I didn't get to do anything fun for Halloween last year, what with being unemployed and all, but there was a Halloween party-type thing yesterday afternoon.

I'm the dragon in this pic, by the way.

I've had this mask since last summer, but didn't have anywhere to wear it, and I still wore my glasses last year too, so I'd be even more blind than usual. I can't so much wear this costume to Blizzcon, because costumes there are pretty limited to characters from their games (and I don't really fancy the idea of trying to find my way around in the dark surrounded by thousands of strangers while wearing this peripheral-vision-killing mask and the wings that bump into all kinds of stuff. It's hard enough to breathe as it is.

But it was pretty fun to have everybody taking pictures of my awesome costume yesterday. I didn't wear it most of the day, and even during the party just for a couple of photo ops because there were cupcakes and I didn't want to miss out on them =)

I think to yesterday and I can't help but smile. Not going trick or treating tonight, but will be eating hot pot with the family, handing out gobs of chocolate to the few kids who decide to stop by our completely undecorated house, and maybe playing a little bit of Champions. Khoa's downloading it too, but it's taking so long to patch that we might not play until tomorrow.

So over the past couple of months, I've seen a trail of ants outside on the front porch. They have apparently taken up residence underneath, as I can see them crawling out of a tiny crack in the pavement. They are totally obsessed with a large potted shrub on our front porch, as I don't believe there is a single leaf on that shrub that does not have at least three ants on it. I don't know why, there aren't any other bugs they're eating, and they don't seem to be collecting any sap or anything from it -- they're just crawling all over it as if it's made of pure sugar.

But until recently, they've stayed outside. I haven't seen ants inside since I killed that colony last year.

Apparently, the summer heat is pushing them to take refuge indoors. Over the past few weeks, I have gradually seen individual ants wandering around, but I tend to ignore individual ants.

Today, there was a trail, crossing the bathroom counter, from one side to the other. Some were coming down from the window, others were coming up from that hole in the top of the sink that keeps it from overflowing if you leave the faucet on too long.

I decided it had gone too far. So since the original bottle of Terro was downstairs in the garage (to make it easier for me to poison the ants on the front porch) and mostly empty, I decided to open up the second bottle I had in the bathroom.

I took it out of the box and noted that the top of the bottle was broken -- it was missing the cap. I'm surprised it hadn't leaked all over everything. I shrugged, broke off a piece of the paper backing, and put it down next to the sink, neatly intercepting the junction where the trail from the window met up with the trail from the sink. I stood there and watched for a little while, as the ants ran into the paper in confusion, and mostly crawled around it or turned around and went back the way they came. I saw a couple of ants go exploring on top of the paper, encounter the drop of Terro, and stop cold in amazement at the most delicious thing they've ever seen in their little ant lives.

Terro is rather maliciously amusing like that -- the ants go crazy for the stuff and swarm all over it, then go back and give some of it to every other ant they see, believing it is like ambrosia from heaven in a time of dire famine. Not realizing that it spells the doom of their entire colony.

I put the bottle back below the sink and left for work. I was expecting the number of ants in the bathroom to increase dramatically over this weekend, as the ants came to gobble up more of the poison, but I was not expecting what I did find when I got home.

Khoa told me there were a TON of ants in the bathroom, and that the Terro on the slip of paper had been gone since the morning. I went upstairs to find TRAIL of ants coming down the window and straight across from one side of the counter to the other. I glanced at the paper and noted that it was empty. Opened up the cabinet and picked up the bottle of Terro, and VERY QUICKLY put it back down again, and brushed the ants off of my hand.

Yes, they are actually crawling in the little tiny hole in the top of the bottle and swarming around inside.

Hey, if they want to fight amongst themselves and drown each other in an effort to get to the poison faster, that's their deal. It just makes me cackle with malicious glee. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!

And then I went downstairs to get the other bottle of Terro, and put a few more drops next to the sink for good measure =3

Ask anybody who knows me and most likely, they'll say that I'm a fairly reserved person. At least, I'd like to think so. Certainly, I'm no introvert--but I like to keep my head down, so to speak. My philosophy in life is to have a small yet measurable net productive effect on the universe, rather than to shoot for fame and fortune. After all, the flame that burns brightest often burns fastest.

