I think that's the title to a Namie song and while not entirely accurate, it just rolls right onto the subject line.

I'm tired, at least. We went to bed late Thursday and got up early Friday to greet our apartment's maintenance man who put a latch cover on our deadbolt and fixed our wash machine. Will was on 3 hours of sleep and I was on 5. Then I ran down to Woodland and Longview. I got my oil changed and picked up Corey and Collin. We went back to my apartment where Will had predictably stayed up rather than attempt to nap.

We played video games until about 8pm with one break to snag the guitar hero world tour special that gamestop has going on - giving us an additional guitar for rockband and an extra drumset & mic in case we break ours. It also gives us another game should we choose. We played a fair amount of rock band which was a lot of fun, and we even did some switching of instruments.

Alex dropped by with a friend around 8, but they couldn't make it to the rest of the planned events. We got lost on our way to Voodoo Doughnut Too thanks to stupid directions from the internet. The destination was NOT on the right and it sure as hell is not on the Burnside side of the divide, it's on Sandy.

Either way, we met up with Gary and talked for near an hour, scoped out the place, and I had my first doughnut in over seven years. After that, we piled into Gary's little VW convertible - much to Iron's sheer horror as his seatbelt didn't work well and the rest of us didn't have any - and drove all of the 2.6 miles without mishap to Clinton St. Theater.

There were some people dressed up and it was a mixed Portland crowd. There were punk and goth and geeks and old and young. There was one person clearly dressed up as Rotti Largo. We heard that there was going to be a shadow cast crew and Gary got all excited. Will ended up falling asleep in the neighboring restaurant - a charming little restaurant with a handful of items on the menu and some great music. We decided to call it on account of how tired Will was and how little sleep I had.

So I drove us back whereupon we played more games until nearly 1am. I served fruit all day and some chips and dip. Not exactly real food but we had plenty and no one complained.

Will and I went to bed closer to 3:30am, I coaxed him out of the living room such that our guests could sleep and he was trying to stay up such that his 12 midnight-8am shift that he has this evening wouldn't be an absolute nightmare for him.

...we were awoken at 8pm by Biscuit and Corey and Collin were up playing video games. They weren't being loud but they were talking and there was some punctuated laughter and excitement as they played through some old Sega Genesis classics that were ported in a bundle of several Sega games to the 360. I'm able to sleep through a decent amount so I just settled back in to nap. I kind of dozed off but around 9pm, Will started swearing and throwing pillows around and I was so startled.

Once he's up. he's up. And he's a surprisingly light sleeper. So here he is with 3 hours of sleep one night with people around all day and then drug through Portland with my usual crazy-navigation then cursing up a storm style and then back again for another 4 or so hours of sleep with work that evening.

He was mad :P He doesn't like having company under normal circumstances and with work and lack of sleep it just complicates the matter.

Within the hour I managed to round up Corey and Collin and we went to IHOP for a pleasant breakfast before I took them home. When I crept back in, Will was and still is asleep. Lucky for me.

Once again, it just strikes me how much of a hermit he is, in a sense. He doesn't mind going out for a movie or to get food that he wants or grocery shopping even. But just wandering around downtown bothers him or trips without solid plans and just vague ideas like "fun." He doesn't really like to be around a lot of people and would prefer just his own time to play what he likes when he likes.

No wonder traveling with him is such a chore.

I should mention somewhere in here that I've slept 10 hours in 48 hours when I prefer to sleep a solid 8 and I work tonight too. And I was doing all the driving. QQ, I know.

let's live it up

A year has come and gone and a few extra weeks have slipped by. We have managed to cohabitate together without killing each other or going into severe financial debt. So I figured it would be time again for the "wedding" talk.

We started with discussing the budget, and Will was none too enthused about ascribing money to such an event. He's a little frugal to begin with - with only 2 exceptions: slurpies & video games - and he's not really excited about the wedding as a whole.

Marriage? Sure.

Wedding? No way!

He confided that he doesn't like weddings. He doesn't even like parties. He doesn't like going out, he doesn't really like being around people, he would just as soon stay at home. Kind of a kill-joy, huh?

I'm not on the bandwagon of you have to put up with a wedding because that's just the way weddings are. After a good year invested into Offbeat Bride & the online community that supports it, I've adopted the exact opposite viewpoint. Weddings should be defined by the people involved.

It's also a great exercise in compromise. It involves give & take between not just the bride and groom, but also all the friends & family that support them.

