This is a Blog

Seeing as how it’s been a while since I posted anything, I figured I would update this blog to remember things later on. Or something.

I haven’t said much because I haven’t been online all that much. When I’m not at work I’m normally playing video games or doing something with Mal, and it’s now a rarity to even see me on AIM. I know that’ll change when I get back to school, but it’s weird right now to think I’m not online very often.

Work has been going pretty good. The economy has definitely affected business, but there’s been $100+ nights (rare, but they’ve happened). It’s cool to think you can walk in at 4:30pm and walk out 5 hours later with over a hundred bucks in your pocket. The job is pretty easy and is mostly just being someone’s personal servant for 40 minutes (something some folks like to take advantage of).

I had a huge list of video games to play and beat this summer, but I also wanted Mal to play some of my favorites. She’s beaten Gears of War and Halo 3, Portal, New Super Mario Bros, and we’re almost finished with the first Phoenix Wright game. I normally don’t juggle so many games at once, but here’s my ‘now playing’ list: Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Phoenix Wright, Chrono Trigger DS, Pokémon Leaf Green, Sonic Unleashed, and a handful of other DS games. Tomorrow I’m going to pick up Wii Sports Resort, even though it’s mostly for my father.

Despite juggling so many games at once, I’m doing a pretty good job of keeping up with the stories of all of them. There’s a few other RPGs that I’d really like to start, but I know I can’t handle any more right now. I’m nearing the end of Phoenix Wright, then I’ll probably devote a good bit of attention to Fable 2. I’m also having Mal play through Half-Life 2, since that should really be a requirement for anyone who loves video games at all.

But, besides work and video games, there hasn’t been much going on. I had a Halo party for my high school graduating class again (it normally happens about twice a year or so), but I’m assuming that would fall under video games. Even so, the summer hasn’t seemed dull or boring at all, and I’m enjoying it to the fullest, especially since I’ve got Mal with me.

So there’s my update, internet. Keep on the lookout for more of that weekly Ninten Speaks stuff, since that’s the most you’ll be getting of Stephen Georg online until school starts. (And oh yeah, I also just released a new song about EarthBound—you can listen/download it here, but I’m sure it’ll show up on my site in another day or so).

Good lord, crazy stuff just happened.

I was over in Hamilton Hall, SCAD’s film building, because I had to capture the project I had shot this past weekend (you shoot on tape then you capture it with a tape deck to turn it into editable digital footage). It was about 9pm or so and a deck had just opened up so I began capturing my footage. About 5 minutes into the process, it started raining: hard. Everyone was like “what?” Soon after, water started pouring into the room through the ceiling. There was a huge leak and it was going all over one of the computers. I pulled out my phone to take a picture and as I pressed the button all of the lights went out.

“Crap.” I figured the generators would come on and we’d be back in business… but nothing. The staff came around and told us we should leave, there were no generators (apparently there’s just too much equipment there and there’s no way of powering everything). I had to leave Hamilton… with my tape still in the deck. I talked with a staff member and they told me they’d have my tape there tomorrow, but if someone takes it, I’m screwed: that’s 100% of my raw footage, without it there’s no proof I ever did the assignment.

I ran outside through the pouring (read: pouring) rain and waded through water already up to my ankles to jump into my vehicle (keep in mind that I also have my 500gb external hdd in a bag: hopefully it didn’t get wet). I close the door and start up the car, and dial Mallory on the phone to tell her how crazy this all was.

At least I thought it was crazy. When I pulled out of the Hamilton Hall parking lot, there were garbage cans everywhere, apparently the wind blew them into the street. After I dodged all of them I turned right onto MLK and realized this wasn’t any ordinary storm. All of the traffic lights were out as far as I could see. There were ambulances, police and fire trucks everywhere. And needless to say, there were wrecked cars all over the sides of the street. When the stoplights went out people apparently ran into each other, and lord only knows how many deaths happened tonight because of it.

I drove home very, very slowly with mostly straightaways (one left turn, and that was the hardest turn I’ve ever had: no one knew who should go). The water was halfway up my tires for much of the trip. I pulled into the dorm and realized that nowhere in the city had power: the entire city of Savannah lost power tonight. It was truly something out of a horror movie. People were just outside of their dorms, confused. Projects obviously had to be put on hold since it’s impossible to work without electricity: you need either light to see or a computer to work with.