The problem however, is that most people think in extremes. The human condition does not lend itself well to the gray shades of reality. If someone proclaims, as I have, to not be an ambitious individual who constantly strives to stand out of the pack, then they would be labeled a lazy bum (or some similar sloth-like adjective). I'm sure Kiryn also knows all too well the inequities of being strung along by a label imposed by others, whilst maneuvering a step ahead from the scorn of said label's antithesis. It's half the reason why we get along so well -- plus, we're both hybrids in the game of RL.

For many years, I've considered myself unique in this view of how my life should turn out. The world, it seems, is full of people shooting for the stars and instead landing on the moon in a miserable and dejected dust cloud. That, or they're just making a quick pit stop on their hurried trip elsewhere. Me -- I'm just trying to enjoy a pleasant lunar picnic.

That changed several years ago when I attended a GE course titled Recreational Studies 101. Despite its name, much of the class was quite difficult. However, it was enlightening since the entire course fundamentally agreed with how I viewed life. It seems that prominent psychologists and sociologists have, within the past few decades, concluded that human beings thrive on the small things in life. While popular culture likes to deify the large sporadic events in our regular lives, it is in fact the small recurring events which keep us happy.

I've seen firsthand the effects that ambition can have on people. I've seen people I love be emotionally crippled by a fixated ambition; where no accomplishment is truly worth relishing or contemplating but instead merely a step on an endless Kung-Fu stairway. On the other hand, I've also witnessed people who have mulled over a single event as "the greatest" thing in their lives only to struggle with their sense of self once that event is over. Inevitably, any event that is that hyped in a person's mind will undoubtedly leave them either disappointed or dejected over its conclusion. And I haven't even touched upon the people who don't reach their lifelong goals but are forced to make do (what I like to call the Hillary Clinton scenario).

Now what does this have to do with the reason why I'm writing a post today? It's because one of the small recurring moments happened to me again today. Someone enjoyed my cooking.
I am happy.

During these past summer months, I've been practicing cooking meals. I'm usually not one to cook, and preferring to warm up instant dinners. It also doesn't help that I get grossed out at the sight of raw meat. On top of that, animal blood makes me slightly queasy. But Kiryn and Best Friend are often hungry after coming home (understandably so, they don't get an afternoon break long enough to eat) whereas I have time to kill. It started off with pasta in a white sauce and before I knew it, I was making homemade sauces from homegrown tomatoes.

Well a few days ago, Kiryn and Best Friend explained that their workplace was hosting a potluck. Kiryn wanted me to cook up something delicious like I usually do (her opinion, not mine), for her to bring along. She suggested I make my [personal take of] Alice Springs Chicken. I spent some time yesterday preparing the chicken (tip: slightly bashed chicken marinates better) and marinating it overnight. I woke up early this morning before my class to cook it for her. It was later on in the day that Kiryn told me she'd overheard people conversing about my entree. Apparently a snippet of the conversation went as follows:
"dude, who made that chicken wrapped in bacon?"
"I broke my no-meat-eating thing to eat that, it was hella delicious"
"...some kind of mustard..."
I was also informed that the chicken was devoured... the word feeding trough was thrown about. =)

Have you ever seen a 25 year old do a giddy dance? No? It's slightly a gruesome sight. But that was me after hearing Kiryn relaying the story.
Ultimately though, while hearing praise made me very ecstatic, it's not the root of my happiness. I put in effort for the people I care about. Cooking is just one manifestation of that, but for now, it's important to us. I'm buoyed through life on the happiness of those most close to me in the small and recurring events--like sitting down to dinner together over delicious food. I did the giddy dance because someone validated the quality of my efforts, but it's not why I keep doing what I do. That, to me, is a measurable effect.

Now that I'm free of that silly wrist brace, let me point out some things about the convention itself.

1. Goody Bags: I already mentioned, but very disappointing this year. All I got was a figurine for a Game I Don't Care About, a murloc minipet themed after the G.I.D.C.A, and a small bottle of hand sanitizer. They couldn't even give me a button or a bumper sticker. I'm going to be selling my figurine either to someone at work who couldn't go or on eBay. It's still mint condition, haven't even opened the box. I haven't decided about the baby murloc. I might use it just to help me get minipet achievements in-game, but I don't really care to have it following me around.

2. Beta keys: They actually made a big deal about the fact that "one thousand of you will be chosen to be in the Starcraft 2 beta!" Umm, maybe you guys forgot, but last year, EVERYONE who came to the convention got a beta key. I've still got mine. Hoping to sell it later, after all, it's a beta for the G.I.D.C.A. But this year... a thousand people out of the 20,000 who attended, plus the further 50,000 who ordered the live feed? Yeah, whoopdedoo.

