I'm just still kind of discombobulated about the moving whole thing. Got my 'notice to vacate' pinned to my front door when I came home tonight. That makes it seem so sordid, as though I've done something wrong. After all, I worked at the Housing Justice Project! I recognize those notices to vacate! :)

This whole area is so overpriced. Liz mentioned that some of the other devs happen to all live at a complex not too far from the office. I asked one of them about it and he offered to let me come take a look at his place, but when I checked the apartment's website I realized that it's not much cheaper to live there than where I am now...and I need a two bedroom unit that takes cats.

More web researching tonight to compile lists of candidates.

Broos...you are always welcome to help me move, but more than your physical labor I shall need your brains when I get wherever I end up so that we don't have to steal wireless from the neighbors named Linksys anymore :)

I'd been thinking about moving. This apartment, while spacious and lovely, is expensive. Over the past six months or so, I've half-heartedly paged through rental websites and those booklets you can pick up at the grocery store. But it's half-hearted because moving is so draining of energy and resources. You need a chunk o'change as a deposit and first month's rent. I don't have that kind of money at hand, so it's much easier to drift along, unhappy and anxious.

Yesterday, our apartment manager called me to ask when she could arrange for me to view one of the newly remodeled units in our complex. They've been remodeling for several months as old tenants move out.

"They have tiled entries, new appliances and carpeting!" she enthused. After a few moments, I said to her, "You're saying I don't have any choice, that I can't renew my lease even if I want to." She replied, "Yes. Unfortunately, I have to get in and remodel your unit. There's ten other families in the same situation."

I'll be looking at one of these lovely remodeled units this morning before work. Then I'll need to think about whether I want to stay in this complex (which has the benefit of not needing another deposit) or if this is really the god of renting forcing me to move.

In conjunction with the previous post...

Owlchick took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Longs for tenderness and for a sensitivity of feel..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

Sitting outside yesterday, I somehow managed to get sunscreen on only one part of my jawline, which with my tan now gives me a sort of mottled, pinto pony look. Probably no one will actually notice, but I do and I worry about how it looks to everyone else.

Because you know, that's a major fault of mine...I care too much what other people think.

And it's a hard fault to overcome, because the root of it is basic politeness. The best way to make other folks feel comfortable is to figure out what they want and somehow provide it. The only way to know what they want is to care about what they're thinking and how they're feeling. It gives me great empathy, but hamstrings me on making changes because there I go wondering, if I do such and such, what will everyone think?

Folks who meet me generally comment at some point on how charming I am. And I am! :) I'm very charming because I want everyone to like me. But sometimes, with some folks, that part of my personality disappears and I suspect I take it out on these poor people that I can't be mean to everyone, so I'm only mean to them.

Take poor Steve, who isn't a bad guy except that he reminds me of Rob. Rob's too far away for me to take things out on anymore ;) When Steve says something that's exactly what Rob would say, it gets my goat and I snap at him -- which isn't particularly good since we're now sharing an office and thus spend the greater part of the day together. I was really sorry about smacking him (Steve) in the eye with my stuffed owl, but dangit...he so deserved something. Or did he?

So now all of you know my dark side. I'm apparently still bitter enough about things to take it out on someone who, while not completely innocent, is not the true target of my irritation.

Except that Matt says I'm not even really mad at Rob. He proposed that I'm really mad at my father, who disappeared from my life when I was still a little cherub. I can't take my anger and disappointment out on him since he's dead, so I've neatly transferred all my unmet expectations and resulting irritation on the men in my life.

Hopefully, this public confession of my biggest character fault will somehow allow me to overcome worrying all the time about what people think, because now all of you know something about me that I've just realized but that all y'all probably have known all along -- and have been too polite to tell me.

I'm really a bitch.

Bang! Howdy.

Ayup.

Driving home tonight, I stopped by a store and bought a swim suit. I haven't bought a new swimsuit in over seven years. Part of it is that I feel larger than I want to be, part of it is that I'm cheap. But after my trip, I realized that one of my swimsuits is reaching the end of its lifespan, so it needed replacement.

I tried on several different styles, finally buying a two-piece in shades of blue. Now I need to maintain my weight to prevent a muffin top. :)

Shopping with Sushi will remain one of the highlights of my holiday. I'm thinking of it now because my room smells absolutely divine.

