Posts tagged wassy
Merry Christmas Eve!
Dec 24th
Ahhh…finally. It’s Christmas Eve and my vacation has begun. I won’t be back to work (unless something explodes) until January 4th, so needless to say yesterday time was standing still. But it’s finally arrived. Vacation. Wooo!
The next several days are going to be consumed with family type stuff. I’m going over to my parents today for out main Christmas celebration as well as the (semi) gathering for my mom’s side of the family, then back there tomorrow more for hanging out purposes. Then I’m headed off to my aunts house for the gathering for my dad’s side of the family on Saturday.
Today’s going to feel looooong as well, because Wassy should be finishing up the Christmas-themed Frost piece at some point which I will be unable to see until this evening when I return home from my parents house. She did the inks last night and it’s turning out amazing, so I can’t wait to see colors.
But al that must wait until later, I’m off to get ready to visit my parents. To all 4 of you who read this, I hope you have a happy holiday.
Weekend Before Christmas
Dec 21st
Time to report on my doings over the weekend.
My Christmas shopping is now completed. I took Friday off from work and this ended up being a good decision since I needed to venture out to the stores to finish off my shopping stuff. But it is now completed and ready for our family gathering on Thursday (we do present stuff on Christmas Eve now since my sister is busy pretty much all day christmas)
Friday evening was quite a fun experience in City of Heroes. I joined up with Wassy and some of the folks that inhabit the Fan Art section of the City of Heroes forums for an evening of hanging out and chatting. It was really fun. Great conversation with everybody and I hope I get the chance to do that again at some point in the future. I was a bit apprehensive about fitting in since I’m more an outsider to that particular group of people but it was a really fun experience.
Speaking of art, Wassy has been working on the Christmas themed Frost piece for me over the past couple days. I’ve been trying to be good about not looking because I want to be surprised, but she gave me a peek yesterday and her current progress is extremely promising. I can’t want to see the final version. My levels of anticipation for this gift are high. I’m looking forward to it as much, if not even more than spending time with my family this week. I really, really appreciate it when she takes time out of her (now incredibly busy) schedule to do something for me.
Onwards to my other activities. I actually finished working on a web site design! After floundering around a months after finishing Wassy’s site, I was able to actually put another one through to completion, which was a website to host the City of Heroes Fan Art Forum art competition that she’s hosting next year. I need to have it done by January, so it’s a good thing I got it all set now. Eddy Swan (from the art forum, we’ve been chatting since we played the game together on friday night) helped out a bunch with a logo concept which was a big part of what the design was missing.
So now, to start working through the longest three days of work of the year before my huge vacation begins…
Lots Of Waiting
Dec 7th
There’s lots of waiting going down this month.
First, I’m waiting for next weekend because of Dexter, the second to last episode of the season having aired last night. And what a season it has been. I’m going to continue my policy of no spoilers, but lets just say that unless they totally screw this up, this is going to be my favorite season of Dexter ever. They’re handling things so well, from the twists and turns to Dexter’s character development. And John Lithgow better win SOMETHING for his performance.
The second thing I’m waiting for is this Friday I get a bonus in my paycheck (that ends up being about 1% of my pay. Long story short, we’re getting back 4% of the 10% of our hours we lost earlier this year, but they budgeted 5% and instead of giving us 5% of our hours, we get 4% and a 1 time payout for the remaining 1%. Gotta be some sort of tax reason) and I desperately need a new office chair, as I believe I have mentioned before. So I’m curious as to how much I’ll have to work with on my chair hunt.
I’ve put the desk plans on hold for a while, by the way. I’m hoping I’ll stumble across something that will work out in the meantime.
In other news, Wassy was working on a model sheet for one of her City of Heroes (well, City of Villains, but it’s really the same game) this weekend applying her new skillz from this semester to her comic book style linework. Seeing how that turned out is going to make waiting (patiently) for the christmas-inspired Frost piece she had mentioned that much harder. Quite looking forward to that.
All that’s in addition to waiting for the end of the month with Christmas and New Years, spending some time with my family and a long (and needed) vacation from work at the end of the year.
So needless to say…there’s a lot of waiting going on. And it’s making time slow to a crawl.
Latest Goings On
Dec 2nd
I figured I’d split this post out from the desk post as the desk one was more focused and this is going to be a rather random, general overview of what’s going on.
So lets see here. School…I spent some time over my vacation working on my final project for Digital Typography. I got it most of the way done, but I need to do some more tweaking and proofreading to make sure everything is all set. I also have 2 images I need to add that I somehow forgot to spec out when I was doing all the measuring stuff. I’ll probably get around to doing that tonight.
Speaking of school, I can’t remember if I mentioned registering for next semester’s courses, but I’m going to be taking a photoshop class which has the potential to be really, really boring. At least the first bit is, considering I generally know the basics of Photoshop so it’s not exactly going to be anything ground breaking to start. Could get interesting towards the end though.
