This is my Second Life Avatar Metahari Quirk. if you play, send me an IM.Thanksgiving was nice, somehow the meal always comes together about 30min before everyone arrives. My Interview went well last week, apparently I’ll be strongly considered for the position. /crosses fingers.

Anna Bis is my cyberpunk role playing character, she’s an exotic, she’s had a bit of genetic/cosmetic surgery to give her slight jackal appearance. She usually fights melee, with her rippers(claws kinda like deathstrike in the xmen2 movie).Anyway, she’s hiding out at the Arc House as an exotic exotic dancer.

sigh

My vote’s on the first one, if you’re trying to decide which one to pick up. I could have done without whole character arcs in this one.

still, the gameplay and music and story, such as it is, was enough for me to play to beat it, and i don’t have tons o time for games these days.

so, there you go.

Here’s a link to some great fanart and fancomics for the game:Lots of spoilers in it though, so be warned.

http://aimostudio.com/swkotor/index.htm

http://tubertarian.com/kotor2missingcontent.php (sound files and text files on the deleted parts)

The rest of the weekend was great though, we had bacon and eggs and cinnamon rolls and biscuits for breakfast, cooked up by pal Roofer. (Well I did the baking) And Saturday night, my mom brought by a turkey that she had cooked for us, with some stuffing. It was all carved up for us, and there was enough for all fifteen some people, and was a nice change of pace from the pizza call that usually goes out. Lots of Halo 2 and Halo 1 were played, as well as a bit of silly Eyetoy experimentation.

Last weekend,
Spent Saturday on publicity and history of Studio Antithesis, partially by checking my old journal entries. Everything blurs together, and we’re trying to get a better handle on when we did things. We also updated the Studio Calender with some birthdays and tenative Con dates. (Acen, Anime Iowa) Maciek colored the cute chibi’s that Allie made for us. Then he turned them into Buttons (pictures forthcoming)
We also printed and/or dated all reviews we have for S.A.T. and put them in a portfolio.

This week
Finally got my teeth cleaned (flash smile). I surprised dental technician, ‘Your teeth aren’t that bad at all’, likely due to the fact that I had actually followed my dentist’s suggestion from last month that I increase the flossing. (which also helped keep my gums from being overly sensitive while being clawed at during the cleaning)

I took yesterday off, partially due to the awkward time for the dentist appointment, but also due to the fact that Wednesday night I really felt weak and sick, and not fun. But somehow, after sleeping in, I was actually feeling really well. Especially well after the great dentist appointment which was far less pain and time than I thought it would be.

I didn’t even waste my time, I vacuumed all but two rooms in the house, windexed three mirrors, emptied two trashcans and did two loads of laundry.

I removed a bookshelf from the bedroom(to be used downstairs for dvd and games), and put together a little circle table to hold my lamp and alarm clock. All the junk on the bookshelf was then reappointed, to the guestroom bookshelves, or to the art room.

I hope my neighbors didn’t mind the 2 min vacuum job, really late at night, I did before putting the circle table in place. But I just couldn’t put things back in place without it, the dust had gotten thick in that corner.

I still ended up with time to defrost the chicken, and cook said chicken and make the cressant rolls and then later to make cinnamon rolls (leftover bag of premade from the party, but needing an hour to rise in the oven before baking), and to play a few hours of Harvest Moon on the Game Cube (my husband bought me a new memory card!).

Yes, we actually turned on the Animal Crossing to use for the midnight countdown! hee

Happy New Year!

Did some quick Christmas shopping with Mom, and added to my list, (apparently the one I posted was too general and too short)

Made it to a nice tea and wine party with Dan and Merilee, who I hadn’t seen in a long time, their daughter, Genevieve was a joy, just about a year old and walking and waving at everyone and everything. (me, the piano, the plant). D&M were so sweet and instantly used my gifts to them(big wintery themed coffee mugs) for their party, which they didn’t have to at all, and was nice. It was nice to chat with a variety of people from different groups, Contra Dancers, photographers, quakers, and art buddies. ( and showed up, and I was able to give them their gifts as well! (Wicked book for Kim, Katamari Damarcy for Maciek).)

Was all set to go to Christmas service with my parents, when Mom called and said she had to take my father to the emergency room because he had intense rib pain. They feared a blood clot in his lung, but it turned out he has bruised or fractured a rib. Which isn’t life threatening, but very very painful, and not really the sort of thing he needed on top of the cancer stuff. I headed over to the house after they got home, to spend time with them

Worked a bit on art, and played Baten Kaitos on my GameCube till it died. Husband sent me out to get a new one, , I picked up a holiday platinum bundle gamecube, which came with Mario Cart Double Dash. It was a pretty good deal, and not purple, and I was able to continue playing blissfully until sleep time.

