Party Time

I had a very social weekend. Friday night I met a bunch of friends at the Hi-Life in Ballard for an early birthday dinner. It was a good time -- and a good excuse to get together with everyone. I was particularly glad that Matt came with us. After dinner we had drinks at a bar Shana and I scoped out last week on Phinney Ave.

Saturday evening I had two parties to attend. One was Johnzo's party for which everyone was supposed to bring five songs and label each whatever color they thought appropriate, then Johnzo compiled them and played them over the course of the party. I wasn't able to stay long, but I'm really looking forward to getting all of the songs.

After that party I went to Katie, Kate, and Beth's for a combined birthday party for Katie and Beth. It was a fun night and I somehow managed to stay there until almost four in the morning, which was a little ridiculous. That was okay, though, because I was able to sleep in and be a bum on Sunday. It was nice to be able to sit and read for most of the day. I also watched Waiting for Guffman, which I borrowed from Shana awhile ago. I hadn't seen it since it was in the theatre and it was still very funny.

I have to say it's actually been pretty warm lately. I'm on the second floor of my building and the heat sort of builds up even with a couple of fans blowing.

I'm pretty tired, so I'm going to read for a bit more, then crash.

Oh, Wil, I'll get to the RSS feed thingie tomorrow sometime.

I'm Not In A Bad Mood

I feel a bit deflated and defeated, but I can't say I'm in a bad mood.

I went to the doctor's today to talk about the whole lack of weight loss thing. See, in the last three months I've managed to gain about 25 lbs. From my lightest weight of 295, I'm now up to 320 again. Ugh and Argh.

"Any changes in your life?" he asks. Nope, not really. I have a new job, but now I spend less time at work than before and I'm going to the gym and walking again. He looks perplexed, but suggests a couple of options. Luckily I'm generally healthy, with a resting heartrate of 72 and a blood pressure of 132/82.

So, neither of us knows what the hell is going on. He claims I shouldn't have to kill myself to lose weight, so my 40+ minutes of sustained aerobic exercise three to five times a week should be adequate. But here I am again. I'll keep at it.

Friday night I'm having dinner with a small group of friends, then meeting a much larger group for drinks at Sully's Snowgoose Saloon on Phinney Ridge at about nine o'clock. If you're bored and/or in the neighborhood, please stop by. It should be a fun group of people -- plus the bar's smoke free.

Long Silence

For some reason I've been very lax about updating during the week. I'll work on that. I know I got through stages of posting regularly and not so regularly, but I never know why that is. Anyway, the last week has been good. I've been making a concerted effort to be more active, and although the early part of last week I was pretty tired from the convention, by the weekend I was doing a fair amount of walking.

Walking, by the way, it what I'm doing instead of the gym most of the time. I'm sure I'll go to the gym, too, but most of the time I'm going to be walking. I may even walk to work semi-regularly if I can get up early enough -- which I'm really going to try to do. I'll let you know how it goes.

Work's been going well, but I don't feel like I'm really making progress on things. I should make some good progress this week, though. I was able to test something for the first time on Friday and it needs to be reworked, but the basic idea seems solid.

Thursday we started a new game of the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game. We, of course, randomly generated out characters and I'm playing a dwarven troll slayer named Bokdok the Bastard. He should be fun and I'm really looking forward to playing a straightforward fantasy game.

Friday I took a couple hours out of the day to run over to Redmond on an errand and took some time to stop by the game store and I even picked up a new Champions book. I can't help it, I love Champions and I enjoy what they publish, even if I'm not currently in a game and don't have much chance of getting into one anytime soon.

I spend Friday night discovering the evils of online poker -- which I won't be getting into anymore than I did this weekend because it could become much too expensive. So, consider that chapter of my life over -- although I did win two of the ten or so games I played, so it wasn't a total loss. Besides, I went to Sandra's later in the evening and played poker with real, live people, which is always more fun. And I won about $3.50.

Saturday was comics, laundry, and a long walk with Seth, during which we went to the mall and I bought an iPod. See, I neeeeeeded it (believe me?) because I'm going to start this whole walking regimen and my bulky, single-CD walkman wasn't going to cut it if I was going to be spending a lot of time trundling about town. See? Need.

Sunday I met a friend for coffee in Kirkland -- which was having a big classic car show, so I was able to check out some fun, old cars -- the oldest of which was from 1901, that was pretty cool. Plus there were some nice Mustangs, so I was entertained. When I was leaving there Shana called, so I picked her up and we had brunch at Mae's on Phinney Ridge. It reminded me of Mickey's Dairy Bar in Madison. Yum. Afterwards to went to Best Buy and Target, so we could needlessly spend some money, except Shana picked up some birthday presents for her dad. We also discussed what I should do for my birthday and I think I'm going to organize a dinner for this Friday with everyone. That would be fun.

This evening I went for another walk with Seth and then I had dinner.