She led me into the Lush shop and I bought things. Lovely, jasmine-scented things and it smells like prom time in Hawaii. I've always love jasmine, pikake by any other name. Now I'm sitting here inhaling as deeply as possible to hold in the fragance and the memories :)

Matt recommended that I read Freakonomics. He rather insisted since every day after he lent it to me (often more than once a day), he would ask, "Have you read that book yet?" Thanks to the miracle of a week off, I finally have. It's pretty interesting, though I think the authors skip around so much it felt disjointed. I know they're trying to show the relationships or lack of one between different events, but at some points I would be certain I'd just read the same sentence two pages ago.

Next on my reading list is The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. SteveD recommended it and even lent me the copy he keeps on his desk. Steve writes really well; apparently he won an award in college for a paper he wrote about this book. I've liked everything else he's suggested I read (we were trading poetry websites a while back), so off I go to my next reading assignment.

Back in San Diego again. The cats are very happy to see me, for I suspect my return was heralded by Chris vigorously cleaning their litter boxes and that always makes them happy :)

Thursday was our last evening as the Three Chickas of the Apocalypse, so Barb, Sushi and I went to see Don Ho. I've never seen him perform before, but he was very entertaining, considering the surgery he underwent not too long ago. In fact, I'm sure he was wearing the very same hat in the news article at his show!

Kurt caught up with us after the show. I don't think I mentioned it before, since it happened at the same time that I was in hospital, but he was promoted to Major with HPD. Which is kind of cool...except when he has to dash off in the middle of dinner to don his mask, cape and tights to fight crime -- as happened this time. He did stop before reaching the nearest phone booth to take a photo or two with me, but alas...some of them are on his camera so we will need to see if my eyes are open in any of those.

Friday, my sister and I (sans Sushi, who had to return to Austin that morning) took my mom out to lunch. We thought of Broos and created this photo tribute for him because we wished he had come to Hawaii, too.

I'm back at home, after accidentally wandering into the office on the way home and sticking around to get caught up on stuff. Working tomorrow, too. No sympathy from Matt and SteveD, who've been putting in late nights while I've been lounging on the beach.

It's good to be back :)

E3 went rather quickly. Other than a severe bout of stage fright the first day, I remembered everything I needed to say about our game and was very charming to the folks I got to meet. Got to do a drive-by hugging of Steph and Mike P., but apparently missed Melissa's visit to our booth.

And now we are on holiday with Sushi and my sister! Barb took the week off, and we've been behaving like tourists. Yesterday, Sushi and I shopped for hours, then sat on the beach fronting her hotel, followed by consuming mai-tais at the bar.

Today, we did the semi-circle island tour, driving around Kailua, over the H-3 to Pearl Harbor and out to the Dole Plantation to totally pwn the maze. :)

We finished the day with a picnic dinner at Haleiwa Beach. Now, the three of us met due to our time as GMs for Simu, so we're an imaginative crew, but we each have different approaches to things. We illustrate our different approach to things with this dinner theater vignette:

Sushi: Is that...do you have turtles? Oh, my god! That's a turtle! [stands up and points]
Barb: They're a protected species; let's get closer and take pictures! [grabs camera and heads down the beach]
Me: We shouldn't disturb them because...ooh, look! There they are! [sits up straighter, staring into the waves]

Later, after parallel pursuing the turtles along the shore, Barb returns from her photo-taking, ecstatic and babbling.

Barb: I'm calling Erik!
Sushi: It's like...midnight where he is.
Barb: That's okay; if he doesn't want to talk to us, he won't answer the phone!

And so our heroines watch the sun set while Barb and Sushi relay the day's adventures to Erik, who's apparently recovering nicely (so to speak) from his surgery, while the turtles frolic in the surf and Tracy picks up stray bits of rubbish along the shore.

This is a very nice holiday. Tomorrow we plan to go to Hanauma Bay and snorkel. Alooooooha!

Leaving for E3 in the morning, followed by vacation. I'll probably not post unless I can wrestle my sister's computer from her :)

See you all in a couple of weeks!

Mothers Day Video Game Special. Game Playing Moms.

You might find a mom you recognize amongst the interviewees :)

If you prefer something a bit more manly today, you can look here instead.

Enjoy!

Coffee time isn't quite the same any longer. Most of the folks that used to work at the Sbux by the office have moved on to other things, although there's a couple of girls that still remember us by name when we show up.

Matt, SteveD and I sometimes squeeze into my car (it's funny to see Matt curled over in the back while SteveD's knees are shoved into his chin in the front seat) though lately we've been sprawling out in SteveD's much roomier 4-door SUV.

