"A little less conversation..."

"...a little more action please"

And with that one simple, snarled-lip sound clip from the king, (I think) I'm back. Hesitantly, almost certainly, maybe positively, invariably missing a day or two, back. If you have read any part of my blog for the past year or so, you know one thing is certain...I'll fall off the blogging wagon sooner or later.

But, I have a couple of things going for me now: I have a new iPhone4S with it's snazzy little 8MP camera (squeeeeee!) as well as MOvember. If you didn't catch this post, go read it to catch up on my sure to be awful mustache growing experiment/fundraising adventure that will begin on November MOvember 1st.

Also, I just saw this blog post today and feel...inspired about iPhoneography once again. The stuff you can do with Apple's magical little device is astounding. And I'm all mostly (back) in. With that, stay tuned and remember all guarantees in this blog are certain to be untrue or at least partially disappointing or I'll refund 100% of the money you paid me to view my blog.

What I've Been Doing, or Lame Excuses for Not Blogging

**WARNING: Picture-heavy and ramble-heavy post below**

"You're a good for nothin', lazy, bum of a blogger!"

In my mind, that's what you've all been thinking. In reality, it's probably more something like this:

"Who? thekenlong? Did he even have a blog? Seriously...who/what are you talking about?"

Yeah...that's probably more like it. It's been over a month since I've taken a serious stab at taking a picture of the day. Or updated my blog. Or really even wanted to update my blog. Not entirely true, but it's an easy habit to get out of completely if you're not careful. And I haven't been careful at all.

The honest truth is that I have been busy lazy distracted lately and other things have taken priority over updating my blog. At first, it was a fun day trip to Epcot. I even took a picture or two myself:

There has been A LOT of this:

For the un-initiated, those are callouses developing on the ends of my fingers from learning how to play the guitar. I've been taking professional lessons for a little over a month and am actually getting pretty decent from all the practice. Seriously...I haven't been this dedicated to learning something in a VERY long time. I'm sure my wife and kids will vouch for me on this one.

I spend about an hour (sometimes two) each day going over chord charts, practicing scales, picking patterns. It's insane, exhilarating and personally super-satisfying all at the same time.

Mixed in there have been mini road trips...

Oh, the irony (take a moment to see prohibited item #1 in the first picture compared to what was actually found INSIDE the park).

There have been really fun and super-awesome Long family Sunday outings...

We've helped some dear friends move, laughed a lot, loved even more, attended a worship conference and threw in the most epic road trip/concert experience of my life to this point. 

This is a crap picture, but oh-so-necessary.

I say all of that to simply say this...I'm almost back.

171/365:

Back in the Saddle Again...Again

Aloha.

We all know what it means. We've heard it a gazillion times. In Hawaii, aloha means hello and farewell at the same time. John and Paul made it sound better with "Hello, Goodbye", but I'll just stick with, aloha. And I really mean that.

I said all of that to say this...this isn't the first time I've done this—taken a break from blogging. Taken a looooooooong break from blogging. About two years, to be exact. I really need to stay on top of things, but it's just too easy to get out of a habit, especially when most of the things I "say" anymore ends up fitting into a nice 140 character or less snippet for all of my followers in Twitter/Facebook-land to see.

Perhaps this will be a new start or era or just another interruption in a long string of non-blogs that have spanned the past two or three years of my online life. In the immortal words of Pooh, "Oh, bother!".

For now, let us call it what it is...I'm here, blogging, and hopefully, someone—anyone, is reading. If not, all I've done is littered the information highway with just a few more ones and zeroes. And maybe a fun, coherent thought or three.

No promises. No commitments. I'll say something else when (or even if) I ever get around to it again. I guess this is the defining mark of my iLife.

Aloha.