Effort Less

Why is it some things are so hard for some people and so easy for others? Can anyone answer that for me? How do some people meet the man or woman of their dreams when they're 20 and others never do (or at least feel like they never will)? I don't get it.

What brings this on? I had a date yesterday (Saturday) and I was really looking forward to it, but there was just no chemistry, which really sucked because we got along very well, but I kept thinking, "she'd make a good friend." Bah. Annoying.

I make this post heedless of Phil's warnings not to talk about dating here. See, I do on dates somewhat regularly, I just don't write about them here, nor do I discuss them with everyone I know, because most of them lead nowhere. Consider them exploratory surgery; very little pain, you learn a lot, but you definitely feel something different afterwards. So, anyway, I'm still single and still looking. I just wish this were easier.

Changing gears... I worked on the movie script a bit this week. Shane and I will be spending time on it while Cathy is gone after next weekend on her trip. So far it's looking good, but I can tell I have some reading and research to do just to make sure I'm including enough, but not too much, information in the script. I'm sure that sort of thing differs from writer to writer, but I need to see more examples before I'm really comfortable with what I'm doing.

Gas? Still expensive.

Seth picked up City of Villains for me on Friday, so I've been checking that out over the weekend. Not too much, but some. The new powers look cool and I'm sure I'll enjoy checking out some of the other cool new goodies therein.

I missed all the Halloween parties over the weekend because I was out of town all day yesterday. That's too bad, but to be honest I wasn't all fired up for Halloween this year. I have no idea why. I didn't even have an idea for a costume. But I've already decided that for next year I want to get a huge group of people to all go as zombies, then descend on random parties! Okay, the first part of that was serious, but the second wasn't.

Okay, it's time for me to finish up sorting my Magic cards. Yes, I'm still messing with them, but I swear I'm almost done alphabetising them.

Limited Edition!

I'm fascinated by the recent trend in junk food to release "Limited Edition" versions of their foods. I've seen Reese's using these promotions for a number of different versions of their classic peanut butter cup, Hershey's has jumped into the game with a number of different Limited Edition versions of their chocolate bar (with toffee or mocha or ants, whatever), and I know I've seen others.

I'm sure it's just some manipulative attempt to get the consumer to buy now! because this special Limited Edition food won't be available for long!

And it works. I have to admit that I've tried a couple of candy-bars in the past couple of months based on the fact that if I didn't try it now, it probably wouldn't be around in the future. Damn me! Now they'll continue doing these sorts of lame promotions. Maybe I'll do that to my blog posts; leave them up for a while, then delete them, so you'll need to read them when they come out or run the risk of missing out entirely! Whew! My readership would skyrocket!

Seattle drivers continue to lack the ability to merge. It really is maddening.

Last week and this weekend were good. I've been spending a lot of time alphabetizing my Magic cards still, but I should be done with that soon since I only have about a box left to go. Then I can clean up my apartment again, which has been neglected for a while now due to this project.

I picked up some empty record sleeves this weekend, so I can finally take the albums out of the record covers that I'm going to hand on the walls. I was glad to finally stop and get those. Can you imagine if I hung those and then hung the DVD cases I purchased almost two years ago? It'd be like a whole new apartment!

I think I'm going to Vancouver this weekend. It means I'll have to miss Halloween (sorry, Jason, I meant to tell you today, but I just remembered). I'll let you know how it goes.

By the way, happy birthday to Jason. He's a great guy and I hope he has a great 27th year.

Jen sent around some pictures of previous Halloweens, feel free to check them out! 2003 and 2004.

Okay, that's enough babble for now. I swear I'll update more often than I have been. For some reason things have gotten away from me lately and it annoys me too.

Gaming Weekend

Last week was normal. Nothing really stood out because I spent most of my time away from work trying to weed out my Magic collection (an ongoing project). The weekend is a different matter.

Somehow this last weekend turned into a big gaming weekend for me. Friday night after Vic and Kelly's baby shower at work I went with Matt, Isaac, and Rollie to the new Uncle's Games in Crossroads mall to play a Magic booster draft. Then Saturday I went down to the game day that WizKids was having at the Alki Room in Seattle Center where I played a couple of games using the new Armor Wars set. It was fun to see everyone playing, but it was a bit weird that this was the first release that I didn't have much to do with (other than the set list and the stats for Captain America). It seems my time with HeroClix is officially over. Sigh. Oh well, maybe I can start enjoying the game again. As a matter of fact, I really enjoyed playing the other day, so I may have to get some games going now and again. I'm sure Seth won't want to play, though.

After the Game Day thingie, I went to Matt's for dinner and some more Magic. He made some great prok chops on the grill and some fixin's then he wanted to try out a new constructed deck, so we did that until around midnight. For some reason when I got home I got busy organizing my Magic cards and stayed up until almost four o'clock. It's that same thing as always, if I have something to do, I just don't seem to get tired. That ended up screwing up my sleep schedule, though, so I'm going to force myself to get to bed soon to try and reset it.

Sunday after I woke up at noon. Noon! Criminy! I had things to do! Ah, well. Instead I ended up running some errands, then going to James' apartment for an afternoon/evening of poker with a bunch of people. Some of the players were pretty talky, so we didn't get a lot of playing done, but it was still a lot of fun. I even had a couple of good hands right before we called it a night, otherwise it was all carp.

