Archive for Adventures
Adventures in Zombieland
So earlier today, Alysia and I ventured forth as zombies to the Denver Zombie Crawl. This is my 4th of this sort of event – the first three I did back in 2005, 2006, and 2007 in Richmond. Kinda pooped out on them for a bit, I suppose, thus the 2 year gap. It’s bizarre to see how these things have evolved. The first year I’m not even sure there were 100 people, and we walked Carytown as an alternate to the original planned mall, after hearing that law enforcement there might not be too happy with us showing up at said mall and would act accordingly. Big contrast to now, where it seems like these zombie events more often then not take donations of some sort of a charity.
Anyhow, the Denver Zombie Crawl was huge. They were going for a world’s record, and there were zombies by the thousands out. I had no clue that the gathering would be this big. Great for people watching, though! I did a sort of resurrected person from the 80′s theme, and while my costume wasn’t nearly as stunning as some of the other stuff there, I was pleased, especially compared to other costumes which seemed to have a perfunctory blood smear on the face and that was it. I also paid specific attention to my face, as it is rather important to appear that you’ve been feasting on corpses at some point recently if you’re to be a convincing zombie. Once I get ahold of a picture, I’ll post it.
One upside to the smaller zombie walks/crawls is that they bring out the more dedicated zombie impersonators. At the Denver event, there were waaaay too many people breaking character! This also tended to correlate with how good or bad of a job they did at zombifying themselves up. I for one am a big fan of moaning at cameras! So we do 1/2 the crawl, then step into a bar for a drink + appetizer. When we go in, we’re one of a few zombies there and the place is a little under 1/2 full. When we leave, the place is packed, mostly with zombies. After that, apparently still being hungry, we got ice cream cones, and thusly got photographed by someone while eating said ice cream cones. Admittedly, I mostly got ice cream for the joy of being undead and licking an ice cream cone, but lucky for me it was rather tasty ice cream (pumpkin pie flavored, yay!).
And here’s where this zombie crawl became awesome. Unlike the Richmond ones I’ve done, the zombies lingered. They were everywhere, all over 16th street. Chasing and shooting each other (there were zombie hunters there, along with “targets” (people who wore Xs who wanted to be attacked). And lots of photo-taking. I felt like I was at an anime con for the undead, it was pretty sweet. And how I longed for a boom box so I could play “Thriller.” Next year, that seems pretty much like a necessity.
Remnants of the zombie crawl shall cling to me for awhile, this is because I am really bad at removing eye makeup. I know there’s probably cream or something to help me with that? I’m not really sure, since I don’t wear makeup very much. In any case, soap and water has done about as much as it’s gonna, and I’m just stuck having a case of the ole spooky-eyes for the next several days. I’ll probably finally get it all off around the time Halloween rolls around, whereupon I will dress like a raccoon and apply the eye makeup all over again.
The State of Things
Boy am I sticky! I really shouldn’t be, since this is Colorado and it’s supposed to be super-dry, but sticky I am. My plan is to convince Drew to go swimming upon his waking up. Wish I had time to go tubing – it seems pretty big out here, what with all of these rivers out here that are really super-wide streams about 3 feet deep. Maybe one of these weekends.
Work is still super busy. Am slowly plowing through Job #2, and Job #1 has gotten a bit easier now that I’ve more or less figured out how to use a Mac, and how to use Codeigniter, and how to use all of the other stuff they have me using. It’s been educational – I’m still not sure how much longer this job will last, but when it ends I’ll have some good stuff to spruce up my resume & portfolio with.
On a completely unrelated note, all of the tank tops at Old Navy got stupid. I really like their ribbed tank tops – they’re comfortable and usually about $5-$7 each. However, at some point recently they decided to add a foot in length to them. I don’t see the point, I wear the shirt and have a giant pile of fabric bunched around my waist? So anyhow, I lost my tank top source, and need to find another one as my tank tops are slowly fraying apart!
Cow appreciation day last weekend was successful, we hit 4 different Chick-fil-as. The best one was in Larkridge, everyone was super excited, there were balloons everywhere and the employees seemed really into the event, and lots of customers were dressed up. We got our picture taken, too. The worst was some CFA in NE Denver (Brighton?), we drove through the middle of nowhere only to find unenthusiastic staff, very few people dressed up, and a few customers that snickered at our costumes. Not appropriate!
