We finally closed/moved into the house.

We’re in Birmingham and it feels great.

Trading the Space Needle for Vulcan’s magnificent buns of iron. Seriously, he is a physical specimen to admire.

I’ve accepted a job with a Birmingham-based software company. Chelsea and I will be residents by December 19.

Moving back to The South has always been a goal for Chelsea and me long before we were married. Chelsea moved to Los Angeles in 2005 right after college. I moved to Seattle in September 2006, convincing Chelsea to get her own place in Seattle in 2007 when we started dating again.

Birmingham is an amazing city and there’s never been a better time to be a resident. Home to one of the best restaurants, best pubs, and best music venues in America, it doesn’t lack in culture. An international hub for physical therapy and health care for years, it’s also home to one of the fastest growing small business/technology incubators in America.

An afternoon drive takes you to the beach or the mountains, Atlanta or Nashville, the lake or the plains. Birmingham is big enough to feel big, small enough without feeling too small, and it’s the perfect place to start our family. I absolutely love this city.

To top it off, we’re closer to many of you. At this point in our life having friends and family within arms reach seems almost a foreign concept, and that’s not ok. We like you.

So, we’re pumped. Very.

As excited as we are to move to Birmingham, we’re equally as sad to leave Seattle. Seattle will get many posts over the next few days. This city has been amazing in both the experiences it provided and the people we’ve come to call close friends. For the rest of our lives we’ll find any excuse possible to visit.

For now, we plan and pack, and listen to a Randy Newman classic. So you in three weeks.

If you’re new to the blog, you should know: we like Christmas. More importantly, we love Christmastime.

To celebrate the most wonderful time of the year, we have a little thing called Christmas Every Day. We celebrate Christmas with dedicated posts every day from November 26 through December 25.

In the next few weeks I’ll announce the theme. Yes… as opposed to simply doling out piles of posts on Christmas stuff, we’re doing a theme, and I’m pretty pumped about it.

Details to come.

To The Members of Jasper’s First Baptist Church [original pdf]

We wanted to thank you for your kindness and faithfulness shown over the last 26 years.

When our father Conrad accepted God’s call to Jasper, we were 3-years-old and 18-months-old, respectively. Now 29 and 27-years-old, it’s amazing to look back and realize that there wasn’t an area of life you did not positively affect. You were the first church family we knew, and God could not have selected a better group of individuals to instill our Christian foundation.

You have treated us as your own sons, grandsons, and brothers. Not a day went by where your hospitality and friendship was not shown in countless ways. There is no way for us to thank you enough, much less return the favor; we can only assure you that we will attempt carry out the Great Commission in the same manner as yourselves.

Jeremiah 29:11 reads, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” God has big plans for Jasper’s First Baptist Church. We know that you will continue to provide the same encouragement and support to future church leaders that you have so graciously provided to our father over the last 3 decades.

It is with the utmost sincerity that we say it will be difficult to love another church family as much as we have loved you. While Jasper’s First Baptist Church is no longer our church home, it will always be our home church.

God Bless,
Landon & Aaron Howell

Most of you know that my wife Chelsea works for World Vision International. She understands that many of you are looking to assist with Haitian relief efforts, and want to ensure that your money get into the right hands, so she passed along the following link to WV’s website. If you wish to use World Vision as an means to donate, click here . All of your money goes straight to WV:

Goes without saying, but neither Chelsea nor I get any financial kickback from this.

Updated photo site. Completely forgotten about this photo until digging through files over the weekend.

It’s official. The 250,000th visitor to the blog walked through the door today.

Some blogs get that many hits in a day, though this blog isn’t my full-time job, and frankly… I don’t care about numbers. The biggest day at Juicee News I had 135,000 hits. Therefore, 250K isn’t so much a goal as it is a mile marker of how a blog can perform without a strong daily push of long, original, somewhat-inspiring content.

I’ve said it before so I’ll say it again: this blog simply serves as a place where I can type stuff with the chance that my musings amuse you. That’s all.

I hope it’s working.

It’s been 3 years to the day since I rolled into town on the wheels of a rental car (mine had just died in Wyoming) with no job, knowing no one. In 3 weeks we’ll have moved into what will be me fourth place of residence within the city. Always assumed I’d be here for 2 years, max. It only feels like I’ve been here 3 months.

