honeymoon - day 8

This morning we bid "au revoir" to Québec City and drove back to Montréal so that we could return our rental car. By the time we reached our new hotel, it was afternoon. Our new hotel, the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth, sits right across the street from an absolutely gorgeous church called the Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde, a smaller scale (though still enormous) replica of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.



Despite the beauty, despite being in the heart of Québec's biggest metropolis, we were so exhausted from our whirlwind tour of the very white Great White North that we spent our day hanging our in our pajamas, marveling at the cathedral ourside our windows, and watching Little Miss Sunshine. Funny movie, but not the be-all and end-all of cinema as so many people made it out to be for us.

Essentially, we're kinda' beat from so much R and R. We're both looking forward to heading home on Friday and spending the weekend unwinding and slipping comfortably back into everyday, non-Wedding life. Canada has been incredible, but our sofa and 65° weather is really starting to sound pretty incredible, too.

honeymoon - day 7

Before we headed north on our honeymoon, Manda and I jumped online and tried to figure out what there was to do in Québec in the Winter. So many of the sites that we visited said "SKI!! SNOWBOARD!!" Unfortunately, neither of us know how to do either and didn't want to spend 10 days banged up and recouperating from trying to learn. We did, however, find one promising lead: The Valcartier Vacation Village.

Online, the website promised snow tubing, snow rafting, ice skating, and something called "ice karting" which was described as go-karting on a frozen track with spiked tires. I think there was something else about the parking lot being paved with gold and the urinals being able to cure cancer. After today, I can assure you that all of it is true and all of it is fantastically fun. (Well, okay. I made up those last two features, but everything else is true.)

Snow tubing was fantastic.



There were about sixty different tracks available, each one rated from Easy to Double Black Diamond.



And there were no lines. Maybe it was the sub-zero temperatures. Maybe it was the fact that it was a Wednesday. Whatever the case, there was hardly anyone there and we felt like we largely had an entire snow park to ourselves. As for the tube runs, even the Easy ones were hella fun. The most difficult were insanely steep and pretty extreme. I wouldn't quite call diagonally falling down a hill while sitting on a rubber donut "difficult," but the increase in each hill's "difficulty" rating definitely meant an increase in its thrill level.



In the middle of the entire park, as though it had been the first tube run and the rest of the park build around it, was Everest - a massive, insanely steep tube run that stretched up into the sky via a four-story set of steps. I eyed that damn ride all day, anxious to ride the most extreme ride in the park. In my old age, I can't seem to go on rollercoasters anymore without getting motion sick. Snow tubing, however, I can do and I can do it for hours without the faintest hint of motion sickness. And so I kept eyeing Everest as a chance to take on a big thrill ride and not get knocked on my ass by it.

The only problem is that you can't ride Everest on your own. There's a minimum of at least two people required per run. As best as Manda and I can figure, it's so that you and your tube weigh enough so that you don't shoot off of the track and die. It took a while and a lot of "It'll be fine! Totally safe!" requests from me, but Manda finally agreed to join me on a Grand Finale run down Everest before getting some dinner and headng home.

The short version is that I'm never going to be an Olympic Luge participant. I wiped out - hard - smashing into the ice retaining wall at about 30+ miles per hours.



My knee, my foot, my arms - all of them scraped and banged against the icy track in an attempt to slow myself down. What went wrong? My ski goggles had fogged up so I put them up on top of my forehead, fearing that I wouldn't be able to see where I was going. Unfortunately, as soon as we got going down Everest, tiny bits of snow and ice flew up into my face, latched onto my eye lashes, and instantly froze my eyes shut in the -25° temperatures. I couldn't see a thing. When I couldn't see, I leaned the wrong way into a turn and wiped out with YouTube-worthy grandeur.

I'm kinda' banged up, but nothing broke or sprained or tore so that's good. I think I still owe Amanda a few dozen more "You were right"s, but disasterous wipe out not withstanding, we had a great day. The tubing was excellent. The ice-karting was fun - if a bit hard to steer (go figure).



All in all, I'd go again. Except for maybe Everest.

Maybe.

honeymoon - day 6

-40° Fahrenheit. That was the temperature today with the windchill factored into the mix. As for the Celcius conversion, it coincidentally was also -40°. Turns out we found the one spot where Fahrenheit and Celcius line up. Way to go, Canadian Winter.

Rough day for a trip to the beach. However, it was the perfect day to check out the Hôtel de Glace - Québec's 100% ice and snow hotel. While the original plan was for us to check out the Valcartier Vacation Village, the low temperature made us rethink the idea of racing down innertube tracks in sub-zero winds. And good thing we did.

It was fucking freezing. Cold is cold and the Canadian Winter is really cold. But -40°? That's just insane. It'll be a while before I'm complaining about 50° nights in San Mateo again. Anyway, we got a slow start to the day, but eventually hit the road and stopped by Dunkin Donuts on the way.

When we finally made it out into the rural country side, the wind and the temperature were doing a number on us already. The car's heater was roaring as we pulled up into the Ice Hotel's parking lot. The hotel sits in a wide field, molded by power-blasted snow and chainsaw-carved blocks of crystal clear ice. And while it's freezing as fuck, it's absolutely beautiful.



Gothic-inspired arches and quasi-Roman statues, all carved from ice, are everywhere inside. The hotel has some 30 plus rooms, 10 plus suites, a wedding chapel, a bar, and a dance club - all made from snow and ice.



Interestingly, the bar has a refrigerator which sounds odd until you learn that it's set to 5° above freezing so that juice and soda doesn't freeze. Our tour guide informed us that the staff actually tosses their gloves into the fridge from time to time in order to warm them up.



The regular guest rooms are all identical and just look like an ice version of a monk's cloister with a block of ice, a thin matress, and some reindeer pelts for a bed.



The suites, however, are all carved into their own themes, each one different from the rest. There was the Igloo Room, the Medieval Room, the Native American Room, the Yeti's Cave Room, and the Chessboard Room.



Our camera was having trouble taking pictures. It runs on AA batteries and at sub-sub-zero temperatures, the batteries only lasted about a picture or two out in the open air before the camera would stop working. We had little hand-warmer packs in our pockets and we had to keep putting the camera in my pocket, warm the thing up again, and then snap some pictures until the batteries froze again.



We had a great time until we just couldn't take the cold anymore. Once we'd reached our breaking point, we retreated to the warmth of our hotel room, bought ourselves a pay-per-view movie, and holed up for the night as we tried to shake off the intensely to-the-bone cold that we had endured at the Hôtel de Glace.

honeymoon - day 5

Today we watched the Super Bowl. I know; a strange thing to do in French Canadia. However, the entire experience was a lot of fun and completely different from any Super Bowl party I'd ever been to in the States. For one, the game was being shown on a massive movie screen at a performing arts theater downtown.



The whole thing was co-sponsored by a local French radio station and Budweiser. The tickets said that the doors openned at 1:30. We arrived at 2:00 hoping that we hadn't missed kick-off - clearly completely forgetting which time zone we were now in - only to find that they were showing a Montréal/Pittsburgh hockey game complete with all-French commentary.


(Sorry about the quality of the indoor photos. It was hard to get decent pictures.)