Monday:
Got some insurance stuff figured out, and made dental appointments for me and hubby for the new year. _must stop putting things off_.

Last night I finally got commission physically to her and her hubby. Whew! Felt good to get that off my plate before Christmas. As hard as it was to part with “A Song for Evan”, I’m glad it’s going to a good home. could you take a picture of it on the wall when you get it all framed up, please?

Then I headed over to a sparse Writing Group night. I did no writing, but it was very nice to check in with and who I feel like I haven’t seen in a while. (I miss seeing but I just know the new year will open up both our schedules for ass-kickery.)

2005, the year of Ass-Kickery! (place it in your Interests to remember)

Lah. ok, still need to do lots of shopping, but have the rest of the week off, and that’s good.

16,022 / 50,000 (32.0%)

Writing is going slow, we traveled for a family thanksgiving up north last weekend, and I took friday off writing and did art. (Which was lovely really, I’m almost done with ’s commission, and excited about it’s direction), so for the last three days, friday-sunday I wrote about 2300 words. Thankgiving with my husband’s family was nice though, we got to catch up with his younger cousins, who schooled carlo, and I, and our friend ana, all at the same time in Halo2, after seeing the game for the first time. And the Packers won. yay. I actually wrote in the car on the way home.

Last night I pulled myself away from the Halo2 and after a very long time sitting and staring at my monitor, and much futzing around with iTunes,(there were 4 people sharing music at Company of Thieves), I actually got just over 1000 done, which is good because I wasn’t certain I’d get more than 60, and really really wanted to go home to more Halo2. But I stuck it out, and went through 2 italian/french soda’s ( look what you’ve done, I now have at least three of these a week, and more this month because of all the coffeeshop writing I’m doing)

I think I’ll feel better when I hit the 20k milestone, and then 50%. According to my Nano report card, I only need to do 2265 words a day to make it by the end of the month. Which isn’t really all that bad, and I’m fairly sure I can do some catch up this coming weekend. Pushing forward.

I thought I sent a pic from my phone last night from the line, I’ll try to
u/l it later. would have made more impact for you to see the timestamp on
that entry, but, oh well.
Edit:

Now, two red bulls into the day. (yes, it’s the
breakfast of champions.) Today is a big day for our agribiz, it’s sire
summary when all the stats are released for our animals. This is big
news. But it’s not going very smoothly.

They say that A.I’s go crazy after 7 years, I’m not certain one of my
webservers has every achieved such a thing, but it’s quite a frankenstien,
so anything’s possible. It’s also possible it’s had more than enough
abuse, as it has tanked hard, on the most important web day, just after I
loaded in some fresh data. (Standard Operating Procedure) So far it’s
taken the extranet and our sire pages down with it.

Awaiting news on it’s return.

Friday we picked up some viddy games, Star Wars Battlefront for him, Demon Stone for me. (Demon stone is only ok, way too short. Forgotten realms though, and I can control a female theif with actual sneak attacks in battle which is cool. Repetitivegameplay is not cool)

I was supposed to spend a couple hours sitting at my Grandmother’s Garage sale, and so I headed out there Saturday morning with only a little box of toys to sell. All the little girls in her neighborhood sure seemed to like my powerpuff girl toys. Somehow, those couple hours stretched into all day, which was fine anyway, because I had nothing else planned. Tiring though. I took a little break to help my mom clean her house a bit for last minute company, and then went back to the garage sale to help pack up. I made 25 bucks! hee. I have tons more things to sell, but those will just have to wait until some other garage sale down the road.

Then I came home to my husband, and we went out to watch the Sky Captain movie. Which was fun, and stylish and a bit over blurry.

Sunday was nice too, we had brunch with my husband’s father in honor of my husband’s birthday. (last monday, the 20th) His dad surprised us with a cool birthday gift, his old oak dining room table and chairs! This table has sentimental value for my husband. He used to have it up in his bedroom, and remembers role playing on it with his friends when he was quite young. His dad even loaded up their vehicle and brought all the pieces over to our place. Yah! (Till now, we’ve been using a rather long folding table, which was quite functional, but not as stylish)

I headed downtown to spend my garage sale money and a bit more on 6!!! color copic markers, swung over to Electric Earth to hang with Ray for a bit. While I was there , we talked a bit of sci-fi, and in the middle of one of my sentences I couldn’t remember a word. I’m sitting there saying over and over…’Ambi… Ambitious? Ambidextrous? darnit, the word means vague, but it’s better than vague… Ambi, Ambi’ while Ray just watches me, slightly amused. Suddenly, the woman sitting behind me leans back in her chair and says, ‘Ambiguous’ which was really the word I was looking for. ha.

