This was one of the best weekends I've had in awhile.  On Friday night, I met up with my book group for a Feminist Movie Night, where we watched Teeth (a horror movie about Vagina Dentata)  and the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I was definitely glad to have a comedy to watch after Teeth, although the rest of the group seemed to find much mirth in both movies.

On Saturday I traveled back up to Malibu to have lunch with my father, before traveling over to the home of bygoneglamour for a 1950's Hollywood murder mystery party. I really enjoyed myself, and hell must have frozen over because I somehow found myself running the kitchen to prepare all of the food. The really odd thing is that nothing blew up and all of the food turned out great. Ava and Lindsey did a great job creating the character backgrounds of everyone, and there were plenty of possibilities to trip everyone up including; closet communists, maffia members from Las Vegas, numerous acts of infidelity, and a stifled spouse. Truly great. I played a PI working for the head of the studio, so I had plenty of dirt on most of the other people at the party.

On Sunday, I drove back down to San Diego just in time for my second session of the D&D game I just joined. (and yes, I helped Ava to clean up her house before I left)  My rogue was a big help with this adventure, figuring out several traps and key plot points.  However, I may have made a mistake when I found myself face to face with the main monster for the evening, an otyugh named Slag (Basically a giant mouth with pointy teeth and tentacles). I only had seconds to come up with a plan, so I pulled out a vial of particularly nasty poison I had received earlier (2d6 Con Damage with a failed Fortitude roll) and with one hand I drank the antidote for myself, and with the other I shoved the vial of poison down its throat. Everyone stopped talking and just stared at me. "You shoved your arm into the living trash compactor??" I replied that I had hoped the poison would kill it before it could bite my arm, and I didn't want to risk missing it's mouth with a toss attack (It's AC was crazy).  Anyway, no such luck. It bit down on my arm, and did so much damage that the DM ruled my arm had been severed. On the bright side, the poison worked and I rolled well for it, so the Ranger was able to finish it off with his attack.  The cleric was then able to heal me so that I stopped bleeding to death.  It was only afterwards that I looked at the DM and said, "Let me get this straight. I just choked the monster to become a one armed bandit?"  Many groans were had by all. 

For as long as I can remember, I've been plagued with ideas for stories. Even when I am dreaming, at least the dreams I can remember, my subconscious drums up overarching plot lines, beginnings, middles, endings, characters, devices, inventions, viewpoints, and desires all in exacting detail .  During the day when I day dream I have the same problem. Great story ideas and concepts come rushing into my head, and I almost never have the patience to actually record them properly.  This past week I've decided to try and change that. At the very least, I am now trying to keep a list of all of the ideas that come zipping through my head.  There have already been one or two that I didn't get to my computer quickly enough to write down, but I am going to try and make the effort.

Just as an example, as I was leaving the latest Harry Potter movie I thought how much fun it would be to create a checklist book for children. It would be recorded with old style penmanship, like an old ledger, and would list all of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches that a child should experience before growing up.  Such as the sight of a favorite forest path during each of the four months of the year, the taste of fresh baked bread, or the smell of a skunk's spray. I think I would have enjoyed something like that as a child.

Quoted from Nodwick.com:

"And from the "but what will it mean?" files comes the long-running court case over the rights to Superman. In the article it says that DC/Time-Warner will lose the copyright to Supes around the year 2013 and won't be able to exploit the character without licensing it from the estates of Seigel & Schuster. While brainstorming with a friend, we theorized what form the most irritating licensing possibility for Superman could be. Our winner was a license to Dark Horse Comics, where he's made part of their Star Wars universe. In a move that would have both comic and Jedi fans alike reaching for the torches and pitchforks, it would be revealed that Superman's powers come from a rare strain of midichlorians, giving him immense power but mostly only at personal range (aside from the heat vision). We'd also pay homage to "Superman Returns" by making Kal-El the father of Anakin Skywalker. Think about it: Both Lois and Shimi found themselves with children of frightening ability from a mysterious pregnancy they can't remember conceiving."

Yesterday sucked. It just goes to show that you should never look at your life and say, "Wow! Things are going great!".  The universe will immediately locate the nearest cricket bat of doom and womp you upside the head.

Here's a list of what happened yesterday:

1. Two of my employees put in their two week notices. I should have expected the second after the first, as they have been commuting together.

2. The library that got dropkicked into my schedule was not told that they had been moved, so there was much panicking when I went to map their library. They were greatful I was giving them more info than HQ, but it still dragged me into poltics, afterwhich I discovered that large parts of the order of libraries they gave me might be revised. Oy!

3. Upon returning to my staff at the end of the day, I was confronted by the head librarian, who informed me she had a box of books in her office that we had tagged that she was going to send to HQ to ask for a refund. It turned out to be 59 books (a small number when you consider we have tagged around 70,000 in their library alone), but it is frustrating because many of them had broken spines that are not noticable when you are only checking the front and back of each book. (Each of my employees only spends about 20-24 seconds on each item. Not a lot of time to check for damages)

4. I then also realized I left my wallet at home, and my gas tank was almost empty. I had to rush over to Wachovia and play twenty questions so that they would issue me $20 with no ID.

