Okay, I've been busy all week getting ready to head out of town for the holidays. I've managed to get everything done, now I have to go home and pack for the trip. Then I'm up at about 3am to hop the 4am shuttle to the plane -- which leaves at 7am. Yippee.

Thursday half the office went to see The Two Towers. It was good. Lots of neat stuff, but not a great stand-along movie. I may see it again, but there are a ton of other movies coming out in the next month or so that will take precedence.

I also spent a lot of the week packing for the move to our new offices. It's funny to have a nearly spotless desk with no geegaws hanging about. When I leave here today I'll probably never come back to these offices. Freaky! When I return we'll be in our new offices and I can spend a day unpacking and getting set up there.

I'll try to post something over the holidays, but considering I'll be away from a computer for most of the time I'm not sure I'll get the chance.

Keep checking back. I return on January 6th, 2003. Oh, and keep checking back anyway, because I don't want my readership numbers to drop. Very depressing. It feels like no one cares.

Happy holidays.

Friday was the (now annual) Holiday Party thrown by my old boss. It was okay, but nothing special. I bailed after a couple of hours of tasty treats and wine to hit the gym. Saturday was filled the more gym, a little roleplaying (Silver Age Sentinels), a bunch of reading, a short nap (much to my chagrin), and then dinner and a viewing of Star Trek: Nemesis.

First comment; I don't like naps. I mean, this is the guy that hates to sleep, naps are anathema to me. Unfortunately I couldn't keep my eyes open while reading on Saturday, so I ended up napping. Yuck. Naps always put me in a bad mood. They depress my system and I'm always foul (mood, not smelling...I think) afterwards.

Second comment; Star Trek: Nemesis was good. It was a perfectly okay little film and some neat things happened, but it's very, very much like a retelling of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Like a scary-similar retelling. In this case Data takes the place of Spock and Shin Zan takes the place of Khan. Otherwise, very similar.

As I said before, I'm looking forward to going home next weekend. I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to fill two weeks of time visiting people, but I'm sure between my friends and family I'll have plenty to do. I've done zero, zilch, nada, no Christmas shopping whatsoever, so I'm going to have to do some hunting around when I return. I'll probably head up to Madison on Sunday to get some shopping done and visit Rob and Becca before they take off for the holidays.

Um, Seth? Can I sleep on your couch? I know you just got that slacker, Tritz -- I'm sorry -- Dr. Tritz off of it, but I haven't even thought about that before now. Hmm, maybe Kim's an option, too.

Time to relax before bed. Bye.

Silk Nog. (It's down a ways on the page.) I gotta say, I love this stuff! I found this a couple of weeks ago at my grocery store and it's great! Yum. Seriously good.

I'm not sure how I haven't managed to update in the last few days, but I've definitely filled my time. In fact, right now I have very little time to write so I can get home and relax with dinner and a book or three.

I picked up the new Jurassic 5 CD last week and it's excellent. Funky rap-hop is the only way I can describe it.

Work has been busy in a weird way. I come in every day with a couple of things to get done and somehow by the time I leave I've gotten a ton of things done that aren't them. A little annoying, but I have to get things wrapped up by next Friday so I can pack for the move and then head out for the holidays. It shouldn't be a problem, but I should be done by now.

Oh, I got my bonus at work. I'm very happy. I may use some of it to buy a new computer since mine's seven years old.

I went out yesterday and had to spend about $85 on comics for work -- and now I get to read them at work. Ah, it's a hard life.

I've been going to the gym religiously (minus the worship stuff) and it's going well, but I just can't seem to lose any weight. Argh.

I'm looking forward to getting back home and spending time with my family and friends again. I miss them daily and still enjoy all of them more than anyone I've met out here. Does that sound harsh? It's not supposed to, it's just the truth. I think I connect with my family and friends at home on a deeper level. We understand each other. Maybe that's a function of time together, but I prefer to think I know some excellent people that are good, intelligent, moral people more concerned with substance than style.

I gotta have some dinner. Talk to you soon.

First off: Congrats to Kevin and Aimee on the birth of their second son, Quinn. Woohoo! A new member of the clan! I'm sure there are many restful days ahead for the whole family.

No posts in the second half of the week last week due to work, the gym, and a visiting Briton. Quick recap; Thursday night I playtested, then went to the mall with Heather. That's never exciting, but it's nice to get out of the office and do things that normal people do every now and again. We shopped, had a quick burger at Red Robin and came back to work for a bit. Friday was work and then a long evening out to dinner at Cactus with one of our distributors and a bunch of people from work. I wasn't in much of a mood to go out, but I didn't discover that until after dinner when we all headed down to a bar. The Capitol Club, yes, that was it. It's a neat bar, I saw a very cute girl across the room -- very librarian-looking. No, I didn't talk to her, you know me better than to ask such a silly question. The night went on, I wasn't really into it and just kind of sat there. Talked some, but wasn't my usual bubbly self. I was happy to go home.

