Caught In The Whirlwind
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Snowy Weekend
01247 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
This weekend was, on a whole…very good. And very snowy. We had two winter storms roll through the area this weekend. The first started on friday and made my drive home from work a little bit interesting. But it was made up for it later by the unveiling of my newest piece of artwork done by my friend (Wassy). I should get the print either end of this week or, more likely, beginning of next week and I really can't wait to see how that turned out. One of the coolest parts of it is that it's a digitally colored piece that doesn't have that overly digital look to it, and that usually translates really well when it gets printed. Really looking forward to seeing it, and I'm very thankful that she did it for me.
Saturday was going to be the day I went out to my friends for our regular weekend get-together deal but it ended up not happening so I spent the day basically screwing around. I'm nearing the end of my first playthrough of Chrono Trigger and I'm really enjoying it so far. I do think I will purchase it from gamefly so that I can keep my saved games for future playthroughs. There was also much gazing at the new art hotness through the day.
Sunday was snowstorm number 2. The plan was for me to head out for some hanging out with my friends in the afternoon once the worst of the storm had dumped it's stuff but due to some windshield wiper car related troubles they were having, I went out around 10 to help them fix the issue and provide some transportation for the purchasing of a new windshield wiper. That was kinda in the middle of the storm, but my Rogue handled the snow well (really, really like all wheel drive and traction control. Oh, and anti-lock breaks. How did I survive without you??) and I managed to get there with a delay of about 10-15 minutes.
After doing the shopping, the rest of the day was spent just hanging out. We watched some stuff on TV, I played a game of chess with Jay, had some spaghetti with a meat sauce… We also marveled at the total lack of quality of the people trying to clear snow from the parking lot. The worst bit was when they plowed half a sidewalk and left the gigantic pile of snow in the middle of it, blocking the rest of it. It was just a very good, very classic hanging out with your friends sort of day which is always welcome.
So all in all, on the weekend quality meter, I'd score this one as "very good"
Wow…
01250 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I mentioned a few days ago that Wassy was working on a piece of artwork for me. Well…it's finished.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece is a pin-up piece of my main city of heroes villainess. It is a bit risque. Tasteful, but risque. It's pretty tame as far as these things go, with nothing really showing (lots of stuff almost showing, but nothing really showing. Probably the most revealing part is she's wearing a thong to give you an idea). However, artistically done as it is, I would apply the label NOT SAFE FOR WORK to it. So if that kind of thing bugs you, I would recommend not viewing the piece.
With that said…the piece is here (EXTRA NOT SAFE FOR WORK WARNING). I really, really love it. The subject is one of my villains from City of Heroes (well, City of Villains more accurately). Wassy had come up with a really awesome idea for a pose and I agreed (after a little persuasion) to let her do the piece. A couple months later when she got to it (she was VERY busy for a while there)…it was just totally worth the wait.
I especially love her face, in particular her eyes. They're very intense. Along with the stray strands of hair And also the coloring job she did on her skin. It's absolutely perfect. Everything is so soft and sensual. She really nailed the feel that I was hoping the piece would have.
As she was doing the coloring she was making comments about how good it was turning out, and even then..this just exceeded my expectations. This week had been kinda long and dragging quite a bit towards the end, for a lot of different reasons, but seeing the finished piece made it all worthwhile.
The Weekend. A Retrospective
01254 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Another weekend, another huge retrospective post! Although as far as activities this weekend was a little slim on those. Just a lot of relaxing stuff going on.
Friday was the day that would never end. I had been looking forward to doing some old fashioned hanging out with my friends pretty much all week which was causing time to slow down to a crawl. But once 5 hit, it was all good. My dad came over to play some Madden 08 on the Wii, as we've started to do the weekly football games again. This week was a repeat of the last week because the game froze just as I was saving our progress when we got done. The highlight was probably the first play of the game where the first thing the commentator said about my dad's team was "They're in field goal range!" It seems he didn't have too much confidence in my dad's ability to score on that drive (and he didn't score actually)
Saturday was the hanging out day with my friends. I went over there with my Xbox 360 and Rock Band and we were just going to hang out and have a good time. Which we did. Rock Band was sorta spoiled by a crappy song selection by the game, but in the future we're just going to pick songs and not worry about the career mode.It was fun for a while but probably better off just going through the song list. We watched some Justice League Unlimited which was really fun (except for a couple episodes) and then saw the Dawn of the Dead remake which was really good and caused me to be afraid to sleep. Was just classic hanging out stuff that was very relaxing and fun.