Pak’ma’ra, Netbook and Adventures
Headed out tomorrow morning at a vicious hour, and will arrive in Florida that afternoon. Tuesday, we’ll get to Richmond for a few days of wild excitement and sweating and hopefully AC, and then we head off to the Outer Banks for more sweating and excitement and AC. Might post, might not. My netbook is all happy with some 2GB RAM and a new 16GB hard drive, and I installed the Easy Peasy OS on it (partly because of the name!). I really want a Drupal development setup before I leave so I can get some work done while traveling, but my inexperience with Linux combined with Apache’s persnicketiness is leading me to suspect this may not happen. Which makes me a bit cranky. I’ll figure something out, I guess.
Also, have been working on my Pak’ma’ra painting, here is the progress thus far:
Kinda iffy on the curlicue clouds, and I really need a reference for those mountains. Aside from that, seems to be going well. I’ve got plans for metallic material in some areas, for bonus shiny. One thing that’s been annoying – turpentine stinks. I started to get a bad headache despite the open window and fan, and after gazing long and hard at the several paragraphs of health warnings in red on the turpentine container, I decided to switch to mineral spirits. Except that I made the mistake of getting super-green enviro-friendly mineral spirits, thinking it would be the opposite of headaches and brain damage. Which it is, but it’s a cloudy white rather then clear, and keeps separating from the linseed oil, which sucks. I may have to switch to regular mineral spirits. Anyhow, it’s been pretty fun to work on, maybe I’ll do more Pak’ma’ra art after this one, too.
Today’s Random Update
Andrew has finally seen The Wedding Singer, which is one of those movies that I like despite not caring for either of the lead people. I am a sucker for the 80′s. There’s also the fact that the only Adam Sandler movies I tend to enjoy are the ones where he doesn’t act like Adam Sandler.
We’ve been watching Babylon 5, which I am totally obsessed with. Interesting plots that totally carry over from episode to episode, hooray!
I finished reading “Characters and Viewpoint” by Orson Scott Card, which is an amazing book to read if you want to write good fiction, as well as get a better understand of human psychology and perspective.
We got on a bike path this weekend and tried to ride all the way out to Golden. Alas, we didn’t make it. I was stubborn about biking and, despite the fact that it was the first day in over a week that called for rain, I insisted we had to go. Meaning that we got drenched and had to turn around at some point. Oops!
I start the Census job in a week. This is good, as despite the fact that I have a gazillion personal projects to work on, I have a hard time getting motivated when faced with an expanse of free time. I am super productive when I have something else important that needs to get done, however! So, hopefully returning to a 40 hour workweek will help me organize my other time more efficiently.
I wish I could figure out what GS level a Census enumerator is. As this is a temporary position, I’ll be looking for a job to take on once I’m done with the Census. Having a govt. job can make it easier to get another govt. job, and if I already knew my GS level, that would be pretty useful. I’ll assume it’s either a.) something I’ll learn once I start the position, or that b.) as this is a temporary position, maybe GS levels don’t apply for it.
Drew’s job is doing well, he’s about to shift from temp status to being a part of the company – no pay raise, unfortunately, but he’ll be eligible for benefits and such.
And, that’s about all that’s been going on lately here. Oh, I did add a new fishie to my collection, as fishies are very important.
TV, wanderings, and worky work
So first off, we finished watching the first season of the Sarah Conner Chronicles. It’s pretty good! Second season will hopefully be waiting at the library for us in the very near future.
We finally got to wander around downtown on Saturday. My google-fu found free parking at a giant REI store, and from there we wandered through a park and along 16th street. Not as many wacky shops as I was hoping for, plus a Chick-fil-a that was astoundingly closed on Saturday, but the area was still interesting. We then wandered over to a park whereupon we were surrounded by pigeons waiting for bread. Not that we had any bread, but then they’re not exactly the brightest of birds.
These guys were super tame. Super cute, too! Anyhow, after that we stared at the Mint and then headed back over to 16th street where I spent entirely too much money on chocolate that should have tasted better based on it’s price. Then we went back to the park by the river, where we ate said chocolate and a few geese decided we were planning on feeding them. Then we returned to our abode.
HONK!
Also, work is working. As I may have already mentioned, I picked up the Census job, which I start in a month. Also, I’m finally getting paid for the project I’m just finishing up, and am going to an hourly rate for further work. I also continue to stand around outside holding a sign. I suppose I’ve technically been fulfilling what I for awhile considered the ideal job situation: a part-time white-collar job and a part-time blue-collar job. I get physical AND mental exertion, the best of both worlds!
