As of noon today, I no longer am paying on my Accord!

*pops bottle of bubbly to celebrate*

....without actually attending the con!  Someone please explain how that happened!

Anywho, I'm staying home today since I'm in no shape to do battle at work today.  I'm armed with megapak boxes of kleenex throughout each room in my house, three boxes of OJ in the fridge and various snot-thinnin' pill-type products.  Right now the plan is to get some sleep whenever needed and rotate back to the computer to fight off boredom.  I think I'm also going to do something I normally don't do while online and that is to decloak on YIM.  So if anyone out there wants to chat, let me know.  I'll try not to distribute the cooties electronically!

Been kinda grumpy this past week, thanks to having dropped almost a grand on my car this past week for its timing belt replacement.  Turns out my power steering was also on the verge so I had that fixed as well.  Unfortunately, that's put me back in the hole financially and has placed our planned trip to Orlando this fall in jeopardy.  It's also placed my fursuit on the back burner until I can reconfigure my finances (i.e. knock over a liquor store).

Any thought I had of flying south to Califur next week for part of the con also disappeared when I realized that my Saturday rotation at work comes up at the same time.  That's usually easy to work around, but I have so many things happening this month, I don't really have the bordering Saturdays available to bargain with.   Kind of a shame, since it won't be held at the "hotel from hell" this year and there are some folks who'll be there I'd like to hook up with.

On a brighter note, I get to head up to Lake Tahoe for an overnight this weekend.  Looking forward to it!

It's nice to know that the word's greatest time-waster doesn't cease to dissapoint:

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=16&cols=16&id=98Buf2Qt8zw&startZoom=1

Thanks to them I woke up at 3 am and didn't fall back to sleep!  I'm going to be one groggy bag of nastiness today at work! X_X

Tis not all bad though.  When I went to check my e-mail this morning, I discovered that my commission from hbruton was complete.  I'll load it up onto my Fur Affinity page later with some commentary on the character, but in the meantime you can check it out on Heather's page.  Hunt is the second of the three principle characters of the story I'm working on and he's the character with the hardest edge to him.  It's really great to see that come out in her piece! 

Next up art-wise, I'm going to try to get some reference sheets done of Hunt and probably a minor redesign of Bjorn for possible fursuit projects.  I also want to get a few new icons to use here since I want to re-design my journal page a bit.  I've also gone into a bit of a character explosion lately and have created about 5 new characters for my book.  Hopefully as I flesh each of them out a bit I'll try to get them illustrated.

As for the weekend, it's gonna be expensive!  It's timing belt time for my car, so that'll be lost to me for that day.  I was thinking of heading over to Santa Clara to BayCon, but that's pretty unlikely now.  Next weekend will be spent up in Tahoe and the following week is my Saturday rotation at work.  In fact, with Fathers Day and various birthdays coming up, I've pretty much got my weekends booked for the entire month of June.

....to my first LJ friend, tigershadowclaw ! 

Hope you have a great day!

Damn!  I was hoping for McCoy! 

Guess I need the MD for him. :_|  At least I didn't end up as Troi!


Your results:
You are Will Riker

Will Riker 75% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 75% James T. Kirk (Captain) 65% Jean-Luc Picard 60% Deanna Troi 55% Worf 50% Mr. Scott 45% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 40% Geordi LaForge 40% Data 36% Mr. Sulu 35% Chekov 30% Spock 27% Uhura 25% Beverly Crusher 10%

At times you are self-centered but you have many friends. You love many women, but the right woman could get you to settle down.

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Test

Took the last few days off since I had some spare vay-cay days to play with.  This morning's activity: Star Trek on the IMAX screen.

( Spoilers for Star Trek movie here )

No, I didn't decide to end it all this weekend.  It just looks like I tried! :)



This actually happened when I tried to clear my gutters out over the weekend.  It looks small and it actually is, but due to where it got sliced I ended up bleeding for quite awhile.  I finally got it to stop after bleeding through two terry towels.  Nothing like adding a little fear to your weekend!

