Well, getting married for one I suppose. May’s creeping up on me and Liz, and we’re drudging through the planning of it all. Liz has been amazing handling the catering plans and the cards and stuff. I have to design some sort of website for us, and add gifts to our registry. I suppose these are things I could actually enjoy – letting my creativity flow and finding things for people to buy me – but I guess I’ve just been slacking on it. We still have a good deal of time to plan everything. The wedding itself will only be about 15 minutes worth of actual traditional consummations, the part where Liz and I say “I do.” Everything else, well, lots of pirate garb and decorations, and a healthy helping of rum. Non-traditional is the best. I just can’t wait to see Liz’s dad dressed up as a pirate. He is totally stoked. Even Liz’s brother is now a justice of the peace so he’ll be the one marrying us.

Work’s been crazy for me. I’m head-first into a ton of shell scripting, programming, web design, and image maintenance. It’s a lot to handle, but I manage to keep it all under control for 45 hours a week. I manage to sneak in some fun every now and then, too. I’d probably go insane there if I didn’t have a good crew of people around me.

Went to Boston last week for a much-needed vacation. Got to see some old faces, meet some new ones, and just have a real blast. Nearly everything was perfect for me there, I already want to go back. Not sure when/where my next vacation will be, it may not be until MAGfest at the end of the year. We’ll see.

I was in Jersey a few weeks back, too. Apparently people still go to DDR tournaments, myself included. Of course labeling it an “old-school” tournament piqued my interest. 5th Mix was such a sight for sore eyes. Got to play Technika (which I am totally loving) and other various broken Bemani. But it’s the Broken, what can ya expect. This trip also the first time I’ve been able to step foot in Jersey without anything going wrong. Traditionally if I have to drive or fly into the state something screws up along the way. I guess I got lucky this time.

I should probably try to update this more, but it’s so much easier and convenient to micro-blog on Facebook and Twitter. Ah well.

My weekend was totally crazy. Liz wasn’t around for part of it, she was at a convention downstate. After getting out of work on Friday, I did my laundry, caught up on some TV, then went right to bed so I could go back into work on Saturday. After that, Liz was home so we got some food, then went off to a karaoke bar with a bunch of my coworkers for a birthday bash. I share a birthday with one of them too, so it made the night even more awesome. Lots of good times proceeded. Sunday morning we woke up somewhat early so we could head out to Rochester, because Jouva’s visiting a friend there and we wanted to see him. Got to visit this awesome little trinket shop, played Extreme on a 100% legit Japanese cab which still had all the cardboard attractors around the monitor, and played a round of Munchkin (which is my absolute favorite card game btw). Drove back home later in the afternoon to catch dinner at my parents, then stayed up late to finish my homework.

After all that, I’m working 10-7:30 shifts at work due to the head engineer being out of the office for the week, which meant me getting up early Monday morning. Not fun. Lots of good stuff happening there though; figuring out solutions for some problems, making everyone’s lives easier, and just overall having fun there. I just don’t like coming home to an empty apartment.

No plans at all for this weekend, I’m stoked. It’s been a while since that’s happened.

I’m pretty stoked about this project, not only because it’s giving me a chance to prove myself to a bunch of experienced engineers who’ve been in the field for 15+ years, but also because I get to work with my favorite software of choice.

This job gets better every day.

$45 for the DC, two controllers, and a memory card.

Not pictured: 377 Dreamcast games sitting on my external harddrive, ready to burn and play.

sherl0k voodoo dolls exist, now let’s see how Liz will control my life.

Had some awesome Thai food, went to Wegmans for some delicious desserts, and now we’re drinking and watching the Blade movies. Out of order, because we’re awesome like that.

Also went into the office for a few hours this morning, went to the gym, and even got a nap in. Pretty decent holiday, I would say.

Today I imaged over a hundred thumbdrives, labeled them (until the labeler ran out of tape), moved hundreds of gigabytes of images from server to server, and other random stuff for my coworkers.

Went to the gym after work, too. I’m enjoying working out after hours, I still have a lot of energy in me and this is a good way to use it. Been trying to eat healthier, too. Let’s hope my health regime bears fruit.

Heading out to VA for a weekend to play Empress. I’m pretty excited. Get to meet a lot of people I only know through the internets, and see some old faces from my DDR tournament days. Greg’s awesome for letting me crash at his spot and helping me with transportation to/from the airport. Liz is all sad I’m going to be gone for *gasp* two days. I think she’ll survive.

Time to catch up on some primetime TV.

Call me self-conscious, but after I learned the joys of hair dying I always did it. I used to bleach my hair a lot in high-school. I tried black once in college (oh, the experimental days) and nowadays I just give it a lighter shade of blond.

Fresh out of the shower, so fresh and so clean.

Photoshop 7 seems to like to scrub the EXIF data when resizing and saving. I suppose I should upgrade to something newer…

Holiday’s at Liz’s parents was much more relaxed; gift-giving was quick and simple, no drama at all throughout the day (aside from my car getting stuck driving up the long-ass hill known as their driveway, I don’t have snow tires and this is my first Winter with the Cobalt. Liz was stressed for about 10 minutes). Really made me realize how head-over-heels my family goes over Christmas. Lots of gifts, the tree had tons of presents wrapped under it, and it seriously takes like 2 hours to open everything.

I got away with a few gift cards, some clothes, ink for my printer, and a few other random things. I took one of my gift cards (Wal-Mart) and went there tonight, buying LED light bulbs to replace the regular ones around the apartment, along with a new lamp for the bedroom. Unfortunately all they had were the equivalent of 40-watt bulbs, and all the bulbs here are 60. Needless to say, the apartment looks a tad… darker. But the lighting is more natural, though. And there’s the apartment-furnished halogen lights which we can always use. We don’t really do anything that requires really bright lighting anyway, so it’s not all bad. If I can find 60-watt LEDs I’ll snatch them up.

Also saw The Spirit tonight. If anything made paying for the movie worth it, it was seeing Sam L dressed up in Nazi garb with a huge swastika and Hitler as the backdrop. I am not kidding you, this actually happened. The movie itself wasn’t that good but had enough “WTF” moments to definitely make it worth it.

Huge get-together on Liz’s side of the family tomorrow. Apparently they’re known having enough drama to warrant the police being called. My D40 will not be leaving my side, in hopes that I get to play paparazzi.

Liz bought me a Nikon D40. Did I ever mention how she’s the best ever?

Kat and her bf, Kelly and her bf, Mike, Adrian… good times. Brian was there too, and Zack(?!). Haven’t seen him since he quit. Having an order of 8 Irish car bombs was pretty epic.

Saw a pretty good band at the Half Penny, and did a good share of drinking. Apparently I hold my liquor pretty well. That last Jack & Coke was pretty hard.

Not sure if we’re doing it again next weekend, but I sure hope so. A fight almost broke out outside of Blue Tusk and then Mike shows up out of nowhere (he left to go to a different bar) and broke it up. What a way to end the night =)

Finished my Statistics class earlier today, so that’s out of the way. Got one more class to take care of for the semester, which shouldn’t be anything too difficult. I glanced over the final project and it looks like complete cake. Spent the morning at work, where I found out what my new proposed job position is. Check this out: Production Engineer. Me? An ENGINEER? While I don’t think my work responsibilities entitle me to that, I’ll take it. If anything it’ll be amusing telling people that I’m an engineer. Engineers always sound like important people.

Got an essay to write tomorrow, and the apartment needs a cleaning. Not sure what else is in store.