Boo

Last Saturday, Seppo and I went to Becky and Alan’s house for a Halloween party. We were vastly entertained by the hosts, the guests, the food, and the pumpkins. Of the pumpkins, the most noteable was the “BOO” pumpkin that B & A carved, mostly because it was so fun to tease them about what the “300” referred to. 🙂

The costumes:

• Seppo and me: The men with “hands of blue” from Firefly.
• Becky and Alan: Bellatrix and Harry Potter.
• Uyen and Charles: Flighter Pilot Uyen and Cowboy Charles.
• Steve and Stiliana: Pirate Steve and Gypsy Stiliana.
• Steve’s friend Mike: Lab Dude Steve.
• Alexia and Joe E.: Abused Wife and Wife Beater.

I actually took photos, so I will post them at some point. For now, you can see some that the hosts posted here.

Tonight is NaNoWriMo Eve! Ack! In the coming month, you should expect not to see too many posts here but lots of posts at our Incite a Novel blog. If you want to join the blog as a member, just let me know via email or comment.

Hit and Run Update

• My pants feel the tiniest bit looser now. You can’t see it (and frankly, neither can I), but the pants definitely feel different. Portion control seems to be working. I eat everything I want to eat, just in smaller tracked quantities and stop before I feel full at the time, which means that 10 minutes later, I’ll feel full anyway.
• I’m very nervous about NaNoWriMo. I don’t feel like I have enough of a sense of the story I want to tell.
• Writing Technical Requirements Documents is rather dull, but rewarding.
• Holly is visiting next week! Woo!! She’s apartment hunting. I hope we find something awesome for her.
• ETA: I am going to try to give blood again. All the times I have tried in the past, something or another had gone wrong and I was unable to give blood. Today, I shall prevail!

Seppo’s game is out!

On the shelves today! Get it now! IGN and Gamespot don’t have proper reviews yet, but here is a preview article.

Reader average is 8.8! Excellent! I can’t wait to play it. The food system is all new and all thanks to Seppo. The social system has a lot of cool interactions and the animations are so funny and quirky. Love it!

I’m so proud of him. He’s worked like a dog on this project and I think it’ll really show. He’s been able to have a lot of input, and while no game can be truly perfect and ship on time without robot technology greatly advancing, he and the rest of the team have been able to tweak a lot of areas and add interesting dimension to the game. The control system has changed to a more directly controlling style, which, for me personally, will be a really huge positive difference.

Yay!

Fare thee well, Mrs. Parks.

I only just read this: CNN.com – Civil rights icon Rosa Parks dies at 92 – Oct 25, 2005.

🙁 It’s a very sad day indeed. May she be remembered in perpetuity for her courage in the role she played during the civil rights movement.

Movies

The next two movies I’m looking forward to are Derailed, starring Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston (what a strange combo indeed), and Walk the Line, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon (ok, another weird combo). I like both Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, I love the era, and I love movies with music/musicians as the central component (Phoenix plays Johnny Cash), so I figure it’s gonna be hard to mess this up for me.

Strangely, the pairing reminds me of River Phoenix and Martha Plimpton. Man, I really want to watch Running on Empty again.

Productivity

Today has been full of productivity.

• Contact lens trial. I picked up my trial pair and am pretty happy with them. I have a follow-up in two weeks to see what the deposit rate on the lenses is like and how I feel about them.
• Dietary supplements. I stopped by the local natural food store and picked up some crazy multivitamins and calcium & magnesium supplements.
• Cards. I stopped by the local card shop and bought birthday cards for my niece and Seppo’s mom. I also got a card for my friend who is expecting her second baby in February.
• Invitation inquiry. While I was at the card shop, I asked about wedding invitations and looked at some books to see sample prices. This confirmed that Seppo and I should really do our own invites. I asked a friend of mine who did his own, and he said he’ll lend us his paper cutter. Nice and dangerous. 😀
• FitDay. Inspired by a friend’s fitness blog, I decided a couple of days ago to track my nutritional intake and exercise at FitDay. After mulling it over for some time, I decided to take the plunge and buy the desktop version. Having paid for something, I am more likely to try to squeeze it for every penny. 🙂
• Seppo’s Christmas present has arrived! Bwahahaha.

podcasting

In the past, I have agreed that I don’t get the appeal of podcasts. However, last night, I changed my mind.

I didn’t realize that there were podcasts by professionals. I assumed it was all amateurs, so I’d be listening to them doing an audio blog entry. However, last night, while checking out the new tv show downloads available via iTunes, I found that NPR has podcasts covering puzzles and technology. Neat! There are also French lesson podcasts, discussions of tv shows I like, and some podcasts by online media services I enjoy. Neat again! I am also listening to, strangely enough, Adam Curry. He has a show about… podcasting. Heh.

The real thing that makes this useful for me is the ability to subscribe. If I had to seek out these podcasts on my own every day or week, I’d hate it. But once I find something I like, I can subscribe to it and it’ll land on my desktop and on my iPod. It’s like websurfing I can do in a truly parallel manner to my work, instead of having to interrupt work to peek at the news.

Incidentally, I also purchased the first episode of Desperate Housewives, Season 1, because I totally missed that boat and want to evaluate it to see if it would be worth purchasing the season set.

incite a novel

I’ve created a new blog for Seppo and me to write about our NaNoWriMo project. 🙂 Here it is.

tragedy upon tragedy

I can’t really wrap my head around the fact that a disaster of such magnitude is happening. The reports of rescue attempts, especially of the buried schoolchildren, are too terrible to contemplate. I can’t wrap my head around the numbers involved. It’ll be time to donate to the Red Cross soon, when my paycheck comes in.

a poet’s rejection

I read this beautifully written, politely worded rejection by a poet named Sharon Olds of an invitation issued by Laura Bush for the National Book Festival. I don’t know this poet, but I was moved by her simple words and her pained refusal to “break bread” with someone who represents an administration that she believes is doing great harm. It’s not filled with vitriol, but instead, a certain sadness that to me rang true.