Sunday was the usual get out and take care of all of my errands for the week, laundry and grocery shopping. After that I played some Synergy with Jay (basically lets us do a co-operative play through of Half Life 2) and got a little cleaning stuff done in the living room, trying to make it not look so much like something exploded in there. I tried to do the dishes, but realized I was out of dish soap and had forgotten to pick some up. Dah!
All in all, a really nice weekend. Ahhh, needed that relaxation after the alternating stress and awesomeness of the last weekend with the TSO concert.
Roller Coaster Concert Ride
01261 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
If you may recall, my last blog post mentioned the fact that Wassy and I were going to attempt to head out to Albany to catch a TSO concert on Sunday, but we were worried about a stomach bug that was going around. As it turns out, we were both fine to go to the show.
Then we (I) was worried about the weather as we were supposed to get some really nasty winter weather about when we were going to be driving out. So we ended up leaving at 11am (for a 3pm show, 1.5 hour drive in good weather giving us plenty of buffer time). The plan was to go eat lunch at place that we ate at before when we went to see Dream Theater in Albany (Jackbit and Joltz, an "australian" sandwich place), then head to the show, then to Chili's afterwords.
The title of this post contains the words roller coaster because that's exactly what yesterday was. The drive up was nice…no weather problems at all. We got to Jackbit and Joltz to find they had closed, but we weren't too worried about that as we has 2.5 hours thereabouts to find somewhere to eat. We ended up chosing a KFC that was of questionable quality (especially their Dr. Pepper), but at that point it was just adding to the experience.
We had an awful lot of time before the show, so we headed out to Crossgates Mall to wander a bit. Wassy stopped by the Apple store and played around with the new multi-touch touchpads on the MacBook Pros in Photoshop CS4. She was sufficiently wowed by it. It did look really neat. We also discovered that there's an IMAX theater in albany. Which made us wonder why we drive to Rochester for our IMAX movies (it takes about twice as long to get there than it does to get to Albany).
After wandering for a while, we headed back out to the show where we hit a really huge snag in the form of INSANE traffic. I-787 was a parking lot so we ducked out at an exit and tried to navigate the streets of Albany to get to the parking garage. This was extremely slow going. Tensions and frustrations were rising and it was starting to look like we wouldn't be able to make the show in time. I eventually navigated down some side streets with the use of the GPS to attempt to circumvent most of the gridlock and we ended up in sight of the venue just before 3pm, still stuck in traffic. I told Wassy that she should hop out and head in because it might be a while before I find a parking spot and she hadn't seen the show before, so she went in and I was left to get to the garage. we were there late enough where I had to park on the garage roof.
By the time I got there it was after 3pm. I didn't want to wait for the elevator down so I sprinted down 6 flights of stairs and all the way across the parking lot building and the length of the times union center to where I could get in. As it turned out there were having some issues with one of the lighting pieces and that delayed the start of the show, so we were able to catch the whole thing. After the horribleness that was the ride in, the show was totally awesome.
I've said before, and I'll say it again. If you have not gone to see TSO, you need to go. Because nobody does a show like these guys. Case in point:
See?? Wassy took some very aweome pictures during the show so that's where all these images are coming from. As per usual, the lighting was set up on movable trusses that reconfigured themselves as the show went along depending on the song. They added a lot more uses of laser and pyro through the entire show and it was really nice. The new string master (female violinist, first name is Anna…but I'm blanking on her last name) was running around the stage and really getting into it and rocking out. At points she slid across the floor on her knees and bent over backwards to play on her back, and one time she took center stage and bent over backwards while still playing. She's very very nimble.
The first half of the show was the normal Christmas Eve and Other Stories set, which is enjoyable enough. It kinda lulls in the middle due to the presence, chiefly, of the song Old City Bar. it grinds the momentum of the show to a halt. We were in the PERFECT seats for First Snow. We It was "snowing" all around us and the lasers flashing off the falling snow was awesome.