Today we wandered over, placed our orders and then hung around the counter waiting. Matt invited us to come over for poker night at his house.

"It's only $20 per game and we usually do two games," he said.

"That's two pairs of shoes," I scoffed (since, before we got to Sbux, Matt told me I couldn't afford to buy closed-toe shoes to wear at E3). "Besides, I don't know how to play."

"Even better!" Matt said. "Besides, if you win, that's like..." He paused to do math.

"That's like a lot of shoes!" called the barista. Glancing over the espresso machine, I find I don't remember seeing this guy before. I called back to him, "Yeah, but if I go, I'd lose."

"You have such a negative attitude," he chided, which set both Matt and SteveD laughing so hard I thought they'd fall to the floor.

Sometimes, you just can't think of a snappy come-back when you need it. Today was no exception. I growled at the grinning barista, "Shut up and make my coffee."

And as we walked toward his car, SteveD had an enormous grin on his face and couldn't stop snickering, which got Matt chuckling, too. I think they found too much joy in the episode.

Men.

Trying to articulate why I'm not a big movie watcher, I find that I haven't got any rational explanation.

There's lots of movies I think I want to see. I enjoyed the movies I got through Netflix. But the last movie sat on my table for a month and I sent it back unwatched, cancelling the account the next day.

I'm sure part of it is a horror of the cost of watching films at the theater. Ten bucks for a ticket, ten bucks for popcorn and a drink...and heaven help you if you actually invited someone on a date because there goes all your discretionary income for the month!

Looking at what's on ye olde TiVo, I realize that I've become a documentary watcher. There's very little poetry waiting for me; the majority of space is taken up by prose. I did record Cinema Paradiso, but haven't watched it yet. I save up a couple of weeks' of House before watching them. Otherwise, I'm watching Antiques Roadshow, cooking, travel, history or science shows.

You'd think I'd be better at math since I love science shows. Alas, watching them is not the same as being good at the subjects therein. And one of the science shows was really not so very science but was very entertaining: How William Shatner Changed the Universe. :)

But there you have it: I do not watch many movies and I don't know why. Any suggestions?

I'm just still kind of discombobulated about the moving whole thing. Got my 'notice to vacate' pinned to my front door when I came home tonight. That makes it seem so sordid, as though I've done something wrong. After all, I worked at the Housing Justice Project! I recognize those notices to vacate! :)

This whole area is so overpriced. Liz mentioned that some of the other devs happen to all live at a complex not too far from the office. I asked one of them about it and he offered to let me come take a look at his place, but when I checked the apartment's website I realized that it's not much cheaper to live there than where I am now...and I need a two bedroom unit that takes cats.

More web researching tonight to compile lists of candidates.

Broos...you are always welcome to help me move, but more than your physical labor I shall need your brains when I get wherever I end up so that we don't have to steal wireless from the neighbors named Linksys anymore :)

I'd been thinking about moving. This apartment, while spacious and lovely, is expensive. Over the past six months or so, I've half-heartedly paged through rental websites and those booklets you can pick up at the grocery store. But it's half-hearted because moving is so draining of energy and resources. You need a chunk o'change as a deposit and first month's rent. I don't have that kind of money at hand, so it's much easier to drift along, unhappy and anxious.

Yesterday, our apartment manager called me to ask when she could arrange for me to view one of the newly remodeled units in our complex. They've been remodeling for several months as old tenants move out.

"They have tiled entries, new appliances and carpeting!" she enthused. After a few moments, I said to her, "You're saying I don't have any choice, that I can't renew my lease even if I want to." She replied, "Yes. Unfortunately, I have to get in and remodel your unit. There's ten other families in the same situation."

I'll be looking at one of these lovely remodeled units this morning before work. Then I'll need to think about whether I want to stay in this complex (which has the benefit of not needing another deposit) or if this is really the god of renting forcing me to move.

In conjunction with the previous post...

Owlchick took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Longs for tenderness and for a sensitivity of feel..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

Sitting outside yesterday, I somehow managed to get sunscreen on only one part of my jawline, which with my tan now gives me a sort of mottled, pinto pony look. Probably no one will actually notice, but I do and I worry about how it looks to everyone else.

Because you know, that's a major fault of mine...I care too much what other people think.

