Umbral Echoes Blog

Warning: gamer post ahead.  Feel free to ignore this if you’re not into RPGs. Continue reading

It’s been a busy few days.  Last week we went to Kirstie’s grandmother’s funeral, which was sad.  But it was also a really well-done service; the preacher asked the family some questions about Lois’s life and got some stories to use during the service.  Kirstie’s grandfather was very strong throughout it all — it seemed like he knew she was in a better place, and he was actually sort of happy about that.
Continue reading

Went to see The Bourne Ultimatum last night with Grem and Missy, courtesy of Sam who is the manager at the Phipp’s Plaza AMC. It’s always awesome to have a friend that can get you free movie passes. The theater was sold to capacity, and unfortunately we had to sit in the 2nd to front row, over to the right. Not the greatest viewing angle. This will come back in a few moments. Also, the air conditioning was broken. So imagine, if you will, a theater with every seat filled, feeling like a sauna, and trying to watch a screen from a viewpoint that causes it to appear distorted.

The movie started off pretty strong. Cool action, lots of spy stuff. Some cool fighing. Reminiscent of the other Bourne movies, but done even better in my opinion. Well, after the first few scenes, I started getting nauseas. I soon realized why (in addition to the vantage point and heat): the camerawork.

I think they were going for the gritty, in-the-middle-of-the-action feeling with the shaky camera, panning around and zooming in and out randomly. After just a few minutes, I figured out their secret: they found an epileptic monkey, strapped a camera to its right hand, and had trained it follow the action. The one thing they didn’t account for is that the epileptic monkey was also a compulsive masturbator. Because seriously, I swear this movie was filmed by an epileptic, masturbating monkey with a camera strapped to its hand.

Needless to say, I spent much of the movie with my eyes closed to avoid losing my dinner. But the movie was good. I think.

First of all, an apology for dropping off the face of the earth.  Explanation forthcoming.

Last weekend there was a White Wolf cookout, which ended up as a party at Mike Tinney’s house.  Well, some of us got there early, and there was a set of boxing gloves… so we decided to punch each other while we waited for Mike to arrive and let us in.  The only issue was that there were 2 boxing gloves, not 4.  So one person got to be a righty, and one person a lefty.  So I fought some with The Swede, being nice and giving him the right glove.  It was fun times… well except when he decided to punch me several times as we were breaking up from a clench and my guard was down.

Cary’s welcoming party was the next day,  and more people showed up to that than I expected.  That’s the thing with my friends down here — instead of saying they’ll come and not showing up, they say they probably can’t make it, and then do come.  We had some drinks, hung out, and watched Borat.  Which, for anyone who still hasn’t seen it, is incredibly awesome.

Then on… Wednesday, I think it was (I’ve lost track of days), at work we did a database merger for which we’ve been preparing for about 7 months.  This involved staying at work until 11:30pm, coming home only to work more until 2:30am, catching a few hours of sleep, then going in to work on it some more the next morning.  And a few days of publishers being like, “OMGWTF?!?!  Things have changed!  Change is BAD!!!”  With a few refreshing instances of, “You guys are doing great — this has gone more smoothly than I expected it would.”

Okay, after various delays, the party for Cary has been rescheduled to this Saturday.  All are invited to attend; it is tentatively planned to start in the late afternoon, around 4pm.  I’m getting some feedback from friends as to whether that works for them or not, and if there are changes, I’ll edit this post.

Google recently revamped the interface for their Google Docs tool. For those not in the know, it’s sort of like a lite online version of MS Word and Excel. It also has ultra-keen collaboration features that let you work on things with other people, or just let other people view your stuff. It tracks changes, so if someone screws something up, you can always go undo it, etc. Anyway, the new interface is quite slick — makes it much easier to organize stuff. I’ve been playing with it for the past 10 minutes or so. No, it doesn’t take much to amuse me. Just something involving computers. Or boobs.

Kirstie and I are heading to Louisville a bit ahead of schedule, due to her grandmother’s worse-than-expected health. We’ll be leaving tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully arriving in Nashville at a time appropriate to visit Jared and Niquie. I have a 350+ page document that I’m reviewing, which I’m already most of the way through, and hope to finish on the trip up.

And just when I’ve mostly recovered from my dad’s visit and the plague taking me out of commission at work, now I get to go on another hiatus. Then when I’m done catching up with that, it’ll be time for GenCon. Then when I’m done catching up with that, it’ll be time for DragonCon. Whee!