It is good to not be paranoid about monetary situations anymore. Albeit, I’ve been almost on the verge of finishing the redo on my professional website for almost 2 weeks now. One of these days, when I’m not staring at geese or writing these blasted blog entries, one day I shall finish it.
The long drive back from Tennessee
So, last Wednesday night we ended up leaving for Nashville at about 2 in the morning. Errr, we left for Nashville early Thursday morning (somehow, it doesn’t seem to be the next day until the sun actually starts rising). I drove first shift, and got to see a fabulous sunrise in Kansas before attempting to conk out in the folded down backseat of Drew’s car. There’s enough room for a person to stretch out and sleep, but it doesn’t work so well when the car is driving and I’m used to a glorious mattress. We got to Nashville at 11:00 central time. Unfortunately for us, most of the people there were East Coast elitists, so they had just finished watching the ball drop when we went inside, declared it a new year, and went to bed. New Year’s Central Time went unnoticed, and we were conked out in bed by the time Mountain Time New Years happened.
Now here’s something I’m curious about: New York has the ball drop and all, but what about the other time zones? Seems to be that Chicago should have a ball drop for the Central time zone, Denver for the Mountain time zone, and I suppose Seattle for the Pacific time zone. Don’t let New York get all the glory! I’d suggest more southern cities, but it seems that people have this idea that the holidays should be all gobbed up with snow, even though many parts of the US don’t see snow around the holidays at all. However, I’m open to a ball drop in
We were there 2.5 days, whereupon I received stuff and ate stuff and hung out with Drew’s relations. We decided to split up the drive back into two parts, and ended up getting a motel room in Topeka after having eaten some incredibly delicious BBQ in Missouri earlier. I need to either make or get ahold of some St. Louis style BBQ sauce, as it’s really good. I’m a sucker for some sweet and smoky. We might have driven further that night, but at some point the roads got slushy, then icy, and it would have been a waste. It’s interesting to observe weather driving west. It was really cold in Nashville with no snow, bitterly cold in Topeka with bunches of snow, and the further west we drove across Kansas the warmer it got, and it’s gonna hit close to 50 in Denver today.
Incidentally, next time we’ve got this kind of distance to go, we’re gonna try to fly instead. Driving is fun if you aren’t really familiar with the route so much, but we’ve both seen the 430 mile stretch on I-70 across Kansas waaay more then we need to at this point.
And here’s a few thoughts on hotels. I like nicer hotels, but only if someone else is totally covering it. As Drew and I were splitting the tab, we stayed at a Motel 6. In terms of cheap hotels/motels, it often seems better to choose chains over non-chains. With non-chains it’s questionable as to how livable the room will actually end up being. However, it doesn’t matter much for that chain if whoever stays there thinks it sucks, as they’re just passing through and so repeat business isn’t too much of a concern. So, if they’re sheisty or lazy, they can get away with lower standards. However, staying at a chain place, there’s a possibility that you’ll continue to visit their other locations when you travel. Thus, the Motel 6 was as bare-bones as the price suggested, but had the benefit of being appropriately clean and not being sketchy.
We got back last night around 8:30, and Estha was super glad to see us. We now have giant piles of crap sitting everywhere which we should probably deal with at some point. Also, so much junk food. My goal is to not eat it all today. Incidentally, my New Year’s resolution is to not gain too much weight. Screw losing weight. And screw not gaining weight. I’ve accepted the fact that, every winter, I put on lbs. Conversely, every summer, I lose those lbs. All I want is to not gain so many lbs that my bras stop fitting, as that is a royal pain. Mind you, I’ve got summer bras and winter bras for this precise purpose, but when I start outgrowing the winter bras things start getting really pissy for me.
Anyhow, we scored a giant bag of miniature candy (kisses and teeny Reeses cups and such), which pleases the little Martha Stewart part of me as it means we have stuff to put in our candy dish for the next month or so. Incidentally, we decided that we’re gonna keep our Christmas tree and lights up until the beginning of February. See, I get depressed in the winter. I think the excitement of the holidays helps, but January is generally pretty bleak. So, I shall experiment with leaving bonus Xmas light cheer up, to see if that combats seasonal affective disorder type issues.
And on a final note, today is Drew’s and my 4 year anniversary, yay! Unfortunately, Drew is currently passed out in bed with whatever disease he picked up on this trip. We’ll be hitting the Macaroni Grill later for anniversary dinner, whereupon I will gorge myself on sea life and exciting beverages. Until then, I will hang out with Drupal and try to figure out what the heck to get Drew for our anniversary that he hasn’t already received over this long holiday season.
