Getting lightninged in the teeth.

Whooah, late post.  Let's see, where to begin!

Today started a bit late, as I (unfortunately) slept in a bit and ended up getting to the shower after Eric and Matt, which usually sets me back about an hour, it seems like.  Or at least 40 minutes.  Work went smoothly enough - I got a lot done and finished up some stuff.  Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to leave the office around lunch time to go fix my registration issues at the Conservatory - I'll just have to get down there Monday.

I was pleased to hear today that Mr. Daniel will cease to be, merely, Mr. Daniel, but will indeed take on the salutation of Chief Architect Daniel.  I'm glad to see that after several years of ill defined structure, we've properly defined our development team again, and what's more, such formal definition has followed the lines of the informal organization that has emerged organically through his excessive awesomeness.  So way to go!

After work, I moseyed on over to Jason and Kat's place for a bit of Magic carding, a bit of Chinese food eating, and a bit of Trigun and Willow watching.  Pretty good.  I left there perhaps half an hour ago, which is why I find myself home so late.

(Para)phrase of the night, "George Lucas just loves to lightning people in the teeth!"  Or the popular variation, "Oh GOD no!  Don't lightni- GAH!  Don't lightning her in the teeth!"

Yeah.  That's how it is in Willow and Star Wars land(s)!

I think tomorrow I may visit Dado for some relaxation.  I've been mostly looking forward to it all day.

For Reverend Green

Random note of the day: 

Animal Collective's "For Reverend Green" is a gloriously abrasive song.  Incredible.

Dwah, dwah do-be-do-do

Going to client offices is, ultimately, exhausting.  Simply the act of going to some foreign place where you're trying to do your best to be helpful, explain things, solve problems, etc., is rough.

So, yeah, by 3:00 PM I was frickin' done.

I left the office around 5:00 PM and went home to practice and choose some songs that I want to learn to play next.  I chose West Coast Blues (Wes Montgomery), cause I like it.  At my lesson, Dave was playing Killer Joe (I forgot the name of the personage who wrote it), and we decided maybe I should learn that one too.

Uhh.  Oh!

So this morning I got up all nice and early and headed out a bit after 8:00 AM so I could meet Tara and Hillary in Porter.  I ended up at Cafe Zing in the Porter Square Book Store, hanging out, drinking coffee, eating a lemon scone.  It was crumbly and delicious.  Some woman came into the place after tying up her little puppy on a bench outside.  I watched the dog kinda wander around in a circle a bit, sit, decide it was too cold to sit, stand, try to sit again, get cold and stand, etc.  Then, she goes back outside and the dog freaks out with happiness to see her, jumping all over her.  I think it was just about the cutest thing ever.  The woman next to me turned and goes, "Oooh!  Thank goodness Mom is back!"  Exactly what he must have been thinking.

There, that's your cute moment of the day.

... And that's about all I got.  Long day, but a good one, generally.

Yawny Since Afternoon

I have indeed been yawning since around 4:00 PM.  Oof.  Today was, I think pretty productive.  Not like crazy productive or anything, but pretty good.  I spent a significant amount of time in the evening editing sample product images for work.  They're all shirts.  But now they say "Alternate 1 (Standard)" and "Alternate 2 (Zoom)" on them and stuff.

Woohoo.  So, yeah.  Anyway.

I purchased a microphone tonight, because the one on this computer isn't exactly suitable for recording anything.  I'm sorta looking forward to recording some songs and getting used to hearing my own voice played back.  I am, in general, terribly shy about things like singing, even if I love doing it.  Hell, I'd rather sing than bother to play an instrument.

Hmm, interesting that I can just say that and know that it's probably... yeah, it's true.  Maybe I'm studying the wrong thing?  Hmm!  Well, baby steps, Mr. David.  Or something.  What is brought up casually is not necessarily an easy thing to casually do.

I've discovered that if I eat lunch late, I can get a ton of stuff done during lunch.  It's kind of pleasant - gives me a longer stretch of uninterrupted time at the beginning of the day when I'm still fresh.

I've been listening to The Hazards of Love, by The Decemberists, almost non-stop for the past few days.  It just keeps getting better and better each time I listen through it.

I think I may use my remaining time this evening reading a book.  That'll be just lovely.

Lost in... An Island??

Today, for many people, is probably most notable as being LOST day.

This is, it turns out, a holiday I celebrated this season.  I am, however, not a particularly devout follower of the Initiative, as I haven't practiced in roughly four to five years.