And it's a hard fault to overcome, because the root of it is basic politeness. The best way to make other folks feel comfortable is to figure out what they want and somehow provide it. The only way to know what they want is to care about what they're thinking and how they're feeling. It gives me great empathy, but hamstrings me on making changes because there I go wondering, if I do such and such, what will everyone think?

Folks who meet me generally comment at some point on how charming I am. And I am! :) I'm very charming because I want everyone to like me. But sometimes, with some folks, that part of my personality disappears and I suspect I take it out on these poor people that I can't be mean to everyone, so I'm only mean to them.

Take poor Steve, who isn't a bad guy except that he reminds me of Rob. Rob's too far away for me to take things out on anymore ;) When Steve says something that's exactly what Rob would say, it gets my goat and I snap at him -- which isn't particularly good since we're now sharing an office and thus spend the greater part of the day together. I was really sorry about smacking him (Steve) in the eye with my stuffed owl, but dangit...he so deserved something. Or did he?

So now all of you know my dark side. I'm apparently still bitter enough about things to take it out on someone who, while not completely innocent, is not the true target of my irritation.

Except that Matt says I'm not even really mad at Rob. He proposed that I'm really mad at my father, who disappeared from my life when I was still a little cherub. I can't take my anger and disappointment out on him since he's dead, so I've neatly transferred all my unmet expectations and resulting irritation on the men in my life.

Hopefully, this public confession of my biggest character fault will somehow allow me to overcome worrying all the time about what people think, because now all of you know something about me that I've just realized but that all y'all probably have known all along -- and have been too polite to tell me.

I'm really a bitch.

Bang! Howdy.

Ayup.

Driving home tonight, I stopped by a store and bought a swim suit. I haven't bought a new swimsuit in over seven years. Part of it is that I feel larger than I want to be, part of it is that I'm cheap. But after my trip, I realized that one of my swimsuits is reaching the end of its lifespan, so it needed replacement.

I tried on several different styles, finally buying a two-piece in shades of blue. Now I need to maintain my weight to prevent a muffin top. :)

Shopping with Sushi will remain one of the highlights of my holiday. I'm thinking of it now because my room smells absolutely divine.

She led me into the Lush shop and I bought things. Lovely, jasmine-scented things and it smells like prom time in Hawaii. I've always love jasmine, pikake by any other name. Now I'm sitting here inhaling as deeply as possible to hold in the fragance and the memories :)

Matt recommended that I read Freakonomics. He rather insisted since every day after he lent it to me (often more than once a day), he would ask, "Have you read that book yet?" Thanks to the miracle of a week off, I finally have. It's pretty interesting, though I think the authors skip around so much it felt disjointed. I know they're trying to show the relationships or lack of one between different events, but at some points I would be certain I'd just read the same sentence two pages ago.

Next on my reading list is The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. SteveD recommended it and even lent me the copy he keeps on his desk. Steve writes really well; apparently he won an award in college for a paper he wrote about this book. I've liked everything else he's suggested I read (we were trading poetry websites a while back), so off I go to my next reading assignment.

Back in San Diego again. The cats are very happy to see me, for I suspect my return was heralded by Chris vigorously cleaning their litter boxes and that always makes them happy :)

Thursday was our last evening as the Three Chickas of the Apocalypse, so Barb, Sushi and I went to see Don Ho. I've never seen him perform before, but he was very entertaining, considering the surgery he underwent not too long ago. In fact, I'm sure he was wearing the very same hat in the news article at his show!

Kurt caught up with us after the show. I don't think I mentioned it before, since it happened at the same time that I was in hospital, but he was promoted to Major with HPD. Which is kind of cool...except when he has to dash off in the middle of dinner to don his mask, cape and tights to fight crime -- as happened this time. He did stop before reaching the nearest phone booth to take a photo or two with me, but alas...some of them are on his camera so we will need to see if my eyes are open in any of those.

Friday, my sister and I (sans Sushi, who had to return to Austin that morning) took my mom out to lunch. We thought of Broos and created this photo tribute for him because we wished he had come to Hawaii, too.

I'm back at home, after accidentally wandering into the office on the way home and sticking around to get caught up on stuff. Working tomorrow, too. No sympathy from Matt and SteveD, who've been putting in late nights while I've been lounging on the beach.

It's good to be back :)

E3 went rather quickly. Other than a severe bout of stage fright the first day, I remembered everything I needed to say about our game and was very charming to the folks I got to meet. Got to do a drive-by hugging of Steph and Mike P., but apparently missed Melissa's visit to our booth.

