New

New photos of the house and the yard are now in the Flickr stream (in the right-hand column of this page). Check them out if you're interested in seeing what the house looks like in the Spring/Summer months.

I finally received the SoyJoy bars I ordered a while ago. I haven't eaten one yet, but I will report when I do. I also followed the agreement to give two of the three away; so Julia has one and Julia's mom has the other. Here's photos of the product, in case you want to pick some up.



Jason will probably be very excited to see that I'm blogging about a product. Mostly I'm doing it so you can see that SoyJoy's little promo actually worked and I received the product.

That's all the advertising for now.

Job Accepted

As I predicted; I called my contact yesterday and accepted the position at Microsoft. I'm working in their marketing division on a six-month contract. I start in a couple of weeks, so I have some time to get things done around here before I go.

You'd think that I'd have plenty of time to get things taken care of around here since I haven't had a "real" job in the seven months that I've lived here, but you'd be wrong. For much of that time I was putting full-time work into the new company and for some of that time I was doing a bunch of freelance work to make up the shortfall of cash that resulted in not collecting a regular paycheck.

The new company will hopefully be fully funded soon, but I'm pretty sure I'll work the contract until the end (December, I beleive). So, anyway, I'm happy (very happy) to have a regular paycheck coming in again. I'm not so thrilled about the commute, but I can deal with it.

Anyway, I wanted to update you on what was going on.

Oh, and Seth and I received an email from Rob; he's in the Northwest now and we'll be meeting up this weekend. Hopefully that'll be the first of a number of get-togethers we'll have during the time he's here.

279

For the first time since my sophomore year of college, I weigh under 280 lbs. How cool it that?

I woke up this morning and decided to hop on the scale because I hand't done so in a while. Just the day before I was commenting to Julia how annoyed I was that 280 seemed to be another plateau for me and that I hadn't been able to break through it, then this morning I stepped on the scale and there it was; 279.

I know that it's not huge to be down a single pound from 280, but it's actually a pretty significant accomplishment. Apart from being lighter than I was my sophomore year of college (at least the one time I remember weighing myself that year), it also means I've lost 101 lbs. since actively trying to lose weight. It's taken me 7 years, but I've lost 101 lbs as opposed to adding more on. That's definitely a good thing.

In non-weight-related news. I just finished running my first D&D game sans James. He's probably on his way to Carlsbad as I type this. The was fine, nothing super-cool happened, but they did manage to survive an encounter with a huge fire elemental, which was a pretty big deal and they wrapped up their current adventure. Not too much other than that. Oh, except Kristian has joined the group; he's playing a Druid who is so far named "Elf."

Julia and I went to the Gem & Jewelry Show yesterday, so she could pick up a passel of supplies. She's been busily cataloging everything and making new pieces to take to the Seattle Art Museum. She found some great stones and beads that will look great once she works her magic.

I've been playing Pokemon on the Nintendo DS for research purposes. I may post about the game a bit more some other day. I'm still collecting my thoughts.

Right now, I'm going to go upstairs and read more of Gardens of the Moon, I read to a little more than half-way through (and it's great!), then started doing some game reading and I really want to get back to it. Especially because I have a ton of re-reading and note-taking to do for George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, because I'm contributing to the role-playing game. Considering how much there is to read and the topics I have to write about, I'll be spending a lot of my reading time with my nose buried in those books again. They're great books, so I don't mind too much, but I'd definitely prefer to read something new instead. S'okay, it's a paying gig and it'll be fun regardless.

Bon Voyage

James Chott, a friend and one of the gamers in my Sunday D&D game has accepted a position at Upper Deck, so he's moving to Carlsbad this week. I helped him move some things into storage yesterday. I wasn't able to stay for long because I had to get back for an hour or two of phone calls, but it was good to see him and wish him luck on his move, new home, and new job. Now I wish I was going to the San Diego Comic Con this year, but that's not in the cards.

I am going to Origins and GenCon, however, so I'm sure I'll see him at both of those shows.

People keep asking about Julia since her surgery and I'm happy to report that she's completely recovered and it seems that it worked; she hasn't had any sharp, shooting pains since and the scars are almost completely healed. She's been very excited about supplying jewelry to the Seattle Art Museum lately. She delivered a bunch of pieces to the buyer last month and she emailed to say that almost all of it was gone and they wanted more. Woohoo! Like I said, she's very excited.

I've been busy interviewing, trying to get my company up and running, and doing some freelancing. All of which is going well, but it seems to be coming to a head this week and I can't really predict what's going to pop first, so it could be an interesting time for me.

Monday I had a very nice, very good interview with the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) marketing division of Microsoft for a 6-month contract position. It looks like interesting work with a lot of coordination and administration work that I'm sure I could do quite well.

I've been saying it forever, but Red Juggernaut is just on the verge of getting up and running. We've received some funding and we're pressing hard for more. Jim's hoping to have good news by the end of the week.