3. Autographs: The developers and other people associated with the games were available in one of the halls for autographs. Only problem is, there was apparently no security to make sure people were moving along at a reasonable pace. When I passed by on my way to a different line, I saw some guy standing there just chatting it up with Chris Metzen. Khoa stood in line to get an autograph from someone on Saturday. He was in that line for an hour and a half and it only moved 40 feet. The line snaked across most of the convention. He eventually had to give up in disgust, with nothing to show for his efforts.

4. Temperature: The convention hall was actually not frigid this year. After the initial rush to the opening ceremony, I actually left my coat in the hotel and was only slightly cold in my t-shirt. There are two possibilities here: either the voluminous complaints of people like me over the past year made some kind of an impact, or they blasted the air conditioning extra cold last year to make you think of Northrend.

5. Bad DJ: On Friday, they "entertained" us between panels with some no-name DJ who sucked big-time. We couldn't understand a word he was saying in his songs and when we could, they were seriously stupid. I was sitting next to the guy who was my guildleader when I raided SSC, and he described it as "several genres of bad". By the end of the night, the crowd was booing them pretty consistently, and on Saturday they were apparently fired and they played recordings of yesterday's panels or interviews with developers between the panels instead.

6. LV80ETC is stupid: I'm not against metal, really I'm not (I've got quite a few songs from Manowar and Dragonforce in my 800-song favorites list) but these guys are really awful. Their lyrics are really quite moronic (mental thesaurus trying to find more words for "stupid/awful" that I can include here) and contain really terrible groan-worthy puns, and I'll repeat what I said about them when I saw them last year: the only reason they ever get a spot on a stage is because they're lead Blizz developers and this is Blizzard's convention. We left after their second song ("Terran Up The Night"? Seriously? Who wrote that?) and didn't stick around for the Ozzy concert. We weren't fancying destroying our eardrums with 170-decibel music in uncomfortable chairs anyway.

I am somewhat avoiding the blogosphere currently, as I'm a little burned out of animatedly discussing the bombshells dropped by Blizz while I was off in Anaheim, since that's pretty much all I've been doing all weekend. Also, I seem to have hurt my wrist in a tickling match with Khoa on the way home, and my wrist brace makes it difficult to type.

First, the drive down. "Happy cows come from california" indeed. All those commercials to make you think everything here is green hills and palm trees. Well, any true californian would know, the hills here are brown except for a glorious time in the early springtime, and the palm trees only survive in the desert because we waste so much of our precious water keeping them alive.

There were signs that kept reminding us that this place was a dustbowl (a congress-created one, in fact), and a few times we even saw these little mini dust-tornadoes. There was one really nice one that actually looked like a tornado, but I didn't get my camera out in time to capture it.

So we got there, and relaxed in our hotel room for a half hour or so before heading off to get our badges. The line wasn't so long, and was actually moving rather briskly.

So, we headed back and took a look at our loot. I was actually a little disappointed in the goody bags this year. Sure, it had a big giant limited-edition figurine in it, but I don't particularly care about Starcraft so the thing is just gonna sit in my closet until somebody wants to pay me big bucks for keeping it in mint condition. Last year, the bag had all kinds of keychains and bumper stickers and that cool pen that lit up, and the free mousepad with the hole in it for a picture, a pin with a random class on it, the panderan brewmaster bottle opener... et cetera et cetera. Little trinkets! But this year, all we got was the figurine, a bottle of hand sanitizer (that made my hands feel very odd, but had a nice smell to it at least) and a bunch of random papers advertising all of the stuff you could buy at the convention.

So, morning of the convention, we got up at 7 and grabbed some breakfast from the hotel, and headed off to get in line. And what a line it was, of course.

Got in, and hurried over to the far left hall to get good seats for the opening ceremony, where they always announce the big stuff. And... there was a guy sitting in front of us wearing this shirt:

He said it was just listed as "dragon shirt" in the store, which is where he bought it just now, and it was just too perfect and he had to wear it. It had Deathwing on the front.

(as an aside, the program we picked up later spelled the place as "Deephome", which really gave me a feeling of unprofessionalism)

And I'd give you more photos, but since we didn't do much the whole time except watch panels and stand in lines, those don't make very good photo ops.