After that I’m not sure what I’m going to be doing. There’s a digital photography course that tends to run when I can take it but, as I mentioned earlier all of the core graphic design courses (the one’s I’m really interested in) only run during the day, when I’m at work. And I’m not in a position where I can really reduce my hours or quit my job or whatever to go after that realistically. So I’m not really sure what to do from this point onward…
On the brighter side of things, Wassy mentioned last night about having an idea for a new piece of Frost artwork (a christmas-y themed piece, which would fit the character perfectly) once she gets some time which I’m quite excited about. She’s really improved her abilities over the course of this semester, so I’m looking forward to seeing what she can do with the character now. Added to the fact that I love getting new gift arts and it’s a definite “win” situation.
I’m also simultaneously looking forward to and saddened by the return of the TV show Dollhouse this week. Happy to see it come back because I enjoy it (and Summer Glau is joining the cast) but saddened because it’s being canceled. It’s not a great show, and not up to the standards of , say, Firefly…but it was solid and had so much potential which seemed to be tossed away. I blame the network for imposing a bunch of 1 off stand alone episodes when the series screamed for a story arc and the creators of the show for continuing that line of thinking into season 2. Hopefully it ends well, considering they were given enough notice to wrap things up nicely. And hopefully some of the actors (especially the guy that played Victor) get work elsewhere. Because there was a lot of really great talent there.
[Plinky] Memories And Music
Aug 19th
What three songs remind you of a specific time in your life?
Amazon is being fruity right now, so I’ll put the pictures in later. But here’s the answer
The New Math by OSI
This OSI album will forever remind me of Scuba Diving. That’s a little odd considering the fact that the album doesn’t have the slightest thing to do with scuba diving. But I was taking a scuba course at the local college when it came out and I remember sitting in my car listening to it, waiting for class time.
This song reminds me of a fish purchasing trip with my friend Wassy. I had just gotten Fear of a Blank Planet (the album this song is on) and was playing it in the car while we were driving around. Later she said “That music you were listening to sounded really cool. What was that?”
That sent her on a musical journey into Progressive Rock and Metal and all of my favorite bands, which was cool because finally I had somebody to talk to about this stuff and go to concerts with.
Fatal Tragedy by Dream Theater
Speaking of musical journeys…this song was my introduction to Dream Theater and Progressive Metal. I heard it as a random pick on the old internet radio station Echo. Echo was a station that learned your musical preferences and played songs you might like along those lines…one of the first ones that did that. It also randomly played a song that was outside your likes and dislikes occasionally, to potentially broaden your horizons.
Well, the random pick was Dream Theater and I really enjoyed it a lot. It took a year or two for me to really check it out further. But once I did, I got Scenes From a Memory and I was hooked. My journey into Prog Rock began.
Progressive Nation 2009
Aug 5th
Progressive Nation 2009 was VERY awesome. As I mentioned before Wassy and I went off to Albany to catch one of our most anticipated concerts of the year. The bands were Scale the Summit, Bigelf, Zappa Plays Zappa and, of course, Dream Theater.
We left for Albany around 3:30 and aside from one small hitch (some local construction had closed one of the lanes of a 2 lane road for 2 freaking miles why the paved it. Totally unnecessary…) we arrived at the parking garage on schedule. We grabbed some sandwiches and headed over to the venue a few blocks away.
Wassy grabbed a ridiculously overpriced t-shirt (seriously…$40 for very thin shirt?? Add $5 if you're XXL) and we settled in for the show.
First up was Scale The Summit which I liked well enough. They were a pretty dorky looking band, honestly. One of the guitarists wore his guitar so high it looked like a necklace. They had good music but it was a little same-y for doing a setlist like that. There's definitely instrumental bands that I like better. After they had their set, we decided to go see what beers they had on tap. They happened to have newcastle which was one of the ones we like (we're kinda picky about beer) and so off we went.
Bigelf started soon after we got back to our seats and man, they blew me away. I liked their studio CD but seeing them live really made the whole thing "click" for me. Very high energy show and their main vocalists is…scary looking. Complete with top hat and a coat with a long beard. I am definitely going to have to pick up more of their stuff.
Zappa Plays Zappa…eh. I had high hopes for this band as it's the sort of music I might enjoy. And sure enough the first couple songs were really good. But then it got…weird. Too weird for me. I need a little song structure in my songs. So instead I spent an hour and 15 minutes being bored.
However, about halfway through the ZPZ set, two obviously huge older Zappa fans came and sat in front of us in matching tshirts and one pair of binoculars. It should be noted at this point that we were sitting in the 9th row. Binoculars at this point seem a bit unnecessary. But use them they did. In fact they sometimes fought over them so they could watch the individual fingerings of the flute/sax player I guess. Anyway, despite being huge zappa fans and practically bouncing up and down through the entire set, they got up and left before ZPZ was finished. They confused the crap out of me…but it gave me something to watch.
