oddgirl’s blog

It was a fabulous weekend all around – and the Turkey Shoot, Thanksgiving and mini Pub Crawl were well chronicled by MJ. There’s even pictures of much of the weekend, including cooking with power tools. Have I mentioned my love of bacon in these missives before? If not, I’ve been remiss.

The things that are missing from the afore-mentioned chronicle include a regrettable drunk dialing episode post-Turkey Shoot (please take my phone away next year…) and heading up to the WSW after telling my pub crawl pals that I wasn’t feeling all that great and thought it would be best to head home. I did get home eventually and felt like a kid again partying all night.

Until I woke up the next day. Then I felt not young.

Additionally, there are new pictures of Cheese. This one, in particular, shows his true charms.

…can you think of a synonym for liquor that starts with an ‘f’?

The house smells wonderful – I love the smell of stock simmering in the kitchen. I’ve also got a Muscovy Duck and a Willie Bird Turkey in the ‘fridge, ready to be smoked and fried respectively. Tonight is pie dough night. I also will probably get the ingredients for the sorbet prepped. Tomorrow will be some cookin’ time. Yum.

Looking forward to seeing MJ and The Missus. Should be a nice Thanksgiving hanging out with them and chowing down. Wonder if they’ll indulge my watching of The National Dog Show (I would post a link to it, but the Flash site is too painful for me to link to…).

Halo2 is very fun. But damn it – World of Warcraft came out today. I’m going to have to make another trip to Bestbuy.

if you consider some of Popular Science’s The Worst Jobs in Science… i mean working lots of overtime and getting all the free pizza I can eat has got be better than being an anal wart researcher.

Yesterday was one of those break-through days. After hiding out for a few months and keeping to myself, I started to come back out yesterday. It was scary and good. And there were oysters, beer, new roads and all kinds of sweetness. As close to a perfect day as I’ve had in a long time.

I’m off work again this week. Drinking, cooking, hanging out with friends are on the agenda. Give a holler if you’re around…

good things that happened today:

1. I watched movies for a couple hours at work – I’m judging a movie-making contest that we had on the website and have to review all the entries by tomorrow. many of them suck, some of them are ok and a couple are really good. Regardless, it’s cool to have to this as one of my todo’s today.

2. I had a discussion with my boss that went about 10,000 times better than I had expected to go. More on that as I can talk about it publicly…

3. Found out that I’m being interviewed by MTV on Friday about my work on the game. They’re gathering more footage than they need so it’s likely I’ll end up on the cutting room floor, but cool to be asked.

4. Cheese did not scratch my face once in the night. The scars from last week are healing.

5. it’s only 4:30. the day isn’t over. it’s possible that other good things will happen later on…. in the evening perhaps…

Cheese is slowly becoming acclimated to his new world. He didn’t scratch me in my sleep last night and he let me sleep in until 7 am today! what a guy!

Thanks to all of you who have sent me links to the livejournal accounts of life at EA. (ea_spouse and joestraitiff) I’ve read them and don’t know the folks that wrote them – I’ve heard of Joe, but don’t recall meeting him. As for me, while you can look back over the last year of my blog postings and certainly see me complain about the hours I spent at work and about how much I missed living my life, these two blog entries don’t really describe my situation there. My crunch time wasn’t as extended or as awful as the ones described – and since I’m single and have no kids, working long hours just wasn’t as harsh on my life as it would be for someone with a relationship to manage and kids to care for.

Did I see some of my co-workers become justifiably more miserable as the months of required weekends dragged on? Absolutely. Did it feel wrong to regularly be able to schedule meetings for Saturdays with people? yeah – that was just wierd. But for those who know me, you got to see me more energized and more passionate about the project than I’ve ever been about anything.

I feel for the people who’s lives got completely fucked up while working at EA. I’ve met some of the smartest and most inspiring people of my tech career while at Maxis and EA and it sucks to watch the management eat them up and spit them out. In the end it will hurt EA the worst to burn out the best and brightest and watch as they leave to go work for our competitors.

I’ve been there almost 2 years. I should put this post in a time capsule and see how I feel about it after my next crunch.

<cryptic comment>
in other news, getting turned down for that date last week ended up turning out pretty well
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This is something I’d pay to see…

81 cats found, taken from house: Ex-nun, nurse said they’d hoped to find homes for them all.

Cheese, you’re gonna be an only cat… just so you know.

So far, so good with the little Cheese-monster. Well, except for the waking me up every day around 6 am by trying to crawl under the covers and claw me. That I could live without. Other than that he’s got a great attitude, is a sweet natured boy and I’ve definitely bonded with him during my time off. I can only imagine the damage he’ll do to my place when I head back to work on Monday.

If last week was the week of semi-seclusion and inactivity, this week has been the get out, see people and just generally do stuff week of vacation. I’ve seen a bunch of old friends, started making some new friends, hung out with an ex-girlfriend who I want to become friends with and an ex-girlfriend where the jury is still out on the whole friendship thing. I asked a girl out on a date and got turned down, but was generally pretty happy about even asking. I got drunk on a Wednesday night which pretty much never happens because of the whole job thing. And today I get to go see a matinee of The Incredibles, complete with Star Wars trailer, then head off to a bar to a marriage celebration for some friends.

I don’t think I could have had a better vacation. Sure, I could’ve gone pretty much anywhere in the world and done whatever I wanted, but the staying home and getting Cheese ended up being exactly what I wanted to do. I’ve had the time I needed to play, think, sleep. I’ve even been missing work the last couple days and I’m kinda looking forward to getting back into it.

As for post-election blues, I just want to say sorry, everybody. thanks for the link, kallen

And Derek is a pretty eloquent guy. And heck, he’s also just a pretty guy.

waking up to four more years of George Bush. it is overwhelmingly depressing that the politics of fear succeeded in winning this election. but worse is that Bush will likely change the face of the Supreme Court in a way that will take our country back decades in constitutional reform.

ugh. i need a drink. and it’s only 8:12 am.