Quite A Week

The heading says it all. I worked my butt off at work and at home this past week. There wasn't a lot of downtime becuase I was busy at work, busy finishing my editing at home, and I was sick. The sickness part was really only the first part of the week, but it's still making me tired early in the evening. Despite that I had a number of nights of staying up until 2:00am to finish my editing. I was able to sleep in Saturday and Sunday though, so that's okay.

Friday night I went to Jen and Hays' for a pumpkin-carving party. I was wiped out from working all week and didn't really feel like carving a pumpkin, so I didn't do that. What I did instead was hang out with everyone and had one of the best, most relaxing times I've had in a while. What a great bunch of people. I think I nearly burst something from laughing.

Saturday I ran around to do my regular Saturday routine, but also picked up some produce from the Public Market (mmm, green beans) and cobbled together pieces for my Halloween costume. I have to tell you, I was a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to put more thought into my costume, but I've been so busy that I had to repeat a costume and didn't actually get any of the other pieces for it until the day of the party. Terrible. Happily, it all worked out all right. I went as a woman -- I'll post some pictures if/when I can -- and it was ridiculous.

There were a number of very good costumes at the party. Again, if I get the chance I'll post some shots from the evening.

The big news of the evening was the release of Katie's CD. I picked up a couple of copies and it's fantastic. If any of you are looking for a few new songs to check out, email her and order it. You won't be disappointed. Right now I'm wracking my brain trying to think of any recording contacts I have and I think I may have one tenuous one that I'm going to try to exploit.

It appears that I'm firmly below 300 pounds (well, at least I have been for the past few days), so it looks like this new diet has managed to get me past the plateau that I've been on for, wow, about 3 years. Sounds more like a continent than a plateau. Anyway, I'm very calm about it, but really amazed and pleased at the same time. I exit "stage one" tomorrow and move onto "stage two", hopefully I can maintain this momentum. I'm excited to be past the plateau because usually that means I'm good for another 20-30 pounds before I hit another one. If that happens I'd be within striking distance of my goal.

Tonight I'm relaxing a bit before I delve into some housecleaning that I've let slide. I need to go through some boxes that have been sitting on my floor for about a month. I'm sure I have papers, toys, and games in there that I haven't touched for 3-12 years. Garbage time methinks. I'm also looking forward to starting something all my own. I don't know if it will be a comic script, movie script, book, learning some Web programming, or what, but it should be fun.

More Sickness

I didn't sleep very well Sunday night and I still didn't feel well when I woke up, so I emailed the concerned parties at work and told them I'd be out today. I didn't feel like passing this around the office anymore than it already is -- and it apparently is going around because Beth told me that a lot of the office is out sick. I still have a fever, but hopefully I'll be feeling better tomorrow. Regardless, I think I'm going to work.

Anyway, I slept on-and-off until 12:30, then had breakfast and sat down to do some editing. It's about midnight now and I think I'm done for the day. I got a lot done today and I'm only 14 pages from being done.

I woke up to a pleasant surprise, for the first time in probably more than a decade, I weigh less than 300 lbs. That means I've lost 80 lbs. since my heaviest weight (that I know of) four years ago. Hopefully I can maintain some momentum and lose a bit more. If I get to 290 I'll weigh what I weighed, um 14 years ago during my Sophomore year of college. Crazy.

Now I'm going to go sleep and hope I feel better tomorrow.

Sick and Tired

It's late and I have a sore throat. It started as a scratch last night and this morning it was the beginnings of a good, old-fashioned cold. It's been annoying all day, but I feel mostly okay. Luckily it hasn't gotten in the way of anything because I've spend most of the weekend editing. While I'm on that subject, I'm happy to report that I only have 30 pages to go. I'll be done by the end of the week easily -- and I'll be able to put in some extra time into it and come up with some other good stuff to add to the project.

Last week was good. Thursday I played in the final session of the Savage TV game. It was complete blast! We had a great time. I'd love to run that game sometime. It's the perfect introduction to adventure gaming.

Friday I made some salmon and salad and edited the night away.

Saturday I slept in, picked up Seth and Jason, went to get comics, then went to see those freaky puppets in Team America: World Police. It was funny, but I wish it had been more clearly political. As it was it mostly glossed over all the things that are wrong with our government at the moment. It could have been much more biting and poignant.

Saturday was fun because I'd been recruited to distract Jason for a while so his wife could prepare his surprise party. It was good to have an excuse to get out and about with Jason a bit more away from work. The party was fun, but more throat had started to get sore on the way over, so that sucked.

That's all I have. Oh, except if anyone has ideas for a Halloween costume for me, I'll take them! Feel free to email me or leave your ideas in the comments.

P.S. I tried to post this Sunday night, but didn't have any luck, so I'm posting it Monday morning.

V8 and 13

I forgot to mention the one thing about this diet that I ahve to force myself to do. V8. V8 is my bane. I've always hated it. But I've managed to drink some for breakfast Monday and Tuesday. If I keep this up longterm I'm definitely committed to this.