At first we were confused. Then we were worried. We had this bad feeling that we'd just bought tickets to our first all-French Super Bowl. That's the thing about Québec City ... While Montréal is pretty bilingual, Québec City is considerably less so and everyone around us in the theater was yammering away in French.

After a few hours of all-French hockey (hours), the MCs of the day took to the stage, said a lot of things I didn't understand, gave away some raffle prizes and tossed t-shirts into the packed crowd, and then introduced a live cover band.



Yes, our Super Bowl party had a live cover band interlude after the three-hour hocky overture. The band was pretty good and proceeded to play a bunch of American punk and hard rock tunes: Rage Against the Machine, Greenday, and their "specialty," a butt-load of System of a Down. The funny thing was that, since they spoke French but performed in English, their songs had a very thick French accent. Imagine Green Day without any consonants and you get the idea.

"Oo oo 'ave duh tiie/oo 'eesen doo meh when/ah-boot nah-teeng an eh-vree-ting ahl ah wance" Etc. Weird. It went on for an hour, after which a local university's cheerleading team took to the stage.



They lept around performing their pyramid formations and routines while Amanda and I stared at each other in disbelief, desperately trying to figure out the the heck was going on.

Three and a half very weird hours after we first arrived, the actual game finally got off to a helluva start. We were both fully expecting the theater to be full of American tourists, but it wasn't. We were also fully expecting the game to be in French after the hockey game they first showed. But it wasn't either. We sat there for the next 4.5 hours with a theater full of die-hard, French-speaking Football fans watching the Detroit, MI feed of the Super Bowl in English. It was so much fun to see the game in that environment, even if the Bears didn't win.



Another day, another crazy Canadian honeymoon adventure.

honeymoon - day 4

Today was deceptively busy. At the end of the day, I sat down to review the day's digital pictures with a feeling that we'd taken things pretty quietly that day.

Man, was I wrong.

We started out walking down long the sled run outside of our hotel. While there, it turned out that we were just in time for the annual Boat Pushing Race.



Essentially, some crazy Québecois row out into the frozen waters of the St. Lawrence River in a canoe, row as far as they can until they reach the large sheets of ice that cover the bulk of the river, then jump out and push their canoes across the ice the rest of the way. I'd read about this in my 6th grade French book. What I hadn't grasped at the time was the scope of the "sport." It's a massive endeavor. Those guys are nuts.



After watching the weirdos in the river for a while, we took a stroll down the oldest commercial street in North America, browsed some of the shops, and spent way too much money on postage and postcards to send back to our families State-side. We strolled around Vieux-Québec for a few more hours taking lots of pictures along the way. There was the guy with the all-wooden marrionette puppet show busking for money.



There was the annual soapbox derby that we passed by along the way.



There was the skating rink in the middle of town where some passing tourist offered to take our picture. There was the kindly old wood-wooker who taught me how to play the spoons.



Eventually we headed back to the hotel and I passed out. Manda wandered around the hotel for a bit while I was zonked out on the bed. When I woke up, we headed out for some Canadian fast food - more poutine and some damn good hot dogs. One thing I've learned while we've been here is that the Canadians really know hot dogs. That and that it's really freakin' cold in Québec during the winter.

honeymoon - day 3

Marchez dans une «wonderland» de l'hiver. Or ... you know ... however you say "walking in a winter wonderland" in French. This morning we checked out of the über-chic Hôtel Gault in Vieux-Montréal and rented a car for our (allegedly) 2.5 hour drive to Vieux-Québec in Québec City (By the way, if you're keeping score at home, there are three different types of accented letters in that sentence. Yay, HTML). Rural Québec looks amazingly like rural Pennsylvania, and if you were to add French roadsigns and frozen rivers covered with ice fishing shacks to Lancaster, they'd be indistinguishable.



For the most part, we enjoyed the drive except that I kept falling asleep and that it actually took 4.5 hours instead of 2.5. Plus, there was the half hour detour down a long country road with no place to make a U-Turn and without any driveways in which to turn around.

Despite the downsides of the drive, Québec City quickly made us forget all about them. In short, it's stunning. Our hotel, the fortress-like Château Frontenac, is a breath-taking castle high on the hill that overlooks the city.



The streets of Vieux-Québec are quaint, snow-covered lanes that look like colonial America or 18th Century Europe. They could have come directly out of a made-for-the Hallmark Channel Dickens movie, if the Dickens movie involves destitute orphans shopping in expensive boutiques.



Our hotel room has a riverside view which lets us watch the massive sheets of ice float down the St. Lawrence River. There are snow-covered cannons that face the river juxtaposed beside a circus tent-topped gazeebo and a tobogen slide.



As chance would have it, Amanda and I are honeymooning in Québec City during Carnaval, a massive two-week love letter to winter that Québec throws each year. There is ice sculpting and sled races and river races and more ice sculpting. There's an all-ice hotel, plenty of all-ice outdoor bars, and even an all-ice performing arts stage complete with its all-ice electrical room (don't ask me how that works). Amanda and I walked around taking in the fairy tale-like sites for most of the evening.



On our way back from an over-priced and lousy dinner (although, I did have the Bison Ravioli), we got pretty severely snowed upon. Its the first time in years that I've been caught outside in the snow, and I loved it. After catching snowflakes on our tongues and walking the gorgeous streets of Vieux-Québec at night, we returned home to our castle over the river for a well-deserved long winter's nap.

honeymoon - day 2

After sleeping through breakfast yesterday, Rooni and I were detirmined to head down to the Hotel Gault lobby and take in the scenery this morning with a side of toast. Here's what we learned:

1. French french toast from french baguettes is kinda' odd.
2. My mom horribly over-cooks poached eggs.
3. Unfortunately, that's how I like poached eggs.

We followed up breakfast by bundling up and setting off on foot to the Metro station. We tried to buy the Carte Touristique, an all-day Metro pass, from the station agent only to find out that it's only purchasable at a specific Metro stop. Even though I'm violating my promise by writing this down, the nice old station agent let us get on the train if we promised that we wouldn't tell anyone and that we head straight for the needed station, which we did. After getting our day-passes, Manda and I set off for the massive towering piece of modern architecture known as the Stade Olympique beside Montréal's botanical gardens.



Why? Because that's where the Insectarium is, a two-story temple to all things segmented and disgusting. We saw huge beetles. We saw huge walking sticks after searching into the terrariums for a while (stupid natural camouflage).



Manda and I also both stared down our worst fears - huge moths and huge spiders, respectively.





By the end of our time there, both of us were feeling less enlightened than we were completely skeeved out. Our cure ended up being a long and pointless journey by train and by foot (lots of foot) to the let-down of all bagel shops. The guidebook said something about it being so notoriously fantastic of a bagel shop that New Yorkers are known to head there at all hours just to stock up. What we learned, however, is that these must be tongueless, blind New York infants who have never eaten any other bagels before.

On the walk back to the Metro, we stopped at Chez Claudette's for dinner and our first foray into the slimy world of poutine, or as it's known in the US, french fries slathered in gravy and covered with hunks of cheese curds.



It was no Olive+Gourmando, but the service was really nice and my feet loved the rest.

