“It’s like I waited my whole life or this one night. It’s gonna be me you and the dance floor. ‘Cuz we only got one night. Double your pleasure. Double your fun.” I have decided that Forever by Chris Brown is the anthem for August. 
The conference(s) are finished (w00t). I get to spend the next month disconnecting the wireless APs, going through all of the email/stuff that I ignored and attempt to have some type of a summer vacation with D.G. I am guessing that we will attempt to go camping and hopefully go to T. to visit the little guy. I was supposed to be going to Japan in September but I cancelled my flight tonight. With D.G. spending three weeks in Italy and our schedules the last six weeks we haven’t had the chance to spend any time together so while I would like to go back I think I will wait until we can go together.
I finally finished encoding all of my DVDs. I have to go through my archives to see when I started but it feels like quite a while. I will probably start putting some of the TV shows on the USB drive but there is only 1TB so I don’t think everything will fit. I suppose we don’t need Stargate.
Life
I received what was supposed to be a “shiny” new Xbox 360 in the mail last week and let’s just say that things didn’t go exactly as planned. I plugged in everything and turned it on (wanting to see how it looked with the new TV) and it ended up having the exact same symptoms as the one I sent back. I called Microsoft support and was almost instantly transferred to a a supervisor who was just as surprised as I was that they shipped a Xbox 360 that didn’t work. I will try again tomorrow when Purolator shows up and hopefully they next one works.
Life, Technology
Oops. I think the last time I wrote any type of a life update it was April. I am in the middle of conferences at the moment, so life is quite hectic. The first went perfectly, which was fantastic considering we changed our venue. It was also an attendance record which is always nice. The major show is coming along nicely though, and we are actually relatively on schedule. The U.S. economy is complicating things slightly but hopefully that will be improved in 2009 when we start taking the conference “on the road” so to speak since they are demolishing our venue. Initially I was going to be off to Japan in September but I may need to postpone until 2009 because I am hopefully going to be getting a marketing gig from September until December. It doesn’t really make sense to go away when it will end up costing you twice the price of the trip.
D.G. writes her last exam today (summer) and is off for 6 weeks tomorrow with her kids. We thought she might be able to stay here for the summer but we would end up spending $125.00/week in gas. Negative. So she’ll most likely try to come home on weekends, or at least every second weekend since I am going to be swamped until August.
What else. We rearranged the entire condo. We somehow fit the bedroom in the alcove that was my office and so now I have a nice office/study room with windows. :) We also bought a new TV (upcoming post) to replace the TV we are in the process of selling. Ironically the moment we bought the TV the Xbox 360 decided to die (another post) so it is en route to Microsoft. I also became a Soldier’s Angel. I was assigned a soldier who is stationed in Iraq and I write letters once a week and send a care package once a month. It is a little strange I suppose since I am Canadian but D.G. always tells me that I am practically an American anyways so it works out.
I think that’s everything. I’ll /edit if I remember anything else.
Life
D.G. is home…and sleeping. The girls decided they would “sleep” at the airport the night before their flight and ended up not being able to sleep and I don’t think D.G. slept during the flight home so she was completely exhausted when she got here. She managed to stay awake until 9:00pm but she crashed about 30 minutes into Charlie Wilson’s War which I am going to go finish watching.
Life
I don’t know what the heck is going on this weekend but I have managed to break off a quarter of my back tooth and either dislocate or fracture my index finger. :( I will have to go to get an x-ray done tomorrow and typing is practically impossible. I don’t know if there will be anything left of me by the time D.G gets back on Friday. 
Life
I am *officially* done gaming. I deleted all my characters, accounts and gave everything away (mostly to J.R.). Let’s take a walk through history shall we.
Ultima Online - 1997, 1998, 1999
Asheron’s Call - 1999, 2000
Anarchy Online - 2001, 2002
Dark Age of Camelot - 2001, 2002
Asheron’s Call 2 - 2002, 2003
Eve Online - 2003
Lineage II - 2003
Guild Wars - 2004
World of Warcraft - 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008
So, if you think about an average monthly fee of $10 - $15, I spent approx. $1,750 on Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG). That being said, with all the “virtual business” that I ended up doing throughout the 9 years between selling virtual items, virtual currency, virtual real estate, etc. I ended up making approx $10,000 so I suppose you could consider it being financially worthwhile. I attempted to calculate the number of hours I played, I can only guess to be honest but I am sure that it ended up being at least 365 days when I added everything up. Scary.
Life
D.G. is wandering aimlessly through Italy for the next three weeks so I am solo exceptional. She is backpacking with V. before summer classes start. I am not going to be doing anything exceptional, most likely staying up late working on my laptop while watching movies. It is such an exciting life. It is actually the first time we’ve been apart for any length of time since we were married so I am a little curious as to how I will be by myself.
On that note, we finally got our marriage license a week ago. It took 5 months. We never found out if our resort was one of the resorts where the judge wasn’t exactly legally performing the ceremonies. I dropped it off on Friday to get translated, I am going to go back to the Embassy tomorrow to pick it up. D.G. has to go through the entire process of changing her identification when she gets home so we thought it would be wise to get our marriage certificate translated into English.
The conference(s) are coming along nicely though so I can’t complain. I am *really* hoping to get a lot of the tedious work done over the next three weeks so that we don’t end up scrambling in June and July. I would still like to go away in the fall but I will have to wait and see how things are in August. I can get them to refund all of my aeroplan miles for $150.00 so that isn’t so bad.
I also started to encode the entire DVD collection into digital format. It will take an eternity (I think I am at “H”) but I will end up with every single movie in digital format and stored on a 1TB external disk. You can actually plug it into an Xbox 360, PS3 or any type of PC and access the entire collection. We actually fit a bunch of them onto the EEE PC that D.G. took with her to Italy. If you haven’t seen one before, it is the perfect little laptop.