I went home, and inked the mermaid picture I was working on and then started markering it…

Someone PLEASE! give me some markering tips!!! I didn’t ruin the thing, but it also didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. (There’s also some more things I can do to it, I’m sure) I’ve searched the interweb and haven’t found many marker tutorials at all. I’m positive I’m going to love this medium once I get the hang of it.

I started markering my picture by laying down some shadows with a cool grey marker(the lightest one), and then started in with my limited color palette. I tried to keep my lightsource in mind, as well as using some highlighting colors and some shadowy colors. It might make more sense if I scan the thing and then ask for more tips, but I’m eager and hungry for tips and techniques, both for markering illustrations, but also for some fun things to try with my fancy pretty copics.
makes it look so easy!

I’m sure practice will help me feel less anxiety over markering without scanning the lineart first. Still, I’m quite happy that I planned the pic out enough so that all of the mermaid is actually on the page, it’s a bit of a shock to flip through my pencil and black and white sketchbook and stumble across rich markered colors!

p.s. Congratulations on your new baby! Evan Michael

The w0rd-vixens, belleweather, Kim, Heather, and I had lots to chat about; plots and designs, murders and missions, music and madness. (We also had a Gr4mm3r-Fox, Ray, Show up later)

I’ve decided to work with asking casual motivation questions to help fill in the holes of things I’m working on.

Last night, my husband and I met two people, Jason and Stephanie, who tracked me down via the internet, and my Halo tendencies, we sat and chatted, and then played some Halo. They are very nice, and good at Halo. We look forward to seeing them again.

Our A/C is fixed. All hail the cool air that gives life and meaning to our domicile. I think I am sleeping better now that we’re not sleeping on the floor in the basement. I am also feeling less stress this week, which is lovely. This also means I can finally hold art night over at our place tonight! woo.

This weekend is our anniversary. We’re going to spend the day and night in Milwaukee. I’ve booked a room at a B&B near the down town area, The Acanthus, and we plan on wandering about the Milwaukee Museum for the day. I’ve never been there, and am thrilled. We once took a trip to the Chicago Museum. That’s a fond memory. I can’t wait to make more. I’ve never stayed at a B&B, and am very thrilled. Yay! some time for just us!

Sunday we’ll likely share a dinner with my parents, and grandparents at Porta Bella, whom we share an anniversary with. (4 generations, 3 still living) My mother and law and her husband may join us as well. It’s becoming a tradition.

Very cool! And she even holds up against the competition.

I should draw more of her.

Only, I started a really cool picture of my Shadowdancer Gnome last night. I think it’s going to be a really great pic when I’m done.

We had 12-14 people over all weekend, including my brother. It was a blast, lots of intense Halo CTF matches, and lots of good times.

It’s really great that perfect strangers from the internet can become perfect friends. We’ve known this group around 4 years or so, and have parties like this a couple times a year. It’s always fantastic.

And, as always, the house seems quite empty when everyone leaves.

Dad is going to see a panel of doctors and surgeons next week, apparently his case is unusual, and they want to know why.

My father’s enemy is signet ring cancer.

I had sushi last night, and it was yummy. believe it or not, sushi is a comfort food to me. I might have more comfort food tonight, either qdoba’s or noodles mac and cheese with tofu.

I am very happy that Please Save My Earth is out in translated manga. I had thought I might never seen the actual manga pages, and PSME has long been one of my favorite series.

Tonight, I believe, my husband is taking me to a movie. I’m aiming for Big Fish, or Something’s gotta give.

Most of Studio Antithesis is away, and I miss them. It will be nice to see them next week.

I finally beat the hard battle near the start of the Prince of Persia game, last night. Which made me feel good. I beat Syberia shortly after Christmas, with enough interest to play the sequel I guess. The Longest Journey was so much better though.

Frank was in town around New Years. We went to Monty’s Blue plate, and bowling with Adam. Felt like old times. We all used to work together at Sonic Foundry.

Sorry for the odd, unconnected ramblings, been missing recording all sorts of things due to these emergencies.

Went over to Mom and Dad’s the day he was discharged, to eat dinner some friends had brought by, and watch ‘Senseless’, which made my father laugh so much it hurt. He’s feeling so much better than he has these last few weeks. That’s a good thing.