So I boiled it down to three main ideas:

1) be financially responsible in our decisions, aka don't go into debt for 1 day (no matter how awesome of a day it is)

2) keep it simple (focus on what really matters, or big picture, don't get caught up in the details)

3) be representative of us (quirky and gamer, maybe a tad introverted - don't want to get lost in a white wedding because that's not us.)

Note: not saying the traditional white wedding is bad, only that it's not for us. I've had the pleasure of attending beautiful, sincere, and very appropriate "white weddings" and enjoyed myself

So, like many brides & grooms before me, I'm searching for what feels like impossible. You want something in your price range, that everyone can enjoy, that reflects you, and allows you to be the person you need to be on your wedding day. I really liked the Firstenburg community center and it's definitely still an option. We can serve our own food or call in catering. We get the outdoor patio and the indoor room. We have private bathrooms. We have the possibility of renting their game room. We have the possibility of renting additional rooms to set up games (Heeyy we now have rock band to bring, wa-hoo!).

But now our budget is a third to a fifth of what I was originally looking at, and I must compromise on what I originally had in mind. A day filled with laser tag, a rehearsal dinner with family, a relaxed afternoon ceremony and video game entertainment just might not be in the cards.

For inspiration, I've been looking at the 2000 dollar wedding. I thought the author brought up a great point when she remarked that you can view weddings 2 different ways: the "in" crowd or from the "outside". If you were a part of the wedding party you were in the "in" crowd. You went to the showers and the bachelorette/bachelor parties, rehearsal dinner, and morning brunch. If you were part of the "out" crowd, you went to the wedding and reception. Maybe a few of the parties. But not to some of the more or less exclusive events.

Do we need exclusive events? Or should we just keep the wedding pretty small to begin with?

I looked into ideas of a civil ceremony followed by laser tag. I thought about doing it at my parent's house and renting carnival games, projected video games (zomg projection DDR, yes I found it!), bounce houses, and setting it up at my parent's house. I looked into Vegas destination weddings or Seaside, Oregon.

None really struck me - the fair concept sounds fun but a little bit of work (renting chairs/tables, providing food & cleaning up - the carnvial things are set up & taken down by their staff so that's easy). Will wasn't too excited by that.

So I'm not quite sure what, just yet, we're going to do. We want to be married and I want at least our close friends and family to participate. Elopement is closer to what he wants, whereas 75 people is more what I want. We'll have to come to some sort of middle ground.

but baby I don't mean it... I mean it

Given the way that Microsoft has devised it's Xbox Arcade/Live/etc setup, I was a little bothered by the fact that we had 800 "microsoft points" remaining after our downloading of Castle Crashers (which was 1200 points, you apparently can only buy Microsoft Points in 1000 units). There are, however, some games for 800 points so we took a gander at them - most of them were things we'd emulate like Phantasy Star II.

Specifically, we were looking for more co-op games. With only Castle Crashers to rely on for co-op play, along with some situational Tales Of... Co-op opportunities, we would run out of things to do together. (Granted, he's still trying to get me to play NWN 2: Mask of the Betrayer but I haven't felt like playing it atm). I also have been against TD's and somehow his computer ate his Reign of Chaos CD-key code so he's been playing off of mine on b.net - so even if we wanted to play ships or (god forbid) try Dota (as ToB isn't often played and very rarely lasts a full game) we can't due to the cd key code mix up. It's all compounded by the fact that he doesn't have his original CD's here. They're somewhere in Hawaii still.

To return to the original line of thought, here we are searching for something to do with 800 useless points lying around. We stumbled across Magic: The Gathering. That was all sorts of nostalgia - and it was 800 credits. Well, may as well! It was co-op and we could play vs. the computer AI. The unfortunate thing is we have to play single player to unlock decks - the co-op doesn't unlock decks for us :P

It's been enjoyable but sometimes the AI is stupid. It can do some amazingly smart things, but other times it does really useless things. Like shocking a creature though unable to damage the creature significantly enough that turn to kill it, and not shocking the player when I had no means to counter it (come on, I was playing a green deck!). That red deck should have killed me. We counted out the damage. It wasted 2 shocks on creatures and I was at 4 life. Bizarre.

Then again, I know sometimes Magic players do stupid things too but... this was just magnificently stupid. I shouldn't have won that hand. The deck I can't beat right now is black. I've had very bad hands (drawing land over and over and the rack + rats seem to get me EVERY time). I've been trying to play the white deck against it and blech :P I only have red, green and white as my options and you can't mix the decks - though if I beat this black deck I think I unlock it specifically. I'm starting to memorize the cards once again.

