Misc.

Mike had a number of his gaming buddies come into town last weekend for a mini gaming convention. It started as sort of a joke over the holidays, but then they all started making plans for coming to visit. You can see the site Mike's brother put together here.

It looks like the Dead Sea Scrolls are coming to town. Pretty cool. I mean we all have old papers from the past lying around, but when they go on tour, that's really saying something.

We've been getting some interesting things done at work...actually deciding on what to do and what directions we need to head in. That's actually pretty exciting for me. I have direction!

More soon.

Busy, busy, busy

I suppose I should sit for a few minutes and update. Things have been good, there's just been too much going on, so I haven't had time to blog lately.

I didn't get sick like I feared I might last week. Instead I got a couple of good nights' sleep and that familiar pain in my throat went away. I almost managed to undo all my good rest with a late night of poker on Friday (up 'til 4:30), but everything turned out alright.

The poker game was in Tacoma. I maintained my streak of doing really well in the early part of the evening and then making a bad move and paying for it with most of my chips. Live and learn, right?

Saturday was Shana's housewarming, so Julia and I headed over there for most of the afternoon. There were a ton of people there over the course of the day (40? More?) and we had a good time. I'm sure it was a little overwhelming for Julia, who knew almost no one there, because it was a little much for me and I knew everyone there. The house looked great. She's done a good job of sprucing the place up and making it homey and hip. I was pretty tired (due to poker the night before and the cold I thought I was going to get), so I crashed pretty quickly after getting home.

I dropped Julia off at Shana's on Sunday again, so they could color her hair, Julia's, not Shana's. And I went home to take care of laundry, running to the game store, and watching the latest Battlestar Galactica with Seth and Chris. Then I went to pick up Julia and check out her fancy new dark auburn and pink hair. It looks great.

Monday I went with a bunch of people from work to meet with an ex-co-worker, Rick, at the Crossroads mall foodcourt. While there I picked up an adventure that my friend Will worked on. (The Sons of Gruumsh for Forgotten Realms.) That evening Julia and I had a nice relaxing evening and went to Taste of India over in the U District.

Now it's time to go. I'll try to update more frequently, but I haven't been in front of my computer as much lately, so we'll see how it goes.

Sick and Tired

It's ten after ten o'clock, I just returned from dinner with Julia (and a few minutes of grocery shopping) and I'm completely exhausted. About five o'clock today I realized I wasn't feeling so well and I've been tired and feeling poorly ever since. I wanted to see Julia tonight, so we had dinner, but then I really wanted to just coccoon at my place and try to recover by getting to bed early. I'm not sure what early will end up being, but I'll definitely be relaxingm which is basically the same for me.

Anyway, apart from being sick I've been busy with moving my desk to another location at work. That's been a project because I used to have two desks and now I only have one. Luckily, I'm able to put a lot of the games, submissions, and extraneous files on some new shelves we have now. I've also been having a good time getting rid of some crap that's been piling up at my desk for a long time. I like it so far, but I'd rather be over by game design still.

Tuesday night I run Savage Worlds for a handful of people. I'm using the "Savage TV" setting that John ran for us last year; it was a heck of a lot of fun -- even for the new players. I really enjoy that system.

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but I loaded up World of Warcraft a while ago and I've played for a couple of hours. All it's really done for me is to make me want to play more City of Heroes. I'm sure I'll try it a bit more, but I think City of Heroes is more my speed.

I'm going to go relax now. Maybe watch a movie and doze. I'll let you know how I'm doing in a day or so.

Turkeys and Death Rays

Seth posted pictures from our Thanksgiving repast. It includes the mythical turducken, so be sure to check it out.

Also, are you in the market for an atomic death ray? Then you'll want to check out Brotronic Weapons (and be sure to check out the gallery and watch the test footage).

Even More

This weekend I spent a lot of time with my very ill girlfriend. She ended up staying home from work for a few days last week and getting plenty of sleep. I hate being sick and like having someone around to take care of me . . . I had a good mom. Anyway, because of my feelings about being sick I ended up spending time with Julia and trying to make sure she was comfortable and taken care of. And trying not to get sick myself, which seems to have worked out for me. And it seems to have worked out for her, because she was feeling well enough to go to work today. Hopefully she'll be completely back to normal in the next day or two.

To fill the time this weekend we relaxed in front of the television and watched The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. I've been meaning to watch these again for a long time, so I was pretty excited to do that with her. Now we'll have to watch The Return of the King soon -- then I'll have to make it through the extras. Sounds fun to me.

My last post was about all the reorganizing I was doing and then I followed it up Sunday and Monday by going through my books, games, DVDs, and CDs to find things to get rid of. I decided to get rid of a big stack of everything (only a few novels, though). I ended up getting a lot more money than I would have thought, too. So I bought a new D&D book (Heroes of Horror) and a backgammon board, because I want to learn how to play. It surprises me how many classic games I don't know how to play; any number of card games, cribbage, backgammon, go, Chinese checkers, and I'm sure there's more.

After returning from selling those things I tore down a bunch of boxes that have been cluttering up my dining room, then I sat down to listen to some podcasts and create some Word documents of some really old notes and ideas I had laying around. And that's about it for the long weekend. Tomorrow night I'm running a Savage Wolrds game after work, I'll let you know how it goes.