Con Games

I returned Sunday evening from another thrilling and exhausting convention. (I think that's the first time I've used 'thrilling' in a sentence in this blog and meant it, by the way.) This time it was the immense San Diego Comic Con International. The number I heard being tossed around today was that there were 100,000 people there, but it didn't seem as crowded to me this year as it did last year.

We demoed a number of games and I'm looking forward to how they're received once the two new ones are available. The feedback from the conventions have certainly been overwhelmingly positive.

I was able to chat with Robert Kirkman (writer of Invincible), Peter David (writer of The Hulk, again), saw Seth Green ("Scotty don't!" (That's for you, Jason)), and the Wayans brothers, again. I didn't have a Joss Whedon sighting this year, which was a bummer. I was hoping to make that a motif of my trips to this particular con.

Other than that, I found some fun t-shirts, picked up a couple of comics I missed when they were initially released, and traded for some new games.

Oh, I was also very happy to be able to hang out with Brian, who came to the show from Tampa. It seems we only get to hang out at conventions, so I'm going to try to plan a trip to visit him this fall sometime -- after the hurricanes and record-breaking heat, thank you.

For those of you who don't check the comments, check out the post below this one for a message from Rob, who apparently had enough time to post a quick comment between pushups.

I hadn't heard of this before, but there's apparently a "new" type of puzzle out there. Sudoku is a pretty basic sort of puzzle in which you have to fill in numbers crossword-style. But, of course, it's easier and harder than that. Check it out, you may have found a new pasttime. If you're really curious you may want to do a Google search on sudoku puzzles and find more sites to your liking.

If I think of anything else from the convention, I'll post it. Mostly I'm tired right now, so I think bed might be in order.

The Thing Is

Friday night: dinner with Shana, Shane, Cathy, Jen, and Hays in Ballard at Madame K's. The pizza was good, but had a slight kerosene taste which was odd but not entirely off-putting.

Saturday: all the normal stuff, plus I went out that evening with Katie, Kate, and Guy to the same bar we were at after Katie's show on Wednesday because it was one of Guy's co-worker's birthday. There were many cute women, but they all smoked, which kills it for me.

Sunday: I watched a "movie" called What the Bleep Do We Know. It's a new-agey documentary sort of thing that tries to mask it's new-ageyness behind a bunch of scientists. That said, it was interesting and inspirational in a way. Mostly because it acted as a reminder for me to think about things that I haven't in a while. Do I buy the presmise of the "movie", nah, not really, but some of the ideas are at least interesting and provided fuel for my imagination.

I've started reading my comics again. It's been months since I've really tried to keep up with them and I'm looking forward to digging in and clearing out the backlog. But for all my excitement over that, I find I'm not very excited about the comics themselves. I say this every now and again, but I really need to look at the comics I'm getting and weed them out. Maybe after reading the stack I have I'll be able to judge what to drop and what to keep.

That's all for now.

Hey! It's been a while!

I'll say it's been a while. A whole week without a meaningful post.

Things have happened.

My 4th of July weekend was good. I played poker and Friday and Saturday nights. Seth and I went to Jason and Liz's on Saturday afternoon for her birthday party. It was too bad that Jason was out of town, but hey, these things can't be helped sometimes and it was a good time regardless.

Sunday I went to the gym (although I haven't been able to go again this week) and did some resistance training and I was reasonably sore for the next couple of days. It's been a long time since I felt that.

Over the weekend, at the Origins gaming convention my company won some great awards.You'll find the complete list of awards here. Pretty good stuff all around. Congrats to everyone.

Monday I went to (a different) Liz's place to watch fireworks from her back deck. She lives in a place with an amazing view of Seattle, so the fireworks were great, but a bit far away. We left late in the evening and ended up encountering a very drunk man who'd been beaten up by his roommate. He wanted us to call for help, so we did and then waited. The firetruck arrived fairly quickly, they bandaged the guy, and then we talked while the drunk guy sat there and was a mix of annoying and funny until the police showed up about an hour after we first called. The guy was fine really, he just needed some slight bandaging -- but then someone suggested filing a complaint, so the cops were needed. Since it was the night of the 4th they were pretty busy, hence the delay. The firemen were funny anyway. I think we're going to send them some product.

On Wednesday I decided to give up on my diet. I realize this is happening with frightening regularity, but I'm having a hard time being really dedicated to it because I don't like it. I prefer to eat a healthy mix of food. Call me crazy. So, now I'm trying to eat well and get more exercise. My real hope is that I can still lose weight by making this change. It's very frustrating.

Wednesday night I had dinner with Jen and Hays, then we went to watch Katie play at Mr. Spot's Chai House in Ballard. She did well and the location was pretty cool. I enjoyed the evening.

Thursday evening I went to the regular Thursday game, but this week we played Domaine instead of roleplaying. It's been a while since I'd played it and I was happy to have the opportunity to check it out again.

Um, I think that's about all this time around. But I want to give Scott Haring my condolences and that goes double for the people affected by the bombings in London. I just don't understand some people...

What's the Question?

I thought this was an interesting article, so I'm linking to it. I may have to pick up this issue and check out the whole thing.

More later.