picking up more freelance business.
Yet that's exactly what my goal is this year: build the freelance thing into a semi-sustainable business. At least, I want to be able to pay my rent and utilities off what I make freelancing. I've all but given up on the freelancer websites guru.com and eLance.com -- they've been listing very little in my areas of expertise -- so I guess it's time for some old-fashioned self-promotion. And networking -- anyone know anyone who needs a writer?

I finally got it: an Atari 2600. Thanks to eBay [www.ebay.com] I can now resume playing Pitfall for hours, working my wrists into a frenzy on Pac Man, and fall asleep dreaming of blasting Space Invaders. I'll be hunting down Galaga soon.
And I'll be checking the time on my snazzy new Fossil watch, courtesy of Iconocast. I ratted on Lycos for giving my old HotBot mail address to spammers (more in ...random...) to The Jacobyte, Iconocast's rumor hound, and was rewarded handsomely for the effort. Read all about it here: [http://www.iconocast.com/issue/20010125.html#jacobyte]

So I went in for a physical last week for the first time in probably ten years. I've been feeling really out of shape, and I wanted to get a picture of where I stood, healthwise, so I could gauge my improvement. Turns out I've got a kinda high cholesterol level -- 229. My doctor thinks I also have digestive problems, and I agree. Heartburn once or twice a week probably isn't good. So I'm working on changing my diet a bit -- far less red meat, more yummy veggies -- and I'm going to try to cut out caffeine. I know, that comes as a shock to many who know me; there are some who believe mosquitoes get a buzz off my blood. It's going to take a while, and it's not going to be pretty, but my long love affair with coffee will soon come to an end. Or at least be cut down to an occasional tryst.

I just come across an old friend: Todd Stuart, from OSU's theatre department. I played his ex-boyfriend in a one-act he wrote and directed; A whole department full of boys in various stages of out-ness and I, little hetero me, was the only one willing to take a role involving a peck on the lips of another man.
Anyway, he's alive and well and in Cleveland, acting and doing marketing/promotions for Playhouse Square Center [www.playhousesquare.com]. I happened across his blog (web + log - we = "blog" -- basically an online journal) while updating the Daily Report. Check out his site: [home.earthlink.net/~trstuart]

In addition to my own site, I'm designing a site for Danny, my brother. Weathertrain.com [www.weathertrain.com] is sort of a personal portal page for him: basically a list of weather- and model train-related links all in one place, designed to be a convenient launching point for his Web browsing. It'll also have some photos and bio-ish information, but that's up to Danny. Right now, there's just a logo and an "under construction" sign, but by the next Report you, too, will be able to surf the model train scene to your heart's content.

The day after the last Huff Report, I fell off a roof. It still makes me laugh, so I had to tell you. See, my mom, Peter and I had been talking at dinner the night before about climbing on, jumping off and falling off the roof of our house. The next day, just after Cin and I picked up Brandon for lunch, my friend Mike called and asked if we could come help him clear off his parents' roof -- an ice dam had formed and melt-off was leaking into the kitchen.
We headed out, and Mike and I got up on the roof to clear off the 2 feet of snow, break up the ice and see where the leak was occurring. At the spot where we climbed up, the pitch was about 45 degrees, and a thin layer of ice coated the shingles, making it hard to get solid footing. So while Mike had advanced to a flat section further up, I started skidding as I tried to follow him. Skid became slide, and before I knew it I was going over the edge. I checked below to make sure I wouldn't land on the Weber and otherwise relaxed, landed feet first and rolled to my back in the snow. No harm done. I climbed right back up the ladder and got on with the operation, leaving Cinnamon freaked out and Brandon and Mike laughing at me.
We ended up spending about two hours up there shoveling off an 8'x8' square of roof. Brandon drove to Ace and picked up a tarp and some 25lb. bags of salt, which we used to pin the tarp down over the area we had cleared. God knows whether it lasted very long, but at least the leaking slowed down.

Here's a good reason not to use Lycos [www.lycos.com] or its services: As I've mentioned before, HotBot Mail is closing down Jan. 31. Shortly after the first of the year, Lycos made the previously anti-spam service's member list available to MLMs (mail list marketers). Not once did I receive spam on my HotBot account before the shutdown; now I have to put up with several spams a day in order to continue receiving the rest of my mail from the account (email from there is auto-forwarded to my ftnetwork.com address till December 31). I plan to move the Huff Report site off Tripod (another Lycos service) as soon as possible -- I'll keep you posted.

My cousin Jerry recently forwarded me an editorial from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which I've posted on my site for your convenience [ahuff.tripod.com/features/ajc.html]. It discussed a book by John H. McWhorter, a Berkeley linguistics professor and author of the book, "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America." In the book, he describes his and other's experiences growing up intelligent and black and the stigma that combination has in current black culture.
The experiences McWhorter describes are mirrored by several of my friends and acquaintances, whose cultural backgrounds run the gamut from Mexican to Gullah to Poor White. The belief that trying to better oneself is a betrayal of one's roots or social status appears to be pervasive in America, and that troubles me. I plan to write about it next Report, and I'd like to hear *your* thoughts or feelings on the subject, as well as any first-hand experiences. Email me when you get the chance, and I'll try to include your perspective in my piece. Anonymity will be granted to those who ask. Thanks in advance.

Once upon a time, I had this book called 1954. I found it buried in a pile of blank books in a used bookstore in Stratford, Ontario, while at the Shakespeare Festival. It was a daily trading journal for a customer of a Toronto stock brokerage, somebody named Alex F. Hahn (my initials!), and the pages were dated with the day and date (i.e., Friday, January 19). I bought it because I figured I'd use it as a journal, maybe even wait until the days and dates lined up again. This was in late 1991 -- the dates turned out to line up for 1993.
I already had a journal/sketchbook/concept art book series called Jehovah, in which anyone could write or draw anything. Lots of silly sketches and song quotes and stuff, but still very cool. I decided to make 1954 a bit like Jehovah but with a twist: no one could write on any page in the future, except to write down his or her birthday.
So 1993 rolled around, and 1954 got started. It became the most successful of my books yet. Practically every page was covered from Jan. 1 through sometime in November, after I got to OSU and got despondent and had less of a community to share my book with.
It's something I've missed, and it's one of the reasons I started doing the Huff Report. While you readers can't actively contribute, I do try to include your responses and news, and I truly value the feedback I get, no matter if it's positive or negative. Doing a daily report is an extension of that. By writing a little something every day, I'm building an electronic 1954 (actually, 1963 when you do the math) minus the doodles and other people's writings. Maybe some of that'll end up in there, too, online. Stay tuned...

Soon,
Andrew