Well, I'm about halfway setup in my new apartment. After spending 6 months unemployed at the beginning of 2011 in Brockville, it took 6 months of sleeping on a couch in Ottawa and a move to get back on my feet. I lost my girlfriend over it, I spent a lot of money, and I worked two jobs for most of the last half of the year. Hell, I still am. Frankly, I'm not sad to see 2011 gone.

Currently I'm just putting the finishing touches on the paint in my bedroom in my new apartment before I move all my stuff back into it. That marks the halfway point of my painting in my new place. Soon I'll be able to come home and just relax. By the way, it's damn good to have a bedroom again.

Before I started my chaotic mission, I upgraded this site to Drupal 7, a cutting edge CMS. After 6 years of using PHP-Fusion, we left it behind and got a much needed upgrade on the backbone of this site. Unfortunately, that was about all I had time for before my 6 month work mission began. There have been many problems with the site. All of which have been noted and I will be getting to ASAP. Before I get into that however I need to get a lot of documentation written for the site so that people are able to use it with greater ease and less confusion.

Many of the people I see here are new, and probably have only heard wind of my existence. I'd like to welcome all of you. I'd also like to apologize for the length of my absence. I hope you are all enjoying The Den. This year The Den of Amateur Writing will turn 15 years old. We will be revamping and relaunching our contests, cleaning up our interface, fixing bugs and expanding our staff. There's a lot to do ahead. Here's to 2012!