I thought this guy should have made the top three at least in the costume contest.

Sucks that he only made 4th place, I thought the paladin wasn't as good, and the Kel'thuzad costume was less a costume than a really detailed sculpture he was carrying around. The Mistress of Pain totally deserved first place though.

ANYWAY. Photos aside.

When 4.0 comes out, Khoa and I are rerolling. Preferably on a brand-new server, if an RP one comes out. Back to Alliance side with us, so that I can reroll as a worgen priestess. I have made a decision, I am going to fight the good fight for Smite priests. Ghostcrawler said they have no intention of ever making Smite viable at end-game, but they also said they had no plans of ever making the old world flyable, and look, it turns out they were lying about that to our faces.

I've always loved the underdog specs. Back in BC I tried my hardest to be top DPS on my ret pally alt, despite the constant laughs I got, even from people I considered to be my friends. Now that ret pallies are actually viable, they're a lot of fun, but not nearly as much fun as they were when I'd link damage meters at the end of a heroic back in BC and rub their faces in the fact that they were beaten by a RET PALLY.

I'm going to put everything I have into making Smite viable. Glyphs, spec, gearing myself out with intellect as much as possible, finding the best titan path possible to increase my damage output and mana efficiency. The game is against me (I bet Mastery for Discipline is gonna increase the amount PW:S absorbs or something non-useful like that), and if nobody wants to accept me in raids as a Smite priest, then I simply shrug and not raid. That's just the way it's gonna be. This is something I was always fighting for back in BC, but I was too much of a raider then to put it in the foreground. I was determined to do what it took to be the best raider I could, so all of my gear choices were predominantly for healing. Not this time.

Why am I going back to a priest, you ask?

Playing my druid was fun, but I just feel like the class is so built around having all of this potential, that I don't particularly like the feral forms, but I'm expected to use them anyway, especially in PvP. I'm enjoying my shaman, but I know I'll be tired of it by the time 4.0 comes out. I think it'll be time for me to go back to my true passion.

As people who like to level and do 5-mans as our chosen chunk of the game (at this point largely ignoring both PvP and raiding), we're extremely excited about the new quest flow, changes to the leveling zones and gear itemization, and also about the new cross-realm LFG. It feels like it'll be a whole new game, a sequel almost, considering how often we reroll. I'm also hoping that if we can get on to a brand new server early enough on, we can start up a guild and try to exclusively recruit casual players who can use full sentences (using the new looking for guild thingy) and play around with the guild leveling system from the beginning, maybe become well-known on the new server.

I have to wonder if the very simplified itemization might help me out in convincing my sister to play. One of her complaints was that the game seemed really complicated. And the screenshots they're showing us of Vashj'ir remind me a lot of the photos my dad used to show me of the places he would go scuba diving, maybe an underwater zone is the kind of thing that would appeal to him. You never know. Sometimes I wish I could share this amazing world with my family members, but they're about as interested in video games as I am in my sister's strange fascination with kayaking. Maybe it's just not meant to be.

But tonight, we returned to Azeroth and hugged our raptors. They've grown a little in our absence.

So for a long time, I have been planning out this new car. I have always driven a minivan, so I like having a lot of cargo space, and I really fell in love with the overall shape of new-style hatchbacks around the year the Toyota Matrix first came out. Anything resembling that shape, I love.

I see life as an RPG, I have a little wish-list for things I want in my life the same way I have a wish-list for what gear I want my characters to get in that instance run. My number one highly-expensive thing was getting my eyes fixed, which I did last year. My number two, however, has been to get a new car. Number three is to have a nice house with a yard I can grow vegetables in, and I've got a pretty good path towards that right now too.

So when the concept of being signed on as a permanent employee at my job came around, we started seriously thinking about it and how we were gonna do it. I originally wanted a Toyota Yaris hatchback, which until this year were only sold in Canada. However, I discovered that it has a really yucky thing where all of the speedometer and such are in the center of the dashboard (like, where the radio is supposed to go), not in front of the wheel where any sensible car designer would put them. I was eyeing the Scion xD as well, but discovered it had the same serious flaw. Who would do a thing like that?