I have to run out to a meeting right now, so I'll sign off.

Oh, but I should mention that we've started receiving and watching the third season of Deadwood via Netflix and it's thoroughly enjoyable.

Also, if you're a gamer and you haven't tried Savage Worlds, now you can do it for a paltry $9.99. Do it.

1 Year

One year ago today I was layed off from WizKids. It's crazy to think it's already been a year.

My job search is in full-swing right now. I'm hoping I find something fun and that'll pay me well. That said, I'm getting some fun freelancing work right now, just not enough to keep me fully afloat.

Speaking of which, I have more goodies up on eBay. Go buy something . . . if you want. No pressure. Really.

The Epic

That's the longest break from blogging I've ever taken. It wasn't an "on-purpose" thing--it was more of an "I really don't have time to do any blogging" thing. I'll recap the last month or so.

I went to Vegas at the end of April for the GAMA Trade Show. It was very good and we received some great feedback from people about the new games we're making.

Money for the company is not yet here, but things are looking good. So, maybe we'll be able to really get a lot done in the next handful of weeks. That's the hope at least.

I've spent most of my time looking for stopgap work and succeeding in getting some freelance work from WizKids (which was a great time) and some editing for Green Ronin for their upcoming Paragons setting. Those two projects coincided, so all of my days and nights were taken up with work for a few weeks there. It was bad timing in terms of deadlines, but I need the money to live, so I'll take it.

Just in case the money for the new company doesn't come through, I'm looking for full-time work as well. I've been successful in finding some interesting positions and really wouldn't mind getting a regular paycheck. The only thing I really need to figure out if/when I get a job, is what that means for my involvement in Red Juggernaut.

I picked up some freelance work yesterday with my old boss from WizKids, Jordan, but I don't know what I'll be doing and probably can't talk about it anyway. We're meeting on Friday to discuss details.

A couple of weeks ago I had dinner with Shane Hensley and a couple of other guys (most of whom I hadn't met before). It was nice to see Shane while he was in town. I had a nice lunch last week on Thursday with Wolfgang Bauer who gave me some good tips on pursuing work with Microsoft. He's a good guy and I really enjoyed talking with him. And, I may get some freelance work from him, too. Friday I had lunch with Chris Pramas and toured the Flying Labs offices. They're up on Queen Anne and the area looked really nice. They certainly have a lot of options for lunch.

I finally listed some of my WizKids stuff on eBay a couple of weeks ago. That went well and the sales are helping to keep Julia and I afloat while money comes in sporadically. It's a little painful to sell off some of the sets I've worked on, but paying my mortgage certainly takes precedence over wanting to keep them. I'll be listing more stuff soon. I just have to get the pictures cleaned up a bit first.

My car was having issues for a while; the CHECK ENGINE light kept coming on for no apparent reason and then turning off again at random. Well, finally about two weeks ago (yes, everything came to a head about two weeks ago, no joke) the light started flashing at me and the engine sputtered a bit whenever I gave it some gas, so I decided to get it looked at. Julia's brother-in-law works over at Nix Auto in Ballard, so we had the car towed there. Turns out it was some connections to the spark plugs. So, they replaced those and gave me new spark plugs and the car purrs like a kitten again . . . a Subaru Outback kitten. And they washed it! Woohoo!

Also about two weeks ago (exactly two weeks ago as of Wednesday) Julia had her gall bladder removed. She'd been having some really painful episodes and the doctors couldn't pinpoint anything, so they suggested removing her gall bladder. She was laid up for a few days, so I was taking care of her, but now she's up and around and things are good. She has four little incisions that are healing nicely, and although she's a little sleepy still, she's feeling much better. We just had the follow-up visit with the doctor today and he said she came through perfectly and he seemed very pleased that she was off the painkillers already.

And my watch broke sometime in the last couple of weeks. Yes, Julia and I have joked about how everything hit at once.

I've continued to run my Sunday D&D game. That's actually been going well for quite a while now. The players are all 5th level now. In case you're curious, the group is: Grace, a warforged fighter; Quae'Ror, a human artificer; Molly, a human wizard (necromancer); and Gan, a changeling rogue (with one level of fighter). It seems like they're rocketing up in level, but I think we've been playing the game for six or seven months now, so I guess it's taking an appropriate amount of time.

The Tuesday game is also going well. The last session of Warhammer was a blast and the characters are moving quickly into their second career--something that none of the players have ever done in previous Warhammer games they've played, so that's pretty cool. Alternating with that is a Spirit of the Century game. I'm really enjoying that (and not just because it's the only game I get to play in), but I still don't quite grok some of the parts of the game system. I have to sit down and read more of the rules. Regardless, it's a lot of fun.

I have an interview tomorrow and another lined up for sometime next week. I'll let you know how those go.

Okay, I'm pretty sure that's everything.

I'll update soon.