Oh, here's a thing about me. I don't like being called a liar. As I was writing the paragraph above I was trying to think of why I'd gotten into a bad mood and I remembered that Heather "called bullsh*t" (as she so eloquently put it) on a story I told about the first time I was drunk. I won't go into it here, but I told the story and she's says, "No, no. I call bullsh*t. You didn't do that!"

Uh-huh. Right. And why would I lie? And more importantly, why would I ever want to talk to you again? Grrrr, that crap really gets me angry.

Saturday I went to the gym, took a quick shower and was ready just in time for the four guys to show up for our Saturday game. Kevin ran the first of his "X-Men: Year One" game using the Silver Age Sentinels system. It was a lot of fun. After that wrapped up I got ready for the company Christmas, er, Holiday Party. Once I was all dudded up I walked to the new offices so I could see how long a walk it will be. It clocked in at about 25 minutes and I was going at a pretty good clip. If I decide to walk to work once we move I'll have to give myself about a half hour to get there. I really want to do that. It's a great way to add some workout time to my daily routine and cut down on time at the gym. It should work out well.

The party was good. They'd hired a "dinner theatre" group to act out a murder mystery for us. It was very over-the-top, but pretty funny at times. One of the actresses was absolutely gorgeous and the half-dozen single men in the company were very attentive. Dinner was excellent and we all had a good time picking out White Elephant gifts -- some of which were pretty, darn nice. One couple got a complete Playstation (PSX) and some new games, while others received a riding crop, a book on fart jokes, and other such classy novelties. I started out with a bag of Elizabeth Arden makeup, which I traded for a Bob Uecker bobbing head doll, which I traded for a personal fan, which I traded for a harmonica and a book on playing one. Woohoo! Finally, something good! I kept the harmonica and played it all day Sunday. After the party a handful of us went to a local bar and played pool, but the bar was boring so we took off after a short while.

Wow, this is a long post.

Sunday I slept in, went to the gym, oh, played the harmonica! Watched a movie, went for sushi, posted this, and now I'm going home to read some more of Innumeracy or The Lord of the Rings or maybe some comics.

Hmmm, it's the 8th tomorrow and I have only two weeks to get a lot of work done before the holidays. Yikes.

I had my first review in my position here at work and it went very, very well. My boss is very happy with my work and wants me to continue doing what I'm doing as well as take a more active/leadership role in the department. I also found out what my raise and bonus will be. I'm very happy with the situation in general.

I went for dinner last night with a bunch of people from work for one guy's birthday. We ate at Typoon, a Thai restaurant in downtown Seattle. Good stuff. I thought the price to quality to quantity was pretty good, which is really much different from a lot of places in the area. Typcially restaurants around here have a very low quality vs. price ratio. I think that's phrased correctly. If not, I mean you pay a lot, but the quality isn't there.

I'd write more, but it's already 8:30 and I have two-and-a-half hours at the gym ahead of me. Gotta run!

I've decided to work on my math skills. I've always been...not so good...with math and figured it was about time I did something about it. I picked up Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos for some general help and Arithmetic and Algebra Again by Brita Immergut and Jean Burr Smith. The latter is a workbook with lots of examples and problems to work through. I'll let you know how all this goes.

Picking these up further convinces me that I really would like to be able to stay awake all the time. The things I could learn! The things I could fill my time with! Ah, it'd be great! It continues to surprise me how many people think my desire to never sleep is weird. Maybe I know I could fill the time with things. Maybe after a few years I'd get tired of constant activity, but I really don't think so. There's just so much to do. I don't like that I'll sleep for a full third of my life. If I live for 75 years, I'll only experience 50 years worth of life. Personally, I'd rather have all 75 years.

I was completely demotivated at work, but I have a lot to do, so I'll get down to business tomorrow. Lots to do. Oh, and I have my review first thing in the morning. That should be good. It'll be my first review in this position. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm very happy with how the gym has been going lately, but I continue to be frustrated by the fact that women don't seem attracted to me. It's very frustrating and really knocks the wind out of my sails when I think about it. The specifics in this case revolve around the friend of a woman at work. I thought she was cute, but was warned off because she's looking for a rich, Italian pretty-boy. Hmm, yeah, that sounds like someone who's a little hung up on appearances and her own "list". So, whatever. Then another guy at work (not rich or Italian, possibly a pretty-boy) decides he'd like to go out with her. And within a week and a half they've gone out a handful of times and things are moving along. Yippee.

Yeah, it's silly, but it's still annoying.

Time for dinner and the gym.