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig and by now we were old pros at the Metro. The only problem was that once we got back, we realized that Amanda had left her winter hat at Chez Claudette's. So, it was out again, out again, jiggity-jog to track down her lost chapeau, then back through the Metro in a mad dash to try and make it back before our day-passes turned into paper pumpkins at the stroke of midnight.



Tomorrow it's up early and off to the airport where we'll snag a rental car and set off for Honeymoon: Part Deux: Québec City.

honeymoon - day 1

I think we were tired. Maybe it was the one hour of sleep before a handful of cross-country and international flights. Maybe it was the eight months of wedding planning. Whatever the cause, when we finally made it to our hotel in Montréal, Amanda and I slept for 16 hours. We missed our first complimentary breakfast. We missed our first two windows of opportunité to have our room made-up by housekeeping. By the time we finally managed to wake up and get ready to face the cold, we'd managed to miss the morning as well as the 3 or 4 PM closing time for many of the touristy things here in Old Montréal.

Bundled from head to toe in snow clothes, the Mrs. and I headed out into Vieux-Montréal to take in The Basilique de Notre-Dame, the city's catholic basilica and a beautiful piece of architecture.



We wandered around inside for a while, warming up and apparently offending God by keeping our winter hats on. Basilica staff later scolded us for this. There are some odd pictures hanging on the walls inside the basilica. They all depict the savior of the indiginous Native population of Canada being saved/educated/warmly greeted by the good God-fearing missionaries of the first Canadian settlers.



After warming up, snapping some pictures, and blasphemously squeaking our snowy shoes through the reverent halls of the basilica, we set off into the city again - this time to find a bite to eat.

4:30 PM is a weird time to try and eat in Vieux-Montréal in the winter. Most lunch places had closed and most dinner places hadn't openned yet. Luckily for us, we found a great café called Olive+Gourmando. The inside was cozy, the atmosphere was hip French-Canadian, and the food was delicious.



I had a ham panini with chipotle mayo. Manda had cream of cauliflower soup and what she tells me was "the most delicious bread (she's) ever eaten." Afterwards we had a hot chocolate and an "extraordinaire brownie" that was truly extraordinaire.

We spent the rest of the evening takin in Old Montréal on foot. Old Montréal is beautiful. It feels simultaneously very Old World European and Modern Art friendly.





We went down to the Centre Du Science de Montréal, past a frozen section of the St. Lawrence River that people were ice skating on, up into Montréal proper and the Place D'Armes Metro stop where we both struggled with fuzzy french class lessons of whether the French word for "map" was masculine or feminine (we never quite figured it out).



By the time we made it back to the hotel, our feet were sore and our faces were frozen but we'd had a great day, taken some great pictures, and were ready for the warmth of our pajamas.

it's award season ...

And thankfully, I'm happy to announce that I've been nominated for two Game Audio Network Guild (GANG) awards this year. The cool thing about the GANG awards is that the nominations come from other industry audio professionals and the entire voting audience are your peers. It's a really nice honor.

The first I'm nominated in is for the category of "Best Original Vocal - Pop" where the song "Dr. Kunkle's Funnkel Cake" picked up a nomination for the game Thrillville. The second nomination is in the category of "Best Game Article, Broadcast, or Publication" for the October, 2006 Aural Fixation column in Game Developer magazine entitled "Musical Symmetry."

Any GANG members out there who might be reading this should log into the GANG forums and check out all of the nominations.

we're back!

That's right. We're back from the snowy Canadian wilderness. And by wilderness, I mean downtown Montréal.

We took a bajillion photos while we were there and wrote up some pretty detail notes on what we did each day so that we wouldn't forget. Over the next week or so, I'll be putting up our notes and posting pictures for everyone to see.

In short, we had a fantastic time. To everyone who thought we were nuts to head into Canada in the middle of winter, we couldn't possible have hoped for a more perfect honeymoon. So much snow. So much beautiful scenery. The Mrs. and I totally recommend heading to Québec in the winter.

As for today and tomorrow, we're just looking to settle back into normal, non-wedding life. Like I said, specific honeymoon info will be coming as of Monday.

hitched without a hitch

It was perfect. Absolutely perfect. After the months and months of planning, every detail of our wedding turned out exactly as we hoped it would. Pictures will be coming soon. As of right now, my wife [; )] and I are now frantically trying to tie up last minute details before we head off for our honeymoon.

This is shorter than I'd like it to be, but I just wanted to thank everyone for coming. Thank you all for sharing in our wedding and being a part of it. It meant the world to us both.

Like I said, pictures will be coming soon! But first, Canadia!

at long last

It's midnight which means that today is my wedding day. Right now, Amanda is at a hotel in Oakland with her maid-of-honor and my sister and they're having some sort of bridal sleep over thing. I hope they're having a great time. : )

In 11 hours, I'll be a married man - and married to an incredibly woman whom I love more than anything. I miss her right now. I wish we could spend tonight together - there's a "young kid at Christmas" level of excited anticipation in me right now and I'd love to just joke and laugh with Amanda about the long road we've taken to get to this day, reminisce about the tastings and fittings and vendor interviews, laugh about all of the millions of little details that only she and I would ever notice if they were right or wrong.

Of all of the to-do lists that we've written, of all the plans that have come and gone, there's only one thing left on my list and that's to write my toast for tomorrow's reception. I'm slacking a bit. Something in me is sorta' intimidated. How do you say thank you to all of your friends and family for traveling 3000 miles just to say "we support you"? How can a corny joke and a glass of cider thank Amanda's family for being so incredibly supportive of us for our entire relationship and for accepting me into their family so graciously?

You know what? I just realized that I've just written my toast. Everything I wanted to say is right here. So, I think I'll print this out and read it tomorrow. Manda, I love you. I can't wait to marry you today. I'm incredibly lucky to have you in my life and I promise to live the rest of life trying to live up to your vision of me. You're the best.

Good night, everyone. See you in about 10 hours. : )

see you soon!

It's Wednesday on the East Coast and that means that a fair amount of people - friends and family - are heading west for our wedding today. Can't wait to see everyone.

Manda and I are neck-deep in the final preparations for everything and doing our best to wrap up a bunch of really nice finishing details as best as we can so that everyone has a nice time.

We're tired, but really excited about the wedding. I can't wait to finally be Mister Jesse Harlin. ; )

See everyone soon!

t minus 8 days

Until we get our wed on. Our to-do list of about 60 items is now down to about 20 something, which is nice. What's not so nice is that we still have about 20 some things to do.

The honeymoon is all planned and we're really looking forward to heading off to Quebec. We've spent more money on this whole shindig than I thought we possibly could. But it looks like it's all coming together.

Just a few last minute things to tie up and then we can hopefully just sit back and enjoy the day.

I don't know how much I'll get to blog over the next week. I'll see what I can do, but I'm not promising anything, you greedy SOBs. It's entirely possible that the next time I write here, my wedding ring will be clacking against the keyboard keys.

Well ... you know ... like, when I lay my hand flat on the keyboard and smack on it. Whatever, you get my point.

the game that's sweeping the nation!

I realized something today. I realized that I'm a shallow and judgemental asshole. No, don't try to defend me. It's true.