I started this post about 3 hours ago, I'm at work and it's dreadfully busy. Gyaaa summer madness!!!

in the still of the night

2 years ago, I remember Collin and I wandering the exhibition hall at PAX and we stumbled across Castle Crashers. It might have even been three years ago. Each year we'd look for it in the released titles, each year we returned to PAX and eagerly played it again. I don't know how I missed it's release but considering that I was moving and poor, I think I have an excuse. I don't have an excuse for why it took us so long to rediscover it though - I only really think about it around PAX time.

Kyrle told me that it was a great, inexpensive purchase and had a lot of replay value. Of course, he didn't really have to tell me this, just knowing that it was out was sufficient.

We immediately had to create an xbox live account just to purchase the damn game from the arcade. Then, we played it for about 4 1/2 hours straight. It's like gauntlet done right. I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Will played for an additional 2 hours, messing with other characters. I'm pretty hilariously bad at it but I enjoy it so much it doesn't even matter. My only complaint is that I want more - funny because I've waiting this long I should be happy to get any of it. That and we have the first set of downloadable content and the second is on its way.

when I grow up

I think I had a lot of pent-up shopping energy in me because the past few days I've done a LOT of shopping. I picked up plastic storage containers for our room to aid in organization - as I've been picking it up/cleaning it. That's been a royal pain in the ass. I originally went out to buy new hangers, we ran out for all of our clothes.

I bought a new litter box because Biscuit is the messiest cat allowed to dwell solely indoors. I also bought him a toy that he's showed zero interest in. Big surprise. I picked up some spray catnip stuff. Maybe that will entice him to play with some of these toys.

I bought a white board. I also bought extra pens & cleaners for it. I bought a frame necessary to hang the Amy Brown artwork that I purchased last year for the apartment. I bought myself not one stapler, but two (we had zero). I bought new sharpies and hi-liters. I picked up a few more pairs of scissors (we've been living with one, now we have four).

I bought two new fans for Will. One has a remote control. I also bought him 2 dress shirts and 3 t-shirts. One of the t-shirts has Oscar the Grouch and printed across it, it reads: "I only wear this shirt when I'm a grouch." I bought myself 3 shirts and the Sims3. Will recently picked up Prototype. I picked up essentials like milk and yogurt, indulgences like ice cream and cottage cheese, and conveniences like extra magnets and a $1 pitcher.

I don't think I should be allowed to shop now for a very long time.

don't stop for anyone

We celebrated my birthday on Friday with my family. My mom picked me up and we went out shopping - leaving the men at home to do whatever (my dad was working, Will was sleeping). We headed off to Ikea where we bought the frame for the futon - my birthday present from my parents ^^. We also took a look at the covers but my mom, the fabric and crafty person that she is, determined they weren't the inflated prices. We went to Ross where instead we found a duvet cover in a pretty gold pattern to drape over the futon - it's a heavier fabric and matches the living room better. Besides, it was some $70 cheaper (the price of the frame!).

Other various shopping ensued and it was a lot of fun - then my dad came out and we picked up Will and went to eat at the newly opened Applebee's up here in Salmon Creek. We ate to the point of overfull (as is liable to happen at restaurants) and they came back to the apartment to chat with us for a time. My mom prefers this floor plan and we spent some time discussing our cat - who apparently is fat :O. My dad had him quite enchanted, however, as he started making duck & bird noises at him. Biscuit couldn't quite figure that one out.

My mom had other little items for me as well - a purple shirt, new socks, thank you cards, plain cards, and mini-mechanical pencils.

Saturday was a sold out day, in fact, an overbooked day. I had to walk a customer (who luckily was absolutely NO problem whatsoever). This means, because someone at the hotel fucked up and oversold us - we paid for his room at another hotel. He was the first walk I've ever had to do and he was the nicest person. Want to know the real kicker? While I didn't oversell us, I did make his reservation (I remember it too, there were only 2 rooms left for that night!). He's been staying with us now for some 5 years. Not a person we want to treat poorly. Strange thing was my brother called my cell phone while I was at work; which was amusing because I rarely get calls while at work. He wanted to wish me happy birthday, aww ^^ But I didn't get the chance to talk much :( Sold out days are BUSY!