Archives:

Day 1
Year 1
Year 2

Blast from the past: May 10, 2009. Day 3 of my inaugural trip to Seattle.

Little interesting tidbit is that Chelsea’s first apartment (we weren’t talking, much less dating at the time) is just over my right shoulder. She wouldn’t move here for 2 1/2 years.

Get pumped. Add it to your calendar on Facebook. More details to follow.

Date: Saturday, August 15, 2009
Time: 6:00pm – 11:00pm
Location: Musgrove Country Club
916 Country Club Rd
Jasper, AL

Yes… the blog turns 3-years-old today. Just 4 weeks ago we had our 200,000th visitor.

It’s been an incredible year for the blog, though it was not without some bumps in the road. Remember when the pages wouldn’t load and you’d spend your workday sending me emails and facebook messages and I’d try to fix it when I got home but it wouldn’t work and you’d start to cry and you wouldn’t be able to function? ‘Member that?

Thank you for a wonderful year and your continued support. I believe that Christmas season is always the best time of the year on the blog so the last 7 weeks of the year should be incredible.

[As for the picture... it's the first thing I got when I googled 'Happy Birthday 3'. I laughed... so I thought you would, too.]

I emailed the author who broke the news (email addresses and screen shots included) about Palin’s email hacking.

Gawker used to be a fun, resourceful, snarky-humor blog… and now it’s full of photos of the Olsen Twins and posts about media tycoons that only Upper West Side yuppies give two flips about. These days their authors get paid crummy wages while they slave to obtain large page views which (they hope) will in turn lead to 1) more money, and 2) better job offers from the world’s top magazines, newspapers, etc.

Alex Pareene defends the Gawker post his the last sentence of the article: “It’s newsworthy and we will not be taking it down!”

The author who posted this obviously has no class or tact. Our email exchanges are below…

“It’s newsworthy and we will not be taking it down!”

It’s illegal and bears the mark of someone who wants to be a journalist but can’t achieve their goal in a legitimate way.

Good luck in life.

Landon

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I dunno, I’m getting paid. Can’t complain about that!

Alex

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We all get paid… some of us do it in a way that builds our careers, not our unique page views.

As someone who use to own his own news blog (being linked on every Gawker Media blog at the time) I understand that page views will increase your monthly paycheck… but it won’t earn you respect in the journalistic job circles that really matter. Because that is, of course, the only reason anyone works at Gawker: to get the next job.

Landon

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Well it should please you as a rebellious conservative that the last thing I care about accruing is respect in journalistic job cirlces.

Alex

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You might be accruing a little more than you originally bargained for: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/18/palin_email_investigation/

Landon

I haven’t yet received a response.

And yes… Alex misspelled ‘cirlces.’

Just 51 weeks after I asked Chelsea to move to Seattle, I took her to the Pacific Coast and asked her to spend the rest of her life with me. She said ‘yes‘. I’ll let Chelsea tell you about it in her own words. Feel free to read more on The Knot.

From Chelsea:

Rain, Sleet, Snow and Sunshine. Landon had planned a surprise day trip for us and we set out early in the morning. After wearing him thin from begging for more details of our adventure, he finally caved, telling me where heading to the coast. We took the 101 towards Ruby Beach and discovered the amazing beauty this location held. However, I was content in viewing all this from the car…remember, sleet. He encouraged otherwise, so we set out towards the water.

With my feet now soaked and my hands numb, Landon kept his cool while I continued to complain. Once he found ‘the’ location, he set up his camera for us to take a photo together. Freezing and not understanding why we needed this photo in this weather at this moment, I kept trying to persuade him to just take some photos so we could go back to the warm car.

Once the camera was ready, he came near…and then dropped to his knee. It could have been hailing golf balls and all I know is that at that moment I could have cared less. He talked about the ‘horrible’ weather we were having at the moment but how he didn’t care, he talked about wanting to bring me to this spot since I first moved to the Pacific and eventually took the 101 to get to him…(I can’t remember the rest, but it was all perfectly sweet!).