The stress of this is not doing good things to my body. I need to exercise more and release those endorphins.

• Page 5 of Tabloid roulette is up
• Did christmas crafty things with mom.(candles!)
• Opened new checking account at uwcu, yah!
• awesome role playing on sunday, we faced down an evil drow sorceror who
  had unnatrual command over an army of 50thousand orcs.(Vole and Co.)
• decorated tree
• Christmas concert at a local church. (w/Mom/Grandma)
• American forces finally caught Sadamn hussein

When I got there, I thought I was the first to arrive, and I was, kinda. Ray had the iSight set up on his new g5 computer and was using it to talk to Maciek who is currently in Hong Kong! way cool! It was nice to see him and be silly on the iSight and hear about his traveling adventures over there, he also sent some really awesome pictures of the cityscape and some Hong Kong Markets. That was very cool.

Also, I got to get back to drawing on the manga that Kim and I are making, and I got two whole panels done! That only leaves two more for page 5! I was a bit frustrated at first that one was taking too long, but I really cleaned it up nice, and I’ve quite happy with the result. The last four Tuesdays I’ve been writing during art nice, so this was a very nice change. I really want to finish up at least all the drawing for page 5 this week. That would feel very nice.

It was really quiet without Maciek. *giggle* That’s what everyone apparently says about me when I’m absent. We are two chatterboxes in truth.

I got home pretty late, but I was flying from being all artz and productive again. Very excited to continue the comic. Also page 4, which is online now, and page 5, which I’m working on now, are really the best pages I’ve done for the comic. I can’t wait to get this one up and online too.

Saturday: I got up, and headed downtowne to give an interview to the Daily Cardinal, a local student paper, about NaNoWriMo. The interviewer was really nice, her name was Jennifer, and she’s going to try to write a novel this year also. I almost talked my self hoarse from about 12:15 to 1:45. Funny though, before she arrived, I drank half a Mocha, and was talking a bit fast. It’s so much fun to be excited about things. I am excited about Nanowrimo this year. This is truly the year I walk away with a novel. Truly.

Near the end of the interview Kim and Maciek appeared, as I had mentioned to them where I’d be. I sat down for some bean chili and a Key Lime drink. They mentioned that it was the weekend for Open Studios, all over town. I only had time to check out the Thorn’s Home Studio across from Ground Zero with them, before I had to head home to connect with the husband and friends to go see a movie.

We(hubby, Dennis, Doug) checked out School of Rock, with Jack Black, and it’s truly a pleasure to watch. Just a fun, funny movie, not too deep, but enjoyable. Worth the money, yah! Then just an evening of hanging out, and more Zelda.

Sunday: I got up early to head back over to the smuga-otto’s house so we could eat breakfast at Sophia’s before the morning rush. We had yummy food, mmm boysenberry cottage cheese pancakes. Then we spent the day visiting more Artist homes and studios. It was so inspiring. We met so many very cool local artists and got to see their art, how they laid things out. I met a cool lady who teaches private painting lessons, which Maciek and I think we are going to do. We also met a political cartoonist for the Isthmus, who showed us how he works with the copy machine and the waxer, as well as how he’s branching into collage and sculpture. Many of the artists were more than willing to talk to us about their art and procedures.

We met many cats(one from Paris, and one from Capetown), and some dogs, and got to enter into some of the coolest old houses, some of them right on the lake. We also dropped in on our Life Drawing Teacher from last spring in his new studio, and on his recommendation, one of his painting friends.

We did this till about 2:30 I think, when we crashed back at the house, and while we had wanted to do art stuff, we found ourselves all a bit exhausted physically and mentally from all the stimuli, and sat back and watched 3 episodes of Ceres no Destiny I hadn’t seen yet.

I wandered home around 4, really tired, and basically hung out on the couch watching the WB’s big Sunday, which included the first episode of Smallville, and an all new series of Tarzan. Stupid WB, pegging my demographic. heh. I drew a neat portrait of Red Riding Hood, which I haven’t touched since Sunday night, but I’m pleased with how it’s going.

Whew. It’s important to write these things down before they just disappear into my olio of memories.

Saturday, I played lots of Zelda: Wind Waker, and I’m sadly getting close to the end. There was a point where I was afraid it would end too early, before I finished exploring and playing, but things kept moving. The game just continues to be entertaining. And so pleasant to play with the wavebird, in the bedroom, where I can snuggle down in my blankets and be comfortable, and not shoved in the corner of the office.