We talked to some folks and decided to go out to the car to listen to the radio and get some news. On our way out to the vehicle the power of the dorms came back all at once—and everywhere else, too. Looking down the street, it seems like the stoplights are functioning as well. We went back to the room and I checked my computer, everything’s working fine. Hamilton closes in an hour, though, and I have no desire to go back out tonight. Too much adventure for me.

So that’s the story of the night that the lights went out in Georgia. I’ve still gotta work on a Life Drawing project for the morning, and I have an entire midterm to edit tomorrow (amidst going to two classes)—and I hope that the tape is still there. Might be hard to explain to my professor that it was in the deck when the power went out and someone never turned it in…

February 2009 is coming to a close and we’ll soon be entering March. With March comes spring, and the end of cold weather. Unfortunately, living in Georgia and having a girlfriend in Wisconsin keeps me from ever being able to say anything about how cold it is. “I froze to death because it was 55º today” will only get a “55º isn’t cold!” out of her. It’s been nice as of late, though. 70º today here… she’s battling a winter snow storm.

Things in Stephen-land™ have been up and down I guess. I’ll try and backtrack to February 1st (my last big blog update) and remember things that happened after that.

Looking at it now, I had stated I wasn’t writing for Tree From My Youth. That has changed. When I originally wrote that, the cast was having some issues coming up with a solid time to write the script (it’s written collaboratively), and the time they eventually chose was a morning to afternoon, something I definitely cannot do. Seeing as how I was screwed in that department, I started thinking about how nice it would be to not have to write for another year, so I decided not to. It was less than a week later, though, that I was approached to come back. The writing times changed and I reconsidered. As of now, TFMY has released one episode and written the second. The first episode wasn’t so bad, but writing the second made me realize how much I hated writing FaB (I don’t think the actual writing was an issue, but working with others is something I’ve always had a problem with—I prefer to work on projects alone). Even so, I’ve decided to keep at it. Tree From My Youth is something that I feel needs to be brought into this world, and I’m going to have my hand in it in some form. It’s going to be a rough road, though, especially with some of the hard-nuts I have to work with *shudders*.

The more I think about that the more aggravated I get, so I’ll move on to something more cheerful.

This past Friday my Xbox 360 encountered hardware failure, also known as the “red ring of death”. I was in the middle of playing Call of Duty 4 with the folks from Starmen.net when my game froze. I restarted and it froze again. After freezing one more time, the box wouldn’t even come on. Bam. Red ring of death. It’s free to fix, but I’m out of a 360 for a few weeks. A minor inconvenience, I reckon. We’ve been playing a lot of Super NES games since then (my original xbox is modded so we have a ton of emulators), and I guess it’s a nice change.

Also, since the last update I released a new video. For my class we had to create a Film Noir-style video in groups of 4, so myself and 3 others produced Mystery Dick. It was written by Pat Leonard, with some basic foundational ideas stemming from all 4 of us. The great thing about not being the writer is that if someone hates it you can always say “yeah, well I didn’t write it”, heheh (sorry Pat!). I did a majority of the cinematography and directing, and all of the editing (which is all I really wanted to do in the first place). It’s not my finest work and the comedy is definitely not for everyone (I’ve been hesitant to post it on the front page of the site, especially since there’s been other content to fill it), but if you’ve got the 13 minutes, maybe you’ll like it.

Today marks the completion of week 8 out of 10 for this quarter. 2 more weeks and I’m out of here! This quarter has gone quite swimmingly and I plan on finishing strong. I’m most astonished at how well I’ve done in Math: after taking three exams I’ve managed two 95s and a 98. I always thought that I sucked in math (and honestly I still think that), but I’m realizing it was probably more of the fact I didn’t pay attention (hey, it was boring).

