Papal Bowling!

Hmm, it looks like Blogger is acting up again and not posting.

I just thought I'd check the page and it was messed up. I hope this fixes it.

I can't believe it's been a week since I last posted. This week has been crazier than most of my crazy weeks lately. I'm working two jobs right now -- actually it's about a job and a half, but I have plenty to do. Anyway, I end up being at work until all sorts of crazy hours so I can sleep and come in 9 hours later. Ugh.

Then this weekend a guy came in for an interview that was going to happen Monday, so I had to entertain him Saturday and Sunday and Monday night. It killed my productivity and then today the editor of Inquest was in, so that killed today. I was here yesterday from 9:30 'til midnight and it looks like I'm going to do the same thing today.

I'm not moving. Some of you may have known this already, but this is the first I'm getting to actually write it down and let people know. It simply would have cost too much and despite the fact that I'd love to get back to my friends and family, well, it's just not possible right now.

No biggie. At least now I know I can find a dentist and get my jaw looked at. And, y'know, start trying to get a life here. In a lot of ways I put things on hold while I made this decision. I'm a little bummed about it, but I'm not disappointed by any stretch of the imagination.

That's all for now. Gotta work like a crazy freakazoid.

So Seth posted a link to a guy who lives next to an urban redneck. The site is great. It's written well and tells a very funny story about what happens with the redneck neighbor, but what's really amazing is when you get to the bottom of the page and see how many people have visited the site since it launched on April 6th(?), 2002. Wow!

My life? Well I'm still warring with myself about moving back or staying here. I've talked about this before -- and believe me, I'm as tired of it as you are -- but I'm really having a hard time with it. I thought the other day that I was definitely moving back, but now I'm not sure. I think the problem is that I can easily see the advantages and drawbacks to each. And the timing is wrong, wrong, wrong. Six months ago or six months from now would have been perfect. Perfect! Anyway, the vote right now is at a stalemate again. Let me know if you have any ideas or advice for me.

Now it's time to move my desk to my new location (for my new job here at the office) and then go home and have dinner.

So anyway, I really don't have too much to write about. Sorry to disappoint. I thought I was leaning pretty strongly toward moving back to Madison, but now I'm not so sure. I think tomorrow I'll meet with my boss and tell him what's up. I'd like to get some info from him on what he thinks my position will turn into in the next couple of years.

I think I've figured out what I don't like about moving back to Madison, and that's missing out on the opportunities of being here. I know I haven't fully exploited the city of Seattle and I know that I could enjoy it here given enough time, but I don't have that luxury at the moment.

Hell, I dunno.

I gotta go to the gym.

Damn! I just wrote a bunch of stuff about the weekend and then lost it all.

I'll hit the highlights: Yesterday was spent kicking around and seeing Death to Smootchy. It was odd, but fun. Then last night I had some excellent Thai wide noodles -- still not spicy enough -- and playtested some Marvel scenarios and found that they needed some fixin'.

Becca called this morning to tell me she and Doug are getting married next month. I'm very happy for them. They're both very cool people and I hope they're deleriously happy together. They'll be coming to Seattle for their honeymoon and we'll hang out then. That'll be cool.

The rest of today was spent doing laundry, watching some of Tremors and picking up my apartment. I think one of the reasons I like have friends come over is because they motivate me to keep my place clean. As it was, it was starting to look a little too much like the apartment of a shut-in, with all sorts of newspapers and garbage stacked up (sure, I exaggerate, but it makes for a good story). Anyway, it's all better now.

Oh, and my television is really messed up. It blew out on Friday and would only show me snow, then this morning it recovered and showed me pictures, but the sound is all screwed up so that it always reads that it's at the loudest it can be but it isn't and the remote only sort of controls it. I may be looking for a new t.v. soon. This one has lasted for many years, so I can't really complain.

I just finished updating the scenarios, checking email, posting this, and now I'm headed to play games with some people from work. See you soon.

