Kingfox

A very happy birthday to my wonderful and completely mega-awesome girlfriend, jedimentat. I gush about you constantly to your face and to my friends, so I’m sure yet another declaration of how pretty/intelligent/fun/sweet/exciting/entertaining/lovely/intelligent/etc. you are will just make you blush. I’m incredibly lucky to have you in my life, and I hope you have a great birthday and the best of years.

See you soon!

1432

mrfantasy tapped me earlier in the hallway, asking what was behind me. I turned to glance back. “Your twenties!”

I didn’t write the great American novel before I hit thirty (I guess I no longer need to rent that room in the Stagecoach Inn in Quartz (ten quatloos to the first person who can get that reference)). I didn’t get my bachelor’s. I haven’t really seen enough of the world. But I’ve paid off my debt and managed to put together a fairly decent life, all things considered. I’m surrounded by awesome people, and happy. There have been some ups and downs, and I walked away from both of them with stories to tell – all one can hope for. No complaints here.

---

If you want your face or whatever else you can whip up on the television during my upcoming (JOINT) birthday party, just like the past few years, leave an image here. Bonus points if you wish jedimentat a birthday as well, since we’ll be celebrating them both at the same time.

Whatever happened to the Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos? Yet another band that releases a strong album, but fails to follow the album up with anything notable. Sure, they’ve finally put out a sophomore album, but after most of their fans have given up and moved on to other bands. I expect to see one of them on some VH1 reality show, maybe another member involved with a celebutard. Sure, back in high school it seemed that they were unstoppable and really going places, but they were just yet another musical flash in the pan.

I hope the band had some other skills to fall back on, or at least invested wisely. But that’s how it is. One day you’re playing giant sold out shows, the next day you’re living a monastic existence.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Wednesday I returned to work, but yesterday was my first work lunch with a number of people who took the first day back off. It seems a couple others had also decided to grow beards for the new year. runstaverun and mrfantasy and I stood next to each other in the hallway, making a “all the beards on one side” Erik the Viking-esque moment. It was theorized that we were just showing solidarity with the writers, like Letterman and Conan.

---

Christmas and New Year’s Eve were fun. Posted a few times during the vacation, summing up the relaxing time off. Spent some time with jedimentat‘s family and cessna182‘s in-laws. The difference between Cantonese and Mandarin unfortunately stopped jedimentat from being my secret translator, but she learned how to speak Halo 3 instead. A pretty chill end to December, all in all. Except for my drunken night with jedimentat (see her pictures here). ٍSee all of my holiday photos here. Some of these were in the photographic year of Kingfox post, but here’s some of my favorite shots from the vacation:

---

I remember all the crazy screams when STEAM was first unleashed on the gaming world. “Whaaaa, my HL2 no workies!” “Whaaaa, your system sux!” I remember how flakey it was at rollout. But it’s pretty nice that, after finally setting up the software end of things for my new machine, I was up and running with all steam-y games in no time at all. “Hey, Steam came bundled with this piece of hardware, I’ll throw it on. Hey, it’s prompting me to install every game I used STEAM with. Nice, I can play FPSes with my new rig already!” Things should always be so simple.