More importantly, I’m 2 weeks away from spring break, which means 2 weeks from Mallory. It will have been just about 3 months from when I had last seen her, and I’m ready for another visit—I miss her terribly. I talk to her everyday on Skype and we video chat all the time which has helped an immense amount. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been with just telephones, or even before that. Long-distance relationships are definitely more successful these days because of technology, so I’m thankful for that. Another thing to note is that in 10 days we’ll be celebrating our one year anniversary. It’s crazy to think that it’s already been a year. I’m more in love with her than ever, though, so I’d say things are definitely working out. Here’s to another wonderful year with a wonderful woman :)

The last thing I’ll update with is that I’ve decided on a good summer project: building a Hackintosh. For those uninformed, a hackintosh is a Mac built with PC components. Basically, imagine getting a Mac Pro, but instead of paying $7500 you only pay $1500. The process has become incredibly easy (you can even use a retail DVD of Leopard now), so now’s definitely the time. Not only will I have the most incredible Mac on the block, but also the most incredible PC. It’s something that excites the geek in me, heheh.

More later if I think of it.

Time never changes. It unfortunately (and fortunately) never slows down. Story time.

It’s cold. Snow litters the ground and chills my southern bones. It’s 8 am and we’re getting in the car, bound for the Appleton, WI airport. Somehow the weather seems to affect me less than it has in the past week-and-a-half, perhaps it’s just the thought of knowing it’ll be over soon. I brush the snow off the handle of the car door and get inside, immediately sitting on my hands to alleviate the horrible burning sensation that winter causes. The car stutters, but starts.

It’s a short drive to the airport, only 20 minutes or so away. A ever-present ‘impending doom’ feeling pushes the car along the salted highway, closer and closer to my destination—loneliness. The car pulls into the short term parking lot and we emerge to feel the wind whip us once more. It’s the final whip for me, as I’ll be through with it for a long time: I have no clue when I’ll be back for winter. I rush toward the door of the airport, eager only to get to warmth, not my destination.

The airport is warm. Small, warm, cozy, inviting… and yet I can’t stay. Sigh. We make our way to the United counter, the only counter that has anyone waiting. After a few minutes I’m all checked in and we head closer to the security gate. We stop.

Embracing, tears, kisses and “I love you“‘s are seen in the tiny, quiet airport. All eyes are on us as we sit on the center bench and say our goodbyes. 73 days. That’s the next time we see each other. It’s hard knowing it’s going to be so long, but comforting knowing that 119 days passed so quickly. She tells me not to look back. I don’t.

The security gate in Appleton is tiny. The employees move your stuff along the line as they talk about the latest movies they’ve seen amongst themselves. One guy went on and on about Get Smart. Haven’t seen it.

I get to the gate, and sit down. A few seconds later my phone beeps: the text reads “I love you”. I call her immediately but can only manage to catch half of her words through the incredibly loud crying. With the plane boarding, I tell her Chicago is an hour away, and hang up. I board the plane, seat 4B.

It’s a short flight. Shorter than usual since I managed to sleep. The night before, the girl and myself only managed an hour of rest, so it’s no wonder, I guess. Falling asleep was the best thing for me, really, as I felt sick to my stomach getting on the plane. There’s this weird feeling of ‘should I really be heading back there?’ that goes through my mind. Even if just for a moment, I sometimes believe maybe I should run back through security, get my bag, and live there. Then I remember it’s freezing and I hate it. So much for that idea.

I arrive at Terminal F, but leave from Terminal C. With O’Hare being as huge as it is, it takes me roughly 20 minutes to walk to my departing terminal. As it would happen, all the good restaurants were in Terminal F. With no time to walk back, I settle on two double cheeseburgers from McDonald’s. I sit down at my gate and start on my first burger. As I listen to the folks next to me converse in some foreign language, a thought enters my head. Why do I consider someone eating a quad-burger a pig when eating two double cheeseburgers is the same thing? After this insightful revelation of how fat I would inevitably become, I ate the second burger. Being the typical American I am, I had a large fry and coke to go with the burgers, which I finished quickly as well.

I called the girl back, and a few hours had made a difference. The crying had ceased, all was well again. I told her I’d call her in Charlotte, then boarded the plane.