Okay. Stressful but good day. It started with going to the shop to get my car's front headlight which burned out sometime in the last week or so (I was pulled over last Friday, I think, by a cop who obviously thought I shouldn't be driving around a high-class place like Bellevue in a car as crappy as mine (which, y'know, honestly, I can't really disagree with him, but still...it annoyed the hell out of me)). Anyway, I finally took an hour or so this morning and had the headlight replaced. They were also able to hook up my blinker again, so my car is tip-top. Excellent. I like the blinky noise.

Work? Eh. It's work. I'm splitting my time between getting things done for both the Advertising & P.R. job and the design job, so I have lots to do. Sometime during the day the Wherehouse music place called and said they'd received the Pills CD that Seth recommended (Electrocaine (I'm listening to it now, and DAMN! Good stuff, Seth! Thanks for the tip, homes! (Heh, I said "homes."))), so I went to pick that up. On the way back we stopped by that local hot-spot of action, Chili's, to see if a couple of the people from work were still there enjoying a Friday evening drink with the new woman, Carrie -- um, can I say, wow? -- who's taking over the International Sales Assistant(?) position. So, yeah, they were there, so Kevin and I hung out, had a couple drinks, then Carrie says, "Hey, let's go to Kirkland and hit some of the bars there." So, we're all horny young(ish) men, and we're like, "Cool." Y'know, in that nonchalant way that only a horny young(ish) man can say it and not sound nonhorny and non-nonchalant.

This CD is really good, Seth.

So, we all go to Kirkland (named after Captain Kirk?) and she shows us her apartment. Brave of her, really, considering she only just met us on Wednesday. Okay, maybe Tuesday. Brief stop, one of the guys hits the head, she changes something (coat?), we meet her bird (a cockatiel, 17 years old (two years past the usual maximum age (I forget his name))), and off we go across the street. We talk, drink, play pool, and I can't tell you how much I've needed to go out and just kick back. It was fun and I really enjoyed myself and the half-flirty conversations with Carrie. She's a lot of fun, very pretty, and very nice. It'll be nice to have her around the office.

So, I'm typing here and I'm going from my position as the Advertising & P.R. Manager where my boss requires that I put two spaces between sentences because he's read all sorts of crap about how two spaces creates the right amount of break for the human mind to stop and consider what's come before the two spaces so that it comprehends everything and communicates clearly, and my new job as a game designer where the editor just told me today that she doesn't like two spaces. So I have to consciously start editing out that second space in everything I write. Let me tell you, I've been hitting the delete key a lot.

The bar was fun. We drank, talked, played some pool, and then talked some more. Carrie's flirty, but she still seems very earnest, sincere, and cool all around. We leave, the two studs who are with us try to pick up on her but nothing really seems to happen for them and we hop in our cars and head off.

Now I'm comfortably ensconced in the familiar confines of my desk as I type away and listen to this excellent CD by the Pills and am considerably impressed by my ability to insert a couple of double and triple parenthetical statements in this post.

Soon I will go home and sleep in because I have nothing to do tomorrow except pick up comics and maybe come to work to do my own stuff. Cool.

I guess this makes me feel better about being circumcised.

Damn that's a funny thing to say.

Nothing too exciting happening here. We playtested MechWarrior earlier and that was pretty fun. We even had some questions that will need to be cleaned up before the rules go into production. I'm here now working on some more scenarios for the Marvel game. The scenarios are pretty cool, but I particularly like how they interact while you're playing the game -- and they add a level of strategy and...curiousity that wasn't in the game before. It's cool to have a hand in that.

For some reason Blogger isn't posting things when I publish them. I still don't know why, so you probably won't see this post for a while -- or at least until I post something else. I noticed that my most recent post (from Tuesday) hasn't appeared on the blog. Ah well.

I may actually get to take some of this weekend off. That would be exciting.

That's all for now. Time to write.

I so don't want to be here today.

I really need a day off.

This thing is pissing me off. My earlier post only posted after I wrote the second one. Now I'm writing this to see if my second post appears when I try to post this.

Annoying.

I don't know what's up, but I posted something earlier and it hasn't shown up on the blog. I can see that the page where I write and edit thinks that my previous post is up, so maybe it'll appear when I post this. Let's hope. I'm sure you'll find it very exciting.