After Zappa Plays Zappa, the main wait for DT arrived and, man was it worth it. They have a totally badass way of opening the show this year. Their stage setup is also really cool with a new upgraded video show and some neat stuff that Jordan does with a HDTV behind his setup that has a computer animation of him playing that's synced with the song as he's playing it.
The setlist was A Nightmare to Remember, A Rite Of Passage, Hollow Years, Erotomania, Voices, Prophets of War, The Count of Tuscany and with an encore of Metropolis pt 1. Pretty much the perfect setlist.
Wassy and I were praying that we were going to get Voices this time as it's one of our favorite Dream Theater songs and we thought we'd get it in Washington DC last year, but ended up not getting it. So the moment the first note of Erotomania was played, we went kinda crazy. My throat hurts this morning… But it was so worth it. Voices! It still feels a little like maybe I imagined it. Those were all the songs that I was expecting to hear and even the extended soloing bits in Metropolis pt 1 were pretty cool. Sometimes they can go on too long, but the band was interacting and having a lot of fun which kept things interesting.
James LaBrie was good last night, but I've heard him better. I've also heard him much worse. He hit all the right notes but had a little trouble in Metropolis which is a hard song to sing at the end of the night anyway. He was totally on in the showmanship department. Interacting with the crowd…lots of energy and it looks like he's in better physical shape than he has been in the past few tours too. I was particularly impressed by Jordan and John Petrucci during the introduction to Hollow Years where they had a really neat extended introduction solo that was just the right mix of technical and melodic stuff.
I'd put this as one of the best DT shows that I've gone to (this is my 8th DT show). I do enjoy going to concerts with Wassy as it seems like she has some sort of concert karma that makes the show extra awesome. And going with a friend who's as into it as you are is much more fun than going alone.
After the show got done, a quick walk back over to the parking garage and an easy drive out completed the evening. We ended up making an emergency stop at a McDonalds in Herkimer since we were both pretty hungry after the show and couldn't find anything good on the thruway.
All in all, a very enjoyable evening and well deserving of the anticipation
Long Weekend Wrapup
Feb 17th
Here in the US, Monday was president's day which means that some people have a 3 day weekend. And this year for some strange reason, I was one of those people. We usually don't get president's day off (at least I can't ever remember us getting it off) so I was a bit surprised when they came up with the holiday list this year.
So my 3 day weekend started by going out to the movies with my friends. We went off to see Coraline in 3D and it was very good. Excellent visual style, engaging story and very nice use of the 3D factor. There were no old people talking like the last couple movies which was a very, very good change of pace. And it was a nice non-thinking type movie after having the brain work overtime while watching Revolutionary Road and The Reader. Highly recommended.
I also received an omelet lesson on how to make them all fluffy and good. So that should help my breakfast for dinner aspirations.
Sunday was a half relaxing half working day where I did my chores and a little bit of C++ programming and then I did some relaxing City of Heroes playing. I also spent a good portion of the day watching episodes of Firefly on DVD. Wassy mentioned Sci-fi had Serenity on the other day which made me want to watch Firefly and Serenity again. Which I did.
Monday was intended to be a programming day but instead of working on C++ stuff like I had intended, I ended up spending a good portion of the day (while watching firefly) moving Wassy's website from one host to another. It took about 2 hours longer than I expected it to take, but it ended up all going smoothly in the end. After that I was pretty much programmed out, so I just relaxed for the rest of the evening.
Hoping I can get through another chapter in my C++ book this week and maybe get started on a small little project with practical applications.
Wow…
Dec 20th
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.
Movies And Art
Dec 11th
I was over at my friends apartment last night for our weekly mid-week gathering. Most of the evening was taken up by the watching of The Dark Knight that just came out on DVD. I still can't believe how awesome it is, especially Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker. Every single time I watch the movie I see something new in his performance that I didn't notice before. Truly, he stole the film and I really hope that he wins an Oscar for his performance. It was a supporting character role, but I really don't think there was anyone else who has even come close to his performance.
While we were watching the movie, Wassy was working on some drawing. Specifically a piece for me that I had requested about 4-5 months (I think) ago after she had described the pose to me. It's a pin-up (of the not safe for work variety, although there's nothing really TOO naughty being shown, part of the reason why it's so awesome) piece featuring one of my villains from City of Villains. Dark Frost, specifically. She's the one waving sitting on the wall in my last piece of artwork.
I had told her I didn't want to see it until it was totally finished, but she was over there drawing it and making comments about how good it was turning out so I broke down and looked. I'm extremely excited about it now. Well…I we excited before but now I'm even more excited. She gets the whole pin-up thing very well. VERY well. I can't wait for this one to be finished. The pencils she got done last night were awesome and I've been glancing at them whenever I can. Just has to hold me over for a few more weeks…
We also attempted to play Through The Fire And Flames on Guitar Hero 3 after not having played it for months. That didn't end well. Not well at all. Such a hard song to play, and we were way out of practice. Epic fail!
Roller Coaster Concert Ride
Dec 8th
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.
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