How did I figure this out? Well, you see, there's this guy that I see relatively frequently around and about during the course of my days. He's kind of a dumpy guy and he always wears t-shirts that are tucked into his pants. His t-shirts always say inspirational things like "Make It Happen" or "Dream. Believe. Achieve." Anyway, I've seen this guy around and everytime I see one of his inspirational t-shirts tucked into his pants, I find myself trying to figure out if he's 1.) a hopeless nerd with no fashion sense, or 2.) retarded. But you know what? He's neither! Turns out, he's simply foreign. Option 3. And this is where I realized that I was a judgemental asshole. I found myself trying to figure what was wrong with this guy that gave him such a lousy taste in t-shirts - completely aware of the fact that whichever answer it would be, I'd inevitably just think "Oooohhh ... that explains it."

What is that? Am I really that freakin' shallow and stupid? Maybe we all are. Here's a game. See how you do. The the rules are simple: I'm going to show you three pictures. All you have to do is tell me which of these pictures shows

- a group of retarded people,
- a group of nerds, or
- a group of foreigners

Leave your answers in the comments and I'll give you the answers tomorrow.

A.


B.


C.

long awaited story-time

Okay, so not so much long awaited as long promised. Not this past weekend, but the weekend before that, my brother came up from LA to take me out snow tubing for the weekend. I'm not a drinker nor am I the "wild and crazy stripper" kind of guy, so when the idea of doing something for a bachelor party came up, I was pretty short on suggestions. Ry, however, came up with some really great ideas, the winner of which ended up being a weekend trip to go snow tubing outside of Tahoe.

The plan was this: drive up and snow tube all day Saturday. Saturday night head back. Sunday watch the Eagles playoff game while eating hoagies. A great plan and one I was really looking forward to.

When we headed up to Soda Springs, we found the place pretty crowded. Lines were long. Lift lines were longer. But there was snow and lots of it. And I hadn't seen that much snow in years, so it was nice to be back in the cold white.

While snow tubing was a lot of fun, by far the biggest source of entertainment of the day were the hundreds of kids there who had never been in snow before. So many of them just ... didn't get it. It was hysterical. Here's my list of top five favorite snow-retarded kids:

5. The Eater - this kid just would not stop eating the snow. No matter what kind of snow it was, into his mouth it went. Fresh white snow? In. Old stepped on snow? In. Old snow-mobile run over snow? In. If that kid had had a fistful of yellow snow, it wouldn't have lasted long.

4. The Fish Out of Water - This poor girl ... her parents apparently didn't really explain to her that snow is cold. Really cold. Colder than, you know, rain or sunlight. So, when she got up there, she took her glove off, grabbed a big fistful of snow and instantly just began to cry. Not only that but she didn't quite get that if she just wiped off her hand and put her glove back on that everything would be fine.

3. The Lazy Girl - This girl was sitting in the snow digging at it with some piece of blue plastic. I couldn't figure out what it was at first. It looked like salad tongs. But, instead of the typical salad tong ends, it had two concave cups on either end. She was scooping up snow wads with it, then she'd beat the thing on the ground a bit, and then scoop up some more snow. Finally, it dawned on me that what she had was a snowball maker. I kid you not. Who the eff needs to use a snowball maker to make snowballs? Other than being fairly round, it tends to make some pretty crappy snowballs, too. They disintegrate easily and don't look like they hurt when you're hit with them. What's a snowball if it doesn't leave a welt?

2. The Girl With Vision - Most of the kids there were doing a pretty piss poor job making "snowmen." I put that in quotes because most of these things resembled little more than tiny snowball stacks. Lumpy wads of half-assed fun with a stray stick protruding from one side, that sort of thing. Generally, Ry and I just figured that these kids were never going to see a real snowman. That was until Ry and I saw the Girl With Vision. It was like watching the first caveman invent the wheel. You knew you were watching something revolutionary. As we were standing in line, she walked by on a mission with a HUGE snowball in her arms. We laughed and joked about someone finally having had "vision." About half an hour later, she walked by again. This time she'd recruited a friend and the two of them were pulling a sled brimming with huge snow balls. Forget the invention of the wheel, this project of hers had just taken on the look of the construction of Giza's pyramids. As we were leaving later in the day, we passed by her handy work: a massive snow fort constructed out of huge snow bricks and seemingly impenetrable to the piss-poor snowballs of the girl with the salad tongs. This girl was our hero.

1. The Lazy Boy - This kid took the cake, though. After mocking Lazy Girl amongst ourselves for a little while, we forgot about her and started to just talk about other things. About half an hour later or so, Lazy Boy comes walking down along the line of people waiting for the snow tube lift. He looked so forlorn and needy. Why? What was his problem? He kept asking everyone "Does anyone have a snowball maker?" Ry and I lost it. I was dying to scream "USE YOUR HANDS, DIPSHIT!!" but his mom was standing in line right in front of us. That, and ... you know, I would never actually yell something like that at someone. But I wanted to. That kid was a retard.

Anyway, that was the snow and it was fun. Hoagies and the Eagles win were also fun. But nothing beat the impassioned pleas for a snowball maker.

I do'h

Less than a month ago, Manda and I had our apartment spotless. My family was flying out to SF for Christmas and so we cleaned up, scrubbed, and dusted all over the place to make sure everyone would be happy and comfortable.

Less than a month later, it looks like a wedding threw up all over our apartment. There are supplies for making invitations, boxes of wedding gifts, piles of honeymoon-related snow clothes. There are branches. There are lamps. There are thank you cards, place cards, and greeting cards. There are receipts everywhere. There are empty bottles of every kind of sparkling non-alcoholic drink sold within the Bay Area. There are tasting cakes. There are magazine clippings of cakes and place settings and branches. There are binders with all of our notes and book after book after book of wedding planning guides telling how we need binders to keep all of our notes.

It's everywhere. With less than two weeks to go before the big day, I have the feeling that it's only going to get worse the closer we get. When it's all over and we get back from our honeymoon, maybe then we can start to dig out from it all.

totally late to the party

Rhino Records has just reissued all of the albums by The Pogues, Ireland's traditional/punk combo from the 80s.

Like most world famous punk acts, I've heard the name for decades. However, in a completely predictable ignorant bout of closed-mindedness, I decided that they probably sounded like the Sex Pistols since they were labeled as "punk."

Guess what? I was full of shit (also very predictable). They're not anything like the Sex Pistols. Instead, what you get is a very traditional Irish sound with very touching lyrics that are at once both timeless and and brilliant in their brutal urban poetry.

I bought their second album, Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, off of iTunes the other day and have been listening to it a bunch since. I HIGHLY recommend it. Seriously, the lyrics are genius. Do your self a favor and check it out.

never saw this coming

Weekend update delayed again. I'll get to it. It was awesome. Ry and I went snow tubing and had a great time.

But, at the moment, I'm just ... well, I don't know what to say about this. It's funny. It's weird. It's the first time I've ever had this happen. "Get to the point, Harlin." Fair enough.

David Collins and I have been receiving fan mail at work.

Yep. Yesterday we got a letter asking us to release the songs we wrote for Thrillville on an official soundtrack. Today we got a letter from some 10 year old kid who wants to learn how to play the tunes on guitar. And I'm not talking about email. We're talking letters. Actual paper fan mail.

