First Post(!) of 2006, because I woke up early.

A couple of years ago, Kate and I went to Hawaii for New Year; her brother lives there, working in the Coast Guard and saving lives and telling us how great the weather is in Maui. So, all of Kate's family decides that Maui's obviously the perfect place to see in the New Year, and we all save up our pennies and fly out, ready for sun, sea and surf. It rained for the entire time we were there.

The first three days or so, we managed to convince ourselves that tropical heatwaves were just around the corner. "The rain is the Gods' way of saying aloha!" we were told by locals eager to keep us from being depressed, and we went along with it until New Year's Eve, which we spent outside, soaked to the skin, watching people in fake grass skirts try and smile while freezing to death as they tried to do traditional dancing. We went back to our hotel, where the TV news told us that we were in the middle of the worst rain Maui had seen for over 30 years.

So this year, Kate and I decided to go on a road trip to Portland, Oregon for New Year, just the two of us, getting away from it all. We'd drive up the coast, route 1, then 101, stopping off for an evening in nice local cheap hotels along the way. Guess what happened?

We're cursed when it comes to New Year travelling, I'm telling you. Cursed.

(We're back in San Francisco now, after an epic 14 hour journey yesterday that seemed as if it may never end by the time we got stuck outside of Vacaville for two hours because route 80 was closed. Not that that was the first time we'd found roads closed - 101 North was closed when we tried to go up in the first place, and the 505 was flooded last night as well. We did manage to make it to Portland, though, and stayed here, which we'd highly recommend to anyone looking for a hotel there.)

All of this is a long way to introduce the fact that I've not read many comics lately. But the last comic I read in 2005 was ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER #3, which was really kind of Crap. Miller rips off his own Catwoman origin for the Black Canary, fails to move the plot forward at all, and Superman appears at the end for no good reason. Lee continues to make me think that he's drawing all of this in a rush, and somewhat embarrassed to be doing so, with some more weird proportions on almost every character... It's really not very good at all, which is a shame considering that I actually secretly enjoyed the first two issues.

Here's hoping 2006 sees better comics, better weather, and good fortune for the lot of you reading this. I'll try and not vanish for three weeks at a time again, as well. Happy New Year, all.