eHarmony Date #8

I went out last night with eHarmony date #8. It's hard to believe that he's only the eighth guy I've dated from that site. It seems like there have been more. Maybe I haven't cataloged them properly!

We met for sushi and he looked basically like his picture. He was late due to ungodly traffic last night (it took me 30 minutes to get to Encino!), but he called to let me know beforehand that he was stuck and I had a book with me, so I didn't mind.

Basics: He seems pretty nice and we never ran out of stuff to talk about. He's from New Jersey originally so he is on the sarcastic side, which he had warned me about beforehand. I had a really good time and I think one of the highlights of the evening was our Yankees discussion.

Somehow we got on the topic of baseball and he mentioned that he's a big Yankees fan. I scrunched up my nose and said, "Ew, I hate the Yankees!" He was like, "WHAT?! Maybe we should end this date right now! Do you follow baseball?" I said, "No I don't, but I follow it enough to know that I hate the Yankees!"

I hated to break the news to him, but I said, "Dude, EVERYONE except Yankees fans hates the Yankees!" He tried to deny it, but I said, "Really? How much money ya got?" He decided we'd do a token bet and we each put up a dollar. The bet was that we'd ask 10 people and give them the option of (a) love 'em, (b) hate 'em, or (c) don't care.

Results? 40% of people polled hate the Yankees! He wanted to find SOMEONE, ANY-one who liked the Yankees so we polled a few more people passing by our table about it and finally found one who did say that the Yankees are in his top 10 favorite baseball teams. So, I revised my statement to: "80% of people polled who had an opinion, HATE the Yankees!" And I put his dollar in my purse.

He asked me out for our second date before we even left the restaurant. He's into golf and I told him I like the driving range, so we're going to do that. He said that he'd call me sometime after Thanksgiving to set-up plans for the weekend and I strongly suggested that he not wait that long because the weekends get booked up quickly! He took the advice and emailed me today to set-up the date. So, we'll try one more and see if there's a spark. I wouldn't have said "yes" to a second date if I thought there was no hope for a spark, so the next date will be the tell-tale one.

Freezepop Concert

The Freezepop concert last night was pretty good. Much better than I was expecting, but not as good as Chris thought they'd be. He said the sound was messed up. But according to Liz Enthusiasm, she said that this was the best LA show they've had because the sound has been F-ed up at other shows.

The surprise highlight of the show was Ming & Ping! The music was interesting and good. I kept LAUGHING though because there was a guy dancer on stage with him who was dressed up in an organ grinder monkey outfit!! It was pretty funny!

OH! I almost forgot... I was talking with the Duke after the show and he said that they have a song on this new game that just got released for the iPod called Phase. So, all you iPod users, check it out!! It's supposed to be like Frequency or Amplitude, but not quite as difficult!

After the show, the band was downstairs signing CDs, so I had them sign the newest one that has "Less Talk More Rokk" on it! Here are some pictures! I love the Duke's shirt!!

Liz Enthusiasm and me

Me and the other Sean Drinkwater

Me and the Duke

Christmas Shopping

It's now November. Usually by now I've purchased at least a few Christmas gifts. I hadn't made any progress, but last weekend I bought my first official Christmas gift! I need to start making progress, like now!!

Here's a not-so-shocking confession: I have too much stuff. I have too many cookbooks, too many books, too much clothes/shoes, and in general just too much stuff. I need to spend some time purging it bit by bit.

Therefore, anyone who is interested in doing the "no-buy" agreement for Christmas, please let me know! I'm perfectly happy to have our gifts to each other be to spend time together, which is much more valuable to me than anything material.

That being said, I'm going to start making my Christmas list and budget today. Which means, I will start buying stuff soon. This is a friendly reminder to those of us out there with Amazon wish lists, please take a few (or several) minutes and update them!! Delete items you've received (maybe for your birthday in June!) and add other things that have popped up on your radar since then. Even more importantly, please double check the priority of the gifts. Is the thing you added to your list five years ago STILL the "highest" priority? Take the time and review it!

Who's on the list? How much to budget? I have lots of friends and clearly, I can't go around spending $50 on each of them, as much as I'd love to! I have to pare down the list. Most likely, besides my family and a couple co-workers, I'm only buying gifts for friends I see on a very regular basis... And then pick a reasonable amount for each of them. I hate picking an "amount" because I love finding the perfect gift and thinking "THAT'S the gift for ________!" Sometimes it might be $10 or $30.

What are you planning on doing for gifts this year? How much do you plan on spending?

Vacation Time

I was working on updating and reconciling the vacation time for all the employees at work and reviewed my own account.

I have been on vacation for 33 days this year (so far!), with another 3 days scheduled off for BGG.CON. Plus, I'll get another week off between Christmas and New Year's because my company is shut down. We have the option of using vacation time to cover two of those days, but I probably won't. I have been off of work for almost two months this year and that's not including holidays.

WOW! And of those days, 20 were paid, so that means, by the end of the year, I'll have 18 days off without pay. I didn't realize it was so high. That's almost a month's worth! I knew I had taken a lot of days off, but putting a number on it like that was shocking!

The breakdown: I earn 10 hours a month of vacation (three weeks a year) and I started the year with about 9 days of vacation. So, I still actually have a day or two on the books. But I think I better save them up because I'm already starting to plan the trips I want to take next year!! I might have to consider taking less vacation time though... or not. Life is for living, right?

