Lumpy Butt!

Puppy pictures!

So cute!

We're not... yeah, we're not sure what's going on there. It's very... floppy.
Again, so cute. =D

Holy Crap

Sheesh, been a while since I've posted anything. Since last October, Brady and I got engaged (we've set a date in August for the wedding, so we're pretty excited.) He'll be home for good on Friday and can start his student teaching stuff. He's been placed at a local high school close to the house, so his commute will at least be awesome. =)

Not a whole lot else is going on, really. Same ol', same ol'. Serra's huge and healthy. We had to play around with her diet a lot, and evidently she's allergic to chicken. After figuring that out it's been pretty easy to keep her happy.

Adia's big too; no longer the cute little fluff ball kitten. Now she's the cute, fluffy house cat with a propensity for laying on keyboards (which, while adorable, isn't entirely helpful.)

My bestest friend in the world finally got married (yay Teri and Sean!) She's asked if I'd make her a painting for the new house they just bought, so I'll probably post pictures here when I get started. Should be the same process as my panels with the added bonus of a dog trying to eat my paint.

Technicolor dog poop! YAY!

Work It Out

I had an appointment with a physical trainer last night, and if you haven't done this, I strongly recommend going at least once. Almost every trainer in this area offers one free consultation, so even if you can't afford to keep them on the payroll, take plenty of notes and do the same things at home.

Over the course of 30 minutes, my trainer Adrian (who will be known only as "Mr. Pain") led me through about 12 exercises. The point being that you keep all parts of the body moving as much as possible.

Of the 12 things covered in the gym, I think I could reasonably emulate about 9 at home, maybe 10 if I find a good, sturdy stud to attach resistance cords to. I'm thinking I could get by with the follow pieces of equipment:
Step, ball, weights, resistance cord.
Various dumbbells.

The step and weights were used together (I was using 10lb weights at the gym, but I guess 8lbs would be alright for now), then smaller weights were used in a variety of routines. Ideally, you'd have set of dumbbells with adjustable weights--like these--so you could add/subtract as necessary.

I think that at this juncture it would be easier to list the parts of me that DON'T hurt. Fingertips and eyeballs come to mind, but not much else.

Also as a part of this "get my tubby ass in shape" routine, I'm keeping a journal of everything I eat and drink. I'm sceptical, but I'll give anything a shot once.

Well, not anything.

Last Weekend

Was out in SLC over the weekend; my sister Liza made the trek with her husband Norm and their 4 kids all the way from Paris, Texas. I got there Saturday just afternoon, and we spent the day up in the mountains, fishing and goofing off. Mom went with Norm and a couple of the older kids for a hike. We caught a glimpse of them up on the hill, and Mom was kind of crashing around in some bushes off the trail. My prediction was she was snagging rocks. I was SO right (she loaded up one of Margaret's boys with a couple, and had her hands full at the end.)

Sunday morning, we all went to the zoo. For clarification, "we" is: myself, my mom and dad, Mema, Liza, Norm, their 4 kids, Brieanna, Wade, and Brieanna's three kids, Margaret and her 4 younger kids, Daniel (Margaret's oldest) and his girlfriend Katie, and my niece Heidi. For those of you that suck at counting, that's 23 folks, trekking through the zoo.

I think the sentiment of the visit goes to my mom, whom I overheard talking to my sister. She was in the back of the pack, walking towards the zoo exit. Pointing to the group, "Wow. That's all us." No kidding.

After we got home Sunday night, Dad grilled up a bunch of dead stuff for us to eat, and then we got some pictures in:



We should start a biker gang.

Jerks

They're everywhere, and we all have to deal with them. Jerks come in a dizzying array of flavors, from the "stole your parking spot" jerk, to the "flies to the end of the merge lane and then pushes over making everyone wait" jerk, to the "won't pick up after his dog even though you live in an apartment and it's not just his yard" jerk.

While there are many rants to be made about the above-mentioned jerks, I'd like to spend time on a real nasty specimen, the "do whatever it takes to succeed even if that means trampling on other people" jerk.