It's too funny. : )

update tomorrow

I'm way too busy right now to talk about how awesome my weekend was, but it was and I'll talk about it.

Basically, though, it looks like this:

Ry + Snow + Amoroso Rolls + Eagles Win = great weekend

well, it's a kind of composition ...

I've been writing fiction recently. I seem to write it in spurts. I'll go for a long time uninspired and then .~*WHAM*~. Inspiration blindsides me on the train or something. Anyway, I'm writing a novel right now. Well, technically two, but the first one I've written myself into a corner and don't quite know how to get myself out of it yet. Anyway, the one I'm writing at the moment is significantly darker than the fairytale I'd been writing earlier for Amanda.

So, for the time being, I'm pouring my creativity out into my own version of the great american novel, or novella. Depends on how long I make it. Figures that I get struck with inspiration as soon as I'm not writing music anymore. Guess that creative energy needs to go somewhere constructive. Interesting how that works. I wonder what kind of scientific work has been done on creativity?

um ... wha??

I'm a big fan of Mac OS X. It's nice. It's stable. While OS 9 apps used to crash very frequently on me, OS X apps rarely ever crash - certainly not as frequently as the Windows apps I deal with seem to crash.

And yet, despite all of it's Apple-happy stability, I got this error message yesterday.



Deleting negative items? Does that mean it's giving me items? Do computers do double negatives?

Pet Peeve #2: those white ovals

Happy New Year, blah blah blah. I was going to write something all about the new year and all that, but I saw something on my way to work that irked me. For some time now I've had a strong dislike for those dumb white oval stickers with the black letters that seem to be spreading like some kind of automotive rash.

I can't stand these things. It was one thing when they used to simply be nationality abbreviations required for inter-European auto travel. My American-centric brain had a hard enough time trying to figure out what the actual abbreviations stood for. You know ... is "LT" Lithuania? or Latvia? (It's the latter).

But things went wrong somewhere. I don't know when it happened exactly. Maybe it was European ex-patriots living here in the States brought their stickers over with them as an expression of national pride some time in the 80s or 90s. Regardless of when the European stickers first landed, it seems to have taken a while before some dumb ass decided that they, too, could make themselves seem hip and European if they just made a similar sticker with their own made-up abbreviation on it.

That's where things started to get out of control. I remember the first time I was staring down an "OBX" sticker trying desperately to figure out what the hell European country that stood for, only to later be told it stood for The Outer Banks beaches of North Carolina. I was actually angry that it had caused me to waste brain power on trying to figure out something nearly impossible to just regularly deduce.

Now there're things like "HMB" for Half Moon Bay, CA or "McM" for McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Do they even have cars in Antarctica?!

But, as if that wasn't bad enough, now it's just spread to whatever the hell anyone wants to put in a little oval, whether it references a location or not. The one I saw on the way to work today said "MEOW".

...

That's just so ridiculously removed from the original point as to not make any sense. Yes, we get it. You like your cat. But ...

I dunno. I'm at a loss for words, I guess. I just hate those things so much. This is the only one I can get behind:

happy holidays

Not sure how much I'll be writing over the next week as I'll be pretty focused on three things:

1. Family - my mom, sister, brother, and Lisa-in-law are all flying in over the next week for Xmas-stylee fun.

2. Wedding - With a week of prime-time weekdays open to us, Amanda and I will be trying to get as much detail work done as we can.

3. Turns out, it's just two things. But, I'd rather not go back and delete the 3 and change it to 2. So, instead you get this.

Happy Holidays everyone.

stories from the train: lost in translation

You hear a lot of crazy things when you cram a ton of people into the same location every morning. People say stupid things, people fart on you, and sometimes you get some music along with it all.

At the Embaraderro BART station, there's an old asian man who sits by the escalators most mornings and plays traditional music on his erhu, a traditional stringed Chinese instrument. It's pretty quaint and definitely beats the usual mumble-ridden acoustic guitar busking you tend to find in most other subways.

Today, though, the guy clearly was in the holiday mood - either that, or he just wants some money from those who are - because he was trying to play "Jingle Bells." I say trying because he only sorta' had the melody right. I don't know if it's a limitation of the erhu or if he just doesn't know the tune.

I didn't have a means to record it, but I did my best to recreate it as soon as I got to my office. It sounded like this:


Click here to get your own player.



As I was leaving, I found myself behind a british guy having a conversation with a german guy. They both new each other and were talking about their plans for the holiday. It was a ... special conversation.

Anglo: Hey, mate.
Saxon: Oh! Hello! I thought you had taken your plane already!
Anglo: Naw, I don't fly out 'til tomorra.
Saxon: Well, here's to hoping you don't fly through Denver.
Anglo: [laughs] Yeah, dat's quite a blizzahd they got.
Saxon: [laughs as well] Yes, well, I hope to see you die.

!!! What?? I don't know what the hell that guy was trying to say, but I sure as hell hope it wasn't that. Crazy germans.

sucker for the season

Never one to pass up an opportunity to create some new sort of online avatar for myself, Mix-Mas.com has one that's a flash holiday greeting dumping ground. Apparently people's greetings are all just making the scrolling world of mix-mas grow and grow and grow.

Anyway, you can find me and my message here. Just look for this guy:



He's northwest of naked Hitler.

too much stuff

I've got too much going on. The game industry seems to shut down for the week of Christmas. Frequently that means that the week before the week of Christmas ends up feeling like a dead week, too. Many people are already gone on vacation. Many more are simply focused on their up-coming vacations. Not a lot gets done.

I, on the other hand, seem to have a completely full plate. I have to cut all of the files for a new game. I have an article to finish up. I have wedding stuff to tackle (though we found our officiant this weekend. Her name is Sasha Rusk and she's super nice). I have to clean up our apartment before my family arrives this weekend. And I have to deal with a week full of meetings on top of that (like the 2.5 hour long one I had this afternoon that kept me from everything else I needed to be doing).

Anyway, there's a lot going on and no one seems to comment here anymore so I don't know if it's cuz this is boring or no one reads it anymore. Probably both. Guess I'll keep writing, though.

the grass has to actually be greener somewhere, right?

I'm in a funk. Have been for days. It's why I haven't been writing here. Haven't been doing much of anything these days, to be honest. I go through this with some degree of frequency. At least once a year, it seems like I sit down, decide that I hate my career, and that there has to be something better out there somewhere.

Which is not to say that I hate working at LucasArts. It's more like I go through a period of hating being a composer. I get this frustrated knot of 50% boredom and 50% angst in the pit of my stomach and it won't go away. But it seems to stop me from doing anything. So, I sit here and I think about all of the other careers I could have had but chose game composer instead.

Sometimes I wish that I'd been an author. I love to write and would love to actually have time to finish the various things I've started to write over the years. Plus, I've thought about writing a book on game audio. But how many of those does the world actually need? Plus, what am I going to say that's new? "Chapter 9: When the going gets tough, consider a career change"

Anyway, other than that, I find that I think about ditching anything creative and intellectual and romanticize taking a job in construction. There's something very appealing about a job that doesn't require me to wrack my brains every day to create something the world has never seen. Instead, I'm pounding nails into something someone told me to pound nails into. Even thinking about a construction job is more physical exercise than I ever get as a composer.