I really liked the Honda Fit, but was pooh-poohing it because of its name. Who names a car Fit? Seriously. However, it met all of my criteria: it looks awesome, it had an auxiliary jack for my iPod, it gets good mileage, without being too expensive, and it has a lot of cargo space. But then, a couple of months back, Best Friend had a Fit practically fall into her lap, when her cousin was wanting to leave the state but Best Friend's mom said "not with the car I co-signed on you're not" and forced Best Friend's Cousin to trade her 2008 Honda Fit to Best Friend for her old red car. I was like "but... that's MY car" and had to put up with Best Friend constantly complaining about the things she didn't like about it and how she really misses her old red car.

But in the end, I got over that, because the 2009 Fit improves on a lot of things Best Friend is complaining about (such as the fact the steering wheel can't be adjusted, she hates that -- but the 2009 can!) and figured that as long as I stay far away from the color she has, it'll feel different enough.

So we were going to use my old minivan for the CARS program (otherwise known as Cash For Clunkers). Trade in your old gas-guzzler for $4500 towards a new, fuel-efficient car, the old car to be crushed and destroyed to reduce emissions and increase the average person's fuel efficiency, rather than just selling it to someone else who will continue to drive it for years until it eventually gives up.

Since we are Costco members, we heard about their new car program, where you can get a good deal on a new car without having to haggle for it. We went to the local participating dealership, and they told us a number. We thought "hmm, that sounds good, we'll come back in a couple of weeks when the government program is in effect" but Khoa kept calling other dealerships to see if they could beat the price.

There was one place that said it could get $200 less than that price. But then, we found a particular dealership with a reputation for being crazy about low prices, and they beat the price by a good $900. We thought they were crazy, but we agreed we would buy the car there.

Khoa figured out financials and found the number that needed to be financed. He spent a better part of a week applying for loans and finally got one through our bank, which is in the process of being taken over by a different bank. It was a pretty good APR, but we needed all of the paperwork from the dealership before they would send us the check. So we went to the dealership and agreed on a price.

When the CARS program went into effect, however, that dealership started to lapse on their communication with Khoa, though he later discovered that the people who were willing to pay MSRP didn't have any hurdles placed in front of them at all. Khoa, however, got a call three days later, telling him that they needed the title of the minivan to be traded in, telling him that the title was the only information they needed. When he finally got access to a fax machine, he called them to confirm, and THEN they told him that he needed the insurance and registration info that I had taken to work that day since I was using the car. When he finally gave them all of the paperwork, they coyly refused to cooperate with the financing company, and stalled us for a day until Thursday afternoon when Khoa discovered that the government program had run out of funding.

Seems this program is SO wildly popular across the country that it's out of money by the end of the afternoon (when it was supposed to last until November?) and many dealerships are raising prices in response, selling their cars at MSRP in many cases. Congress immediately funnels another $2 billion into the program, surprised at how fast the money disappeared.

We give up on the cheap dealership, they apparently did the same thing to a couple of dozen other people, now refusing to sell the cars at that low price because they know they can get more for them. Khoa calls around (because the original dealership wouldn't have the color we were looking for before the CARS program ran out of funding again) and finds a Honda dealership that actually has a Fit in the color I want (Tidewater Blue) and we head over there to haggle the price after work on Friday.

We met with the salesperson, and she told us that the only remaining Tidewater Blue had a sunroof -- so they couldn't match the price we wanted. We haggled back and forth with her, Khoa wanted the invoice price, she wanted MSRP, but we couldn't get the price we wanted because the color we wanted had a sunroof. Devastated, we considered our options, to either pay the price we want for a color we don't want, or pay more for the color we do want plus a sunroof. The original dealership was offering us that price, but they didn't have the Tidewater Blue in stock. Best Friend suggested flipping a coin, we did so, and it told us to go home and meet with the original dealership the next day.

Faced with this revelation, the salesperson spoke to her manager and decided to agree to our price after all. So then it was a matter of paperwork, many many many signatures, to the point where my signature felt like when you write the same word over and over and over and it loses meaning. The only thing left to do was to get the purchase agreement and the car's title to the financing company. The financial person at the dealership handed over the purchase agreement along with the application for registration, but only looked at us blankly when asked about the MSO (a.k.a. Manufacturer's Certificate of Origin). Therein lies more unexpected adventures, as it was 9 PM Friday night and Khoa's contact at the company would not be working the weekend or the following monday. That was the rock. The hard place was the fact that we had five days to cough up the dough or the deal is null.