Oh yeah.  Saw "Wolverine" over the weekend.  If you haven't yet and you're not a true die-hard, save your money.  Movie offered up nothing spectacular.  If you're a poker player, you might want to go to spot shameless self-promoter Daniel Negreanu in his cameo roll. 

AAAARRGGGHH!!  SOMEONE GET THIS OUT OF ME FUCKIN' HEAD!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ifD-BdjKmQ

NO! I won't imbed it!  Nothing to see anyway!  Besides, it's an oldie!

*runs and hides in shame*

Happy Birthday to berin ! 

Hope you're using the day to relax and enjoy!

It's here again!  Tomorrow at 7:30 pacific my butt will be planted firmly in my recliner with a beer in one hand and my tv remote in the other as I witness the start of what I hope will be a long, fulfilling playoff run for my team, the San Jose Sharks!

Some of the other supplies I'll have on hand will include a phone with my psychologist's number on speed dial, a handgun so I can shoot out the TV Elvis-style lest the play on it offends mine eyes, a collection of any happy pills I can find placed in a candy dish within easy gobbling reach, and some sort of will-to-live inspirational book to pull me out of the abyss in case my team meets the same playoff fate thats befallen them the past 10 years.

Alright, maybe I won't be going to the extremes listed above, but I am expecting more than my fair share of ups and downs. I'm hoping for a change in fortunes this year...but I'm not counting on it.

BTW, if you've never watched hockey before, the Stanley Cup playoffs are an excellent place to start.  The game is played at a much higer intensity level and I've hooked more than one Californian on hockey just by sitting them down in front of a playoff game.

In other news --

I haven't been feeling too mentally or physically healthy lately.  I can tell it's due to a lot of stress I've been under.  This is nothing new to me and it involves some issues I've dealt with most of my life.  As I have in the past, I know I'll eventually rebound from this, but for now it's getting the better of me. 

One way I'll be dealing with it is to re-establish my workout routine.  The problem is I'm frozen in deciding if I'll be working out of my house or re-joining a gym.  I've always been able to monitor my progress better in a gym, but I don't want to be stuck in a membership in case I lose my job sometime down the road.  I could work from home, but I really want to incorporate more weight training in my routine and right now I don't have the space or room to accommodate a weight set or a multi-trainer.  I want to have this decision made by this Friday because I want to get over feeling this way quickly.

After reviewing my finances from last year, I've also determined I need to make a career move now.  I've set the wheels in motion at work by expressing interest in some upcoming sales openings.  Sales is never the field I've envisioned myself in, but I already perform many of the same functions in my current job.  I think I may have enough marketing savvy to prosper enough even in this tough economy.  For a guy who once wanted to write pulp fiction and screenplays for movies, moving into this sort of job is kind of a tough blow. 

For my mental rehab, I'm actually going to be relying on furry to help me along with that.  I''ve got some revised character outlines in the pipeline for my book that I'll be putting up on my FA soon.  I especially want to get the sheet on my character Hunt finished soon, since I want to get some artwork of him commissioned quickly.  Once that's completed, I'll begin the selection process for a fursuit builder to have either Hunt or Bjorn brought to life.  One of the highlights of this past FC for me was an impromptu pantomime session I had with several suiters at the hotel bar.  I never really thought of myself as much of a performer, but I enjoyed that time a lot and I'd like to explore it further.

Geez!  Look at me go on!  It's way past my bedtime!  For anyone who's made it this far, thanks for sticking with me!  I'll keep you posted on how this all comes out!

...to spiritcreations !  Enjoy!

Time to head back to the salt mines after a brief vacation.  Since neither Tina or I could come up with a solid get-away plan, we elected to stay close to home.  Yesterday, we decided to play tourist at a few places nearby.

First on the list was the Jelly Belly plant in Fairfield, CA.  I've lived close to this place for years but have never had the chance to check it out in person.  The production line was shut down when we got there so we elected to shop instead.  Came away with a case of the standard mix beans, a few packs of sours, several bags of caffinated beans, and a few packs of licorice bears.  Most of these will get distributed as gifts to my nephews and also to my co-workers, but the bears are mine dammit!  Highlight of this trip was getting rickrolled inside the gift store.