The events leading up to this? On December 21st I left Myrtle Beach, SC for Appleton, WI. I spent Christmas and New Years with my girl. I finally met her family (60+ people) on both her parent’s sides. From what I can see (and what she says), they’re pretty happy with me. Good. Acceptance is something you can never have too early, I suppose. In one week, Mallory and myself will have been together for 10 months. In those 10 months we have seen each other 4 times, a total of 34 days. Yes, our relationship is a strained and strange one, and yet we’re closer than most other couples I know. In a way, the 1,000 miles between us has made it stronger. We know everything about each other because we talk all the time (I’m sure my roommate Alex can wholeheartedly concur with this). As much as I want to be with her, I’m thankful for the distance. It’s weird to say that, I guess, but we have to get used to it for the next 3 years anyway. By that time, I’m sure we’ll be more inseparable than I already think we are.

Interested in the trip itself? Here’s the abridged version: travel, cold, lost luggage, surprise mallory, meeting nicole, mal’s dead car, found luggage, mal’s revived car, sushi, movies, mother christmas, mallory gets her presents, father christmas, ben and steph, rapids, michelle, movies, the 10,000 song transfer, movies, mexican in the trunk, meeting eric and anton, perkins dinner, blue drank quest, happy new years, happy new years again, shawshank redemption, junk food, falling asleep for an hour, cinnamon rolls, heading to the airport. “I’ll elaborate later” is a dirty, filthy lie, so I’ll just tell you upfront this is probably all you’ll ever get. We also took less than 10 photos in my 11 day stay, which just lets me know we were much too busy having a good time, which we did.

Miss you, Mal. March will be here soon.

Oh yeah, one more thing: I’ve apparently been keeping this blog for one year now. Awesome. Feel free to go back and see how much has changed in the past year. Happy new year, everyone. Hope 2009 is as great as 2008.

Cue Simon and Garfunkel, please.

Well, that’s it. I’m finished. As I type this, I’m sitting in my old office chair in the office of my house. Being home feels amazing, and while I love SCAD to death and wouldn’t mind being with my friends at school again, it’s nice to finally chill out and take a break.

Projects, projects, projects. For my final in Advanced Computer Art Applications, we had to create a web site and incorporate Flash in some way. I figured now would be a perfect time to finish the domain I purchased 9 months ago, StephenGeorg.com. So I did! The domain isn’t up at the moment since I’m having some problems with my server (Dreamhost is on this, no worries), but you can view the same site at my backup located here.

For Drawing 2 we had to do this. Not really much to say about that.

And for Speech I gave a critique of Crooked A’s. She thought the speech was great and gave me a 96, which ended up being the highest score I had gotten in the class so far.

I’m unsure of my grades, but I’m pretty sure I wound up with an A and two B’s. I should know within the next few days, hopefully.

Last update I mentioned wanting to buy Fallout 3… so I did. I think I put in about 12 hours or so on it, but I haven’t played it in about a week or so. Dan borrowed it and put in about 15 hours in two days or so—he actually gave it back to me at one point but then re-borrowed it again later that night. He’s addicted, so I’m assuming by this point he’s probably purchased the game. Even Alex bought the game, and he beat it around the 45 hour mark, just in time for him to go pick up the new WoW expansion. Crazy addict.

We’ve also started on the Fobbies are Borange comic. So far a team of four artists have been assembled and are currently working toward the ultimate goal of recreating the entire series in comic format. It’s a massive undertaking—I’m suspecting that it will take a few years, honestly. One page down. Thousands to go.

My schedule before I left school got a little off track. Alex and myself (who decided to take the same classes this quarter) finished our finals on Monday night, even though we couldn’t leave until Thursday afternoon. Tuesday night, in a fit of awesome (or stupid), we decided (along with Taylor) to stay up all night. That Wednesday morning we went to breakfast (one of the only times we got breakfast that quarter) then off to our 11 am class where we presented our websites. We got back around 2pm and I slept from then till about 4pm. So for those keeping track, I woke up Tuesday at 9:45am and it is now 4pm on Wednesday, with 2 hours of sleep. Anyway, at 5pm we had speech class, so we went to that then came back later. By 8pm I was about dead, so I lied down again, waking up at 10pm. When I woke up I got on Skype to talk to Mal a bit. Time passed quick—suddenly it was 11:52pm and I realized I had missed my opportunity to get some food at the last place on campus to close (the sub shop closes at midnight). ‘Crap’, I thought. Eventually, about 1:30am or so, Alex awoke as well. His car was having problems, Ian needed something printed, and I was starving. So we decided to take a trip to Kinkos/WalMart at 2am.