Over the weekend, the original dealership called Khoa up and asked him about the status, and told Khoa that they DID in fact have the Tidewater Blue, just got one in the previous night, though they originally said they would not be getting any more cars until Monday. But since we matched their price plus a sunroof from the new dealership, we politely declined their offer.

So today, Khoa called the financing company and managed to get someone else to handle the loan. After faxing the information we had, she claimed that the check cannot be sent until she receives the MSO. Khoa then drove down to the dealership and spoke to a manager, who explained that the MSO would not be given until the car is paid in full, and even then, would take at least two weeks to arrive. Obvious catch-22. Need MSO to get check to pay off the car, but need to pay off the car to get the MSO.

The manager then thought out loud about how odd it was that our financing company was requiring the MSO, despite the fact that his dealership gives out loans through that same company routinely and they never ask for the MSO. Intrigued, Khoa asked what if he were to take out an auto loan via the dealership, and managed to get fairly similar terms.

Meanwhile, on my end, Best Friend was pretty sure she was on a new schedule that did not involve her working Mondays, but she really wasn't sure, so she drove me to work anyway, checked her schedule, and went home. I went out with the rest of the QA department to have a nice lunch with the CEO, but it was otherwise a pretty normal Monday. The end of the day rolled around, Khoa came to pick me up, and said we need to go sign a new financing contract together.

So we signed some more paperwork, and I was given keys. Went over the "Care and Feeding of your new Baby Car" type stuff, and then I was suddenly sitting in the driver's seat of a vehicle that was suddenly mine. It all felt so unreal.

However, our final surprise of this wild and crazy trip was when we discovered said car had no sunroof. We confronted the salesperson about it, and she laughed it off, saying "yeah I told you, the only one we had was with a sunroof but I couldn't give you that one because it would be more expensive" but at this point we were so exhausted, and the sunroof isn't something we really cared about to begin with, and we have the car we wanted at a low enough price already.

It's going to take me some time to get used to it. My old clunker minivan wouldn't even do anything until you put your foot halfway down the gas pedal, but this machine feels like (to insert the obligatory WoW-reference) when you first learn epic flying skill after being used to normal flying for months or years. I remember that first epic moment -- constantly overcompensating and running into walls and mailboxes and stuff until you get used to the incredible speed. Hella nervous with my car that I'd do the same, but luckily I got it home safely.

Behold my [Swift Tidewater] epic mount:

As there is a bit of a lull between Razorfen Kraul (27-28) and Scarlet Monastery Graveyard/Library (31-32) we decided to wipe out some quests before we continue instancing. We finished up the Barrens last night, planning on moving on to Hillbrad next.

I like Scarlet Monastery a LOT more on Horde side because of how easy it is to get the main quest over here. On Alliance side, you have to do a quest in Desolace that requires you to kill level 40-ish mobs before you can get the quest to kill the bosses of SM. On Horde side you just ask Varimathras and he's like "oh yeah, go kill those guys for me." simple as that. SO much easier.

So today, I slept in while Khoa did some magic, and found a car dealership that's offering the car I want for about $800 less than the other place we tried (which was already only $200 above invoice). The other dealerships shake their heads sadly at this place and say how crazy they are and how they're losing money, but what do I care? I'm getting a much better deal. Apparently this place has a reputation for crazy good prices. We went there this afternoon and they had the exact car I was looking for, we put down a small amount of money to hold the car for us until the government bill goes into effect next week.

And what's up with the blogosphere? It was sadly silent yesterday. I kept sitting around wanting things to read, but there was nothing. Sigh.

Excerpt from Barrens chat today:
"You're a retard, aren't you?"
"No, I'm a level 80 priest!"

So my manager IMs me this afternoon, to say generically "Are you free at 4? Can you go see (HR director)?" I'm like "Sure." while my mind starts thinking a million miles a minute. You see, as an incredibly anticonfrontational person, I make my way through the day-to-day world by rehearsing all possible situations in my mind beforehand. When a new potential situation is thrown at me, I get serious panic attacks. My heart starts racing, and my mind starts really brainstorming to think of what could possibly be said and what I would respond to it.

So 4 rolls around, and I go over to talk to HR. It turns out that she has some very good news for me indeed -- they're planning to hire me on as a permanent employee as of Monday, with a sizeable pay raise, full medical/dental/vision benefits, paid holidays and paid vacation days. No more being a temporary employee for me! This is really a milestone. After only 6 months of working there too -- it's way faster than anything I could have hoped for at Namco. People would work there for 6-7 years and still be a lowly tester. But here at a smaller company, there's lots of room for advancement.