The second half of the show was much more high energy and they threw in a lot of songs that they don't normally do which is nice for people who have gone to the show year in and year out. I really prefer the second half of the show to the first every year and this year was no exception. The new songs from Night Castle were good too, and I'm looking forward to that album. 2009 is looking to be a good year for music.
Before I get off the topic of the show, I just wanted to add this final picture from the grand finale. THIS is how you end a show:
Now for the down slide of the roller coaster. The show ran late, due to the lighting issue, so as we were leaving the, next show people were coming in, which caused havoc with the parking garage. We got back to the car just in time to have everything stop moving. Since we were at the top of the parking garage, we basically had to wait for everyone else to get out before we could even start moving. I suspect there was some sort of gridlock situation that was encountered as well because nothing moved on the roof for at least an hour after the show. Eventually we decided to leave the car parked and see if we could find someplace to eat while we waited for the congestion to work out. We wandered around for about 30-40 minutes and couldn't find anything that was either open or any good. so we went back to the car to determine that nothing had moved . Period. Half hour of nothing moving at all. It was…horrible. Eventually they started directing traffic to get people out but it was about 2 hours after the show ended before we finally made it to Chili's.
This part of the roller coaster ride was where it finally started to go up again. We had a really nice dinner and Wassy really enjoyed her margaritas. Not so good waitress, but we got our food and it was good. The car ride home was fun as well except for the part where we got stuck behind a snow plow for about 4 miles. But after all the stop and go traffic of the day, I was happy to just be moving.
So overall not the major relaxing day that we had both hoped we'd have, but the concert was awesome, the stuff before and after was good. The traffic kinda canceled it all out though. Next year: Going to a show in a city that isn't playing 2 shows in 1 day. Going to a show with a parking lot instead of a parking garage. Not going to the Times Union Center again.
Looooooong….Weeeeeeek….
01265 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
This week has been mostly boring so far, so I haven't been posting much. Been trying to scrape together stuff to talk about. It's basically just a long slog between Thanksgiving and the Trans Siberian Orchestra concert coming up on Sunday.
However, there's a couple things worth mentioning. I recieved Chrono Trigger DS through Gamefly on Monday which I've been playing. It's one of those classic games that I never got around to playing so I'm enjoying going through it for the first time. It's very neat. About 6 hours in at the moment and I don't think I've ever played anything quite like it before.
Speaking of TSO, my friend Jay has gotten sick with a stomach bug and Wassy is doing everything she can to pevent herself from getting it…because doing so will seriously endanger the trip out to albany for the concert Sunday. So far so good I think, but I don't want to say anything else for fear of jinxing it. (EDIT: It seems she is sick this morning 
)
Which leads me to the reason why she stopped by here briefly last night for a cup of green tea. She had been tormenting me with the thought of a little gift that she had gotten me for a couple days and I was originally going to go over to their place to hang out on Wednesday, but since Jay got sick I wanted to stay away just in case. So she dropped by last night to give my my gift, which was a little penguin soap dispenser that's very cool and cute…although I feel a little bad shoving the spout into it's brain to get at the soapy goodness inside. It goes perfect in my penguin themed bathroom. Very very nice.
So that's the week so far…couple more days of boring to go.
Weekendy Goodness
01275 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
It's Monday. So…aside from being back at work, it means it's time for the update on my weekend activities.
Friday evening I found myself over at my parents house where they had invited me over to watch a movie (I Am Legend specifically). Lured by the promise of real, old fashioned popped popcorn, I headed over. After sufficiently tiring out the dog, we started working on the popcorn popping process. Which was…quite an ordeal. I was reading off the instructions on the popcorn, and my mom and dad both had different ways in which they popped popcorn on the stove. Somehow we managed to combine all of these separate methods into something that worked. One quick note about the popcorn: the buttery flavored oil had no actual butter in it. Scary.
I thought the movie was good, but my parents seemed to not enjoy it as much. I didn't think it was awesome, but it was a good mindless sort of fun type movie. I did determine where my lack of bravery comes from as I witnessed my mom nearly covering her eyes at some points and hugging the dog. This proves that the ability to tolerate scary movies is genetic.
Saturday I went over to my friends, Rock Band in tow, as has become the ritual. Wassy had to do some work, so I played a game of Chess with Jay (well…several games of chess…I had forgotten to turn off the 10 minute per game timer so he ended up losing 2 times in a row before I figured it out). It was an…interesting experience. It seems that Jay has a habit of scheming out loud.
