I have an iMac that I don't use, so I'm going to send it to my parents to use at home. I didn't want to send it to them without updating some things (newest versions of Acrobat, etc.) and it's a realy pain. See, I suck at troubleshooting computer issues and have very little patience for them because I simply don't understand the way they think, how they organize information, all that sort of thing.

Now I'm going to have to wait and get some help with it which is disappointing because I thought it would be fairly easy to get connected and get everything downloaded. No such luck. I guess I'll get it sent next week instead of this week.

It's a long weekend, so I've been running around and mostly relaxing, which has been nice.

Thursday I played in the last session of Johnzo's Savage Worlds: X-Com game. It was very different from the rest of the games because it involved very little combat, very few tactical decisions, and really came down to talking and decisions that we had no clue whether or not they were correct. It was fun. Over the next couple of weeks we'll figure out our next game. Some good options have been put forward, so I'm looking forward to it. Oh, Seth may join us, too.

Friday I had a couple of very good meetings at work to discuss some upcoming products. I'm very happy with how those talks went and we got more done that I'd originally intended -- mostly because I didn't think the others would want to go as far out as we enede up going.

That evening I helped Shana rearrange some things in her house (she's in the midst of redecorating her place) so she could do some painting over the weekend. As a treat for helping her she bought me dinner at Cedar's, and Indian restaurant in the University district. I've been there before and it's very, very good. Probably one of my favorite restaurants in Seattle, actually.

Saturday I did a lot of running around, I ran to Ikea with Seth so he could take a look at things and think about what he'll be buying soon for his apartment and so I could exchange a picture frame for Shana. It was "no-tax day" at Ikea, so it was very, very busy which was annoying, but understandable considering that tax here is almost 9%. We made a quick run through the store, then went to Xanadu to pick up comics. No Shane this week because he's a lazy bum and had just made it out of bed at 1:00 which is about when we arrived at the store.

I dropped off Seth and Chris after getting comics becasuse Chris had to go to a meeting, and Seth didn't feel like coming to the cookout that Katie, Kate, and Beth were having. I picked up some food on the way over, visited with them for a while, made some late lunch, and heard about their recent roadtrip to California. I stayed longer that I should have, because I was supposed to be in Issaquah to meet a bunch of people for Scott's bachelor party at 5:00 at Illusionz. It's a big arcade. I was here in January for Brian's birthday, so I knew what to expect. Is it mean if I say I'm glad I only had to stay for an hour?

Anyway, after that we went into Seattle to Morton's. Apparently it's one of a chain or steakhouses. Fairly high class, but it was weird because despite the fact that an average dinner runs about $50, the style of dress ran from suits and dresses to t-shirts and jeans. Very odd. Scott's best man has been there many, many times and even had his own wine locker, so he'd reserved us a room. I won't go over the whole evening, but it was fun and relaxing and the food was very good. Best of luck Scott!

I got home by about 11:00 to find that Seth had locked himself out of his place because his locks are screwy, so he ended up staying over until he could deal with his lock the next day.

Sunday I got to sleep in a bit, then went to meet Shana for breakfast and a day of running errands to pick up things for her bedroom -- ribbon Ballard, rugs in Capitol Hill, lamps in Frelard (that's a new name to me, it's a combination of Fremont and Ballard). Actually, the lamps took up most of the day, but we managed to find some really cool black and gold, 50's-style lamps at a great store called the Stuff Cafe. The owner was a great guy who gave Shana quite a deal on the lamps. I found a copy of The Tom-Tom Club's album. I've wanted that thing for, um, 20 years now, so that was fun.

In the evening I went into work and played City of Heroes with a bunch of people, then ran back over to Shana's to drop some things off and visit with her for a bit.

Monday the plan is to got to Jason's to (FINALLY!) hang out at his place a watch a movie on his Gratuitous Television. So, I'm going to get moving.

I've been lax in updating, but I've had some interesting things happen lately. Well, I think they're interesting.