We also did some Comic Stuff on Saturday, which was fun. We got a good deal done with page 4, I finished my clean up of the panels, and Kim did the initial lettering and panel boxes. It’s soo much fun to see things come together. I’m sure I’m going to finish page 4 tonight, and Art night is at our place! Carlo came with me to K&M’s house too, where the kitties molested him, and I overheard him talking about scripts and Indesign from where I was chained to the computer.

Sunday was sweet and relaxing. More Zelda, mostly due to some crossed wires, as we thought we were doing brunch with the Father in Law, but couldn’t get a hold of him. It was nice to laze around though, I was busy with the little green capped hero, while my husband was in the other room rolling more hours into our Xbox copy of Morrowind.

Then later, Cafe und Kuken with Andy, Mike and the usual suspects. Eating lovely strudels and chocolates, and coffee with daubs of real hand whipped cream, while we looked at Andy and Mike’s photos from their Austria trip. Looks like their trip was amazing. I had to leave too soon, but left at the right time, with a large sugar buzz, to get home in time for some Gaming with the Dalelands Crew.

Life, she is good.

Things I wish today’s paycheck could go to
Endless Nights
Dancing Barefoot
Lion King DVD
Copic Markers
Comics and Manga
Fall Clothes
Ibook

Things today’s paycheck will go to.
Bills.
Food.

Dry-cleaning.

But soon, soon soon… It will be time for toys, when paychecks hit.

And I’m happy without those things too, which is a good place to be.

And, I’ve lost a total of 8lbs since I started eating better, and that feels marvelous.
If I get out for a couple walks I bet I can make 10lbs lost by next week.

(We all gotta start considering costumes for Haloween, after all.)

But, then I got an invite to go play Phantasy Star Online with Strider Jin, and I’m so glad I accepted.

Strider gave me some really cool weapons and slot items, and then, before he had to go, he gave me some new mags, one that looks like a master system, and one that looks like Devil Wings!

They’re so cute, they float behind my character, and flutter! I need to get a screenshot, but they’re sooo cool. I even spent the 10,000 meseta to change my outfit and color my hair to match better, so now I’m all purply, with purple pink wings, and

ok, ok, I’m a geek, but I can’t tell you how happy I am to have cute devil wings in PSO.

After Jin left, I randomly joined a game, and there were 2 people with angel wings and one with a tail mag, what an adventuring group we were!

heh.

Was feeling better, and got to hook up with Tammy and Liz for our new Girly Gaming group. Woo! I think we’re really going to have an awesome time. This is Liz’s first role-playing game ever, and she’s doing awesome! She’s playing a halfling fighter, and is totally getting into it. Tammy is playing a Rashemi Wizard, and I’ve mentioned Mohna, my tiefling rogue/assassin before. Liz is working on her PhD here in town, studying some radical rhetoric. Also, Tammy had us over again for dinner, which was quite yummy, that girl can cook! Ok, sentences fragmenting, must add more exclamation marks… Yah! Girly Gaming!

Changing hosts for Metahari.com . Heidi suggested HasWeb. They’re cheap, have lots of options, and a cool feature called ‘fantastico’, come on, how can you not love a service that offers ‘fantastico’! It’s actually a feature that has a lot options to install other cool free php programs like b2, or pmachine, ect, with the minimum of fuss. Very nice.

Although, figuring out just what’s going on with my stableful of domain names has not been fun. Sometime between last fall and now, my account with godaddy has split in a strange fashion, giving me two accounts, and not letting me log in, or see important domains like quixotica.com. Ack!

I wanna call them and get things figured out, they were supposed to merge the account yesterday, but, no such luck/time.

I got up Memorial day about 10am, and played PSO and did a load of laundry until we had to head over to Mom’s for a cookout. And OH! What great food. I just about snacked myself to death. And then had half a brat/ half an Italian sausage, and two yummy grilled hot-dogs. We’ve been eating so much Boca products lately, it was almost funny to have so much real meat. We also shredded a bunch of old documents and mail (some of them 3+ years old) and scanned the picture of Khaira I drew on Sunday.

Tuesday night, my husband and I went over to Tammy’s to work on her character for our new girly-gaming game, which will start next Tuesday, and incorporate my tiefling Mohna, with Tammy’s Rashamen Wizard, and a halfling fighter for Tammy’s friend Liz (who has never played before). I’m sure it’s going to be a lot of fun. My last girly-gaming group kinda lost the other women, due things like boot-camp, moving , lack of interest. The game continued though, and is our current Sunday afternoon game with Vole. So that’s neat, I’ve been playing with my Gnomish Rogue for about a year now.

