What's Going On?

I realized on my way into work this morning that I haven't been very good about talking about what I've been up to lately. I realized this because it's now more and ten days after the 4th of July and I still haven't written about that.

Sure, the may not be the topic some of you want to hear about, but considering I started this blog to let friends and family know what sort of fun and stress I have in my life, it certainly makes sense to write about.

Anyway, Julia and I spent the 4th at Shana's. We ran errands in the morning (if I recall correctly we took care of some things at the condo) then went to Shana's around 4:30. There were a good mix of people from WizKids, ex-WizKids, co-workers from Shana's "new" job at the Matter Group, and Shana's mom and dad. It was odd (for me) to see people from our "normal" group of friends mingling with people from the Matter group, but only because I don't usually associate those two groups in my head. It caused me some cognitive dissonance for a few minutes, but it was good to see everyone regardless.

Shana's dad was on grill duty and I spent a lot of time chatting with Tyler, Seth, Liz, Mike & Sharon and their girls. We also got a tour of Shana's fixed-up-but-previously-flooded basement, which seems to have recovered nicely and looks great. She also showed us what she and her father have done in the backyard, which turned out very nicely. I especially liked the tiki themed metal gate they made and installed next to the garage.

Juli and I left around 8:30 because we didn't really care to see the neighborhood fireworks and we didn't want to get stuck in any traffic later on. Admittedly we didn't really have to worry about traffic considering the ride home from Shana's is pretty short.

Last week I started work. On Tuesday, actually, so I spent Monday working like a madman to get everything I had at home listed on ebay before the day job started. I managed to get about 20 items listed (and the auctions ended yesterday), which was nice because I didn't want to mess with any of that during the week if I could avoid it. Plus the extra money coming in is nice.

As for work, I spent most of last week reading up on some specifics about my job, familiarizing myself with some of the tools I'll be using, and generally learning my way around. Now that I'm commuting again it'll be nice to catch up on my podcasts again.

This past weekend Julia and I had a lot to do. She cleaned the condo on Friday and spent time with her mom. In the evening I went to Tyler's to play poker. I did very, very well during most of the game and was up for most of the evening, but I ended up losing $20 for the night. It was odd because I was really stressed about losing the money because we've been so money-conscious lately, but as I drove home I realized that $20 didn't cripple us for the week like it would have before. Now that I had regular work again I could afford to spend $20 on a night out because I knew more would be coming in--soon. That was strangely relaxing and exhilirating to me and I really enjoyed the feeling. But I still would have preferred to walk out with some winnings.

Saturday, Julia and I had crepes at a little cafe near our house, then walked over to a cat rescue place a couple doors down. It had a screened in porch-like area with a bunch of cats and kittens in it and we played with them through the screen since the place didn't open until later in the day. If you're looking for a new kitten, contact me and I'll tell you where this place is because they had some adorable cats.

That afternoon, I played D&D. Also at Tyler's. It's a once a month game and it just happened to fall the fay after the poker game. So far the game is going really well. Tyler hasn't run in a while, but everything is flowing nicely, even with a month break in between. I'm playing a sorcerer named Hugo, he's second level. And I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but we're playing the Savage Tide adventure path. Anyway, enough about that.

Sunday, Julia and I ran a ton of errands. We went to a garage sale near our house and bought a good ladder and a practically-new wheel barrow. We went to the condo and fixed the drapes and vacuumed. We checked out the new house, but they'd spent last week covering everything to prepare for painting, so no real progress or pictures to show off. We stopped by Seth's to get the key to Jordan's storage unit so we could load up the car with more stuff for ebay. We had burgers at Fatburger in Redmond. We generally ran around for about six hours and managed to get a lot accomplished. We were pretty pleased with ourselves.

Last night we sent out ebay invoices, catalogued all the stuff we picked up from Jordan's storage unit on Sunday, and I prepared a bunch of things to ship out to people who bought things on ebay -- which I shipped to them this morning. Work, work, work.

I don't have anything else to say right now and I'm sure I've gone on long enough, so I'll sign off for now.