Tuesday morning I got ready for work and went down to my car. Parked next to my car, in the spot that's marked as 'no parking' was a big, white Cadillac. It's not too suprising that a car was parked there, it happnes now and again. This car annoyed me, however, because it was parked at a weird angle and made it very difficult to get into my car. As I was worming my way into my car I noticed that there was someone sleeping in the back seat of the Cadillac.

Inappropriate? Yes, I think so. So I called my landlord and let him know about the person in the car. I have no clue what the result of that was, but it was a bit of petty revenge on my part as well as a bit of basic safety.

The bamboo outside my apartment is growing like crazy again. I swear it grows about a foot a day. It's really very impressive.

Phil called Wednesday morning to talk for a while and he said he's had a hellish couple of days because his basement has been leaking something like 25 gallons of water an hour due to the rain. He'd had a bad weekend taking care of that, but he was feeling a bit better because his neighbors arrived home from a few days away to find that they're sump pump had exploded and their newly finished basement was flooded with four feet of water. Bad for them, but, like I said, Phil felt better.

A couple of the guys at work submitted an entry to the Red Bull Flugtag . . . aaaaand they were one of the few accepted. The site is taking votes on which is the best submission and right now their submission is in the lead. Go check out the entries and be sure to vote for Hair Force One! Remember, it was built by rock 'n' roll!

Switching gears entirely, I ran my Mutants & Masterminds game last night. It went well, generally, but the players were very distracted -- reading comics, talking and arguing constantly, and not really paying attention. Some of it was due to unfamiliarity with the system and a long-ish fight, but a lot of it was pretty inexcusable. It was very frustrating. Happily I left things at a good cliffhanger that got everyone's attention.

It looks like Brian from Tampa is headed out here for a few days in a couple of weeks. That should be fun. I have to look into some whale-watching trips and some other fun things to do while he's here. I'm looking forward to his visit.

Scott is officially an unemployed teacher! Yes, that's a good thing because it means he has his teaching certification and can start looking for real teaching work. He's hoping that at some point over the summer that he'll be able to make it out here. That would be great. I think he could use a break -- and I'm sure Seth and I would like to spend some time with him. It's been too long.

I don't have a whole lot more to say. I'll try to update soon.

I'm back from the show. It went well and we didn't have (m)any of the problems that we had in L.A. There were still some disgruntled people, but I think we just have to accept that and hope we can make them like us in the future.

Anyway, my system is royally messed up because of the time difference. Plus I didn't sleep well last night because I was afraid I'd oversleep -- instead I ended up not sleeping much at all. I made it to my flight on time, though, so that's a good thing.

I'm also happy to report that I managed to read 200-250 pages of A Game of Thrones. It's as excellent a book as my friends have been saying.

I made it back early enough today that I was able to go downtown to pick up comics with Seth and Shane. That combined with the lack of sleep pretty much did me in for the day. I played some city of Heroes, but other than that I think I'm only going to be good for watching some Buffy, maybe reading a bit, then going to bed. Probably soon.

I'm in Philadelphia at the show and I got the chance to do a quick update. Really quick.

The show is going well. I gave my presentation to our volunteers tonight and that was fun. They got to eat free food, listen to me blather on about our products, then play some games. They had some good questions for me and I think I gave them some good answers when I could. Hopefully they had a good time.

I managed to find a couple of books that I missed recently at the comic store, so that made me happy. I also talked to the people who make City of Heroes and that may lead to some good product swapping and other goodies in the future. Super-nice guys who are fans of my company.

I also talked our convention manager into donating one of our more popular figures to the folks at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, so they could auction it off. That made me very pleased. It's for a good cause and I hope they make some good money off it.

Okay, I have to be up early. And tomorrow night I get together with Kevin and Lori for dinner. That should be fun. I haven't seen them in a while. Later!

Well, there you go. Nothing good can come of this . . . has an all-new, all-exciting appearance! Woohoo! Let me know if you like the changes. The comments are still there, but they've moved to the lower right corner of every post.

Thanks to Seth for all his help with this.

Tuesday evening I ran my Mutants & Masterminds game. It's going well, but this game has reinforced my belief that if the group is going to be a team, then they should start as a team -- no matter how you have to engineer it. Getting them all together has been . . . difficult. I think it will improve over the next couple of sessions, but right now it's a pain. I want to make sure everyone is having a good time and right now I don't think they are.

