Filled with weddings, moving (not me for once though), and projects the past month has made that concept known as free time an elusive little beast. Nothing new, I guess.
Last Thursday the family plied into a van and made the long trek over to Ohio for my cousin’s wedding, making a brief stop on the way to pick up Amanda who wanted to tag along for the festivities (and possibly egg Ohio State for kicking Penn State’s arse in football the week before). The ride there was actually pretty painless even though the DVDs I burned for entertainment got scratched beyond usability (sure mom, put them on the floor where Nicky is sitting, they’ll be safe there). It helps when you can just curl up and sleep in the back seat and not worry about driving.
Friday was social day — I was asked to go out with The Guys and golf all day while The Girls went out shopping for various items needed for the wedding (like my aunt who didn’t have a dress). As such a good chunk of Friday was spent following a bunch of people I don’t know around in a golf cart while reading American Gods (by Neil Gaiman, good book so far). Late Friday night, during a small-ish family party at my uncle’s, Nicky (sister’s kid, four years old) decided Amanda was his girlfriend and she needed to break up with her current one. He was really crushing on her, and continued to throughout the weekend.
As I expected the reception after the wedding on Saturday was the highlight of the trip; with dancing, food, and open bar. The DJ used an iPod for all the music; I was very amused by this. While we were dancing together Nicky came up to Amanda and me, and with a dead-serious glare told me I needed to go find someone else to dance with. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or worry he may attack my knee-caps so he could dance with his new girlfriend. He seems to do this with any girl I’m close to — he had a terrible crush on Arielle back in the day (at least back then he couldn’t tell me to get lost). Anywho the evening came and went too quickly and we were heading back to PA by the buttcrack of dawn the next morning.
I got back to my apartment in the evening to Isaac and all his stuff. Yeah, he moved in with me, oh how life is humorous (for those who forget I lived in his apartment for near a year late ’04 - ’05). We’re not quite sure how long he’ll be staying with me yet but it will be for at least a year though. I’m looking forward to it because it guarantees that I get access to plenty of good music, movies, and humorous web-links much quicker than if he was across town. Between the two of us the apartment is now home to over four terabytes (that’s 4,000 gigs for the non computer-savvy out there) of hard drive space. Huzzah!
Speaking of computers I replaced Robin (my G5 Power Mac). She served me well over the past few years, and was still performing at a speed I was happy with, but I needed a change of computer-lifestyle. With Isaac moving in things are a bit too cramped for two computer desks. In addition I’ve been getting tired of working at a computer for eight hours at work and then coming home just to sit at a desk all night chatting and surfing. I’d much prefer to spend the night on the couch reading and putting a computer in my lap when I need it. The solution is something I’ve been considering ever since I lived on a laptop in Japan: get a MacBook Pro.
So say hello to Lilith my new primary computer from which I type this post. She is a beautiful machine: 15" widescreen 2.16gHz Intel Core Duo. She can even boot into Windows (perish the thought of dirtying my hard drive with that!) if I ever need to run a VB Script (Windows-only programming language) or something along those lines for a client. Plus I can now play those games which don’t get ported to mac (which is becoming increasingly rare, but still happens, like Half Life 2).
As a result I’m selling my PowerMac (dual 1.8gHz G5s, 1 gig of ram, ATI 9800Pro SE) with its LCD (20" widescreen apple display). If you know anyone interested please let me know (hoping to get around $1k for it, which seems to be the going rate for my model + monitor on eBay). I’m sad to see her go, but happy to spread the mac-love to others.
I’ve taken up Aikido (martial art) at dojo that Craig is in (my manager from Circuit Shitty and fellow D&D dork). So far I’ve been enjoying the class, aside from the fact I keep screwing up my left-side rolls and therefore my shoulder is ready to mutiny. I could really use some mats at home so I could practice outside of class without the fear of being in even more pain when I screw up repeatedly.
Oh and I’ve upped my running to five miles on days I don’t have Aikido. I’m really surprised at how little that doubling of distance hurts me.
I must be in shape. WTF?
Amanda and I have started working on a little project — a web comic. If you remember last year I worked on coloring the Megatokyo strips to get comfortable with the CG process in photoshop. Based on the last one I did I think I’ve got at least a decent handle on that part, so now it’s time to move on to the non-digital aspect of the process: sketching. The comic is meant to force me to work on that aspect of my artwork (a part which I’ve never been that strong with, at least when needing to come up with my own characters and such). She’s going to be in charge of the writing and I’m the art bitch. Our humor and style seem to match up pretty nicely so I think it will be a good partnership.
We’re still in the very early stages of flushing out ideas and characters (although she is making notability more headway than I am, but hey she doesn’t have to draw!) so there isn’t really much to show just yet. I figure it’ll take me a month or so to get my sketching up to something usable and get all the characters designs figured out. I really want to force myself to make a lot of time for this in my schedule, because it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time (get back into sketching, do my own thing with it) but never had a good reason to.
This of course will make that beast known as free time even harder to catch.
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