The significance of the number 13 in the headline of today's post refers to my eldest nephew's latest birthday. Wow is all I have to say. I was 22, just out of college, working at Pic-a-Book on State Street in Madison when he was born. It was also the first day of snow that year. It feels like yesterday and 13 years ago at the same time.

Anyway, Jake's 13. I'm going to have to write him a letter and let him in on some secrets that every teenager should know. Feel free to leave your advice in the comments thread and I'll pass them along.

I didn't play the regular Tuesday game tonight. Instead Matt and I went to Seth's for dinner. It was nice to sit and relax and not edit for a while. Then I went home and edited until 12:30. Whee! It seems to be going much faster lately, though. Definitely a good thing because I have about five pages of questions that need resolving and I still have 60 pages to go.

Completely Immature

Yep, that's me. Completely immature. Monday morning I start my new food plan and I'm committed to doing it right. I swear. The first two weeks will be hardcore, then expand into some foods that I'm really looking forward to. Why am I immature? Because for the past week I "took a break" from my last diet until I started my new one. I was actually pretty well behaved, but tonight I decided to indulge one last time, so I'm sitting here eating a very good napoleon. Totally stupid and immature. But, wow, it's good.

Once again, I edited a lot this weekend, got comics, played some City of Heroes, and went to see Primer Saturday evening with a bunch of people. Primer was very good and it bears a second and possibly a third viewing. It's very hard to get my mind around, but I'm not alone in thinking that.

That's, um, that's really about all. But that's okay because I have a lot of editing to do. Okay, time to get to it.

Double Busy

Tuesday evening I played in the fifth session of the World's Largest Dungeon. Seth ran this week and he threw in a good fight and we managed to find our way through a trap -- after setting it off. It was fun.

Wednesday was another busy day of meetings. For some reason I've had a lot of meetings lately. Wednesday night I went to dinner with Shane, Cathy, and Matt S. (not the normal Matt I mention from work, but a different one) at the Honey Hole, then Seth met us at the Egyptian Theatre to watch I Heart Huckabee's. It was an interesting film about existential crises that people go through. There were some very funny bits in it and I'm still processing some of it so I won't say much more. One of the things I will mention, however, is that I thought it was interesting that some of the things the movie seemed to be presenting as great revelations were really pretty basic if you've given "the human condition" much thought. Regardless, it was fun and had a great cast.

I don't have much more to say and I'm pretty tired, so I'm going to go to bed.

The Next Big Thing

And I mean it, the next big thing is my friend Katie. She's working on her budding music career and she's excellent. You can visit her site at Katie Davis (.us). She has some great songs, snippets of which you'll find on her site. She'll also have some CDs ready come the end of the month and I highly, highly recommend them. She's awesome.

Go. See. Listen. Enjoy.

I went to the doctor's today and (happily) he recommended I ditch this Atkins think and move onto something else with more of a balanced menu. Hooray! That makes me happy. He also said that I should give motivational speeches to patients of his that want to lose weight. He was very impressed with my weight loss over the past six months. All I know is that I'm moving on to a better, more balanced food plan. I'm very happy about that.

Why no posts?

Honestly, I have no idea why I haven't posted for the last week. I think I've been busy with my editing project, work, and the odd game of City of Heroes. Oh, and some high-drama issues at work that aren't appropriate for posting here. I'll just say someone at work is having a hard time and I'm trying to help them out -- as much as I can.

Most of this weekend was spent editing and I'm just about half way through. That's not totally fair, I'm 70 pages into a 160-page manuscript, so not quite half way. I have to spend more time on it during the week because spending the weekends inside sort of sucks.

I went out Saturday evening with Katie, Kate, Beth, and Seth to Cedar's, an excellent Indian restaurant in the University district. I had promised Katie a free dinner to reward her for performing some of her music in public. See, she's very . . . neurotic when it comes to performing in public. Butterflies. Really big, ugly butterflies that tear away at her soul. Mostly I think she's incredibly talented and I want to encourage her to do what I think she'll be amazing at.

She has to perform twive by the middle of next month to get her very own sheetcake from Safeway. Katie loves cheap Safeway sheetcake. Hopefully her desire for it will make her famous.

Changing gears; I'm headed to the doctor's tomorrow. I haven't been there for a while and I'm curious about what my diet has been doing to my cholesterol and such. I just want to make sure I'm not doing irreparable damage to myself with this very lop-sided diet. I'd really like to switch back to what I was doing before. It just seemed more balanced than what I'm doing now. We'll see how it goes tomorrow.

Happy Birthday, Julie!

In case you don't know who Julie is, she's my little sister and today is the 4th anniversary of her 29th birthday. (You figure it out.) I don't have any idea if she's one of those people that don't like to talk about her age, I think it's weird when people are sensitive about their age. It's a fact of life that you age, everyone does it, so there's no reason to be embarrassed by your age. I dunno, it's just a thing for me. Anyway, happy birthday to my little sister!

I ran the fourth session of the World's Largest Dungeon. It went well. It amazes me how few encounters the thing has. I had to throw some bad guys at them just so the players didn't fall asleep at the table. Design-wise I understand that they didn't want to throw so many encounters at the players that they'd die, but the type and rate of encounters so far have been laughable. Seth and I are going to have to coordinate some more reasonable random encounters for the players.

