I'm outta here!

I'm outta here and on my way to Vegas!! Whew. This is awesome. I'm finally finished catching up from all the hard drive crash stuff and February financial results are finished. I can go into my birthday weekend worry-free!

How conscious is attraction?

I looked across a table and met his gaze. Something about the quiet, yet intense way he looked at me made me curious about him and made me long for him. But what? We'd hardly exchanged 10 words with each other and yet, there it was. Attraction. At least from my end. How does that work? How can you look at someone and be attracted to them while hardly exchanging a word? Granted, that attraction may diminish the second they open their mouths, but it's there.

It's like your unconscious takes over and starts analyzing the person based solely on what the eye can see and that's where the sorting begins. Your brain starts trying to categorize the person based on all its experience and viola! Attraction...

Based on these assumptions, I'd like to lodge a complaint. A complaint against myself. Specifically, against my Brain. If attraction truly does stem from the Brain, then Brain, listen up! Could you please stop being so annoying and try to be a little practical? Quit being so unconscious and try to think about it just a bit before you start sending dopamine everywhere. I understand that I make it difficult when I hug someone who makes you feel like nothing in the world could possibly go wrong for those few seconds, but be strong! Don't waste the dopamine!

And please stop making me feel attracted to guys who:

• Don't want kids. Just stop it! I had to consciously override you already by divorcing my husband. If I was OK with not having kids, I would've stuck with the perfectly good man I already had!
  
  
• Are atheist/agnostic. Why is believing in God so hard to find? It seems tougher in L.A., but maybe it's my sample size. I promise to do my part by branching out more.
  
  

Thanks. If you can't help, then I promise to start doing more conscious filtration of the attraction. Maybe between the two of us, we'll be OK.

BGG.CON 2007

The registration opened today for BGG.CON 2007. I'm signed up and ready to go! I booked my hotel room, so now I just need a plane ticket! The emails are flying fast and furiously! I can't wait!!

*doing a little happy dance in my chair*

My birthday plans are shaping up!

My birthday is rapidly approaching and plans have been made! I'm going to Vegas with a few friends and we're going to see O at the Bellagio. Tickets were expensive, but I'm so tired of doing the whole "the tickets are too expensive, maybe next time we'll see a show..." thing. That can just go on and on. You know what? The next time has come and we're seeing a show!

I'm really looking forward to it! It's been ages since I've seen a Cirque show. Also, I picked out a restaurant for dinner too. We're going to Rosemary's Restaurant which has a top rating by Zagat, so hopefully it's good!

Posting will resume shortly

I've been having a rough week this past week and I've been wanting to post, but I haven't had much free time. I have a bunch of half-written posts. We'll see if I can clean any of them up to post this weekend.

My work problem has me working more than I think I ever have! Basically, we lost our hard drive that stores all our manufacturing/production/accounting data. We back-up everyday, but apparently something happened so that none of our back-ups were readable. So, our last good back-up was from 12/21/06. I've been a data entry fiend, just reentering everything again. I worked last Saturday and I'm scheduled to work this Saturday again. I've been coming in early and staying late. Whew! But I've still managed to get in lots of socializing! Who needs sleep? Bah!

Tonight is my first "night off" in 13 days. My plan? To watch Seven Up! and 7 Plus Seven and eat dinner at home for once this week! I have been declared the "most boring Netflix friend on the planet" by Shane because I've had that movie at home since October 2006. Yes, I know it's a waste of money. I am determined to watch it and send it on its merry way tomorrow morning. And then I'm not going to let the next one sit so long. If I do, I'm going to cancel my account.

Starting on Monday, I have two solid weeks of plans topped off by a birthday trip to Vegas! When am I going to get my laundry done? I better do some tonight! And looking ahead, I see I have almost every weekend day in April booked up too. Having lots of friends is awesome, but man, they keep me busy!!

Goin' back to Cali...

I'm sitting here at work on a Saturday (BOO!) and doing data entry (double BOOOOO!). It's terribly boring, so I've been taking little breaks to do this or that. I'm listening to the radio and "Goin' Back to Cali" by LL Cool J just came on. Why do I love this song so much? I don't even really care about the words, I just love the way it sounds! It makes me want to move! I actually just got up and danced around for a minute. There, I guess now I can get back to entering data.

I have a date tonight

Or at least I think I do! We've played phone tag all week long and through the messages, we've managed to piece together this much: we're supposed to meet tonight sometime around 7 PM. Where? I'm not sure just yet. For what? Not sure about that either. I'm fine with just meeting for a drink or dinner. I guess I'll find out if he calls me back. The last message was from me to him today and I gave him my cell phone number so he could call me and we could firm up the plans. We'll see how it goes!

Update: Details have been firmed up. We're meeting for Colombian food at a place I read about last weekend. We'll see how it goes!

After date update: The date went well. He looked just like his picture and was a nice guy. I wouldn't say there was any kind of strong chemistry, but he certainly didn't make me want to not go out with him again, so we agreed to set up a future date, but it's probably going to be at least a couple weeks away due to our busy lives. Perfect for me though since I'll be pretty busy over the next couple weeks anyway!