Drupal, the holidays, etc
I feel like I’ve cracked a major milestone, or something, regarding Drupal. I finally figured out how to write a basic module, and it works. Still needs a lot of finessing, but it gives me confidence that I can finish this project I’m working on without that pesky guesswork of knowing what I needing to do, but having no clue how to do it and no clue how difficult it is to do it. I’m really hoping that I can clean up my module and make it more user-friendly, so I can publish it with other modules and future people could find it useful.
I think I might go ahead and convert the Salami Day website to Drupal. I was originally using it as my CakePHP learning experience, but since not getting the job that I originally tried to learn CakePHP to impress, I feel like Drupal is just a better direction to go in, for now at least. That was an unfortunate job experience, anyhow. It’s really crappy when you go to an interview, find out that there’s something they really want you to know that they never bothered to tell your recruiter about, or bothered to mention in the telephone interview you’ve already had with them. Then, when you mention you’ve been thinking about learning it and can pick it up in the next week, they give a dismissive comment, as if they don’t believe you. Pretty much my entire design/development career has consisted of “Hey, I need to learn this program to do this thing. Guess I better do it.” I mean, that’s how you learn, right? Mind you, I didn’t have any sort of fabulous grasp on CakePHP, but after a week I’d rebuilt Salami Day and had a decent enough understanding of it’s structure. The job looked pretty nice, too. Oh well. Considering how many applicants they might have had who actually *knew* CakePHP, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I didn’t get it. Nonetheless, I wish I could just jump up and down and flap my arms and scream that I’m a hard worker and love deadlines, and have them listen and fall in love with me and give me a bucket of dollars. If only!
In other news, I’m getting sick of ham + salad. We did Christmas with Drew’s aunt Pam, and as she was fortunate enough to get invited to a friend’s timeshare in Hawaii for the remainder of the holiday break, we got to take home all the food that Drew’s cousin Travis wasn’t going to eat. So, we have this gargantuan bag of salad, along with a nice pile of ham. Thus, ham salad! Goes great with Ken’s Steak House honey mustard dressing! Also, mmm, Christmas latkes. They went fast. We also have a metric ton of chocolate. Pacing issues with that, of course. Also, a post Christmas present – me finding a workout machine for free on Craigslist! It’s some sort of step resistance machine, nothing too fancy, but it’s free, and that’s the important part.
We leave for Nashville in two days. Drew’s family reunion and all that stuff. I get my sewing machine back, which shall be glorious. My butt will also get numb and fall off from the driving. Less glorious.
Also! On the 6th, I go in to take an application to become a Census worker. Could be fun! I have been spending waay too much time playing Oasis, which is this fabulous “Civilization meets Minesweeper” type game, which came out a few years back and I’m playing on my computer and is really cheap through the Amazon game downloads section. Andrew has been similarly productive, in that he just finished reading all of Dragonball. Which is a godawful quantity of manga.
Hmm, about time for another infamous ham salad. Hope everyone has a Happy New Year!
Chick-fil-a, snow, my car, and other miscellaneousness
For those not in the know, I had an adventure this past week. Drew and I, having entirely too much free time and no money to eat out, decided to camp out in front of a Chick-fil-a to get 52 coupons for free combo meals each. Incidentally, there was a blizzard going on at the time. It was….cold. And sometimes it was fun. I wrote a big ole description about it (plus a few pictures) at my food blog, and I’ve got the rest of the pictures available to view on facebook.
My car is still in the shop. The repair place called me the other day and informed me that it’ll be around $3500 to fix the car. Which is quite possibly more then my car is worth. However, the insurance company should be covering it, so all is good. If they weren’t, I’m pretty sure I would have heard back from them by this point. I’ve not really driven the rental car at all. Part of that is the blizzard, and part of that is that it’s bigger then I’m used to and a bit clunky and currently covered in snow. Well, I can’t really say “clunky” I suppose. It’s clunky in the way that cars covered in doohickeys that are super spacious for larger people are clunky. So really, I’m just used to driving a cheap small car, and feel weird in this nicer large car. I also want more visibility. The Kia’s got me spoiled on that, I just don’t care for super-slanted windshields and rear windows.
Nanowrimo starts in two days. Need plot soon. Going to super exciting Nanowrimo launch party tomorrow.
Also, and this is important, if you dress like a burrito tomorrow, you can get a free burrito from Chipotle. You can just wrap some tin foil around your arm, it totally counts. Guess what I’m planning to eat for dinner tomorrow? And for the next several nights, if all goes well! Mmm, nothing tastes better then free.