But ... I never do anything. I'm here in my "dream job" wondering what other opportunities are out there in the world. Like I said, it's just a funk. I'll get through it like I have before. I just wish I'd get through it sooner rather than later. This one's been going on for a week now.

stories from the train: anger management

I was waiting for the train home tonight, contentedly wasting my life playing Jewel Quest on my RAZR, when I noticed some guy pacing around the train platform. He was clearly some kind of "no one loves me/hugs me/calls me on my birthday" punk with a chip on his shoulder as well as in his paper bag he was carting around.

Angry Punk had a bike, a very conservative and completely not-punk blue roadbike, that was leaning up against a sign post. Again, I wasn't really paying any attention to anything other than Jewel Quest at this moment. Angry Punk just kept pacing until his bike suddenly fell onto the ground.

What happened next can only really be described as a shit fit. Angry Punk instantly ran up to his bike and started to kick it and punch it as it lay on the ground. All the while he was yelling "FUCKING BIKE! FUCKING NEVER ANYTHING BUT FUCKING TROUBLE! FUCK THIS THING!" At which point he then picked up the bike, lifted it over his head, and threw it onto the train tracks. "FUCKING BIKE! FUCK YOU! I WAS THINKING ABOUT WOMEN! THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU FUCKING THINK ABOUT WOMEN ALL THE GODDAMN TIME!"

With his bike now laying on the train tracks and the train only moments away from arriving, he then proceeded to resume pacing around the train platform, this time muttering to himself. The only words that were understandable were either Fuck or Fucking. The rest was "mumble mumble FUCK mumble FUCKING mumble mumble" etc. After pacing and cursing for a little bit, Angry Punk then jumped down onto the train tracks, retrieved his bike, and then set about lovingly inspecting it to make sure it wasn't damaged.

I really didn't feel like being the one to him that his bike falling over was probably more a product of not having a kickstand than thinking about women all the time.

When the train finally arrived, he was very clearly talking to some kind of imaginary friend and the two of them were having a conversation about how strange it was that the train was going in the wrong direction. (I think he wanted to be on the northbound platform.)

When I got off the train four stops later, I was worried that he was going to say something to me while I waited to get off the train. Turns out, he was completely well behaved crazy angry punk guy. My guess is that he was back to thinking about women again. Strangely, though, the other guy standing behind me picked up where Angry Punk left off.

As the train pulled into the station, the guy behind me started to talk to himself saying "hehehe ... The train ... it just farted ... IT FAHTED .... ::imitation of hydrolic break sound:: ... hehehe ... it fahted ..."

I miss my car.

ticking along

The wedding is coming a long well. Every week we finalize more and more stuff. For those playing along at home, here's where we stand (actually, this list is more for me than anyone else):

What we have finalized:
- Date
- Location
- Dresses
- Rings
- Band
- Photographer
- Guest List
- Invitations

What's in the works:
- Someone to perform the ceremony
- Flowers

What's not done:
- Cake
- Tuxedos
- Decorations
- Favors

So, that's not so bad. We have all of the major stuff out of the way except for who's performing the ceremony, and even that we have a meeting on Sunday with a potential candidate. Things are going well.

Meanwhile, I'm a complete dick and forgot to say "Happy Birthday" to Ry on Saturday. So, in honor of his turning 29, here's a fan film of The Ghostbusters taking on Freddy Kruger. Apparently Freddy seems to have killed their lighting guy or something.

Stars of MySpace issue 1: Sasha Lans Project

MySpace is awesome for many reasons. Partially, though, it's awesome in how much exposure it can give anyone with simply enough thumb dexterity to work a mouse and sign up for an account.

Take for instance Sasha Lans. Sasha may very well be a joke much like Borat. I'm not entirely sure. What I do know is that his MySpace page starts with the sentence "The Peace and Love to you my Friend who has come on my Website!" and then doesn't let up from there.

You see, Sasha is an electronica composer who doesn't speak English all that well. Along with his attempts to blend a bunch of different cultures together making him a "musician of new generation of electronic musicians."

Take a look at his Pics page. Please tell me that he isn't 100% correct. If this is where the next generation of electronic musicians are going - photographing themselves poorly voguing in front of a vertical rug - I'm totally on board.

So, Sasha rocks and should go on tour immediately. No doubt. In fact, he should go on tour with No Doubt. I think their fans would appreciate his style. I know I do.

how about a "stop all the bullshit" dance?

People are starting to tell me that they're receiving the wedding invitations that went out on Tuesday. So, that's good. The bad news is that I'm now completely addicted to checking the website to see if anyone has RSVPed yet. So far, no one has.

I still haven't found someone to officiate the wedding. Trying to find someone who isn't completely flaky seems to be really hard. Maybe it's particularly the Bay Area, but it seems like people who are professional officiants for a living walk a very thin line between religious figurehead and complete bullshit artist.

Sure, there are reverends who just do weddings. But they seem to be few and far between. Instead, you'll find TONS of people who do all kinds of weird things like the Walking Into Wisdom Menopause Ceremony, Home Blessing Ceremonies upon moving into a new house, and the Dances of Universal Peace that I can't even begin to figure out what they're for.

Can't I just find someone who isn't crazy to do a secular ceremony? Is that too much to ask, San Francisco?

stories from the train: frrt

At the Embarcadero BART station, the platform is dotted by these large, round marble benches for commuters to sit on while they await their trains. Most of the time I get down there, the benches are full of people and I end up standing. Monday night, however, I got down to the station just as a train had departed and so there was an open spot to sit. I sat down right next to this older guy - mid to late 50s - who had a bike leaning up against him.

Now, the seating was tight. Only about two inches separated his ass from my ass on the bench there. Not to mention, because the benches are circular, everyone's backs are angled towards each other a bit.

Anyway, there I am sitting contentedly waiting for my train and reading some billboard or something when I notice Old Bike Guy lean forward like he's going to stand up.

Only ... he doesn't stand up. Instead, he just stays bent over like that. Suddenly from right next to me I hear:

bbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPP!!

This gross old fuck farted right on me. He couldn't have aimed it at me any more if he'd gotten up, walked his ass right up to my face, and then let loose right there. No apology. No "oh my god .. I can't believe I just did that." Nothing. Just a massive raspy fart and then he straightened himself up again.

Other people suck.

it's sorta like "ground hog's day"

I feel like I keep reliving the same week or two over and over again. If you're playing along at home and would like to re-enact your own round of "Jesse's Life™", it goes like this:

Step 1. At work, I start the week with my most recent sketch being rejected for various different reasons. I'm then asked to write more sketches.
Step 2. I write sketches. Those sketches sit around until a meeting is called about them, sometimes that meeting is on the following Monday.
Step 3. In the meantime, I do tedious paperwork that's meant to speed up efficiency somewhere.
Step 4. No one reads the paperwork.
Step 5. I attend meetings.
Step 6. At night and over the weekend, Manda and I plan our wedding.
Step 7. Monday comes. Repeat step 1.

This weekend Manda and I got our invitations all assembled and they'll go out in the mail tomorrow. (64 invitations * 8 adhesive photo corners per invitation) + 64 envelopes = one metric assload of glue we had to lick. But they're all done, they all look great, and I'm very happy that we can cross that off of the to-do list.