That said, not a bad premiere.   I spent an hour and 8 minutes catching myself up on what's happened in the past few years: I feel I have a fairly good handle on it now.  Yeehah.  I'm still not particularly sure if I can afford to spend a few hours every Tuesday watching TV - I sorta sacrificed to go hang out with friends tonight.  I don't know if I can really fill up another evening with some specific activity - that doesn't leave me with many free weekdays left.

So, anyway, work today was weird.  Lots of not-sitting-at-my-desk for sudden meetings, code reviews, discussions, explanations, etc.  I'm not particularly sure how much I got done - perhaps it's a measure of my lack of LOST-faith that I was messing around working on some stuff during the episode.

I randomly ran into Julia on my way home, waiting for the light to turn so I could cross Mass. Ave. on my way back to my apartment.  She walked me home, we had a lovely conversation, and in return for the company I gave her a ride to her place on my way to Justin and Ali's for LOST day.

Our gym schedule seems to be suffering.  We agreed, perhaps, we'll try to take a run on Sunday.  I think this is an excellent idea.

The time is now12:05, and I need to get myself to sleep.

A Monday of Substance, or, How I Came Up With More Than 200 Characters of Labels

Today was another trip to our client's office.  Hillary, Tara, and I set out from Porter Sq. at 9:45 AM, and had a few hours of meetings regarding the design of the apps we're creating.  In Hillary's words, "It's so nice to start the work week with a road trip!"  I agree - it was a nice change of pace.

We got back to our office in the afternoon, and after sitting around eating lunch, I got an IM from one of the project managers on our clients' side. Turns out I was 27 minutes late for a meeting.

Now, when I say this, I want you to envision it being said by someone who hates, hates, hates to make a bad impression, and generally tries very hard to appear on to of his shit:

ARGH.


I.  Am.  Such.  A.  Moron.  I hurried into a conference room and apologized profusely (but with dignity!) on the phone after I called in.  They were all very gracious about it - apparently they had some other topics to talk about while they were waiting.  Whew.  Thanks, guys.

After work, I went over to class at the Conservatory, which went pretty well today.  Not like last week!  We got last semester's "quizzes" (read: final exams) back, and I got an "A Excellent."  Woo!  This is proof, at least, that I can seem to manage basic music theory pretty well, even if I don't have the chops to play half of what we talk about.  Even Ear Training went okay today.  I need more practice.  My ears, they remain half trained.

Mondays are always fairly devoid of interest beyond points such as those above; I go straight from work to school to exhausted.

Haha, that was funny, see, I mixed locales and states of being.  Ho ho.

Ha ha.  Hoooo.

Did I mention I was exhausted?

I think I need to start spending an hour or so in the morning practicing my musicking.  Holy crap, musicking is a word?  It didn't highlight it as incorrectly spelt.  Is spelt a word?  Seems to like that too - I would have assumed that should be spelled.  Damn English!  So complex.

Anyway.  I like Red Stripe.  Hooray, responsibility!

Chapter Ten.

Today was a good day for random science fiction/fantasy stories, though I use science fiction as a qualifier simply to differentiate the type of "fantasy" I'm referring to, so you don't get confused and worried that this blog is about to include a bit too much information.  

So I've been reading the Wheel of Time, as mentioned numerous times before, and I just reached chapter Ten of book eleven.  Excellent chapter!  I'm thrilled, though the possibility exists that someone reading this might receive a spoiler as a result of my expounding upon why I'm excited by this chapter - thus, I will dispense with further description.

Regardless, I've been waiting for it for a long, long time.  Awesome!

In other, related news (re: the first paragraph here), we had what felt like a pretty good Ars session today, which I ran for the most part.  Our characters are all embroiled in Ragnarok (Yeah, the end of the Norse mythos), so we as players keep doing all this research into what would supposedly transpire.  I, currently, seem to be playing the universe conspiring to make Ragnarok happen (or not happen!), and everybody else is trying to navigate events and figure out what's going on and why we seem to be stuck at the beginning of the process.  Three years of winter have come and gone, all of Europe is freaking out, the year is 1255, and for some reason the frickin' Jotunn and AEsir aren't gettin' their fight on.  Loki seems to be missing (what else would a trickster do than not be where he's supposed to be?), and stuff is generally messed up. 

But it went pretty well.  They figured some stuff out.  Next week should be fun!

Otherwise, I sat around today and made orange juice / Cracklin' Oat Bran pancakes, cleaned the kitchen, read a book, and planned for tonight's game.  All in all, a lovely Sunday.