Hoppy Nude Jeer!

Well, welcome to 2006. Having fun yet?

Actually, 2005 was one of the best years of my whole life, if not *the* best so far. Everything got less complicated and pretty much fell into place, and things got pretty darn good. I finally got to a point where I can say "I'm happy with life."

Of course, that probably means that for 2006 I'll wind up making it all complicated again and sorely challenging my happiness. But then, that's what artist types do, you see. We're never completely happy being happy, we always have to go for that next level up. We can't just do one cool painting and then stop, we have to go to the next painting. We get antsy if we're not working on something new and interesting. Unfortunately that means we're constantly stirring stuff up in our lives and causing friction and frustration for ourselves and anyone close to us. You know, throwing a monkey wrench into our own works.

It's just what we do.

So, sorry to anyone who checked here looking for phonecam posts, I was pretty busy most of the time I was away, and even worse, up in Maine my phone was on roaming (they changed the network coverage, bleah) so it would have cost at least 50 cents a minute to send posts. I did fully intend to do some phone blogging but I did a lot of running around, to wit:

Fri 12/23: At airport 7:40 (via cab, after ride home from TGF - thanks hunny :*), flight 9:55, late departure, bumpy ride, not much sleep. Sigh.

Sat 12/24: Arrive EWR 6:00 AM, picked up by Dad. Home to Dad's place, immediate sleep until 2 PM, hang out with family, videogames with my brother Matt until 1AM.

Sun 12/25: Slept til 1PM, off to Aunt Marion's 4ish, xmas dinner with most of family (cousin & his family upstate), home 11ish, to sleep right away for...

Mon 12/26: ... awake 6:30AM, to rental car place about 8ish, 10 hour rainy/snowy drive to Maine.

Tue 12/27: Probably could have blogged as I pretty much did nothing, waiting for Maine friends to get in touch with me, and was rather annoyed that they didn't. Then again, you wouldn't have wanted to read my utter grumpiness. Even TGF couldn't cheer me up.

Wed 12/28: Friends finally contacted me, had to go hunt down others, late night hangout once finally located.

Thu 12/29: Massive hangover, more hanging out, played Risk, not up so late this time.

Fri 12/30: Up at 6AM again for drive back to NJ. This time no weather, drive 8.5 hours (normal), hang out with Sideshow Steve late.

Sat 12/31: Back to Dad's, family hangout, Sideshow's gig for NYE, out til 4AM of course. Disco Fries, yay!

Sun 1/1: Late sleeping, to airport at 5:30PM, flight 7:30, very late departure, arrive LAX about on time somehow at 11PM, TGF pickup, home, to sleep 1AM.

And then to work yesterday at the usual time. We didn't get Monday off like the rest of the world because we got all of last week off - which was completely unexpected and in fact highly unusual in the game biz. Most game companies work crazy hours, and when there's a milestone due it doesn't matter what holiday is coming up. We gotta hit the milestone even if it means everyone's here 24/7 for a month and our Xmas dinner is a plate of turkey sammiches from Koo Koo Roo. So having the whole week off was a rather nice gift from the company, which I would have to attribute to some luck in the way our schedules changed, and some good management, too.

So anyway, I'm still a bit jet-lagged and groggy today, and yes of course I'm beginning to come down with a cold now. Wonderful, just wonderful. I'm afraid 2006 is getting off to a bit of a rough start. Hopefully I can nip this in the bud with Zicam and a ton of vitamin C, or the next 3-5 days will see me at just about my most miserable. There is nothing worse than a head cold to me. I have lousy sinuses and when they are stuffed I just want to lie on my back and NyQuil myself into a coma, rather than be awake and experience a sensation equivalent to having fast-dry concrete power-injected up my nostrils, hardening into a massive and expanding ball of skull-shattering pain. I really hope I can avoid that, yes really I do. :
I should have just gone right to the Zicam as soon as I got home, because the whole time I was on the East Coast I was surrounded by smokers, constantly smoking their cigarettes. Dad smokes, Mom smokes, most of my friends in NJ smoke, the bars are all full of smoke... I washed all my dirty clothes about 2 hours before we left for the airport to come home, but when I got home and unpacked, they all still smelled like cigarette smoke. It just got into everything. My suitcase reeks of it, I'm gonna need to Febreze the hell out of it.

And of course, cold and flu viruses just looove to hitch a ride on smoke particles. In a bar full of people smoking, you are inhaling all sorts of nasty bugs just itching to get into your lungs; this is a common way such things spread. Smoking if you have a cold is kind of anti-social then, isn't it? Bastidges. Figures I'd get bit that way.

Seriously, I just don't get why anyone smokes cigarettes anymore. We all know it's lethal, regardless of the virus-spreading. I mean, I probably wouldn't mind, and it probably wouldn't be bad for people, if folks just had one or two cigs every once in a while. But almost everyone I know who smokes does a pack a day or more.

Here in California I'm hardly ever subjected to cigarette smoke, because in most public places (including bars and clubs) you can't smoke, and anyway it seems like smokers are a small minority compared to elsewhere. I couldn't get away from it back east, it was everywhere. Really a massive difference. I guess that's just one more thing I'm happy to have left behind.

OK, OK, yeah I'm ranting and blathering. I'll stop. I don't have much else to write about at the moment, anyway. Oh, I put up a few pix from the trip on my Flickr page; I really like the one of Machias Bay that I shot from Rick's parents's new place down the 'Port.

Back to work...