Next up was the Budwiser brewery tour down the street.  Again, never had a chance to do this before, but I have toured the Olympia Brewery and have brewed my own at a couple of stip mall home breweries.  The tour was kind of a dud, bypassing the actual brewing process, but we did get two free 10 oz samples of our choice!  That makes even the bud/michelob brands taste better!  The Fairfield brewery will begin full tours on May 1, so I may have to go back and check it out.

Wrapped up the evening with a HUGE chinese dinner (*burp*) on the way back home.  Got leftovers if anyone wants a potsticker or some chow mein?

....to wish infinitysquared a Happy Birthday!  Hope if was a fulfilling day!

Gotta go now!

...is the CD with my prior year's tax information.  Specifically, it's somewhere in one of the 50 or so CD doughnuts I have scattered about the office.

D'oh!!

After the events of the past week that I mentioned in my prior journal, I'm so ready to go out and have some fun this weekend!

I got an early jump to the weekend yesterday, since I only worked a partial day. Went out to Thunder Valley after work to play some cards. This was my first time playing on the Lightning Poker electronic tables and I can't say I liked them very much. I could never really get comfortable at the table. Combine this with a few run-downs and one bad decision and I was out of there after a few hours. Got some of my buy-in back when I returned home and logged onto Full Tilt, so that made me feel a bit better!

Tonight, is one of the highlights of my active social schedule (BWAHAAHAA!). Tonight is the anniversary party for a local sushi place we've frequented for the past 11 years. We try to hit this up each year and every year it's a blast! All the food you can eat, plus a drink coupon for two beverages of choice (unfiltered sake!!), although the staff always gives us more than that :). The entertainment for the evening usually features a local taiko drumming team, a local rock band and, of course, karaoke! That's right folks! This could be your chance to see your friendly neighborhood ursine belting out a drunken version of "My Way" on your local YouTube! Stay tuned!

Sunday will probably be an R & R day. I may be in channel for FPS, if I've recovered from the hangover I no doubt will get :D. Movie night may also happen, but I may table that until next week for Watchmen.

All told, I'm just glad I can be festive for this weekend! So far this year has been a real stinker, punctuated by only a few highlights, like FC. I definitely need some more positive things to look forward to!

Woke up at about 6:45 this morning.  When I went to let the dogs out I looked outside the window to see a winter wonderland!

My house is at about 1000 ft elevation on the western slope of the Sierras.  Low snowline is typically a bit above 3000 ft.  While it's not unheard of to snow here, getting any significant snowfall is pretty uncommon. 

I'll try to get some vid up later on my YouTube and link it to this post when I get back from work tonight.

It's Tuesday morning and almost time for this bear to head out and get smacked around repeatedly by the reality two-by-four. Just wanted to share some thoughts about the con before the Insurance Express heads out.

Last year I went to FC on a test-drive basis for one day. I was brand spankin' new into furry and I had to make sure I really wanted to be part of it. Obviously I was intrigued enough to want to return, but I was also prepared for a bit of a letdown from my initial experience. Coupled with the fact that I had to cancel my lodging reservations because I knew my trip would be interrupted by personal obligations, I really didn't know how the Commute-O-Con would work out in the end.

I shouldn't have worried!

I had more fun in the two days I was there than anyone should be allowed to have in a month! I met some new people, shot some video, hit up a few parties, attended FNL, and even found myself at the final table of the Hold Em tournament! I had so much fun that it made the late night and early morning drives back home on Friday and Sunday go by really quick.

I do have some regrets though. The first being that I wasn't able to attend the con start to finish. I'll do everything I can next year to avoid the problems I ran into this year. There were also a number of people I wanted to meet that I knew were in attendance, but just never ran into. I'm looking at you, t_h_squirrel , wolfgrowl  and kuddlepup !  Hope you three had a great con as well.  Perhaps we'll hook up next year?

I'll try to post a more-detailed trip report later tonight.  Time to run now!