Domestic Gaming Goodness

I spent most of this evening doing six loads of laundry, catching up on my overflowing TiVo and discussing Thanksgiving with Chris. Meanwhile, he cut and started sleeving Agricola. The reason? So we can play it this Saturday at So-Cal Games Day! There are 360 cards and we finished about half of them. He did most of the work, but I helped by cutting a chunk of them at the end. He took home the rest to finish them up by Saturday. It's taking a TON of time!! I'm going to be very picky about who I let play my game. Even better, Chris and I have an Agricola wager. We'll have to wait til the end of the day Saturday to see who wins!

Also, my original plan for Wednesday night was to go to the Guitar Hero Bar, but once I was told Freezepop ("Less Talk, More Rokk" anybody??) is playing Wednesday night at the Key Club, I rescheduled and made plans for that instead! I wonder if they'll be any good in person! We'll find out!

Weekend Recap

Friday started out with a Guitar Hero par-tay that rocked all night. Saturday brought us yummy carnitas tacos and lots of fun conversations. I also went to Best Buy to return the extra copy of Guitar Hero III that I had pre-ordered. It didn't show up until October 31st!!! It should've been here Monday, but UPS sucks.

I went to see Before the Devil Knows You're Dead with some friends last night at the Encino Town Center. OMG, there were so many OLD people at that theater! It was weird! The movie itself was pretty good. Slow paced, but intense. And, Marisa Tomei is smokin' hot. Geez. How old is she? (IMDB says she's almost 43!! WOW!) She has the body of a 20-something year old!

Then we went to the Maui Sugar Mill Shack and again, it was filled with old people! There was a decent band playing though so we had fun watching them. Then we stayed up way too late talking. I don't think I got to bed before 5 AM all weekend long!

Today was filled with shopping with Nikki. I got a SUPER cute dress from Banana Republic for about $15. It's awesome. I can't wait to wear it! I also got a bunch of other stuff. It's really been a while since I've gone clothes shopping. I need to do that more often. But before I do that, I need to clear out some space in my closet. I have perfectly good clothes that I just never wear. I need to just purge all that stuff.

I didn't get some stuff done (like LAUNDRY) that was on the original plan, but I will do that tomorrow night. I also need to sleeve Agricola with the English translations of all the cards. That should pretty much take up all of Monday evening. For a pretty busy weekend, it was actually relaxing and fun.

Coming up this week: laundry, hiking, GH bar, and two dates! One with an eHarmony guy and the other with #5.

Guitar Hero Achievements

I had a Guitar Hero party last night and we rocked the house!! Til 4:30 AM! My downstairs neighbor loooooves me! I did warn him though. What else can I do? I did also turn it down after midnight.

Luckily, Pearl had never played so she watched all the tutorials for me, scoring one of the achievements. We scored some of the others too like the 500 note streak! I'll post a link to my progress later.

Guitar Hero III: Online!

On Wednesday, I decided to try playing Guitar Hero III online. Since I was playing online, I hooked up the headset to my guitar. I played a quick match, but I couldn't hear anything through the headset and since I've never played any console video game online, I wasn't sure if it was even working or I had it hooked up correctly. So, after I beat the first person (on hard, I should've gone to expert), I created a match and hosted it. When it got to song selection, I was talking to Chris and we decided I should try "Evenflow" since we haven't unlocked that one yet and thus, haven't had a chance to play it.

I played that on expert and I ended up losing by about 7K points, which isn't much. So I say to Chris, "Hey, not too bad considering I've never played it before." All of a sudden, in my earpiece I hear, "You've never played that song before?" The other guy could hear me talking the whole time!! It was pretty funny!

I also played a couple matches on Thursday and got friended by a couple guys. Soon I'll have a whole Guitar Hero gang online! The online play is so cool. I love it because it gives me the chance to play against people that can beat me by double my score, which is a great challenge. I love it!! I seriously could hang out in my apartment for the next month straight busy with all the Guitar Hero, reading, cooking, TV, movies and oh yeah, board games.

I was joking with Chris the other night and told him, "Any hope I had of finding a boyfriend who doesn't already live in my apartment has just flown out the window!" because the online play is that cool!!

Evan's Homemade Costume 2007

I am sure all of you remember Evan's costume from last Halloween... how could you not? It was an awesome homemade Lego-Man!!

Whenever I have kids, I want to make homemade costumes for them. I think that would be so much fun! And way better than some canned costume from Target!! I know I'll never be as handy as my sister is, but you have to admire the handiwork!!

As you know, I am a big fan of food (hence all the photos of what I've eaten or cooked!), but really it's a family thing. We all love food! Including my 7 year old nephew who apparently has watched one episode too many of Rachel Ray's show and goes around asking if we're going to use EVOO (extra-virgin olive oil for those non-foodie types out there). He's not your "normal" 7 year old in some respects. So, they started doing research on what food costume ideas they could use for Halloween and narrowed it down to a California roll or the winning costume...

I present to you, my nephew Evan, the Lipton tea bag. Yes, you read correctly...



Oh, isn't that adorable!?!

NaBloPoMo 2007

I tried this last year and it didn't work so well, but that isn't stopping me from trying it again this year! It should be easier now that I have web access on my cell phone! That way, when I'm out of town for BGG.CON, I can still post!

The way I see it, between my new Xbox, a new GH, Rock Band coming out later this month, dating, cooking, and catching up on posting about Essen/Europe, I should have PLENTY to write about. Now let's just see if I can be remotely disciplined about it!