Good news!  Today I can actually walk around and sit at the computer for a few hours at a time.  Went to the doctor this morning, and apparently I have not only the flu, but also gastritis (an inflammation of the stomach lining).  The second part of which meant that drinking all that orange juice for the vitamin C wasn’t so great of an idea — citrus is a no-no.

I’m feeling better though, and that’s the important part.  Trying to catch up a bit on work, since there is a hugetastic final database merge coming up soon (like, in a couple of days).  Gastritis can lead to ulcers though, so I’m trying very hard not to stress about that.

Lungs closing in…  light getting dimmer.  Kirstie playing WoW in the other room, and not able to hear my cries for help.  Outlook: bleak.

Seriously though, I think I’ve got bronchitis.  Most of the symptoms went away other than the cough, and I’m fairly sure I got it from my dad.  He is a heavy smoker, and got bronchitis once years ago, and I’m pretty sure he’s had it since then but just calls his cough “smoker’s cough.”  His doctor told him the only way to really get rid of it was to stop smoking for a few weeks, so the cilia in his lungs would grow back and actually bring up the infected gunk.  Needless to say, that wasn’t going to happen.  So after playing tour of Atlanta and chauffeur for dad for 5 days or so, I’m left with this.  I’ll probably go to the doctor on Monday (assuming I don’t feel back to 100% by then), and no doubt get prescribed some antibiotics.

I’ll have something interesting to post once I’m feeling better, I promise.  A rant, even.

…is being bored.  Sure, the splitting headache, stomach ache, hot and cold flashes, and general fatigue and aching all suck.  But what’s worse is that I have to sit in bed, doing nothing other than play around on the laptop from time to time, as the other symptoms will allow.

In other news, Cary is going to be in the ATL on Monday!  I plan to throw a welcoming party for him on Friday (not today (he’s not here today (how do you like those multiple parentheticals, hmm?)), but a week from today) here at the house.  So if any of you reading this can make it, then come on down!

While my dad was visiting this past week, I showed him around the city a bit — took him to the Aquarium, to a few of the malls, and we even visited the UPS corporate headquarters in Sandy Springs.   I apparently used to live just down the road from it; who knew?  That was an… interesting experience.  My dad wanted to just drive there and walk in, to have a look around.  My response was along the lines of, “…Can we do that?  I don’t think we can.  In fact, I’m pretty sure of it.”  “Danny said we could just go to the front gate and I could show my ID, and they’d let me in.”  “With no appointment or anything?  Well… okay.”  (I apologize to the grammar-conscious out there, for not separating all of those quotes into different paragraphs; I thought it best to save precious screen real estate.)

Predictably, that didn’t work out as well as dad hoped.  Surprisingly though, we did get in.  All the men there were in 3-piece suits, all the women in similarly dressy outfits.  I was wearing khaki pants and a business-casual polo, and my dad was wearing… a t-shirt and shorts.  We got many an odd look; in fact, I’d say that a lot of the people there were outright fearful, looking at us as if we were random hobos who wandered in, or perhaps terrorists.  This was reinforced when my dad took a picture of the building from the cafeteria area, and I swear not 30 seconds later, the head of security was walking up to us asking us who we were and what we were doing there.  After a brief explanation, he let us know that normally pictures aren’t allowed, but that since my dad was an employee he’d allow it.  He suggested we have a look at the 3rd and 5th floors, then left us on our merry way.  No doubt to go watch us on security cameras like a hawk.   The rest of the visit was uneventful, though there was a nice open-air garden area on the 5th floor.

I really should update this thing more often.  I’ll blame sickness this time.  But soon, I shall have an interesting post about absinthe for you.

Oh yes, also: Kirstie and I will be visiting home starting Thursday, July 19th through that weekend.  Hide your alcohol and your daughters, Louisville.

Last weekend my friend Clark was getting married in Terre Haute, IN.  For those of you not familiar with Indiana, the things to do include:

1. Grow corn.
2. Watch corn grow.
3. Play basketball.
4. Smoke pot.

The boy really needs to move to Atlanta.  Anyway, the drive up started at 5:30am, which would have been worse had I actually driven any of it myself.  Instead, I got to sleep.

The bachelor party, due to general lack of funds and disease-free or attractive (either one or the other would have sufficed) strippers in Terre Haute, mainly involved drinking, and setting things on fire.  Specifically, a couch.  With gasoline.  And fireworks.

Continue reading