Today, Wednesday I took care of some things before I leave for the show in Philadelphia. I'm gone from Thursday to Sunday afternoon. The show should be fine and I'm looking forward to seeing Kevin and Lori, who'll be driving up to have dinner with me on Saturday evening.

Okay, I have to go get ready to go. I'll try to update over the weekend if I can. Otherwise I'll be back Sunday.

Saturday night Chris stayed home and worked on some things for his brugeoning practice he's establishing out here while Seth and I went to see Troy. It was an okay movie that I'd recommend for a matinee. I certainly won't buy it. It just wasn't good enough to get me really jazzed up. I was a little disappointed that they decided to take all of the mythological elements out of it. Although that did lead to an interesting idea that none of the characters involved were "magical" at all, and instead their legend just built up over the years to the point that they attained mythical status. Interesting, but I'd have rather had the mythical bits. Peter O'Toole was the best part, but Eric Bana and Brad Pitt were okay.

Sunday I did a whole lot of nothing that I can remember other than going to Marymoor Park to watch people fly remote-controlled planes (very cool) and play some City of Heroes with friends all over the country (Seattle, Madison, and Green Bay). That was fun.

I started watching my copy of Buffy season five, which was nice. I'd like to get through them all soon, so I don't feel bad about picking up the next batch in the next couple of weeks.

Monday was Seth's first day at work. That seemed to go well and I doubt I'll say much more about this subject here.

This evening I had a nice, long talk with Brain in Tampa. He's a great guy and I really hope I'm able to see him again soon. It's funny how good of friends we are considering we only really know each other from phone conversations and meeting at conventions. After we talked I had some dinner with Chris, Seth, Kevin, and Kim, then came home to work on things for the third session of Mutants & Masterminds. Now I'm going to watch more Buffy and go to bed.

After another fun-filled evening of playing in Johnzo's excellent Savage Worlds X-Com game. On the way home I heard from Seth and Chris who called to say they were in Issaquah so they'd be to my place soon -- about a half-day early, actually, since I wasn't expecting them until sometime Friday. No biggie, though, so they showed up, we unpacked and then they crashed pretty quickly.

Friday I worked while Seth and Chris looked at apartments and ran errands. They stopped by later in the day and I went to look at the apartment Seth was interested in -- and possibly interested in having me move into as well, but I don't think I'm ready to pack up and move just yet. Besides, if I move it'll probably be into the city . . . despite the commute. After work we had some excellent dinner at Ginza in Bellevue. Later in the evening we drove around a bit, then played some City of Heroes. Fun.

Saturday we grabbed some breakfast, then went down to Zanadu to pick up comics. No Shane this week, unfortunately, but that was probably okay because we had to make it a really quick trip because we were headed to Clementine's birthday party afterwards. We made it back home to pick up some things, then over to the southern part of the city just in time to have a fun afternoon of bowling and birthday fun.

Now we've come home to hang out for a while and decide what we're up to tonight. I had a few free minutes, so I thought I'd do some updating. Oh, by the way, I may change the appearance of my blog, so if you come back someday soon and see that it's very different than it looks now, well, it's on purpose. Some change might be good.

I'm up late waiting for my bathroom rugs to get done in the dryer. Yes, it's as exciting as it sounds. See, I spent the latter part of the evening picking up, cleaning up, and organizing my apartment in preparation for Seth and Chris' arrival on Friday. It's not going to be spotless or anything like that, but it'll be pretty darn clean and much more presentable than it was earlier today. Part of that involves washing my bathroom rugs, so here I am.

Earlier this evening I played Carcassonne (however it's spelled) with Matt and a former co-worker. It was nice. We had some dinner, then played a couple of games and chatted. She seems to be doing well.

I heard recently that the sixth season of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer is coming out by the end of the month, and I'm a bit bummed. I still haven't managed to watch season five (which I've had since before Christmas) and I don't own, nor have I watched seasong three of Angel, which has been out for a while. I'll have to pick up the pair of them sometime soon-ish. I still have a handful of movies to watch, so I'm in no hurry. I'm still enjoying Samurai Jack, anyway.