It was freezing, good lord. It was about 27 °F, which is unbearably cold to a southern boy. (Really, you can’t comprehend the pain that winter weather causes me). Ian used his magical French powers to get the car working again and we headed off to Kinkos.

The problem with Alex’s car was this: apparently his fan was continuing to run when he shut off his car, which killed his battery. Ian jumped his car and took out the fan plug. When we got to Kinkos (about 20 minutes away), Alex kept driving around to continue to recharge the battery. As we left, though, Ian looked up and saw that the temperature gauge was right on H, so he jumped out of the car and quickly put the fan plug back in. The car cooled down and everyone cheered.

Anyway. When we got to WalMart, Dan and myself headed for Subway (open 24 hours!) while Taylor, Alex and Ian went to buy some crap. The lady ahead of Dan and me was taking forever (and not just because there’s only one person working at 2:30am). Apparently she was getting subs for more than just herself: she had a list of 8 subs or so. By the time she had finished, the rest of our group was back and waiting for us. We finally got our subs and left. When we got back to the dorm it was about 3:30am. By the time I went to bed that night it was 4:45am, leaving me with 5 hours of sleep.

Quick recap: woke up Tuesday morning at 9:45am. It is now Thursday morning, 9:45am. I’ve had two 2 hour naps and a 5 hour sleep session. So in 48 hours I’ve slept 9. Not bad, not bad.

Thursday is the day I’m supposed to be finishing up, so I get back from my last class of the year then get started on packing up all of my stuff. My parents and myself don’t leave out until about 7:30pm or so, and embark on the long journey home. I’d say I slept about an hour in the car. When we got back home it was 12:30am. Being the person I am, I got sidetracked and got on Skype. To make a long story short, I went to bed at 8am. So let’s recap:

• Wake up Tuesday 9:45am
• Slept Wednesday 2pm
• Woke up Wednesday 4pm (2 hours)
• Slept Wednesday 8pm
• Woke up Wednesday 10pm (4 hours)
• Slept Thursday 4:45am
• Woke up Thursday 9:45am (9 hours)
• Got an hour of sleep on the road (10 hours)
• Slept Friday 8am

I was up for over 70 hours with 10 hours of sleep. Hmm. I should really not do that. Ever. Ever. Again.

My sleep schedule is all off wack again because of this. I went to bed last night at 11am and woke up today at 6:30pm. I plan on getting this fixed tonight by going to bed around 11pm or so. Unfortunately that means I will have only been up for 4½ hours before I head off to bed, so I may not be able to fall asleep. Oh well, we’ll hope for the best.

To wrap all of this up, I’ll mention again my trip to Wisconsin coming up on December 21st. It’s crazy to think it’s only 29 days away. I’m sure I’ll have all sorts of pictures to post here, so keep on the lookout :)

(and ps: hire me to do stuff since I need money D:)

Haven’t updated in about a week, so I guess I should take the time to update folks on what’s going on. Let me go grab Seth Meyers and Amy Poehler.

Let’s see, what’s happened recently that’s really important… oh yeah, that presidential thing. Obama beat out McCain in electoral votes badly. But seriously… did people actually suspect McCain was going to win? I called this a month or so before it happened. I never doubted once that Obama would lose, I knew he had the support of a majority of the country. Personally, I absolutely hate (read: hate) politics and prefer not to get involved, and I would’ve stayed out of it if it wasn’t for a new underlying, unspoken rule. If you don’t vote, there are some people that straight-up hate you. Really! I can’t quite understand the logic here—I know it’s a ‘privilege’, an ‘honor’, and that I should exercise my right to vote, but what if I just don’t want to? Oh, I know I could take the time to find out about the candidates, but I just don’t care. I don’t think that makes me selfish, I just choose to be uninformed because when it’s all said and done I can stand back and continue to not care like I did in the first place. That doesn’t make me stupid, irresponsible or any other word synonymous with ‘careless’ or ‘dumb’. It’s my choice, darn it. But this election employed the ‘if you don’t vote, some of your friends will hate you’ rule. Bullcrap.

So, I registered to vote. Barely. I dropped it in the mailbox at 3pm the day it was due. I figured ‘you know, if I don’t get it in time, so be it’. But it came, and I had registered to vote. