Category: IRL

Forever is a long, long time

So you may have noticed that I’ve been ignoring the blog for a while. I guess that’s just the kind of thing that’s bound to happen when you get married. That’s okay though. I have stuff to type thoughts about now. None of them particularly interesting to anyone but me, but that’s kinda the point.

I’m going to try may hand at publishing another article in the near future too. That’s kind of exciting. It’s another TE staple too, so froth with demand!

Random musings

I just realized how ironic it is that I said “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was too much of a mouthful for a title. (You know, because my website’s name is an octosyllabic monster)

My Super Talking Time Bros 2 LP is coming along swimmingly, though I feel the onset of burnout. I guess devoting every spare second I’ve had to it for the past week was maybe a bad idea. Gotta learn to pace myself better.

In any time I have that I’m not putting toward STTB2, I’ve been soaking up more completely useless trivia than you can shake a gunblade at from the Final Fantasy Wiki. Do you understand the plot, character motivations, and mythology of Final Fantasy XIII? Because I do. I probably know more about FFXIII’s story than FFXIII does.

I’ve finally started reading Monster Nation, the sequel to the superb Monster Island. It’s good, but not quite as hard to put down as Island was.

Trying to eat less sucks. Now I’m hungry all the time. Even right after a meal.

I cannot believe how many more people are on the 4:42 bus home as opposed to the 5:14. I had to stand for half the ride home yesterday! I have never been so put upon as this.

I was looking at DLC costumes for Final Fantasy XIII-2, and can’t help but think that Square-Enix got something backwards. Noel is a more competent Medic than Serah, and she’s a better Ravager than he is, but Noel got the black mage costume and Serah the white mage. Geez, gender roles. Also Noel’s black mage outfit lacks a pointy hat. Epic fail.

Why does iTunes delete all the ringtones off my iPhone whenever I install the new firmware? Nothing else ever vanishes. Just the ringtones.

Is Minecraft still big enough that Mojang is really getting away with charging $25(ish) for it? I was super excited about gettiing the Xbox version until I saw the price.

Scouted

So one of our branches decided to start up a soccer league within the company. While I declined the opportunity to play, I was also selected to design and draw the “jerseys” for their team, The Ron Burgundys. This offer I was happy to accept.

This isn’t the whole thing, but it’s most of the logo. My rough drafts were a little more ambitious than the final product, but that’s mostly because t-shirts (and I assume all manners of clothing) are ridiculously hard to draw on. I’m pretty satisfied with the final results; hopefully the team likes my work as much as I do.

The thing I’m really digging is that I’m becoming something of a go-to guy for low-profile art projects at work. It’s not exactly the fame and fortune I once hoped my “skill” would bring me, but I certainly can’t complain. People are asking me do draw things for them because they enjoy my work. I like it. The really nice thing is that no matter how crappy I think my output is, everyone is really supportive and tells me it’s great. Maybe it doesn’t push me to improve like criticism sometimes does (usually it just makes me want to give up forever), but it sure makes me feel better about myself.

Boomba latty

Things are going swimmingly for me right now. Work is great, the wedding is coming along, and I love my house. On that last note, we did a phenomenal job of getting everything moved into the house. Thanks to the help of a handful of incredibly dedicated family members, we got everything we own moved in in just two days. Of course, anything that isn’t furniture is still stuffed away in boxes (aside from the Wii), but I think that the wife-to-be and I are going to have a lot of fun getting everything unpacked. I enjoyed the process of getting all my crap boxed away, so I can only imagine that getting it back out is going to be just as fun, if not more.

The only facet of my life that isn’t perfect right now is my weight, and considering how everything else is working out, I really shouldn’t be complaining about it. But my health is important!

It’s not really that I’m terribly unhealthy. I’m in fairly good shape for someone with a gut the size of mine, and it’s that gut specifically that’s the problem. Try as I might, I just cannot drop the weight. I’ve been doing really good lately too! I’ve slowed my sugar intake significantly, and have been making a solid effort at getting more fruit and veggies into my diet.

I’ve been getting regular exercise too, which I hear is important. I walk up and down four floors worth of stairs several times a day, and walk back and forth three blocks to and from my bus stop. I try to go out for a walk two or three times a week, as long as the weather is decent. I’ve even been spending about half an hour a day playing Just Dance 3, at least five days a week. It works up quite a sweat, and it’s the closest thing I’ve found yet to a truly fun way to exercise.

There’s a barely visible Cadbury Creme Egg under my monitor stand at work, and it’s been there for almost a month now. There was a time, not too long ago, where that thing wouldn’t have even lasted a day. But it’s there. Partly as a testament to self-control, and partly because I’m often too busy to remember it’s there.

All of this effort is for naught though, because since the last time I weighed myself I have actually put on weight. And it’s not muscle either, because I’ve just been doing cardio and aerobics as far as exercise goes. Sometimes I play with the 10-pound dumbbells, but not in any way that would build any serious muscle mass. So I don’t know what to do. Maybe the fat is just waiting to drop off after a while, but I’ve been doing this thing for well over a month now. I would like to see at least some small results.

And all this work because 70% of my wardrobe looks awful when stretched around my belly. I don’t even care about being trim for the wedding; I just want to be able to wear my Goonies t-shirt without being embarrassed.

/venting

Separation anxiety

It’s hard to think that in less than a week I will no longer live in the room that I’ve lived in for roughly twenty years. I’m not going to lie; I think I may be more anxious about leaving my home behind than I am excited to be moving into my very own house. I am excited, mind you, it’s just that I have an old soul. An old soul that’s afraid of change.