And now we are on holiday with Sushi and my sister! Barb took the week off, and we've been behaving like tourists. Yesterday, Sushi and I shopped for hours, then sat on the beach fronting her hotel, followed by consuming mai-tais at the bar.

Today, we did the semi-circle island tour, driving around Kailua, over the H-3 to Pearl Harbor and out to the Dole Plantation to totally pwn the maze. :)

We finished the day with a picnic dinner at Haleiwa Beach. Now, the three of us met due to our time as GMs for Simu, so we're an imaginative crew, but we each have different approaches to things. We illustrate our different approach to things with this dinner theater vignette:

Sushi: Is that...do you have turtles? Oh, my god! That's a turtle! [stands up and points]
Barb: They're a protected species; let's get closer and take pictures! [grabs camera and heads down the beach]
Me: We shouldn't disturb them because...ooh, look! There they are! [sits up straighter, staring into the waves]

Later, after parallel pursuing the turtles along the shore, Barb returns from her photo-taking, ecstatic and babbling.

Barb: I'm calling Erik!
Sushi: It's like...midnight where he is.
Barb: That's okay; if he doesn't want to talk to us, he won't answer the phone!

And so our heroines watch the sun set while Barb and Sushi relay the day's adventures to Erik, who's apparently recovering nicely (so to speak) from his surgery, while the turtles frolic in the surf and Tracy picks up stray bits of rubbish along the shore.

This is a very nice holiday. Tomorrow we plan to go to Hanauma Bay and snorkel. Alooooooha!

Leaving for E3 in the morning, followed by vacation. I'll probably not post unless I can wrestle my sister's computer from her :)

See you all in a couple of weeks!

Mothers Day Video Game Special. Game Playing Moms.

You might find a mom you recognize amongst the interviewees :)

If you prefer something a bit more manly today, you can look here instead.

Enjoy!

Coffee time isn't quite the same any longer. Most of the folks that used to work at the Sbux by the office have moved on to other things, although there's a couple of girls that still remember us by name when we show up.

Matt, SteveD and I sometimes squeeze into my car (it's funny to see Matt curled over in the back while SteveD's knees are shoved into his chin in the front seat) though lately we've been sprawling out in SteveD's much roomier 4-door SUV.

Today we wandered over, placed our orders and then hung around the counter waiting. Matt invited us to come over for poker night at his house.

"It's only $20 per game and we usually do two games," he said.

"That's two pairs of shoes," I scoffed (since, before we got to Sbux, Matt told me I couldn't afford to buy closed-toe shoes to wear at E3). "Besides, I don't know how to play."

"Even better!" Matt said. "Besides, if you win, that's like..." He paused to do math.

"That's like a lot of shoes!" called the barista. Glancing over the espresso machine, I find I don't remember seeing this guy before. I called back to him, "Yeah, but if I go, I'd lose."

"You have such a negative attitude," he chided, which set both Matt and SteveD laughing so hard I thought they'd fall to the floor.

Sometimes, you just can't think of a snappy come-back when you need it. Today was no exception. I growled at the grinning barista, "Shut up and make my coffee."

And as we walked toward his car, SteveD had an enormous grin on his face and couldn't stop snickering, which got Matt chuckling, too. I think they found too much joy in the episode.

Men.

Trying to articulate why I'm not a big movie watcher, I find that I haven't got any rational explanation.

There's lots of movies I think I want to see. I enjoyed the movies I got through Netflix. But the last movie sat on my table for a month and I sent it back unwatched, cancelling the account the next day.

I'm sure part of it is a horror of the cost of watching films at the theater. Ten bucks for a ticket, ten bucks for popcorn and a drink...and heaven help you if you actually invited someone on a date because there goes all your discretionary income for the month!

Looking at what's on ye olde TiVo, I realize that I've become a documentary watcher. There's very little poetry waiting for me; the majority of space is taken up by prose. I did record Cinema Paradiso, but haven't watched it yet. I save up a couple of weeks' of House before watching them. Otherwise, I'm watching Antiques Roadshow, cooking, travel, history or science shows.

You'd think I'd be better at math since I love science shows. Alas, watching them is not the same as being good at the subjects therein. And one of the science shows was really not so very science but was very entertaining: How William Shatner Changed the Universe. :)

But there you have it: I do not watch many movies and I don't know why. Any suggestions?