Still, overall we are getting along well with the library staffs we are working with, and apparently my boss has been getting some great reviews of my work from various uppity-ups in the county system.  I also should be able to hire new staff more easily, as a bunch of part time library staff just got laid off due to budget cuts.  I'll just cross my fingers and hope there aren't too many more days like this one.

This is pretty cool. It's the first poster to change when it thinks no one is looking.


Here's a link to the full size pic:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4OYGjUrdllo/SkWJIXygMjI/AAAAAAAAX9Y/qL169DVtcW0/s1600-h/amnestycamera.jpg

On Saturday I went and played Kickball for the first time since Elementary school. You might not think the game is very athletic, but when you only have four people on each team you end up either running around the bases or running for the ball 24/7 for 9 innings. Lets just say you can really feel it in your legs afterward.  I also did a one hour walking meditation Saturday night.

Walking meditation is one of the few meditations I've kept up with. I choose a direction and just start to walk. Sometimes I wander for a few minutes, and other times I walk for hours. After awhile, any depressive feelings I have begin to ebb away, and my mind empties of all thought. At that point, I get to a point where I feel the world around me more than myself, and I know it is ok to turn around and go home.

During these walks it seems like my mind turns from inward to outward, and it becomes easier to notice the beauty in the world around me. For instance, last night I wandered by North Chollas Community Park, and found that the architect incorporated all sorts of waves into the sidewalk running along the outside.  The pavement has occasional wavy lines stamped into it, the sidewalk itself rolls to and fro in different directions rather than moving in a straight line, and there are also random gardens with wave motifs at various points along the way. They also let all sorts of wild desert fauna and bushes grow on both sides of the sidewalk, so it feels like you drunkenly wandering through the woods at night. (It's probably the closest I've felt to WWC in quite some time;) Wild rabbits periodically will dart out in front of you,sometimes even in packs, and they chitter in the bushes as you walk past. It's amazing how many little things seem majestic and magical when you just take an hour out of the day to pull yourself out of your own head.

On Sunday I finally made it out to the San Diego Wild Animal Park to try out their new zip line. It's the second largest zipline in America (Alaska's is larger) at just under 1 mile. You have to ride a bus to the top of a hill outside the park, which is 900 ft above sea level. You then walk out onto a tall metal spear where the ziplines attach to. The ziplines run over three separate areas of the park, so you can get a birds eye view of various animals from all over the world. Overall I would say it was very fun, but I wish it could have lasted longer. Typically the ride takes 1 - 2 minutes to complete depending on your weight and the wind.

Here we find Neil Gaiman being interviewed in a bathtub with Amanda Palmer.

I finally got off my crutches over the weekend, and back into regular shoes.  The bottom of my feet are still kind of tender, but I can walk around for short periods of time pain-free.  Currently I'm really not looking forward to my ER bill showing up in the mail, but I have to admit they did a great job.

(And yes, I do realize I should skip doing marathons in the future if I have not trained for them)


Oh, and the leather mask I posted a few weeks ago finally came in the mail!  I'll post pictures of it soon.

Beatles!   Rockband!   So......Happy......Right.....Now....


Click the link to watch the beautiful opening Sequence:

http://www.thebeatlesrockband.com/cinematic.php
Now I need to buy an Xbox....

Odin has been cast for the Thor movie:

http://io9.com/5276266/brian-blessed-to-bring-booming-voice-brian-blessed+ness-to-thors-odin

I think he could work beautifully, but I'm interested in what rae_beta and sir_beard have to say.

Sometimes I wish I was not so stubborn. On Sunday I got it into my head that I was not only going to run in the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon, but that I was going to finish all 26.2 miles no matter what.  Well, I did finish it, but the "no matter what" turned out to be my ability to walk.  I developed severe blood blisters on both of my feet, two of which encompassed the entirety of both of my heels.  K__ was kind enough to pick me up after the race. I would have been screwed without her help. 

Today I had to go into the ER to have them treated, which included them chopping the first several layers off of my heels to let them heal and drain.  I was actually doing ok up to that point until she held up one of the skin flaps and showed it to me.  Really not something you ever want to see.  The doctor informed me it was like I had a really bad second degree burn on my heels.  I'm going to have to keep my feet wrapped and try to walk as little as possible for the next week. Unfortunately I can't miss work right now, as I have important meetings and new staff to train. On the bright side, the nice doctors prescribed me Vicodin. 

One of my new employees stopped coming in to work earlier this week without letting me know why.  I knew that she had been having trouble tagging her materials as quickly as everyone else, but I was unsure exactly why she had stopped coming in since she did not answer her cell phone or my email.

That changed this morning, when she finally emailed me to say why she had quit. In the email she did say I was a nice manager and a decent person, but then she began to list all of her accusations. Here are a few samples:

"I feel that I was being constantly checked, and put under too much pressure to perform the quota you were requiring without pre-disclosure of the full job duties."

" I thought that slavery was abolished in this country but I found out that it was just to converted to corporate America's need to be efficient regardless of a workers state of well being."