The Origins awards nominations were announced and my company is in the running for a dozen of them. Wow. That's a little crazy. It's nice to know that people like our stuff that much. Here's the list of nominations.

In other news, the Seattle International Film Festival is back. I'd like to check out a few films if possible, but I'm out of town the first weekend and I haven't found a copy of the schedule, but as soon as I do I'm going to pick up some tickets. That should be fun.

My rugs aren't done yet, but I think they will be soon, so I'm going to go watch them spin until they figure out I'm watching and stop.

Monday I worked part of the day, then took a couple of hours off to go see Van Helsing with many of the people in the office. The movie wasn't good, but it was fun and cheezy as hell with lots of bad dialogue and silly acting.

Monday night I finished up some things for the game on Tuesday and chatted with Shana, which is always a good time.

Tuesday night I ran the second installment of my Mutants & Masterminds game. It didn't go quite like I'd expected, but everything turned out all right and we had a blast. There were too many gut-busting laughs throughout the course of the evening to go into here. I'm a little concerned by the number of players involved, but so far it's going all right.

I still have a number of things to do in order to prepare for Seth and Chris' arrival on Friday. Hopefully I'll be able to get some of them done Wednesday evening. If not, I'm going to have to take some time off from work to prepare. Hmm, maybe taking Friday off would be fun. I'll think about it. I certainly have the vacation time for it.

It's invisible to you, but Blogger did a major redesign on their interface -- and it looks like they've added quite a few features -- and it looks great. I'm sure it will take some getting used to, but it seems like it should be easy.

The end of last week was pretty unexciting, but the weekend was fun, so I'll skip the boring parts and only give you the interesting bits. That way it seems like I live a really exciting life with no boring moments whatsoever.

Friday I left at a reasonable time and went with Shana to Ikea to help her pick up a cyborg (at least that's what we've been calling it. It's actually a sideboard) for her apartment's ongoing renovation. I picked up some glasses and a Mother's Day gift for Mom. I think she'll like it. I'm going to try to get it sent out right away Monday, but I'll really have to figure out how I'm going to do that considering the meetings planned for the day -- plus, I get to go see Van Helsing and that will take up some of the day.

After we dropped the cyborg off at her place I drove to Broadway to meet Pat, Angel, Kate, and Katie for dinner at a Mexican place that I can't remember the name of, but it was pretty good. I had a margarita and, wow, I could feel it before I was half finished. It's funny how not drinking and not eating carbs will mess with your alcohol resistance. After dinner we went to Kate and Katie's and watched the horrible Win a Date with Tad Hamilton. Katie loves bad movies and this one fit into that category well.

Saturday I did some reading and my laundry in the morning, then went for breakfast at a place down the street from where I live. I forget the name. In the afternoon I waited for Shane to call so we could go get comics. Eventually he did -- he'd been busy setting up his new bed -- and I went to pick him up. After comics, we hung out at his place for a while and he and Cathy started calling people to set up an impromptu get-together because it was Shane's birthday. Within an hour or so, we had a roomful of people; Shana, Ethan, Anna, Jen, Hayes, and Shane, Cathy, and me. We had a good time watching some of Shane's new Samurai Jack and Aqua Team Hunger Force DVDs, listening to music, and eventually, watching PCU. Food arrived very late, bummer, but the girls made a birthday cake (smelled great) so that made dinner fun for everyone but Hayes and I who are Atkinsing. I left around 1:30 and made it to bed by 3:00.

I slept in Sunday. And I needed it. I was very bad last week about not getting enough sleep. I talked to mom and wished her a happy Mother's Day. She had a great story about something that happened Saturday night/Sunday morning.