I'm in a bad mood. I should stop writing.

if I knew anything about robots...

I think I'd be one of these guys. The R2 Builders' Club builds their own robots that are recreations of and inspired successors to the astromech droids from Star Wars. For those who don't speak fluent dork, R2-D2 is an astromech droid - three wheeled legs, a dome, and an old ARP synth for a voicebox inside a garbage can and you've got yourself an astromech droid.

And to be completely honest, I think this is the greatest little invention waiting to happen. It's like the Roomba only does more than clean your carpet. It can wander down to different departments in your office and give people files (paper files, not electronic - although I guess it could do that too), it could get you coffee, or hell ... it could even brew coffee and then just dispense it. Yes, the work world is waiting for the astromech droid to become a reality. And by "work world" I probably just mean me and the guys at Astromech.net.

Anyway, in the meantime, I can placate myself with action figures. So I did. And now I'm happier.

i bet Beethoven never had to make Excel spreadsheets

There are a lot of supplemental documents that get made when you're doing the music for a game. Design documents, cue tracking spreadsheets, implementation notes ... I'm stuck in one right now. It's terribly exciting. I had originally thought that it might have been better in the olden days when you didn't have to deal with these things to make music, but then again there wasn't much to do back then when you weren't making music except for make babies or go crazy.

Tonight Manda and I are meeting with a photographer we're considering for our wedding. You can see his stuff here. I really like his work. Hopefully our meeting will go well.

Guess that's it. Back to Excel.

wii-oops

Yeah ... problems with the Nintendo Wii. It turns out that flailing your arms around like a crazy person in front of your TV might not be the best idea ever.

Want more proof? Try here, here, and here.

who knew?

Apparently the world does not wink into existence each morning when my alarm goes off at 7 am. Apparently it's around much earlier than that. Manda and I got up before 6 today to go out walking. We're trying to get some more exercise into our lives these days. I'm finding that parts of me that I didn't think had muscles actually do. And they ache.

The long weekend was very nice. Spent lots of time in my pajamas with Amanda and Final Fantasy XII. It's a good game. Our poor cat was freezing cold all the time. Amanda and I kept piling on sweaters and stuff, but our cat was simply resorting to trying to smash her body up against ours at night. So, we bought a heater and now she's content and happy.

That's about it. Pajamas, video game, warmer cat. That's what 5 days of vacation boils down to for me. It's not much, and to be honest, I'm pretty happy about that. I needed a nice long break of nothing. It's been a very long period of being very busy at work and the down time was heavenly.

the shine is off the apple

Consider me naive, but I actually thought for some reason that people who bought hybrid cars are buying them - at least in part - because they care about the planet. Decreasing their fossil fuel consumption, reducing emissions, supporting corporations who are helping to drive eco-friendly technologies towards the marketplace ... But, like I said, that was naive. What I guess is really happening is that people are buying hybrid cars because gas is too fucking expensive and they don't want to spend so much on it. Nothing else. Sure, there are some people who care, but most likely it comes down to how frequently people need to fill up their tank and how that impacts their wallets.

So what was it that changed my perspective?

I was in line at a Burger King drive through a few nights ago. As I sat there, the hybrid in front of me got their food, traded the cashier their money for a soda, and then proceeded to wad up a bunch of trash and through it out the window of their hybrid.

Who litters in a hybrid? Shouldn't Toyota have some sort of LitterSensor&trade that triggers an ejection seat if you toss crap out of your hybrid's window?

Anyway, it bummed me out and I realize now how dumb it was to think that the recent success of the hybrid was due to some large eco-awakening across the country. I guess it all just comes down to just dollars and cents.

totally slackin'

On writing here. There's been so much that's happened in the last few days that I've found it tough to figure out where to start with it all.

The company meeting went well and our band's live performance was a smash hit. I keep getting stopped in the halls or congratulated in emails for helping to make it "the best company meeting ever." Turns out people like rock concerts more than PowerPoint presentations about sales figures. Go figure.

Other than that, I can very happily say that Music Sketch #7,493 was actually met with approval (muted approval, but hey ... I'll take anything at this point). Among the committee that have heard it so far, 1 person enthusiastically likes it, 1 person is content with it, and 1 person seems to be resigning themselves to it because of the rest of the people's interest in it. But, happily no one has said "Nope. That's not it." yet. We'll see what happens. I like the thought that I'm getting close to having people actually approve something on this score.

Manda and I have been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XII this past week. It's very good, if you're into Final Fantasy games. If not, I dunno ... I don't know if anyone who doesn't enjoy turn-based RPGs would enjoy it. But I'm into them and I'm enjoying and that's all that matters to me.

Let's see ... other than that, I couldn't be happier to be staring down the barrel of a three day work week. It's been a while since I had any time off and I'm really looking forward to 4 days of nothing but turkey, wedding prep, and (knowing me) naps.

God, I love naps.

ah, the train

So full of strange people ... so wonderful and beautiful in their circus-freak oddities. I took the train and the ghost train shuttle yesterday like always, but for some reason it was FULL of special, special characters yesterday. Here's a run-down of some of my favorites:

1. Surfer Man - This guy was on the shuttle to work in the morning. He was standing next to me having a conversation with Granola Woman about the benefits of various local farmers' markets. Without a doubt, the best thing about Surfer Man was his complete ability to go 10 seconds without saying the word "like." I swear to you, this is an actual quote:

"It's, like, so great that, like, there's like, you know, like, soooo many, like, different, like, kinds of, like, squash, like, you knooooow?"

It must be, like, so hard for, like, anyone to, like, knooooow anything this poor guy is saying at any given time.

2. Aging Goth Man - Dear Depeche Mode fans, I've found what you're going to look like in 20 years. And guess what? It's not pretty. On the train ride home, some guy who obviously hadn't been hugged enough or something got on the train sporting his highly sculpted, orange-dyed hair and museum of facial body modification. Apparently, this inspired nearby Aging Goth Man to strike up a loud conversation with him all about how he loved the other guy's hair and has been thinking for a while about laminating his hair with some kind of heat activated plastic whatnot. Problem is, Aging Goth Man's sorta' gray hair was in some kind of state of strategically shaved/weirdly balding mass exodus. Basically he just looked like he'd be hit full-on in the face with a mid-life crisis and was pioneering some sort of Punk Rock Combover. I don't think it's going to catch on, laminated or not.

3. (and my favorite) Crazy OCD Woman - Yes, Crazy OCD woman got on the train at the same stop as Aging Goth Man. She proceeded to sit right in front of me, so I was privy to a fair amount of her crazy. First, she took the newspaper that was folded under her arm and proceeded to unfold sheet after sheet and blanket the train seat with them, all the while smiling this huge "Look at me!!!!" grin and trying to make eye contact with everyone around her. After she had safely shielded herself from the dirt of the train seat, she sat down (still making eye contact and smiling at everyone around), began mumbling to herself, and then leaned up against the unpapered window and train wall - which I can only assume is actually dirtier than the seat because of contact with everyone's hands.