Today I worked on a new version of one of our games and made notes on something else I'm working on for the company that owns us. I hope both of them go somewhere because they're two very different projects that I think would be great for the company.

I've been mulling over a number of story ideas in my head lately and I think I've solved one of the big questions I've had for one of them. The other is still a bit iffy, but I spend a lot of time thinking about them both throughout the day, oddly enough, it seems like I get the best ideas as I lay in bed at night and drift off to sleep while thinking of them. Maybe because nothing else is distracting me?

Oh, I finished the first of the new Shadowrun novels this weekend. It was a very basic introductory novel, but it was well-written (compared to the last novel I read which wasn't, in my opinion). I think the novel releases this month sometime (I had a preview copy), so check it out if urban-cyber-fantasy is your cupa. Next on the list is the latest from Gaiman, The Anansi Boys -- which I always think sounds like a combination of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Maybe it's just me.

By the way, everyone should go buy Tsuro. It's finally out and it's great. You won't be disappointed.

Okay, time to make myself sleep.

Sometimes I Just Don't Know Where The Time Goes

It feels like it's been six weeks since my last update. I mean, even Kevin and Donna have updated in the past week and I've been a total slacker.

Luckily, I have an excuse. I've been busy. Pretty good excuse, eh?

Thursday Shane and I sat down and started working on our movie script. We have the first scene written and worked out a few more of the kinks in the story, so we're on our way. This thursday I'm planning to rewrite everything into the correct format and touch up what we've done so far. We both think this will be the best movie ever, so it has a lot to live up to. You'll see we were right on opening weekend -- which will probably start on a Wednesday sometime in 2007.

Friday night I went with Matt, Isaac, Rollie, and Seth to a Magic release tournament in Crossroads mall. It was fun to see the new cards (and pick some up), but the tourney didn't go well for me. I made a bad choice early on and it resulted in me not having any fun at all. See, I insisted on playing Red/White and I should have played White/Green. Oh well.


Saturday I cleaned and organized around the apartment, which was pretty fun, actually. And then went to a housewarming party at Jen and Hays' for the evening. It was another "Short Attention Span Film Festival" so everyone brought a short video clip or scene from a DVD and showed it on Hays' gratuitously large television. (By the way, most of the people I know out here seem to have gratuitously large televisions and I'm beginning to feel inadequate. So if you're wondering what I need for Christmas, the smart money is on a huge flatscreen television.)

Sunday I met with Shane and Cathy for comics, then hung out with them for a bit downtown before coming back for my first City of Heroes game in a couple of weeks.

Monday was work, and by work I mean I had meetings all day, then went to the doctor. I'm still alive.

More later.

By Your Command

Lou asked for it, the game we played on Saturday was called Return of the Heroes. You can find more about it here and here and here... if you want to.

And despite the fact that the reviews are all rather favorable, I can't actually back them up. The game has a lot of interesting bits, but I'd have rather done almost anything else. So, Lou, what I'm saying is, it's not worth buying or even playing, really, but it might be worth watching some other suckers play -- for a while -- in order to see how it works.

Changing gears; I saw Serenity today and it really was a damn fine movie. I really enjoyed it and if you like sci-fi movies I'm sure you'll like it. Please check it out.

It Has Begun!

Sunday night I went to Shane and Cathy's for an evening of work on our movie script. that's very exciting to Shane and I because we're quite convinced that this is the greatest movie never put to paper. I'm sure you'll hear more about the script as it progresses, but for now we have the outline on paper so we'll get started on the guts this week. You'll see t in the theatres sometime in 2007, I figure.

The rest of the weekend was actually quite full. Friday I went to the gym (good for me) and then went to see a late showing of A History of Violence with Seth. It was a very, very good movie that I think my dad would like (Mom, you wouldn't like it so much; too violent). It was a tad slow, but I think that actually helped to make is feel more real. If you don't know much about it, it's the story of a small-town diner owner/father/husband who takes out some Very Bad Men and becomes a media darling for it -- which leads to some other Very Bad Men seeing him and thinking he's an old "friend," which is where things go South. I recommend it, even at full price.

Saturday I went to the gym and even did some lifting (double good for me), wasted a bunch of time and did some reading, then around 4:00 I drove Matt and Seth to Mike's for an evening of boardgaming. I forget the name of the game, but it was a little painful, so maybe that's for the best. For those of you familiar with Talisman, it was like that only way more random. Yeah, you heard me. That lasted until midnight, but we also played a couple games of Blokus (which I heartily recommend!), but the other game still lasted a good six hours. Ugh.

Sunday, Sunday, what happened to Sunday? Oh, yeah, a late breakfast, more reading and timewasting, then dinner with Kevin and Kim for Kevin's birthday... then to Shane's.

A good, semi-productive weekend really.

I paid my rest today, which went up $40 this month. Kind of a bummer, but it's the first increase in the four years I've lived here, so I can't complain overmuch.

I keep thinking I had something else I wanted to write about, but now that I'm sitting here I can't think of it. Ah well, if I think of it later I'll post. Otherwise you get to wait. If you simply have to have an update of some sort, go check out Greg's pleasant stories about reading stories to his daughter or Glenn's very cool Disney photo blog. (By the way, Glenn, I think you should spread the meme of the 6-photo Flickr blog, it's very cool.)

More later.