"I was constantly reminded that we would need to be producing 1000+ records per day by Friday and even more records per day after that (your quota, which is based on a computer model that is unrealistic anyway)"

"Regardless of the fact that you were being nice and providing us all with a company paid lunch on the first day-during day 2, I was told that I may "want to trim my nails" to make production easier."

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Her complaint of being "constantly checked" involved me speaking to her at the end of the day when she input her work into our online timecard.  My concern was that she was constantly labeling 400 - 500 tags less per day than all of the other employees.

As for her nails, I did mention to her that trimming her nails might help, as they were longer and I had seen on past jobs that they could impede finger dexterity for this kind of work. I was just trying to help her think of ways to improve her work flow, since it was obvious something was drastically slowing her down.

Even though I have been trying really hard on this job to be nice and not stress anyone out unduly, I still feel like a heel.  It's just hard to make some people understand that production line jobs have to have goals, or they can never finish on time. Sigh....

I swear, Neil Patrick Harris never gets old.  The following video is from the Funny or Die website, and includes Margaret Cho, Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, John C Reily, Andy Richter, and many more.

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Kind of exhausted this morning. Yesterday after work I went to Balboa park to meet up with K___ for the protest march against Prop 8.  For those of you who did not hear, the California Supreme Court voted yesterday to uphold Prop 8 banning gay marriage.  However, they did let the 18,000 marriages stand that happened before the ban. 


The march included about 10,000 people, and went from Balboa park to the Hall of Justice downtown.  Once we got to the end, we were greeted by the local Women's drum circle group playing over a large system of speakers loaned for the event.  After that the mayor, Jerry Sanders, came out and spoke. 

The story of our mayor is pretty neat. When he took office he was a staunch Republican, but then his daughter came out of the closet and started a serious relationship with another girl.  The mayor then told the rest of his party that he had to support his daughter, and began to strongly vocalize support for gay marriage in California. Since then he has come to speak at the majority of protests against Prop 8.  Very cool.

After the protest we went and got some tasty Mexican food, and then played some drunken chess.  It's been awhile since I've known someone locally who enjoys chess, and I had a great time. 

So far this weekend I've donated blood, helped a friend move, installed an air conditioner, attended a meetup.com dinner and a movie group for Terminator, and gone to the San Diego Zoo and Museum of Man.  I kind of got into a sedentary lifestyle in Glendale because of the lack of opportunities to meet new people, and I'm trying to get out of it now. Lately I've been using the meetup.com website to find fun local things to do to both get out of the house and to try and meet people with similar interests. 

I might be crazy, but one of the things I've decided to try next weekend is the Rock and Roll Marathon in Balboa park.  It's a full marathon, but it includes 40 bands playing along the route. I intend to walk for most of it, but I'm going to try very hard to finish it.  If I can finish it in eight hours, I'll consider it a victory.  I'm sort of considering this as a giant first step towards getting back in shape. I was doing really well for the first half of my project in Glendale, but then I got depressed and stopped exercising. Now that I've moved, I'm going to start using the exercise bike I bought, and try to do as many local events to get in shape as possible. Wish me luck, and I'd appreciate recommendations for good running shoes that I can purchase before next Sunday.

Anyway, below the cut are some of my favorite pictures that I took today at the zoo and in Balboa park.

( Pictures )

If the majority of my stuff was not in storage, I would be very tempted to create something for this contest. The artist Jake Hildebrandt created the steampunk PC pictured below for the Damnation video game several months ago, and now the folks that run www.destructoid.com are giving it away!




All you have to do to enter the contest is to post something steampunk related that you have made (posters, pictures, costumes, video, etc.) in the comments section of this webpage (http://www.destructoid.com/show-us-your-love-of-steampunk-and-win-this-custom-pc-133069.phtml).  However, whatever you post needs to include a destructoid.com sign somewhere in it, so if you want to use an old photo be sure to break out photoshop!  I think it would be awesome if someone we all know won this PC.  The contest began May 24, and ends June 19.

I just spent the last three and a half hours installing a new air conditioner in my window, as the house I am staying in has no central air. Why'd it take me so long you ask?  I thought I was being slick in measuring everything carefully so that I could have a perfect sheet of plywood cut to fit around the unit in my window. However it turns out that Home Depot can only cut wood all the way through, so my perfectly sized piece of plywood ended up having to be cut into three parts. "No worries!" I said to myself. I'll just hook the pieces together with metal latches.  One hour later all of the pieces were home and reconnected. It was at that point that I realized my initial measurements were wrong. 

I had forgotten to take into account the metal lip at the base of the window, and the handle next to the metal lip to open the window. More cutting would be required. Several curse words later, I drove back to Home Depot to pick up a saw. After that it was a matter of cutting, checking the **** thing against the window, cutting again, etc. Eventually I got everything to the right size, and here was the result:



Woot! No more heat wave for me!

Here's the last pixel creation I was able to make before I moved. I'm still thinking about what I want to do next.

These two items make my inner child stand up and cheer.



Transformer USB drive, specifically an adaptation of one of Soundwaves mini-discs....
http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/product.aspx?product=TAK10927&mode=retail&picture=out



Anniversary edition metal Soundwave MP3 player. Currently seems to only be available on E-bay. 

(And it transforms!)