I should go pretend to sleep.
Life
I am an uncle. :) I have to say that I am quite excited about the entire situation, although I have no doubt that as soon as I see him it will change my perspective on life. :) It seems as though my experiences in the last two years have been “life-altering” so to speak. I wouldn’t say that I am all that different, but I do feel as though I look at life quite differently in a lot of ways. I suppose I just learned to appreciate what I have and not be concerned with everything else. Simple words to live by. You can use them if you wish.
With that being said, things are relatively typical lately. Work is slowly starting to take up more of my day, in particular abstract reviews, which I am really excited about this year. We made some changes to our “suggested topics” and received some really innotive and interesting proposals. I have also been doing some graphics design work for some nightclubs in the city. Mostly just poster artwork and some website design but it has been a nice “break” for me. I imagine it is a little odd to replace work with work but one feels more like a hobby. I could just be making excuses I suppose, lol.
I have been spending my weekends (late nights) at the club and have started to make some really great friends there. I haven’t been drinking, which comes as much as a surprise to me as to the rest of you. :) I started by helping my friend out with the poster artwork but slowly started spending at least one night a week there just lounging and providing my insight and experience wherever necessary. D.G. and I discussed the thought of my getting back into the scene, but I don’t think I would want to go back to the lifestyle associated with being a managing partner of a nightclub. I am just as content to spend my weekends lounging on the couch with a movie.
Speaking of movies, we (read I) went on a bit of a spending spree this week and picked up Michael Clayton, We Own The Night and American Gangster. Along with 3:10 to Yuma, which we watched last week, these are all really good movies and totally worth renting/buying. I have also been catching up on a bunch of movies that I haven’t watched yet, I suppose that is due to the fact that I have been up late recently (i.e. 3am right now). I should probably get back to a regular sleep schedule but I have been a little preoccupied with work lately (happens every year) that it takes me a while to get my thoughts clear so that I can fall asleep.
On that note… Zzz…
Life
Wow. I can’t believe the last time I wrote was three months ago. :( Life has been a bit of a whirlwind I suppose but I will share the highlights. Married life is kick as$ to say the least. :) We got married a few months ago and the entire experience was as flawless and memorable as we hoped it would be. It was a small ceremony with mostly our family in attendance but everyone had an amazing time and the pictures ended up being fantastic. After we got back D.G. has been busy with school and me with work. We also had to rearrange the entire kitchen because there wasn’t nearly enough room for all of the stuff we received. It isn’t that I am complaining. :) We just didn’t have the shelving needed for all of the appliances, dishes and everything else we received between bridal showers and wedding gifts. We actually had to go out and buy new storage shelving just to fit everything. The last thing we needed was tea/coffee mugs. Ironically enough, someone ended up giving us a gift yesterday that ended up being a set of twelve Irish style glass cups. We will just pretend they’re Scottish.
We went on a road trip for Christmas. We visited my sister and my parents (who were visiting her) in T., then went north (near Lake Huron) to visit D.G.’s aunt and uncle and grandmother, none of whom I had met. Always interesting to show up with your “husband”. :) We had a great time and ended the visit with some Boxing Day shopping in the most amazing clothing store ever. They had Rock & Republic (and all kinds of other jeans) on for 50% off. Needless to say we spent a small fortune on clothes, but it isn’t like we will be going back there very often. The road trip ended with a brief overnight at a bed and breakfast owned by the parents of some close friends of ours. Her dad is a renowned chef from Switzerland so the food was remarkable. We celebrated Christmas together that night with a little get together, and a lot of vrum (vodka and rum). It was a dirty night. Our recovery took quite a while, mostly while the girls were shopping and we were frightening away anyone who tried to come near the couch in the mall that we had confiscated.
The insanity continued with NYE. We had 20+ people at our place, mostly friends of D.G.. We went through a plethora of bottles here and went to the club where two magnums (60oz bottle) of Grey Goose waited for us along with several bottles of champagne. :) By the end of the night, there were only 5 of us left. The rest were either escorted, dragged, or walked out of the club. Everyone ended up where they were supposed to though, so it was a good night all around.
This week has been relatively painless, with the exception of last night when I started my new training regime. Hopefully I will still be able to walk by tomorrow. :) D.G. has been working and I will be quite happy when she finishes tonight because she has been waking up at dawn and I haven’t been able to fall back asleep after the alarm went off. It has been a very productive week mind you but waking up at 6am isn’t for me.
Life
We went out with some friends of D.G. Saturday night. Dirty. My illusions of a quiet September quickly disappeared after three bottles of Grey Goose and a 4am departure from the shawarma joint (where one of our crew got their lambada on with a girl from the latin club next door). It was hilarious. Sunday wasn’t as enjoyable. If there was a day that I wish I could have slept through that would have been it. We couldn’t though, because D.G. had to go to a bridal shower (that she almost missed). I got to spend the day cleaning up the disaster was our condo. D.G. came home with the entire car filled with boxes. We got some amazing gifts. And absolutely *no* where to put them. I think we’re going to have to replace the rest of our registration list with shelving.
What else. We cancelled our cable. It wasn’t a financial decision or anything, but we realized that we don’t actually watch TV with the exception of SCIFi, The Food Network, and of course football (which I have no doubt I will miss). After the first 48hrs you really don’t miss it. We also finally started to get around to watching the 650+ movies that we have. If nothing else, we’ll get to spend an additional $100/month on stuff.
I also got my new grill (read teeth) and you wouldn’t believe the difference. I had been waiting to get my teeth fixed for quite a while and I can totally appreciate why people make the investment. I only got the top done but I’m contemplating getting the bottom done before the end of the month. I imagine I would get them all replaced if I had the time and several thousand dollars.
Life