Sunday was dreadfully slow but it did have some fast points. One in particular occurred when AVITUS called me, lol. That was crazy, and I missed a phone call trying to get off the phone with him. Otherwise it was mostly dull, but this gave me the opportunity to write - I pounded out some 3 more pages in addition to the 2 that I had labored on all the previous weekend. This meant that I had a full 5 pages to present to Gary when he walked in Sunday night. He was pretty excited. I find combat to be dreadfully difficult and detail-oriented for me, but Gary thinks I do rather well at it. Sometimes I suspect he just talks it up, but he asks so many questions and seems genuinely interested in my characters and my novice concepts of writing.

Monday, birthday day, rolls around and it starts out with the sappiest, most unromantic, but most perfect card left on my computer desk. It was completely Will and it moved me to tears - even down to the part where he was cursing that the pen was dying and the ink color changed as he had to switch pens. It came as a total surprise when my mom showed up with Corey and Will in tow - and with cupcakes. Adding to the surprise was when Anna (coworker) dropped in with a fudge cake with happy birthday written across it. :O TOTAL surprise. I need to find out when she's going to Mexico to get married, I think that might be this weekend. Doh, now to get her something! Ne?

It was so nice to have visitors at work. My mom kept trying to give cupcakes away to guests, they brought me balloons which I put on the back counter and guests kept wishing me happy birthday. My korean guest from Seattle who comes down once a month showed up and he gave me green tea and wished me happy birthday - it was so sweet. He told me he was bringing me tea but he didn't know it was my birthday. It was funny. After all that excitement, Gary also presented me with a present - Pulp Fiction. He told me awhile back that he was going to get it for me but I didn't really think much of it, lol.

So of course that evening I watched Pulp Fiction and it was pretty good. I'd like to watch it again on my own sometime where the boys are talking excitedly through some parts ;P lol. But it was still good. Today was shopping/gamestop run-around trying to get prototype and giving up and buying it at game crazy/raiding/watching Transformers. I hadn't watched the Michael Bay film yet. I'm not the biggest Transformers 80's fan but I was die-hard enough to wait until now to watch it. There were some lines ("One shall stand, one shall fall") that made me both cringe and shiver (Hugo Weaving can do that to a person). lol. Like omygod I loved that line and then omg, what did they do to my beloved childhood. It could have been much, much worse and it was good.. for what it was. I'm also glad that they gave Welker a role in the next movie. Granted, I still want(ed) him as Megatron but Soundwave is still pretty awesome.

Tomorrow: Rocky Horror Picture Show. Oh, and the first performance episode of So You Think You Can Dance! :D

Also, Will seems to be failing at consuming scientists in Prototype.

I feel like I should go and play with the thunder

Baby frogs are getting into the apartment. All doors and windows are closed.

Biscuit thinks he's died and gone to heaven.

it doesn't matter

I've had a long weekend, which is not too surprising. This is the official start of "on season" for most people in the hospitality industry and thanks to good weather and local events, it was very much "on." I spent most of my time half-babysitting, half-admonishing 7th grade boys who ran through the halls throwing ice at one another, harassing girls, prank calling from the house phone, and tossing random items into the pool.

Amidst this, we were out of towels so I was constantly folding them while parents berrated me for our incompetence to handle the bath towel situation and the fire alarm was beeping erratically as one of the two batteries needed to be replaced. The switchboard was randomly leaving message lights on for rooms. The side door wasn't permitting individuals to exit the hotel. The refreshment area was an utter disaster zone with pool water puddles and hot chocolate.

I was pretty fed up with it at the conclusion of two nights. I moodily sat on ventrilo with very little to say, attempting to decompress from miserable work conditions. I didn't have a chance to eat either day, much less sit, simply due to the activity. As there's no one to relieve me, there's no real chance for a 10 minute break - much less a half hour lunch. On the plus side, I get paid for every minute I'm here (well, up to what totals to 8 hours for the day - never more even if I do stay over and am working helping out the next shift). This is also the first year that I get holiday pay - but it's small consolation.

I think any job can be stressful. Volume of work, pressure, and not taking proper care of oneself just makes it all the more draining. I'm rapidly approaching the end of my rope here at the hotel. I really like my coworkers. I really like my managers, as people. As managers I've had better but I've also had much worse. They motivate me to keep working which is awesome and they thank me for my work. But they're not as competent as I believe they should be as acting as a buffer between their employees and our owners.

There's also been a lot of unrest given that the most recent trainee was hired at a rate higher than any of the current employees at the front desk - and we know that we're not getting raises to compensate for the difference.