Work. *Sigh* Work has been . . . interesting. Not because work has been hard, but because everyone in my deparment is seriously overworked, physically and mentally exhausted -- and all that adds up to very, very low morale. As soon as I can I'm going to have to try to do something to fix that. They all do great work and I want them to be excited and motivated, not burned out. Must come up with some ideas to help them.

I received my sample copies of Foes of Freedom today. Woohoo!

Editing is slow work.

I've spent most of the weekend indoors editing and it was an annoyingly nice weekend; very sunny and very warm. The kind of weekend that I'd actually like to spend outside, especially since I won't get many more of them before it really turns to what everyone conceives of as Seattle weather for the next however many months. But, I was trying to be responsible and actually fulfill my contract for my editing project. Good for me. Stupid weather.

I wish I had something exciting to talk about, but that was pretty much my weekend. Oh, I did play some City of Heroes. Friday night when my eyes were about to pop out of my head from reading of the screen for too many hours I got a call from Jim. He wanted to know if I wanted to play -- and we did a long mission that took until four in the morning. A bit longer than I'd planned, but it was fun and all I had to do when I woke up was edit, so that was all right.

I manged to get about 1/6th of the manuscript done, so I only need about 6 more day's-worth of time to have it finished -- and I have a month to do it, so that's good.

I was secretly very excited today because I wore a shirt I've never worn before. A shirt I received nine years ago and have always wanted to wear. It's silly to be excited about an old t-shirt from a company that I haven't worked at for eight years (that's been out of business for eight years!) with the logo of a magazine that hasn't been published in eight years, but I was pretty happy about it.

I was watching something last night and it made me think about how annoyed I am with the diet I'm on. Given the paragraph above it seems foolish of me to speak badly about it, but I don't like that I've cut out so many types of food. I beleive balance is an important thing and right now my food intake is very, very out of balance. I'm going to set up another meeting with my doctor and see if he has any new advice. I'll set that up this week.

On the eve . . .

It's Thursday evening as I sit here and as I was on my way back from gaming, just walking up my steps from the car, I realized that it was this evening three years ago that I arrived in Bellevue and started living here.

I have a better job than before. It's more fun, more interesting, and pays me more.

I have an apartment that I've now lived in longer than I've lived anywhere in the past 17 years. It's nice, fairly spacious, and comfortable.

I'm a bit thinner than when I moved out here. I'm definitely healthier.

I keep in semi-regular contact with everyone I kept in contact with before I moved here. I was worried when I moved that I might quickly lose touch with people back home, but over the years I've apparently learned how to keep in touch with people. And really, why wouldn't I? I have some great friends . . . even if they do live in Michigan, New Jersey, Florida, Wisconsin, and everywhere else it seems like.

I have some great friends out here. I've managed to develop a fun group of friends that I enjoy spending time with and who, for some reason, enjoy spending time with me. If you go back and read the first year or so worth of posts after I moved here this was a big, big worry for me and I'm happy to say that things have turned out well.

That's all very good. All in all, I guess things are going pretty darn well.

Thanks everyone for whatever role you play or played in all that.

News over the past couple of days was interrupted by the reposting of the saga of moving out here, but I'll do some quick recaps.

Tonight was the first presidential debate. I already have my mind made up on who I'm voting for so I didn't watch, but honestly that's not why I didn't watch. The reason I didn't watch was because it would make me way too stressed to hear about all the crap that no doubt was thrown on one candidate and then back on the other. Sure, there were probably some interesting bits I missed, but it wouldn't have been worth being ticked and tight-jawed about it all night. Besides I had a game to play. My favorite post to-date about the current President has to be from the Crawford Texas Iconoclast. It's interesting how negative they are on Bush considering they endorsed him only four years ago. (Thanks for the link Jason.) My real fear is that people who identify themselves as Republicans will vote Republican just because that's what they've always done. I think if people were to look at his record objectively they'd see how weak -- how bad -- his time as President has been, they'd see that keeping him in office, that voting for him, only helps to weaken this country both internally and to the rest of the world.

You may have seen in the news over the past couple of days that Mount St. Helens is acting up again. I really wanted to comment on this in the last couple of days, but it would have interrupted the flow, so I didn't. Hmm, what are my thoughts on a possible volcanic eruption right next door (geographically speaking)? Well, I think it's pretty cool. Sure, I have reservations about being excited -- and I'm not foolish enough to think, "Well how bad can it possibly be?" I have a pretty good idea that it could be pretty damn bad. Even so, I think it's pretty interesting. Seth found some good links about Mount St. Helens' seismic reading last week and those from this week. Cool.

I have a ton of editing to do on a project and I've started, but it's not going as fast as I'd like it to. I really need to sit down this weekend and spend some time going through everything and making real progress. Must.

I got a call from Phil this week. He's having a party in the middle of November that I'd like to get back for, but I don't know if I have the money. I like Phil and I'd like to be there for him on his big mid-life birthday. I'll have to look into that over the next couple of weeks. I can't imagine there's a lot of demand to fly to Milwaukee this time of year.

Okay, time to get some sleep.

Year four starts today. Cripes, four years!