He presented me with our family bible that already had ‘The Howell Family’ engraved on the cover. It was incredibly sincere and we both soaked in the moment. Literally, we were soaked. After calling our parents, we continued down the coast and the sun began to shine.

Introducing Mobile Viewing for your cellphones and mobile devices. Now you can read the blog while you’re stuck in traffic, waiting in the doctor’s office, or sitting on the toilet.

Simply direct your browser to lh.wirenode.mobi for small, easy viewing of articles. To insure speedy load-time, videos and images won’t appear, though to view the blog in its full format, you can always just head to landonhowell.com, obviously.

The blog turns 2-years-old today which means that the blog is chewing solid food, walking around the house, getting into the cookie jar, and smoking.

As I’ve said before, the blog is something I’ve always enjoyed doing. From Europe to The Big Move to the good ole random links, you keep reading despite my grammatical errors and self-infatuation; and for that, my ego is eternally grateful.

In all seriousness: I really have no earthly idea how the blog has built up this kind of base… 160,000 visits and close to 400,000 page views in just under 24 months. You guys/gals are awesome.

People ask me questions about the blog all the time…

Who reads the blog?
You… silly. Actually, the only time that I know for certain who actually views the blog is either A) They tell me (at work, weddings, funerals… yes, funerals), or B) They comment on any article. Other than that, I just have statistics to guess from… people from Jackson, Birmingham, Nashville, New York, and Atlanta make up a huge segment of readers… though readership stretches far beyond the US. (Seriously… who reads my blog in Japan, China, and Dubai???)

Do you ever get tired of it?
Nope. Never. I enjoy entertaining the notion that this blog is somehow entertaining.

When will you quit blogging?
When you all quit reading… or when I die (though I’m sure Heaven has an incredible wi-fi network)… or when I have to. By have to… I mean have to, though I don’t know what I mean by that.

For the fifth-straight year, Mississippi College continues to be the fastest growing college in the state of Mississippi, increasing 7% from 2006.

The growth is so much so that the university has been forced to rent rooms from at least two local apartment complexes. MC plans to eventually purchase the apartment complexes, as well as reignite past plans of building new on-campus apartments. We actually got a first look at one of the proposed complexes during an SGA breakfast back in 2003… I’ll be very jealous should they press forward with the plans.

Over the weekend the blog hit a milestone: the 100,000th visitor

A hat tip to those of you who make the pilgrimage to the blog on a daily basis for heaping helping of links, comments, videos, and Republican propaganda.

I once again thank you for reading along. The blog has truly become something I’ve looked forward to doing as I’ve posted almost every day for the last 15 months.

Thank you for you contributions, your encouragement, and the non-stop questions about the release of Eurosix. (It’s coming. Patience.)

For those of you who’ve been so kind to ask, Aaron got home from China yesterday and is in Jasper today. He’s been gone for 15 months so I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.

Granted, his body is on a completely different schedule right now. Just add 14 hours to the current time… and that’s what time his bodily clock is on. So, when he answers he may seem a little groggy… but he’ll most likely be up and about seeing as he hasn’t driven his precious Honda Accord in over a year.

If you want our home phone number just shoot me an email.

In an effort to best secure all copyrights and tweak last minute issues, Eurosix won’t be release for 1 more week. I knew that when I set the November 7th date I was shooting for as a target that was almost unattainable… but I shot for it anyway, not understanding just how long the tweaks and twerks would take.

I’ve been unusually busy around here the past week (ie – going to bed at 4 AM as opposed to the usual 2 AM) and I want to do this to the best of my ability. Seeing as this snuck up on me as fast as it did to many of you… I don’t believe I’ll be receiving any death threats for the release of the book.

So, put your credit/debit cards back into your wallets/purses and camp out for one more week as Landon Howell Publishing presents the first product in its best possible form.

get ready for a blitz over the next few days… you’ll know when it’s next Tuesday.

Within the next two weeks I will be beginning a short 3 mintue podcast that will be released once per week. It will available on Odeo and iTunes for free. You will also be able to listen to it straight from the blog without having to download a thing.

Aren’t I considerate?

This is just something fun to add another dimension to the blog. Plus it gives mom and pop a way to hear their sons accent slowly lose some of its Southern twang as he adjusts to life in the PacNo.

Alright. ‘Tis all.