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So lately I’ve been considering shooting my friends and family. Come on, admit it – the thought has crossed your minds, too.

Of course, unlike all you scary, maladjusted freaks, I was just talking about shooting them with a paintball gun. Now, I’ve never been paintballing before, but it looks like wicked mad fun. Basically, you carry a big CO2-powered gun filled to the brim with paintballs, wearing protective vests and paintball masks, sneak around a wooded area and shoot the living daylights out of anyone that moves (or, if you’re sneaky enough, even those who don’t). Provided (I suppose) that they aren’t on your team. Or if they are, that they’re being really, really annoying first.

I was invited to go on an August Home paintball outing last year, and I eagerly signed up. Then I spent that entire weekend painting my basement and was so sick of paint by paintball time Sunday afternoon I wasn’t sure if I would really enjoy the sight of all that splattered paint. Not that it would have mattered to my clothes any by that point. Looking back, I’m not sure I made the right choice, and I’ve been waiting for another opportunity ever since.

Luckily, it sounds like there’s a chance my dad might be picking up a couple of Tippmann or spyder guns from Ultimate Paintball in the near future. Which means I might be able to convince him to go out and wage war in grandma’s timber this spring. :)

There are reasons I should not be left alone in front of a computer. One is due to my super mad hax0r skillz… I’m like that kid in the “Hackers” movie that got banned from using a computer until he was 18, except I haven’t ever made out with Angelina Jolie (…yet). Another is my tendency to pile more work for myself on top of my already tottering tower of busy-ness.

To that (second) end, I’d like to announce yet another awesome web project! That’s right, from the people that brought you CSSnewbie, please welcome I Can Has Hope!

If that name doesn’t cause a lightbulb to turn on over your head, please check out ICanHasCheezburger first. If that website makes you laugh, then you’re good to go. Please proceed happily to ICanHasHope.

So what’s the idea? It’s pretty simple. Take the simple, snarky, and sometimes witty humor of ICanHasCheezburger, and bash it against a mess of political commentary. Or, as I’m dubbing it, LOLitical Commentary.

And then to make things better, I’m going to donate 50% of whatever I make through advertising on the site to Barack Obama’s campaign, up to the legally allowed $2,300 in the primary election and $2,300 in the general election. After that, I’m going to find a deserving charity and donate proceeds to it instead. Or perhaps I’ll rotate through the charities, so a lot of people get the chance for a little bit of Hope.

And that’s the basic premise: Hope through Humor. If you like that idea, then please visit the site, share it on your own websites, link to it on Facebook… the whole shebang. This idea has the chance to do a lot of good. And if you’re into that sort of thing, I’d also ask that you submit some photos/captions of your own. I would really prefer if this site weren’t All About Me.

And while we’re on the Obama track, if you’ve considered donating to his campaign and just haven’t gotten around to it yet, now would be an awesome time to get it. As the graphic to the right states, Obama is just a few thousand donors away from becoming the first candidate in history to have over one MILLION individuals donate to his campaign. He’s hoping to hit the million-mark by March 4th, when Ohio and Texas go to the polls, as a very visible sign of his appeal to the masses. I’m already one of those near-million, but I’m hoping ICanHasHope gives me the means to help his campaign even more. :)

I’ve been in a pretty good mood this last week, financially speaking. Assuming it’s possible to be in a mood in the financial sense. Regardless, as of last week I am finally out of credit card debt, and that has me feeling pretty good on a lot of levels.

How’d I accomplish that? Through the annual magic of income tax returns. My federal return got to hang out in my bank account for all of 24 hours before being handed over to my credit card company. I’ll miss not having that money to put somewhere else (like Europe, or a new computer, or a high-yield savings account), but getting rid of that debt is the best decision I could have made presuming long-term goals of financial success.

I got a decent sized return for two primary reasons: I pay a ton of interest on my mortgage, and I pay a ton of interest on my student loans. Both contribute to my deduction, so I ended up getting a nice chunk back. Of course, as that list also suggests, that means I’m nowhere near being entirely debt free – nor will I be for many years to come. But I was able to knock down one debt, and that feels really nice.

I was also lucky in that my credit card debt, while certainly annoying and stress-inducing, wasn’t as crippling as the debt other people have. I only had one card, and it wasn’t maxed out. If you’re in greater financial peril than I’ve found myself in thus far, perhaps a bit of Debt Counseling from the folks at DebtConsolidation.com would be in order. They offer a debt analysis service free of charge, and this may be one of those rare occasions where someone’s advice is worth significantly more than you paid for it. :)

Amanda and I are starting to get more of the details of our Eurotrip planned and finalized. I realize I still owe a couple of posts on how we’re getting over there, and what we’re spending, and so on. This is not those posts. But I promise they will come soon. :)

The map above shows our general travel plans. We’ll land in Paris, spend a few glorious days and nights there, and then head northeast to Amsterdam to spend several days with our friends Anne and Luke. After we’ve had our fill of the ‘Dam, we’ll head southeast to Munich and spend a couple of days (and more to the point, nights) in the land of Good Beer. Mmm. After that, we’ll be heading west again to fly out of Paris.

So far, we have a hotel in Paris and a basic itinerary planned for the city (we have a list of things we’d like to see, but haven’t decided on which days to see them). We also have a somewhat less planned-out list of what we’d like to see in Munich. Tonight, I think we’re going to try to sit down and find a hotel and/or hostel for which to sleep off our hangovers in Munich. After that, we just need to decide whether we want to stay in the same or a different hotel for our last night in Paris.

And once we have that decided, the big parts of the trip are planned. We still need to decide if we want to buy our bus tickets for our international wanderings at the time or in advance (I’m guessing in advance), but considering at last check the bus schedules hadn’t even been posted for mid April yet, we’re doing okay on time for that one.

So I never really thought I’d write these words, but today I feel a heck of a lot better about my acne problem.

I don’t know if this constitutes TMI or not, but I am afflicted by what those in the know term as “adult acne.” Also a “tendency to ramble,” but that isn’t the point of this article, now is it? Boy – that article, when it comes, is going to be a bear to get through, no? I mean, a rambling post about rambling would just… err, I digress.

For a while now, I’ve tried to hide the signs of my acne due to the social stigma of it all. I mean, puberty was quite a while ago for me, so I should be done with the acne-ridden part of my life, right? Well, maybe not.

Acne, according to this article here, is actually on the rise among adults. From 1989 to 1999, the article says, the average age of patients coming in to have their acne treated rose from 20.5 to 26.5 years old. And that makes me feel a heck of a lot better about myself, considering I am almost exactly 26.5 years old (I’ll be 27 in August). And they also say that “more than half of all adult women and about a quarter of adult men” are currently acne sufferers. Now I’m no chemist, but I’m pretty sure that would mean that a majority of the adult population overall suffers from acne. Maybe the presidential candidates should try to swing the Pimple Vote to win the upcoming election.

So it seems I’m not the freak of nature I thought I was. And that’s a good feeling all around.