Khoa and I are researching that car I want to buy as a reward to myself for getting a real job. You know, to replace that 15-year-old clunker my dad gave me when I was in high school. There's this new law in effect that lets you get thousands of dollars towards a new car if you trade in an old enough car with crappy enough mileage, and my old minivan qualifies for that quite nicely. They're going to crush and destroy my old car in an effort to reduce emissions and increase gas mileage in general.

So the car I've got my eyes on is a 2009 Honda Fit. It's got the cargo space since the seats fold down in the back, it's got a USB interface for my iPod, it's got pretty good mileage (way better than I'm used to anyway) and sadly, it's almost identical to the car my best friend got from her cousin. Except hers is a 2008 I think, and it's a different color than the one I want, but still. Sigh. Oh well, it's a good car anyway. We're planning to head over to the dealership this weekend to check it out and have a test drive.

And so I'm sitting here thinking about how good life is, and my plants are growing nicely. That purple petunia I was nursing back to health is starting to have flowers again that smell so sweet, and the redwood burl my mom brought down from up north (the third such piece, the previous two didn't fare so well) is actually growing many many fronds for once. Whenever I lift up the protective plastic dome to give it more water, the humid air that escapes smells of redwood trees and home.

There's so many other little anecdotes from my day, like beef and broccoli for lunch (what do you mean we're out of rice? are you sure you're in the right kitchen?) to that guy who sent in a tech support ticket consisting of a video he had FRAPSed of him typing his problem in a text document (people do things like this! This one had the whole department laughing, it ranks up there with people embedding screenshots of text documents in word documents, and people taking photos of their computer screens because they don't know how to take screenshots) but I'm tired and I don't feel like going into more detail right now. I'm just happy =)

So funny story.

Last Saturday, I'm lying around with Khoa after the wedding rehearsal/brunch, just relaxing. Khoa suddenly straightens up, alarmed.

Says to me: "Damn, I'm such an idiot! I just realized I won't be able to go to (best friend)'s D&D game tomorrow!"

Me, with a bemused face: "......uh...... yeah? Obviously. What with (sister)'s wedding and all."

Says he: "I need to tell (best friend)! She's probably going to be wondering where I am!"

Says I: "Hon, I'm pretty sure you're the only person who could POSSIBLY overlook a detail like that."

So (in a total "isn't this so funny?" kind of way) I relate this story to Best Friend over Skype (she is not online at the time, but it's a good way to leave messages). When I see her again on Monday so that we can carpool to work, she tells me "yeah, that totally didn't occur to me until yesterday either." What am I gonna do with these two?

The actual wedding went as planned, nothing huge went wrong at the last minute or anything. The sun came out at just the right time so that it wasn't all cloudy and stuff. Unfortunately due to that sun, I have a nasty sunburn that's made it quite painful to move my shoulders ever since. Yummy cake was eaten, my sister put me squarely in her shadow once again, and I now have a dozen pots of purple petunias in my living room.

Here's a pic from Stepsister's camera of that day, the entire album I like to refer to as "Stepsister is Prettier Than Me In That Dress And She Knows It":

No, my emotions haven't been going up and down like a rollercoaster this month, why do you ask? I prefer not to think about the kind of things being around family for an extended amount of time does to my mental state. Deep breath, handle it, back to life as usual.

It was a lot easier than I expected. We were sitting there on their website's front page, reloaded a couple of times, and then the link appeared. Clicked on it, congratulations! You're #375 in the queue. A moment later, #80 in the queue. A moment later, click here to finalize your purchase! We had our trip planned out complete with hotel reservations by 12:00, as we checked MMO-Champion to see the news that today's tickets were sold out within the first half hour. Everybody else is waiting until the 30th to buy their tickets, but I am left to try to figure out what costume I'm going to wear.

I'm torn between continuing work on my draenei outfit I chickened out on last year (must find some blue paint for my face, make a tail, and somehow attach hooves to my shoes... at least make an effort to make some kind of hooves) or just wear my fangs and possibly a cape and say I'm a dragon in human form like I actually ended up doing last year.

I need to get in contact with Baeloch and see if he's planning on having another party this year (and, well, if I'm invited, since I'm not actually in the guild and all that anymore). Fun!

Now to wait until August =(