Anyway, Tammy made these awesome enchiladas, and salad, and we had yummy strawberries and angel food for desert. She has this kick butt loft apartment too, with a super high ceiling and tall windows in the front area. She showed off her Xena game cards, and picked some music out she thought I’d like. It was sweet of her to drop by my web page to see what I’m into. Very cool.

Then we grabbed some wonderful Fajita Ranchera’s from Qdoba’s and headed home for a triumphant Space Hulk game. Doug and I were the Marines, and my husband played the GeneStealers(aliens).

Riding home in the back seat of Doug’s car, eating my lime sprayed tortilla chips, I had one of those wonderful relaxing moments where I just was. It was really nice, relaxed, munchin on my favorite chips, ready to get home to where Carlo had already set up the board to play.

The game was fantastic. We lost Doug’s powersword Sgt, and my lightning claw, and 3 marines, but overall we were successful. I regret losing Frank, who held off many many of the brood from a key entry point, perhaps as more than 12, and made it possible for most everyone to get back to the space shuttle. Also a valiant loss was Ty, who held the line right in front of the shuttle, falling to the brood while keeping the rest of the crew safe to exit.

The game was a bit hard on the GeneStealers, I kept rolling sixes all over the place.

>for those not in the know< Space Hulk is a like a board game, your pieces are painted miniatures, some plastic, some pewter. Space Hulk itself plays a lot like the movie Aliens, with lots of creepy aliens lurking about, and a small crew of marines on a playing board made up of little cardboard pieces that interlock like a puzzle, but can be connected in lots of different configurations so you can keep the game fresh and new.

Sisters of Battle are Warhammer 40k miniatures, something like battle nuns, but they don’t make female space marines… Warhammer often employees whole armies of miniatures, and measuring distances and such. Space Hulk is a simpler game than 40k, but still a whole lot of fun.

So, once I get them primed and painted, I’ll be able to use them instead of the marines. They are a bit intricate, I hope I can paint them well.

We modified the gun jamming rule for overwatch, which used to state that you roll two 6 sided dice for a gun, a 6 kills a genestealer, and doubles of anything will jam your gun, though double 6’s will kill the creature and jam your gun. We changed that to jamming just on double 1’s. It’s a lot of fun this way, less annoying jamming, more shooting. It’s not like there are a lack of genestealers, they just keep coming, 1-6 randomly each turn at one entry point.

Anyhoo, the game finished just before 1:00. whew!

Friday night was leo-list book reading and Buffy over at the Smuga-Otto’s’s, which is always a treat, full of tea, laughter and geekiness. We watched the Christmas episode with Angel and the First. Good ‘homework’ for the current season. And then since they still had their Christmas tree up, we set up the camera for a ‘family picture’ heh, so fun.

Saturday was so amazing. Remember last weekend, my Mother in Law came by to help us set up our new hutch?! Well this weekend, my Mother came by to help me organize my kitchen, and work on putting our new place to rights.

She came by about 10:30, and we wrote down a list of some organizing things we’d need, like laundry baskets, more kitchen cloths, little shelves for the cupboards, and then ran to Wal-Mart to get all of those, plus some pillows and a bedspread for the guest room downstairs.

Then we came back and unpacked all the dishes and pots and glasses that had been sitting under our long table up against the kitchen bar, about 8 boxes containing pans and plastic containers and all sorts of things that my husband and I hadn’t figured out where to put. My mother marveled at all the space we had in the kitchen, and had so many great ideas of where things should logically go. It’s still tough with only one drawer(which the silverware occupies), but with her help and advice we found places for pretty much everything. And I kept going downstairs for some more kitcheny things. Wow! A fully organized kitchen!

Somewhere in here, Carlo brought us some Quizno’s subs (yummy) and we sat down for some soda, salt and vinegar chips and chatted about what was needed for the basement. Then my husband got a call that the Mopar club he is president of was having their party that night, and not next week like he’d thought. So we went into cleaning mode, and finished cleaning the kitchen, I cleaned the bathroom, and my mother, bless her, cleaned our floors in the kitchen and bathroom, while my husband vacuumed.

Then, while the Mopar people came over, we retreated to the basement, to work on the guest room, laundry room, and the main room full of many boxes from our move.

We made the bed with a burgundy bedspread, put pillowcases on the new pillows we bought earlier that day, and set up the cute little side lamp table we still need to make a cover for. It almost looks like a proper guest room now. I put in an alarm clock, and plugged in a phone.

I organized the laundry room with the new baskets, (laundry clean and dirty was everywhere, we had moved it from the main room to the laundry clean and dirty-so hard to tell after a big move), and my mom poked through our boxes.