There was a thunderstorm (oh, how I miss them) and she woke up in the middle of the night when a bolt of lighning hit nearby. The thunder shook the house as it always does when lightning stikes close by. Everything was fine, so she went back to sleep. A while later she rolled over and saw a reddish-orange flickering light in the hallway. For a moment she thought the house might be on fire, but when she got up to investigate, she saw out the side window that there was a fireball raging in front of the neighbors' house. The police already knew about it and it was being taken care of, but apparently the lightning had hit the street, blasted a hole in it, split a power line and that's what was fueling the fireball. I'm not sure how electricity can keep a fireball going, but maybe there was a broken gas main or something, too. Pretty funky, though.

After talking to Mom, I an some errands; picked up a new pot to replant some cacti I have at work, some plant food for home, and I finally spent the last of my Christmas money on three CDs (Prince's Musicology, Modent Mouse's Good News For People Who Love Bad News, and The Essential Johnny Cash) and the Samurai Jack DVD set. I'm looking forward to watching those. The style is incredible. I'm especially impressed by how little dialogue it uses. Plus, it was only $25. Cool.

This afternoon I picked up a bit in preparation for Seth and Chris' arrival, had dinner with Kevin and Kim, and worked on a bunch of characters for Tuesday's game of Mutants & Masterminds.

Now it's almost midnight, so I'm going to do something or other, then try to get to bed before 1:00. Wish me luck.

The past couple of days have involved work, playing City of Heroes, and running the first session of my new Mutants & Masterminds game. I just returned from running it and it went well. I already have four players and I'll have two more (if Seth plays once he gets here). And I know Jason is interested, too. Hmm, might be a bit large by the time this is done. I'll see how it goes. I have a feeling one or two of the people won't be entirely reliable.

So, what do you do when someone you know is feeling bad about life, sad for no reason, teary, depressed? I'll tell you what I do; I listen. I don't know what else to do. I wish I could make everything feel right, but I can't and it's frustrating. The real shame is that this person is great. Really a fantastic friend, lots of fun, reliable, and just, plain cool -- but doesn't feel that way right now.

I'm sure you've all felt like this at one time or another. So, my question to you is; what advice do you have for my friend to help get out of this funk?

And, cheer up, buddy. I know I'm not the only one who thinks you're great.

I don't know what happened to today, but the rest of the weekend was good.

Friday I went to Shana's and hung out with her and Beth. We watched the best of Will Ferrel, had dinner, and talked. Beth was leaving for Portland, then L.A. for a few weeks, so I won't see her for a while.

Oh, I got a haircut Friday night, too. It's short. Very short. I was considering shaving it all off, but instead I just went super short (maybe a 1/2" at the longest). I didn't go completely bald because I didn't know if my head would look all right that way -- since, I haven't been bald since I was a baby . . . if I was bald then. I don't know. So, anyway, I may shave it all off at some point, just because, but for now I won't have to get a haircut for a while.

Don't ask me why I cut it so short -- or why I was considering shaving it. I just think it would be cool to do for once. And who knows, it might look good.

Saturday I got up early and went down to Shane and Cathy's to help them move. I arrived about 9:00, we picked up the truck, and moved until the afternoon. Then we got some food and picked up comics. Their new place is in Capitol Hill, just a few blocks from Katie, Kate, and Beth. It seems like a nice area and their apartment is much better than their old one.

I got home later than planned, so I wasn't able to go to Angel's fashion show because my clothes were still in the dryer. Kind of a bummer because I was curious to see her designs, the place it was being held, the clientele, plus I was even in the mood to be social. Ah, well, maybe next time. I hope she had good success.

Today I slept in, went to work for a bit, had dinner with Matt, and worked on some things for my new Mutants & Mastermids game on Tuesday. Plus, I've been playing a fair amount of City of Heroes. *Ahem*

I think I'll go play now for a while.

At some point I'm going to have to finish watching Singin' in the Rain. It's been sitting in my DVD player since I picked up the game.

I talked with my mom this morning and she said that Dad was walking in with a bag of pretty ice for her, then she went on to say, "I think my two favorite things in the world are ice and hot water." (Not together.) Then she told me that my dad's response to that was, "My two favorite things in the world are you and sunshine."

I can't tell you how cute I thought that was. I was smiling about it for hours afterward. Does anyone else think that's about the best thing you've heard in a while?