Guitar Hero Bar

Last week, I had two friends email me within five minutes of each other to let me know about a bar in Silverlake that features a Guitar Hero night every Wednesday at 10 PM. Do they know me or what?

Of course, I had to go check it out ASAP, which was tonight! Here's how it works. You buy a beer (no hard alcohol available), then get signed up on the blackboard they keep behind the bar to get a turn up on stage to rock out. The tricky part once you get up there is that you have to watch the notes on the opposite side of the screen from where you're standing on stage.

The guy that runs the bar and the two barbacks all took turns up on stage and it was great! They are the three bears of GH greatness... One wasn't that good (but had good stage presence), one was medium/hard good, and one just rocked the house on expert every time!

Travis and I played a few times... the first one was co-op "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'" by the Rolling Stones on expert. Then we played Freezepop's "Less Talk More Rokk" on hard, but in hyperspeed mode (code at the main menu: OBOYOBOY). Our final song was an expert pro face-off of "Sweet Child O'Mine" and I kicked his ass. I think it was the long streak that did him in. I nailed the first part of the song. It was awesome! There was one other girl that was really good and I would've loved to face-off with her. By the time I saw her play, it was crowded and the waiting list was long. If I see her there again, I'm going to throw down the ax!

This all took place at a non-signaged bar:
Hyperion Ave Tavern
1941 Hyperion Ave.
Los Angeles, CA

The pros: It has Guitar Hero! Cheap drinks ($4 beers, $2 non-alcoholic beverages), friendly crowd
The cons: No hard alcohol, it gets crowded around 11 PM.

I'm going to post a MyPC event and see if they'll open early for us!


Eugene and Erin rocking out!



Here is the kick ass bartender Eric who is playing with his homemade controller! It has extra fret dividers on the neck and when you press the string to the fret thing, it closes the circuit and makes the button activate. The strum bar barely sticks out past the strings, so you need a pick to strum this guitar. It's awesome!



Here are a couple of pictures of Grant's homemade wireless controller:







Here's a picture of Eric's more decorated homemade Guitar Hero controller and me using Grant's!!





Update 6/7/07
I went to the GH bar last night and saw Grant. He and Eric are thinking about starting to take orders for the converted guitar controllers. I told him that I'd put an order in. He said that he's not sure how much he'd charge. I told him to make sure he charges enough to cover his costs and make some money at it. It takes a couple weeks to make one. For materials, he has to buy a controller which costs $50 and then the guitar, which probably costs a bunch too. Adding in labor, etc. and the whole thing could get pretty pricy. Buying one would probably be worth it for me. Even if I knew how to do it step-by-step, I'd never actually do it.

If you're interested in finding out more about ordering one, leave a comment!

Order from Amazon?

I want to order a book to try some more freezer meals, but it's less than $25. Anyone else need/want anything from Amazon? Ideally, I'd like to place the order on Wednesday morning. Leave a comment or email me directly if you'd like to order something.

Disk Doctors to the rescue!

Our sick hard drive was diagnosed as recoverable. But it's going to be pri-cey! But we gotta have it, so what are we going to do?

The current plan is this... I leave work at 7 AM (thank God for books on CD!) and drive down to LAX to pick up the disk drive and a copy of it and a CD of the data and drive it back to work where I will get to follow instructions given by a computer techie person over the phone on how to install this insanely important drive into the computer. Great. No pressure, right?

Although I am not really looking forward to that, I am mildly relieved that they are sure they can recover the data. I'll be greatly relieved when I actually see that data on our system and live. For someone who can be wildly optimistic, I'm reserving that judgement until I see proof with my own two eyes.

If the disk had not been recoverable, I would've only had to reenter everything we've done for the last two months!!!! So, I'm saying prayers that everything will indeed be fine.

Computers rule the world

Or at least mine, especially while I'm at work. There's nothing like a failed hard drive to turn your world upside down.

So instead of sipping drinks at a bar with some friends, I might be cruising down to the OC to pick up our sick drive to get it looked at by some Disk Doctors this weekend.

Please, please, please let the drive work once the technician tries it at home.

*fingers crossed*

I'm feeling better! But what about my soapdish?

So I'm finally starting to feel better. I took yesterday as a sick day and slept in until 12:30 PM!! I never do that!! I guess I really needed some rest!

I wanted to post more about my cons, but then realized that probably there really isn't much more to say that would be terribly interesting to non-gamers. :-) So I won't bore you with details. Suffice to say that I had a marvelous time, met lots of great people and I'm already planning my next few trips that will revolve around gaming. Yes, I have a problem!

But on the upside, I'm making more and more friends across the US and I'm very happy about that! I'll be able to know someone anywhere I go!!

But, I'm worried about my soapdish... I accidentally left it in Denver and now it's being held hostage!! I received these pictures in the mail today! My soapdish is being tortured!!

Keep that match away from him!

Not the acetone!

Oh no!!