Reorganizing

Monday after work Jason, Kevin, and Kim dropped off the second of the two bookcases I was taking off Kevin and Kim's hands. And Jason was super cool to give up his claim to that bookcase and spend his time carting it over here in his truck. I owe them all lunch. So, after moving some furniture around and reorganizing a bit I now have a mostly-filled bookcase in my living room -- and I was able to move things around in my room so that I can almost fit all of my gaming books on the shelves in there. Lemme tell ya, I really need to do a great purge of role-playing books. I know I have many, many games and supplements that I'll never get to play, let alone read. Now that they're organized a bit better I'll have to do that soon, but it will pain me in some cases.

Tuesday night I played in the first session of Mike's Shadowrun game. It involved a lot of bookkeeping as we wrote up a character or two and refamiliarized ourselves with our characters and the rules, but we managed to get a little bit of gaming in. Next time we should be able to dive right in.

Wednesday right after work, Julia met me at the office and we drove down to the Old Spagetti Factory for a birthday dinner with her family and her sister's in-laws. It was nice, but I prefer having Julia all to myself. She had the day off today because she has a head cold. I felt really bad for her because I hate feeling like that. Plus, I'm a little paranoid about colds because if I catch one it has a good chance of sending me to the doctor for antibiotics because of my throat issues. So, no kisses for her tonight, which was very sad. Hopefully she'll feel better tomorrow and we can get together.

Work is interesting. I'm not running out of things to do, but the things I need to do are taking up less and less time. Partially that's a good thing because I need to start thinking ahead about what sorts of projects we should be working on. Again, I can't talk about this too much here, but it's an interesting challenge and I've been mulling things over in the back of my head for the past few days and weeks. Hopefully something will come of it.

Next Tuesday I have to move my desk. I'm a little bummed about that. I've been sitting with the other designers forever, but now I'll be moving over with the rest of R&D, which is located in the same area as the art department. I'm sure things will be fine, but I like where I sit now -- and I have two desks, so I can spread out a bit. Ah, well. It must be done to make way for others who are moving around as well. I may have to spend some of the weekend to clean up my desk a bit and bring things home.

More soon.

New Hotness

I write this to you on my brand-spankin' new flatscreen monitor! I'm very excited about it. I had a bunch of gift certificates and money from my birthday and Christmas gifts, so after rebates it cost me only $180 out of pocket for a 19" LCD monitor. And considering my old monitor was a nine year old 15" monitor, this is a huge upgrade for me.

As for the rest of life, things are going well. We had a bit of an emergency this week as my boss wanted to get part of a big project done early so he could give a presentation, but by midweek we'd worked everything out and underway. We also had to put together some things for a presentation he's giving tomorrow, so that kept us all busy.

Friday night James, Jason, Liz, and I went to play poker at a friend of James'. The night went well for me; I only bought in once ($10), at one point I was up to about $37 and ended the night at $14. I know I made a couple of bone-headed bets, but overall I'm happy with how I did.

The rest of the week is sort of a blur, but I've made it to the gym a few times this week, which I'm happy about. Also, Julia and I have been having a good time. We went to dinner a couple of times last week, watched a movie and had dinner with her parents, and had breakfast/lunch at a restaurant/poker room in Renton. It was a place her father'd taken her for a "lunch date" when she was 11. She was surprised to learn it was a poker room, which was funny to both of us.

Oh, the movie we saw was Walk the Line, which was just as good the second time. It's just a good film.

I've been pretty far behind on listening to my podcasts since I returned from Wisconsin, but I'm only two episodes behind on the Daily Source Code and I'm catching up on my NPR newscasts as I type this. I have other podcasts that I listen to as time allows, but those are the main ones for me.

I watched Silverado on DVD this week. I haven't watched it in a long time and I was amazed at how good it was. Granted, it's not the best movie ever, but it was a great Western and puts me in the mood for a good Deadlands game.

Right now I'm going to sign off and consolidate some notes for a story I'm going to start. I may even begin tonight if I get my thoughts organized. Wish me luck.

Are We Not Kids?

The first of the year is always a good time for further signs of impending apocalypse.

Classic new wave-era art provocateurs Devo have licensed their songs and image to Disney, so that the group may be reborn as Dev2.0 [Devo 2.0] The new group will consist of 10 to 12 year olds, both boys and girls. Some of the songs will be lyrically toned down to suit a kiddie demographic. The original band members have recorded new versions of the tracks to accompany the kids’ vocals.

Articles here and here. Video for “Whip It" here.

Even more so than Andy Warhol’s silkscreen celeb paintings, this is a mind-blowing instance of social critique disturbingly insinuating itself into the thing it is critiquing. A more chilling proof of the group’s theory of devolution cannot be envisioned.

(Via Robin. Thanks.)

Back in the Saddle

I managed to finish The Prodigal Sorcerer on the trip back to Seattle, so my list of last year's books was accurate. I worried when I included that book on the list that I might not make it through before the end of the year. Thank goodness for long, boring plain rides, eh? As for what I thought of the book; I liked the writing well enough, but there were a few instances of the characters just being flat-out dumb. I wouldn't recommend reading it if you're in the market for a new book to read. There's much better stuff out there.

Julia and I went to the Rosario Resort on Orcas Island on Friday and had a very nice, very relaxing time. It was great to see her again.

Saturday was Shana's New Year's Eve party, so we hung out there for the evening. It was pretty low key, but definitely a good time.

Sunday night we watched The Pirates of the Caribbean (did I spell that correctly? It's late and I don't feel like checking) DVD and tonight we watched The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Both very good and both worth picking up on DVD.

Other than that I did a lot of cleaning up, settling in, bill paying, and all that other stuff you need to take care of when you're away for a while.

Okay, time for me to rest. I have work tomorrow and I want to be ready to go. Talk to you soon.