Up until a few years ago, I'd never really had any interactions with jerks of this nature. Sure, I'd heard of them, knew they made corporate offices and especially Wall Street their native environments. Even after I met a prime example of the DWITTS jerk, it took me a while to realize it.

Common traits: over-the-top friendliness (perhaps to compensate for later episodes of back-stabbing), common use of industry buzz words particularly around management staff, and an unnerving interest in the happenings of other, perhaps rival, departments.

Things to watch out for: comments such as, "Gee, you look busy, I can take a project or two off your hands if you'd like." Statements like this can easily be spun into something negative, like "I knew she was going to let the project slip, so I volunteered to rescue it." While an outright lie, and complete bullshit, this makes the DWITTS jerk look better in the eyes of management.

After your DWITTS jerk has thoroughly trashed your reputation, has developed strong relationships with key staff members (usually via a liberal use of alcohol), he will probably then proceed to take outright credit for work you've done. You may even notice that online resumes contain such blatant lies as "was the chief technology developer" even when the only thing the DWITTS jerk did was some cute little Flash widgets and a bunch of visual stuff. Nevermind that YOU spent all night up with the hosting company to make sure the site was still alive so his pretty shit worked.

No, nevermind that at all.

WAR and DNR's.

First, the hospital where I am being treated for a slew of broken-girly-parts related problems asked me to "review the surgery documentation" on their website, part of which is to consider Advance Directives.

If you don't know what that is, it's basically: do you want to be resuscitated, do you want to be on/off life support, what's the deal with your insurance, off-the-cuff final wishes, blah blah blah. Kind of depressing. I'm working on mine right now, and it's tough. The way things generally work for me: if you have it, you won't need it. So you're damn right I'll have one ready to go.

Second, Warhammer Online! Brady and I are playing in the open beta, and it's pretty fun. Very similar to World of Warcraft in regards to the UI/quest scenarios/group mechanics. They've added something called "Public Quests" which are interesting--you run into an area (anyone can) and participate in a repeating event with several stages. If you contribute a lot to the scenario and have good rolls (this last bit screws me every time), you get special loot after the last stage completes.

As far as character classes, we've decided we're not fond of Order, and instead are focusing almost entirely on Destruction (greenskins in particular), which is a reversal on our almost entirely Alliance character set in WoW.

The instanced PvP areas are similar to battlegrounds in WoW as well--you sit in a queue, the queue pops, and your side has to meet the objective to win. We only did one round, and all we had to do was cap both bases several times. To keep folks from base camping after the cap happens, a wave of fire washes out from the base and goes a reeeeeally long way, killing everything in its path. Took me a couple of times to realize what was happening, but it makes sense in retrospect.

Couple of the bugs/irritations we've noticed so far: sometimes, it takes forever to logout or quit to the desktop, even longer than the "It will take 20 seconds to prepare your logout" message implies. There are a couple of glitchy issues with the environment, mainly Brady getting launched to his death when he was supposed to land safely at the next objective, or losing control of my squig and being unable to summon a new one, cause the old one wouldn't despawn. You also can't skip the opening animation for each race, which gets old. At least it's short.

Servers go live on Thursday officially, but we're doing the headstart so we can start our real toons tomorrow.

Motivation

I don't have any. There's a bunch of stuff I want to do, from the mundane (should wash the car, organize a bunch of the crap in the house, give the dog a bath) to the more significant (running again, art project for the bedroom—which I can't say much about, since it's supposed to be a secret.)

Even basic day-to-day stuff thwarts me. Getting out of bed, getting dressed, making dinner. They all seem like monumental tasks. I'm guessing it's a bad thing to just want to stay in bed all day and not get out.

(BTW, just went to get some water from the breakroom kitchen, and there's a palette of bottled water in there for anyone that wants it. On the side it reads, "Talking Rain: Pure water. Unsweetened." Unsweetened. Um, thanks?)