Anyway, the grand finale came a few stops later she started to loudly mumble the words "Just in case" over and over again to herself. Interestingly, she then took out of her pocket a couple of folded one dollar bills, and handed them to Aging Goth Man (who was standing in front of her) and continued to say "Just in case. Just in case." He looked very confused by it all, but he took the money!

What the eff?! Who takes a crazy woman's money?

For all of its downsides, there's no denying that the train is always entertaining.

muh

I'm totally beat. Band practice last night. Band practice this morning. Band practice again tonight. It's like every day I have to perform a 2 hour concert, sometimes 4 hours. Totally exhausted.

On top of everything else, I finished my latest sketch. We'll see how it goes over.

Some positive feedback would be nice. But more than anything right now I just want a nap.

it's like the wind was knocked outta me

I'm totally exhausted today. I have no idea why. I went to bed early. I slept well all night. But today I'm just completely beat. Amanda got up at 5:30 in the morning today and I'm thinking it's some kind of sympathy exhaustion. It can't be real exhaustion 'cause I sure as shit didn't wake up when she did. At about 6:30 I realized she had left.

This weekend was busy. We did a bunch of errands on Saturday and then Sunday had the Band Practice/Engagement Party double-whammy. Second part first: Amanda's mom threw us (I first typed "threw up" but that's wrong) an engagement party Sunday afternoon as a chance for all of her friends and extended family to meet me before the wedding. It was nice. I met a lot of very nice people and they gave us wedding presents - which I hadn't expected. It didn't dawn on me that an engagement party was that kind of event. Turns out, it is. So, we have a bunch of nice new baking stuff and more power/hand tools than you can shake a stick at, which is good since currently we just have two hammers and a bunch of stripped screwdrivers.

Before the engagement party, I had been at band practice. This coming Friday will be the company meeting where we celebrate the release of Thrillville on Nov. 21st. As part of the celebrations, our company president has asked Audio Lead David Collins and I to put together a band and perform the four songs we wrote for the game live. So, we're doing our best to tackle the task at hand and put together a killer little set of music. Maybe that's why I'm so tired, though. I spent two hours jumping around like I was on stage. It's been a while since I've done that ... I'm not used to it anymore.

Anyway, guess that's it. It's Monday and I'm tired. And I have band practice again tonight. Followed by a two hour commute home. Followed by the grocery store. It's going to be a long day.

the new political landscape

Ry and I were talking yesterday and decided that - now that the Democrats are in power in Congress - they should make one of their first orders of business the act of collectively rubbing it in the face of the White House that the American people can apparently only be fooled for about 6 years until they get angry and rethink things.

So, with that in mind, we started talking about some much needed revisions to current D.C. monuments. I thought I'd mock one up in Photoshop. So here's the updated version of the Washington Monument, post-Blue Tide:



I like it. It has a certain ... "what are you looking at?!" quality to it that you don't tend to find much in monuments. Well, except for this guy.

sore winner

Last night, Manda and I were down in Mountain View helping out at the Registrar of Voters until about midnight for the mid-term election. Manda has been a lead for a few years now staffing and running a precinct supply return station and I've been helping out as part of the hired muscle.

All night I was completely glued to the election results as they were coming in - desperate to watch what was happening around the country and watching the statement from Red America that the neo-cons had officially squandered all political capital they once had.

Suffice it to say, I'm a very happy little democrat today. It's nice to wake up to a Democratic Congress and the ouster of Rumsfeld. Now, if only my back wasn't killing me, I'd be able to jump for joy.

busy, bizzy, biz-A

I was going to say "I'm very busy these days, much like Tony, Toni, Toné" but I actually don't think they're busy at all. So, nevermind.

I'll give everyone one guess as to what I'm up to this week. Here's a hint: it starts with "sketc"

If you guess "sketches," you're right! Yes. I'm doing one more sketch this week. But the entire nature of the project has changed, much as it frequently does during the course of game development, and I'm adapting to the new situation. One day, if I can ever talk about it, I'll try and recount the story of "Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen: the Story of the Music I'm Writing Right Now."

Suffice it to say, music is at best a subjective experience and at worst a completely nebulous realm of art that is so difficult to talk about in a committee setting as to be nearly useless to even attempt. But, game development is all about committees attempting, so that's how it goes - regardless of whether or not it makes sense.

Anyway, I think I'm in a good position now. More creative freedom. More options available to me. The only thing I don't have is more time, something that continues to dwindle with every sketch I do at the expense of actual in-game content. Hopefully I can wrangle this latest sketch together quickly, get it signed off on, and then yump right into actual content creation. That's the goal anyway. We'll see what the committee says.

gems

There's a homeless guy who hangs out around the area that I catch the Presidigo shuttle each morning. He's pretty filthy and seems to have zero fear of cars since he will frequently stand out in the middle of the street and speak to the invisible people he counts among his friends.

Usually, he's pretty tame. He mumbles to himself and his 'friends.' Sometimes he even picks up trash off of the streets and throws it away in the nearby trash can. But not today.

Today he was pissed. Here's what he was yelling:

"NO! NO YOU'RE GIVING ME 'LISTENING EAR'!!! NO, THAT'S 'LISTENING EAR'!!!!
I ASKED FOR 'HAPPY DAY'!!!!!!! THIS KIND OF CRAP IS GOING TO SHUT THIS WHOLE BUILDING DOWN!!!! NO. NO!!! THAT GOES IN THE INCUMBENT BOX OF MR. AMERICA!!!"

Poor guy. Clearly he's having a bad day, and maybe reliving whatever bad day it was the got him out on the street. It's a shame no one game him "Happy Day."

limbo

This evening, a big meeting is taking place - a meeting I'm not involved in. However, it will decide (hopefully) what project I'm on tomorrow morning. This meeting could have big implications, both good and bad, depending on how everything goes.

In the meanwhile, I'm just sitting around waiting for it to happen. I keep flip-flopping between a feeling of confidence and a feeling of near-crippling nerves.

I just want a decision to be made one way or the other. Until then, it's limbo time!

genetic waste

That's essentially what one of my childhood friends describes my brother and I as. Between a family history of heart murmurs, color blindness, dyslexia, mental illness, and cancer, our friend Jeff decided that the Harlin family must simply just be a dumping ground for Darwinian used DNA rags.

Among all of that crap is my incredibly poor sense of smell, and therefore taste. For some reason, I have the worst sense of smell out of anyone I've ever met (with the exception of my brother, whose the same as I am). You can pretty much count on the fact that if you ever ask me "Hey, Jess ... do you smell that?" the answer will be "Smell what?"

That said, whenever I do smell something strong, it must really be unfreakinbelievably strong for my craptacular sniffer to pick it up. Take, for instance, the smell of downtown San Francisco this morning.

I stepped off of BART and instantly smelled something funky. I couldn't tell what it was, but I decided that it must have been the person next to me or something. The only problem is that the person next to me wasn't next to me for all that long. Not to mention, the further I went up towards the street, the stronger the funk smell got. It wasn't until I was standing outside on the street level that I finally was able to place the odor.

All of downtown San Francisco reeked of onions today.

I don't know why. Maybe it was because of the Halloween party held here last night. Maybe not. Whatever the reason, there's no denying that it was incredibly pungent. And like I said, if it was bothering genetic waste like me, it must have been driving everyone else nuts.