Him: How much do you value your knight?
Me: Very much thank you. I have two of them.
Him: Or do you…?
Me: Yes I do!!! They're both right there on the board!!
And so on. This is the first time we've played when we're in the same room, so I didn't know about this before. It seems he does it all the time. From that moment onward "Or do you…?" or variations of that became the catch phrase of the day. Especially during our scrabble game later in the evening. Speaking of scrabble, we watched the Word Wars documentary (about world champion competitive scrabble) using Netflix while we were hanging out during the afternoon. It was good but the people they chose to focus on were some of the biggest losers and jerks on the planet…There was nobody sympathetic, except for one of the guy's parents who said when asked how he was doing during a scrabble tournament: "I'm kicking ass!"
Sunday was my day of cleaning. Since I finished Fallout 3 on Friday, I have to wait for Gamefly to send me a new game which probably won't actually arrive until after Thanksgiving due to how the mail is this week. So I've decided to spend some time doing a really exhaustive cleaning of my apartment. I got my bedroom mostly cleaned up yesterday and did a lot of living room organizing in the evening. I picked up wall-e on DVD and was watching the commentary while cleaning up my living room.
I also attempted a new dish for dinner. Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo to be specific about it. Making everything from scratch including the sauce. It ended up being pretty good, but I need to adjust a few things with the sauce. I let it thicken a bit too much and I need to add a little more cheese to my next attempt (a side effect of the thickening…didn't want to add too much cheese or it would have been WAY too thick). But there will be a next attempt…oh yes…
This week is going to be a long short week. Short because of having only 2 days of work this week. Long because that's followed by 5 days off, Thanksgiving with the family being one of the days. This week is going to be…very strange.
I Need Roadies
01282 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
It's that time again…time to catch up on what was going on with me this weekend.
Saturday was the usual hanging out with the friends day. I went out to their place, bringing Rock Band and my 360 along so that our band, The Awesome Sauces could go on tour again. I really need to get some road crew members to pack and unpack this stuff. But it's very fun playing, so I don't mind transporting the setup around. We played some Rock Band, obviously, watched some TV and generally hung out and had a very fun time doing so. And also got to have some homemade pumpkin bread that Wassy made up which was very awesome. (And it's even better the next day with tea)
Moving into Sunday I was determined to get some cleaning done around the house. My bedroom had again fallen into a total wasteland of stuff everywhere so I was determined to spend an hour or two and get as much cleaned up as I could. I ended up getting about 1/3rd of it taken care of. And I also finally went through my closet and dumped a bunch of old stuff that I hadn't taken out of there since I took it out of the moving box and put it in the closet 3 years ago. I went through a box of old computer games and programs, most of them DOS games or games that won't run on today's version of windows. I dumped pretty much everything except for 4. Then I went through the top of my closet and took out/organized a lot of my old computer crap that I thought I would use but never did. I have a lot of new found storage space now, which is desperately needed.
Spoooooooky Weekend
01296 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
This weekend was quite fun with lots of friend based activities happening.
Friday we (we being Wassy and Jay) went out to a local haunted house (semi local, about an hour away), which turned out to be quite fun. They have multiple attractions there and we decided to do two of them. Intensity and Creepy Cabins. Intensity was the scarier of the two. It was totally dark inside with a couple actors wandering around and whispering creepy things and growling and such. It was set up like a maze as well so it was easy to get separated. Very fun. Creepy Cabins was more traditional-haunted house-y. More creepy than scary, which I guess was part of the name. But overall it was a fun evening. After that we went back to their place and hung out for a bit. I also discovered the joy that is Jelly Belly Jelly Beans. And the horrible goodness of a movie that is The Toxic Avenger. It was on just as I was leaving their place and I caught it on Netflix instant watching when I got home. Best…B Movie…EVER.
Saturday, I headed back over there for some Rock Band and other general hanging out stuff. We ended up starting a band called The Awesome Sauces. I created a glammed out rocker named Biff as the lead guitarist. Wassy made a anorexic drummer chick that looked like she was about to snap in half. Jay made Gus…the lead vocalist/sideshow freak. He looks like a wolf man in a orange and green suit with pinstriped pants. We played for an awful long time and it was very fun. Rock Band is very awesome and I'm glad I got it. I can see myself bringing my 360 over there quite often for a while.