Finally, wow, after about 9 hours of work, (fun work), we stopped, sore and happy with so much accomplished. We didn’t clear the basement of boxes, but we did manage to clear the area in front of the steps (visible from the front door), so it doesn’t look like a garage sale from the door anymore. Without going downstairs you’d just see the blue couch and a lamp, with the big brass candlestick holders behind on the little ledge that runs the perimeter of our basement.

We grabbed some trays and ate good sandwich meat sandwiches downstairs on folding chairs, while we shivered. (Our fireplace downstairs doesn’t work, the pilot is lit, but it doesn’t ignite) Then I showed my mom Dance Dance Revolution on our new PS1(got a certificate from work for Sears for Christmas, ps1’s are cheap now!), even though my legs and feet were terribly sore. She thought it looked like fun.

It was a lot of work, but wow, makes you feel like you really made your weekend count.
~~
Sunday Chris brought over his GameCube and wavebird, to sell to us for the price of a couple games he’d been wanting. We had snagged a used copy of Animal Crossing at Blockbuster, and he stayed to watch me set up and giggle over Tom Nook’s wiggly nose.

Name:Iris
Town:Bliss

And I played that most of the day. The Wavebird rocks. It’s soo cute, snow everywhere, lots of silly animals, and lots to do. I managed to pay off my first debt to Nook before Carlo came home, and Jaz and Eric showed up for some gaming.

Before the game Jaz and I played a bit of MonkeyBall2, which looks like more fun than the first, even if it makes me a tad seasick for the normal levels, lots of sense of depth and speed. Also popped in Resident Evil, looks very nice, though the stutter in loading the cinema’s is very annoying. (I can tell you though, for the most part, AC hasn’t left the cube since I got it)

The game went long, but was fun, as Eric, Jaz and I (plus npcs) defeated not only the zombies, but also many swamp bandits riding huge wasps. I think I need to drop this wand of magic missile though, powerful yes, cramping my rogue’s style though.

Went to bed happy, got lots accomplished for the whole weekend, and now I can find things in my kitchen, yah!

Whew! no wonder it took me all week to get this written.

The signon was pretty painless, the worst part was putting in billing info for any premium downloadable content I may want to buy in the future. And then, woo, I was online, with my xbox. The voice communicator/headset is very cool. I was talking with people from Georgia, Chicago, Arizona, all over. The whacked demo is more fun than I thought it’d be, and the MotoGP demo is awesome. We have the full game so I can choose all the tracks to play on. (Except the 2 I haven’t unlocked yet). Both games are much more fun when people talk, laugh, apologize and generally have a good time. Full 16 people for the races is amazing, people crashing all over the place, in the race you get to talk to people in front and behind you, and the person you crashed into. If you just can’t catch up/overcome a racer, you’ve got a chat buddy for the race. I fell in with a good crew for several races and added some people to my friends list. Very cool stuff.

The games where people aren’t talking aren’t as much fun. Especially if you occasionally hear them breathing, and they won’t respond to your questions. Only ran into one jerk who wouldn’t stop talking, and being annoying, but the other 3 people in the whacked game ganged up on him, threatening to report him for poor conduct, and he logged out of our game.

wheee! very cool. This is just going to be an amazing service.

Last night was the LAST NIGHT of moving, we were up past one in the morning but its all moved, it’s all done. And clean. Husband going over for a bit more vacuuming today, but today, at noon, we sever ties with the old apartment, Yahoo! My mother in law is amazing, spent her whole night finishing cleaning out our kitchen, while I scoured the bathrooms.

Now the terror is trying to make things semi-presentable for tomorrow night, our Haloween Party.

Holy cow. I’m tired.

People don’t really dress up for Halloween here at work. I’d have worn a wig or something, if I could have found anything this morning. I am wearing pumpkin earrings. Honestly, I’m so tired, I don’t know how much more I could have pulled together for today. Still, kinda sadlike about not having something fun to wear to work. Surprising lack of general candyness too, though that’s prolly best for me. There will be more than enough goodies tomorrow night.

Must get the brain ready for tomorrow.

~~~

I ordered my Xbox LIVE beta kit this morning before work, by next week, wheee, I’ll be online with mah Xbox! Here is my tracking number, if you want to play along!

Also, speaking of following along, I added several may and june entries from private hidden place back into Questing. Many of them dealt with interviews and such, so they weren’t posted here during that whole find a job process.
1Z5207W91246899278
~~~

Busy weekend planned, Haloween party friday, Lunch and football on the tell with mother in law on saturday, Kung fu party saturday night woo, and Nanowrimo Madison Kick off party on Sunday. There are over 9500 people doing nanowrimo this year, crazy, can we break the 10k? that would double last year’s participants and be crazy. Today is your last day to sign up, so GO! DO! Write!