It's too bad that I like this so much and get paid so little. Then again, I wonder if I'm making excuses for my growing sense of apathy. Would I really care more if I were paid more? Likely not. But at least I'd feel a little more appreciated! I'm beginning to get this very definite feeling of being used - a notion that cost Safeway my services several years ago. I don't mind making sacrifices for a team and I believe that it's necessary at times to keep business moving. But not to have any incentive to do so, or any reward, makes such acts undesirable.

I get upset at the injustice and outright illegal practices that are put into use. Not being paid for when we're here but rather a standard "8 hours" for every day you are scheduled is just the beginning. They still owe me two checks from two years ago.

On the flip side, every time I think about banging out a two week notice I just look at Ryan's box. It's filled with applications. People will gladly take my position - and at less money - and they're lining up. Jobs are not easy to come by, even crappy jobs. So I really can't be jumping until I line up a secure, better job. The other option is to suffer through it and march myself through college and then get out of this entire rut to begin with.

It's sad because hospitality is a lot of fun. And honestly, I think I'm pretty damned good at it. I could be better and I'm not perfect. But I'm pretty friendly and personable. I receive far more compliments than I do complaints. I'd make a career out of this if there were a career to be had.

Apologies about the attitude - it felt nice to rant.

I'm on a mission

I meant to do some writing today, as there's very few customers, but I somehow haven't been able to continue on it. I started half-daydreaming out some possible scenes. Unfortunately, all the Silent Mobius watching has left the scenes feeling... very dramatic and overdone. It feels quite anime-esque and that's not what I was going for. I need to finish the series and let it out of my system quickly so that way I can get back to writing.

Maybe I'll re-read my story while at the beach. The opening chapter takes place consulting the sea, actually, and the nation where most of this is based on is the kingdom by the sea.

I have a couple here who is absorbing most of my time. They're very nice and the wife talks with me a lot. Like a lot a lot. She's offering me to come visit her in Coos Bay and she'll make me sushi. And I'm thinking oh goodness, this could be a long night. They've come up for extra coffee, extra towels, had me go into the room with them as they inspected it, I turned on their AC, I gave them an extra listing for the tv, they've called me twice asking what channel things are on, they've asked me three times for food recommendations, and twice they've querried as to the breakfast hours. They also asked me where my accent is from, believing me to be from Canada. First time I've heard that one.

My favorite confused accent was when someone told me it sounded like I was from New Zealand.

I feel kind of lost. As if I'm wandering, aimless without a goal. I don't have anything that I'm really.. working on. I'm not in charge of any online community work, I don't have any real desire to play WoW of late, and there's very little that I can plan about the wedding without a date - which, btw, it appears as if my brother has determined to come stateside next year. Meaning that maybe, just maybe, we can finally do this thing.

I've kind of been picking up the house and getting it in order. I've kind of been doing PAX but at the same time there's not much to plan. I want to do a Taurus get together (zomg so many birthday, p.s. Happy Birthday Jessica!) - ironically it will likely be Gemini by the time we do get together.

I think I need to get back to school, get a career lined up, and sort through this marriage thing. Maybe even finish writing this book. They're all goals but they don't feel very real atm. It's almost like I'm living somebody else's life right now.

don't turn around

I've been rewatching the Silent Mobius TV series - and I've finally gotten to the point where I had left off before. Now it's all new. I remember really liking the movie, though it seemed compact and brief. Not many movies can compact giant manga lines into a scant few hours successfully. Hence why I was interested in seeing it displayed in 26, 25 minute chunks. It's okay, but I don't think it's going to be become much better than that. I think BGC Tokyo: 2040 gives the same feel, and does it better.

I stayed up rather late last night talking with Vana. He managed to stray upon me when I was in one of my poetic, reminiscing state where I make very little sense and write twice as much.

Poor guy.

But I had fun talking and I don't think I completely annoyed him with my babbling - it might have even become interesting at a point or two.

We discussed the weighty topics of soulmates and the harsh reality of love.

My sleep was light and restless. I'd often wake up to the cat running around. Eventually, he fell asleep by my legs and I woke up without the aid of my alarm around 2pm. It looked bright and beautiful from inside our relatively cool apartment so I donned a skirt and short sleeves. It's not super warm, but it was definitely in the low 80's. Warm enough that I'm not wearing my blazer.

The hotel is full but the group is out right now. I've been writing bits and pieces of my story in the meantime. I should probably go replace the hot water before all the kids return.

I don't hate you, boy