Weird

I'm in a bit of a funk. It's been going on all day and I'm not really sure what to do about it. Certianly there are things going on that warrant a bit of an emotional response from me, but it's all circumstances that will resolve just fine in the next couple of weeks. But, for right now it's all leaving me in a weird mood.

Luckily, things with Julia are great, my friends are great, my family's great (and happy birthday to my grandma, who probably won't ever see this), and work is looking very, very interesting due to a couple of big meetings in the last couple of days.

Maybe I just need a break from things. I took off Monday and did some work around my apartment and I may take Thursday and Friday off to do more of the same. I'm really enjoying the editing project I have right now and I'd like to get it done as quickly as possible. I'm about one-quarter of the way through right now and I would have been much further if I'd stayed home tonight and worked on it, but I had to run the next chapter in my Deadlands game. I think the game is going well, but I keep coming up with the plot for each session about an hour before the game, so I scrap all the work I've done before then and revise it right before the game. Thankfully the new plots are more interesting than what I had prepared, but it'd be nice to have the good plots worked out ahead of time. Ah, well.

Mostly my free time for the past week has been taken up by editing, so I don't have anything exciting to tell you about my fascinating social life.

I'll try to update before next week, but if I don't, have a great extended weekend!

Middle of May Already?!

I noticed a serious up-tick in the amount of spam email making it's way into my bulk email box. I figured out that they come in at a rate of about 7 SPH (spam per hour). Previously I didn't receive anywhere near that much crap email and I'm curious if this is some new spam offensive or if my address just happened to make it into the hands of some young and ambitious spammers. Who knows.

I had a laugh today over the fact that Jodie Foster game the commencement address at the University of Pennsylvania's graduation. She was given an honorary doctorate. But what's really funny is that one of the graduating students was Yakov Smirnoff, who recieved his Master's degree in positive psychology. What a country!

As for the recap of the past week...

Tuesday night I ran Deadlands: Reloaded. The game went pretty well and the players seemed into it and maybe even a little spooked by the weirdness going on around them, but the final, climactic battle with the big, nasty demon ended abruptly when Jason's character cast an offensive spell that killed the thing in one shot. Oh, how unimpressive a monster was that? Major bummer for me. But, the heroes succeeded and saved the inhabitants of the town, so that's a good thing. I'm running again tomorrow night. We'll see how that goes.

The rest of the week was pretty normal, although Friday night Julia and I had dinner with a friend of her's who's from Columbia. We've gone there once before and she's an amazing cook. This time she prepared pork roast in mojo with beans and other yummy snacks. Wow, was it good. They're also big wine fans, so we enjoyed some very tasty wine with dinner along with an excellent dessert wine. If I remembered the name I'd tell you. Luckily, I have the bottle in the back of my car, so I can pick up a bottle at some point. I'll let you know when I do, so you can do the same.

Saturday and Sunday mornings we happened upon some neighborhood garage sales and estate sales where I picked up a couple of books and Julia found a pretty good selection of vintage jewelry for pretty good prices. I think she was happy with her finds.

Saturday evening we went to her parents' place for a(n early) Mother's Day dinner. Julia's dad is a very good cook and he made an excellent meal for all of us (all of us being Julia, her brother, sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and mom and dad). Then as we were sitting around afterward, Shana called to invite us out to the Showbox to see the sold out Erasure show. I didn't know Julia was a huge Erasure fan, but apparently she is because she was super excited when I asked if she wanted to go see the show. This was a show that sold out in 3 minutes and I remember talking about it with people when it happened. Who knew Erasure had such a following in Seattle?

Anyway, the call came at 8:00 and by 9:05 we'd ditched her mom, changed clothes, and were downtown at the Showbox. The show was excellent! They started on time (who does that?!) and the sound levels were absolutely perfect! I don't say that lightly. I've been to too many shows at which the sound is unnecessarily loud and peircing. Where the sound actually detracts from the overall experience, but that wasn't the case here. I could hear the singer, pick out the different instruments, and hear what my friends were talking about if I leaned in to listen. If every concert could be like that, I'd go more often. Oh, and the show was over by 10:40. They certainly didn't want to keep all those 30-45 year olds out too late...I mean the sitter has to be home before midnight, right?

Sunday afternoon I dropped Julia off at Shana's for Jen's baby shower and I ran to get comics, then went home and had to turn around and pick her up again. Oh well, so much for a couple hours of picking up around the house. Sunday night we lazed about at Julia's and watched the finale of Survivor, which was actually pretty good.