It’s a really interesting game, not really a straight platformer, and that makes you think. Sure, there is some jumping, dodging and shooting, but those time elements really mix things up. Have to be careful where you step or you might pick up the wrong time crystal, and you have to think about areas that might need special attention time wise, rewind, or pause might be the only way to get to that special cat icon.

The graphics are beautiful, especially once you get to the third set of levels in the caves, with shimmery lighting bouncing off of the walls and all items. I’m not sure if its the graphics alone or the combination with music, but the game seems very japanese.

I also really like the water effects, especially when you can pause and you go through it like jello, leaving a cat sized track, and when your pause runs out, the water rushes back to normal making big waves from the peaks. Very cool.

I don’t quite understand why the current time sweeper I have is an improvement over the previous one, but at least I have plenty of places to go back to to gather more gold.

Bonus tip: Try to keep some trash for the goal, you get trade in gold. Some items are better than others, the question mark balls can fetch at least 100g while most random trash is 1g-60g.

Overall though, I’m happy with the game, it’s nice to have something completely different to play.

Lesse, we played lotsa Xbox, had a good number of people over to fight and race. We did some light cleaning, and bought new cleaning supplies. Am I the only one who thinks new cleaning supplies are fun? Not so much fun after they are not new anymore, but we got to put new hockey pucks of bleach in our toilets, and for some insane reason, that made me happy, well that and having both bathrooms be clean at the same time.

On Sunday I got to see Harry potter, Nancy was in town, and we caught the matinee, which was fun, not as good as the book, but very true, and! I finally met Zara! yah, even though we couldn’t connect until after the movie was over. We’ll have to have her and Nate over for some good clean xbox’n fun.

I am having trouble breathing, seems I’ve been ambushed by a cold. bleh, and work has slowed considerable, pushing the launch of the redesign off to an unknown date. I wonder if I’m destined to be thwarted at trying to launch the site, eternally.

oooh, sleepies would be nice right now, curled up in bed with all my pillows. Whew, do I have writing to do, practically all of last week was a bust, writing wise, but, I figured out last night that If I do about 3000 a day, I can still make goal by the 30th, barring any further distractions. I will finish this challenge…

DOA3 is sooo sweet.
My husband is such a sweetie too, he greeted me at the door last night was was incredibly cute and cuddly, showing me the condolences basket work had sent, with neat little shortbread cookies, teas, and chocolate tools like the ones my company sells.

I asked him how his day was, and he said ‘intresting’, i asked what happened, and he, shyly, said ‘nothing’.

‘Then why was it intrestin…’ I said as I turned around from facing him and the counter to the tv set. There, on the floor was the xbox box, with the extra controller, and the 2 games.

‘Merry Christmas,’ he said, as I squealed.

Friday night we went to Monster’s Inc with Ace and Jess It was sooo good. I’d had a tough couple days at work, and this movie wiped all the frustration away. It was genuinly fun, and creative, and the graphics were astounding. The trailers in no way do this movie justice. GO SEE IT!

Saturday we went over to Jaz’s to game, took us a while to get started, because my husband was supposed to run the game, but he’s been sick and has practically lost his voice. That’s no good for a GM. We all had a relaxing afternoon, talking about gaming, and dynamics and what we like in a good role playing game. We took a trip to westfield comics, where I picked up three more Gloomcookie comics, and the first I feel sick comic, which has a really cute style, and had me giggling quite a bit.

We did get to play a fun pick up V&V game, courtesy of Tony and the group worked really well together, plus Jon as Thorn was soo in the groove! It was a lot of fun.

And then, well, I came home and wrote lots! yah! I made the minimum for yesterday night, (min was 5001) though I wanted to be at 6000, that’s ok though, that means I only have to play makeup with 1000 words today, plus, the 2000 I want to write today.

And I’ll be meeting with other Wrimos at JT Whitneys today around 3 or so, so that should be fun, and perhaps I’ll get a bit more written, in good company, woo!

I feel so accomplished! Plus, I’ve decided I’m going to do crunches every night this month, I’ve done that before, years ago, and I know I start to see a difference even after 2 weeks! I figure, I can spend 2 hours writing a day, >10min of crunches will not kill me. Plus, I’ve done them so far every day this month. It’s so nice to wake up everyday with a little bit more accomplished. Makes me feel like the evenings weren’t wasted or anything!

My main character met Bringwel the bear last night, so did I.