I spent the majority of my Sunday afternoon last weekend tearing apart the room that I worked so long and hard to build. Given, that just means taking down posters and stuffing all my crap into boxes (and boy howdy do I have a lot of crap!), and I’m still not done yet. I keep hesitating to start packing my clothes because I keep trying to tell myself that I have more time and that I’ll still need them. I know that once my wardrobe is boxed away that it’s just going to get that much more real.

It… it looks so alien to me without all the posters and CD racks and all my other stuff. Those bare walls may not look like much, but they cleave through my soul like a gunblade through Squall’s face.

I know it’s a necessary step, but it’s a scary one. I love the comfortable safety of my parents’ house. I love not having to worry about bills. I love being able to walk upstairs and know that there will be food in the fridge. A month ago I was really confident that I was ready to grow up, and now it’s way too real.

I suppose that if there’s a silver lining in this, something that quells my fear and keeps me from running away and hiding in my room, it’s the knowledge that I’m going to get to live every day from now on with the woman I love. She’s the reason I do everything I do, and this is certainly no exception to the rule. I know that without her that I’d probably be a deadbeat living in my parents’ basement for the rest of the forseeable future. I will never take for granted how good it feels to have someone there who motivates you to be the best person you can be, who brings out all your best qualities. I love knowing that no matter what hardships I face, she will be there supporting me all the way, and that I have the opportunity to do the same for her.

I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again: I’m lucky to have her.

I may be anxious about moving out, but I have nothing but excitement for my pending marriage.

4 (four)

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my first date with Stephanie. Between house and wedding expenses, we were too poor to make it one of those stereotypical anniversary date nights, but I got to spend it with her and that’s all I need to be happy. It was a great night, and I’m lucky to be with someone as perfect as her.

Back in January we splurged on tickets for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the corresponding concert having been a couple Fridays ago. They were a little more expensive than I’d have liked, but we agreed to claim that the purchase was our anniversary gift to each other. We went to see TSO a couple years ago for one of their Christmas shows, and I guess I don’t really need to mention that they left a good enough impression on us that we went back for a second round. To date, TSO is the only act we’ve seen twice.

The concert’s theme was Beethoven’s Last Night, and I don’t feel like trying to explain it, so here’s a link to the Wikipedia page. All you need to know up front is that TSO is a group that highly values both metal and classical music, and plays a stunning combination of the two. Despite my hipsterish nature when it comes to music, I really love it when rock acts cover classical music, so this kind of stuff is right up my alley.

The show, as I’d expected, was amazing from start to finish. Having a narrative in your concert might seem like something that just increases the delay between songs, but I find it extremely captivating. Musicals and traditional opera, I have a lot of trouble swallowing, but rock operas are one of my favourite things in the whole wide world. It was also nice that after the story was over, the band just kept playing. I think the total length of the concert was two and a half hours? Something around there, anyway.

I don’t really have any strong opinions left, so here’s a really low-quality YouTube video of a couple songs:

Here I go a-counting

Oh my goodness you guys, accounting.

So I do that now. Professionally. Semi-professionally. Training to be able to work in the field with an air of professionalism. It is my position title. It’s repetitive, and tedious, and really, really not at all exciting. I love it. I’m the kind of person who can while away hours days grinding experience in old-school RPGs, so this really is a good fit for me.

I only recently realized a possible subconscious reason I’ve been so gung-ho to get into accounting. And I am taking that knowledge to the grave. Let’s say it’s an “unfinished business” kind of thing.

And that’s awesome and all but there’s nothing really interesting to say about my days at work: I plug in some numbers and then plug in some more numbers. Rinse and repeat. Once in a while I stop to pay some bills, which results in more number-pluggage. Anything I do think would be type-worthy information is Top Secret. I suppose it’s notable that riding the bus to and fro again has been considerably more pleasant than I’d expected, aside from occasional bouts with light motion sickness. I’m a little disappointed that it’s been a dry well for StreetPasses so far. But I’ve only been bussing for a week, so maybe everyone who rides with their 3DS was on vacation over the last week.

In other news, I’m doing something completely crazy: I’m writing an article. Yeah, you know, those silly things this website used to be built on? Maybe you don’t know. It’s not a thing I really do much anymore. Anywho, it’s a classic-style article. I don’t want to give anything away, but I will say that it is not about video games. SHOCKER! The only problem left is that I seem to have completely forgotten how to write at length about silly things that are not projected onto my television/computer screen. This could be a terrible idea.

Now you’re in my house

So I got this “house” thing during the week.

I don’t actually get to use it for almost two months, but damn am I glad the hunt is over. All the lawyer and banking stuff that I’m wrapped up in at this point is a little annoying, but our realtor is making life really easy for us, and it’s not nearly as stressful as the process of looking for and bidding on a house.

I’ve been working on a budget for us, and at this point it looks like we may have to choose between internet and food. So my blogging time is probably going to be limited to work hours.

J/ks, we’re not really that poor. We’re definitely going to need to make every penny count for the first little while, though. Why didn’t anyone tell me that being a grown-up would be so expensive? But uor parents keep telling me that we’ve got a big score to look forward to in the way of wedding presentation, which should help make ends meet for a while.

All financial worries aside, I’m very excited to finally have my own place! I just wish we could move in a little sooner. It’s going to be amazing to not have all of my stuff crammed into one room 🙂