Dinner for the night was Pot Roast, which I've never had before ever, to my knowledge anyway. I thought it was quite good and was pretty much the exact opposite of all of my experiences involving non-ground-beef. Very soft and mouth melty.
Sunday was the traditional lazy day, so not much to talk about. I played a lot of Fallout 3 for the XBox 360 which I'm really enjoying more than I thought I might. The first person-ness of it is more manageable than I was thinking at first. Really fun game with a good sense of humor. I'm glad I got it through gamefly.
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I Made Food For Somebody Else…
01300 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
..and they lived! So far anyway. Hopefully they stay living.
Wassy came over last night and instead of going out I wanted to cook something in-house so I made baked Sea Scallops which turned out really well, with only a few minor issues. The scallops turned out really well, but the microwaveable rice ended up being slightly undercooked. Figures that the actual cooking bit would turn out ok and the easy part would get screwed up.
After that there was much rocking as we played Rock Band 2 for a while and hung out in general. Rock Band 2 is a really fun game to play with other people around, and it's definitely worth the investment that it took to get in the door.
Speaking of investments in games though, due to the price of the latest Xbox 360 type games, I'm trying out gamefly. It's basically netflix for video games, but not quite as good. But it's better than paying full price for a game you might play once. And the price is set up so that..basically, if I manage to play more than 1 game every three months, it'll pay for itself in savings since a 360 game is about $60 and the 1 game at a time thing is around $15/month + tax (2 is $22ish). So we'll see how this goes. My first game should be arriving either today or tomorrow hopefully, which is Fallout 3.
I finished Tales of Vesperia on Tuesday, although there's still a lot of the game I didn't get to do. I'll go back later once the walkthroughs are more solid so I can find all of the hidden items and such. There isn't really a great guide out for it yet since it's so new. But I managed to complete the game without looking at a guide except in trying to find certain locations on the world map. I have a terrible direction sense and I get frustrated if I can't find where I'm supposed to be going next. But other than that, walkthrough free! And it was an excellent game. Similar to other Tales games in it's game mechanics, but that's what you get into the series for. You know what you're getting when you buy one. The story did a very good job of keeping me interested and guessing as to what would happen next.
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Four Day Weekends Are Win
01303 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Well, I've been pretty silent over the past 4 days because I kinda took a little break from everything. This weekend was intended to be a period of recharging and it worked out quite nicely.
The main event was friday and Saturday where my friends and I had planned an overnight stay sort of hanging out type thing. I was to bring my 360 and Rock Band 2 along with Mario Kart for the Wii and some slasher type movies to fit in with the time of year (along with a turkey dinner and some pumpkin spice beer which turned out to be an excellent combination). Also a lot of candy corn and root beer floats to round out the excessive amounts of sugar.
The event turned out very well. The Rock Band-ing took main stage and we spent an awful lot of time just having fun playing with that. I ended up mostly playing guitar, Wassy handled the drums and Jay did a lot of the vocals although we switched up a bit so everybody did something at least once. By far the highlight of the night was when Jay did the vocals to the Beastie Boy's "So What'cha Want?" as if he was a shakespearian actor rapping. It was so hard to keep playing and at the end of the song I was rolling on the floor laughing. We had to call an intermission so that we could all stop laughing.
Wassy and I also spent a lot of time playing the two Dream Theater tracks. By the end of Saturday, we must have played Constant Motion and Panic Attack at least 10-11 times each. It's nice to see a band like Dream Theater in one of these games.
As far as the movies go, it was my first time seeing Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. I think out of the 3, I enjoyed Scream the most because it kept me guessing more than the others as to what would happen. But they were all good movies, especially for watching this time of year with all the Halloween stuff going on. We had intended to head out to a haunted house as well, but we got rained out (the place is mostly outdoors). We're going to attempt to go friday this week instead. So far the weather is looking much better for that. I've never been one for scary things (too chicken) but my friends are slowly turning me around on that.
Sunday was just a lot of hanging around and relaxing for me. So not much to say there. It was just a really nice and relaxing weekend, and I'm very sad that it's monday now
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