Tonight I came home from work and did a major cleaning of my bathroom. I think I have a mold infestation somewhere in the room (probably the barely-functioning fan). I couldn't get the plate off the fan, so I settled for washing the tub and tile, cleaning the toilet and counter, and scrubbing the floor. I think it's much better now. Now I have to move on to picking up some of the clutter that's been gathering lately.

I've agreed to take on another editing project, which will start as soon as I get the manuscript. I'm hoping to get my hands on a laptop that I can use for about a month. That would be really useful.

Changing gears entirely; I was listening to a podcast from the BBC today (BBC Radio Newspod) and I learned about something that really shocked me. It seems that in Bangladesh that some men who've been jilted by the women they want to marry, have, for the past few decades, taken it upon themselves to throw acid in the woman in question's face. Yeah. And not some wussy acid, we're talking about sulfuric acid (a litre will run you about 50 cents from some kids on the street corner, just tell everyone you need it for your car battery. They'll understand). If you don't beleive me, or if you want to find out more for yourself, you can go here, here or here. I watched the video (the last link) and it's actually a very good ten-minute documentary about the situation. Actually, I can't get over how determined and strong some of these girls are.

Okay, time to go. See you soon.

Hey There!

Another week gone by without a post. Apparently having someone you want to spend a lot of time with is detimental to blogging on a regular basis. Sorry about that, but it's definitely worth it for me.

This past week has been good. Work has been none too exciting, but Julia and I have been busy with other things, which have been fun. Thursday night we had dinner with her parents on their boat. We took a nice cruise around Lake Washington and the two of us even piloted for a while. Or is it captained? Drove? Who knows? Regardless, we were in control of the boat. The weather was nice and we grilled and ate on the boat which was cool.

Friday an old co-worker of Julia's had a party in West Seattle. The hosts had a great house with a nice open floor plan and after hearing them talk about what they bought the place for and what they plan to sell it for I can't help but think, "Man, I really should have bought a house or condo when I first moved out here." Really, it's ridiculous. Anyway, the party was fun and I got to meet a lot of the people Julia works or has worked with.

Saturday we ran around to a bunch of thrift stores to look for old jewelry for Julia and we have pretty good luck. Thankfully thrift stores usually have pretty good book sections, so I also found a handful of novels I'll never get around to reading. That night I met up with Seth for his birthday dinner. It turned out that only he and I would be sharing dinner because everyone else was going to meet up with him later at a bar and billiards place called, The Garage. So, I ended up having a nice, relaxing talk with Seth, but I missed out on the really social part of the evening with all the others.

Sunday was a lazy day, but I'd forgotten my credit card at the B&O when Julia and I ate there on Saturday afternoon, so we went back there for brunch...and to pick up the card. After that we ran around to a bunch of thrift stores in and around Ballard, however, we had no luck finding any goodies, which was a bummer. We were close to a game store in Ballard, so I stopped by and wound up buying the new minis game from Privateer Press, Hordes. It looks very good (but then, all their stuff does) and I'm looking forward to spending some more time with it.

I read all of the Infinite Crisis series today. (If you don't know comics, you can skip this part, by the way.) I'd let the whole thing (along with a lot of other comics) pile up and I figured I should read it now that they'd completed it and have headed into the next stage of the story. Well, what can I say? For what it was, it was good. I think this was the bookend to the Crisis on Infinite Earths series from 20 years ago. It's a clean up of the past and a set up for the future that does away with a lot of messy continuity and (hopefully) allows the creators to tell better -- not such grim and gritty/downer -- stories in the future. Anyway, it was an okay series. Seth had big issues with the art inconsistancies, but they didn't bother me nearly as much as they bothered him.

Okay, I'm sleepy, so I think I'm going to go and get some rest. More later.

I Want!

I've had a toy cube-thingie since I was pretty young. I have no idea when, where, and from whom I received it, but I love the thing. I never knew what it was called or where to get a new one, but today I happened to stumble onto a site that has some available. Admittedly, they're a bit pricier than my plastic knockoff, but oh how I want one of these. I guess they're called Yoshimoto Cubes...who knew?

Dang! I hate that that store is located in England. They have a number of things I'd love to get my hands on. The various dice sets they have are still super cool.

I found a note from a couple of weeks ago about how many words there are in the English language. Apparently at the time of whatever I read (or maybe it was a podcast) the number stood at 988, 968 -- and the number should reach a cool million sometime between November and April. Funky.

One of the guys I work with is a member of a hip hop dance company that performed at the Apollo a while ago. You can check out the video here. He's the guy in the black and white hat and the #1 jersey.