I have to create a bunch of scenarios for my second job at work. I really enjoy making this stuff up, but I'm really getting burned out by working all the time. I think I've worked that last four or five weekends without a break and it sucks. Tonight I have to ditch out on going to the gym again and I really don't like doing that for work. Maybe I'll make up for it tomorrow.

I'm working my way through the Toy Story commentary track now. It's already pretty interesting and I'm only a few minutes in.

Last night I was watching Toy Story as I was reading Call of Cthulhu. I just thought that needed mentioning.

I also noticed that Joss Whedon was one of the writers for Toy Story. That was interesting. I'm sure all you illiterati out there already knew that, but I didn't.

I know how sick you all are of all the porn I post here, but here's something for all you comic fans.

Synchronicity is a funny thing. I was just thinking earlier this week that I wanted to pick up the DVDs of The Usual Suspects and Romeo & Juliet. Today I stopped by the Wherehouse at which I normally buy such things and there they were on the "NEW" rack. For good prices, too. And they're not the normal editions either, they're super-cool editions with all sorts of crazy extra stuff.

I have to admit that the Romeo & Juliet film was something I really didn't think I'd like, but I'll be damned if I didn't think it was a damn fine film. I especially liked Mercucio. He rocked.

Synchronicity #2. I was going to post a link to this story about "cloning" but I saw that Seth had already done it, so I didn't have to. About that whole "cloning" issue; I really wish people would stop calling it cloning, that's not really what they're doing in these cases. In the various different animal (and now human) cases they're doing something more akin to "twinning." Maybe it's just me, but I think of cloning as an exact duplicate of an organism that's created by taking samples from the original organism. The "cloning" that's so popular in the press lately is more like creating the twin of an animal, not actual cloning. Anybody else feel this way?

Saturday night and I'm at work. I think I write that every Saturday. I thought I was going to go to Theatre Sports tonight, but I haven't gotten anything done and I really need to, so...

Oh, for those that care; I spoke with Brian P today and he's trying to decide between going to law school or continuing as a teacher. He has to decide by April 15th and it's really a hard choice for him.

I finished Shakespeare in Love and have moved onto The Sixth Sense. When I'm done I only have Temors, Strange Days, and possibly the Toy Story three DVD set. Plus the two DVDs I picked up today. I figure I've saved myself about 6 months worth of cable costs. So that's kinda cool.

Gahh! My archives disappeared, but Seth showed me how to fix it. I hope. So if you see archives off to the left all is cool. If not, well, we have a problem.

I'm trying to decide if I should go to the gym or try to finish all my work-related and non-work-related writing tonight. I kind of feel like taking the evening off, but who knows. I'll try to power through it and see what I can do.

For anyone that cares; I received and email from Andrew as he was waiting for the moving crew. They were coming today to move him from L.A. back to Atlanta. What fun.

My taxes (well, more appropriately, Corsair's) are causing some big problems at the moment. I can't find everything and I'm not back in Wisconsin to find it all. Very annoying.

I stumbled across this very cool site when I was doing some research on espionage and how an organization with a cell structure works. The chart looks cool and give you a good idea of how complicated this stuff is.

It's kind of pretty, too.

This looks like something out of Star Wars, but it's real. Cool.

Damn, I'm still agonizing over whether or not to move back, but right now I'm really feeling like it might be the way to go. I really like where I am now, but I don't know if or where I'd be employable if I stayed here. Whereas the job back in Madison leaves me open to any number of other possibilities in the future. And I miss my friends and family. I miss having a social life. I'm not locked in a closet here, but neither am I having much fun or meeting cool people, or anyone else for that matter.

I need to write more. Despite the amount of time I spend at work, I really need to set aside time to just write. I worked all weekend on an article and only wrote about 1600 words, then last night I added at least that many words in two hours. Annoying! Work smarter, not harder.

I'm currently in the middle of Shakespeare in Love. The next DVD on the shelf is The Sixth Sense. Then I only have a mere handful of DVDs to watch and I can buy some new ones...or get cable...or move home, er, back to Madison.

Maybe it should tell me something that I still call Madison home.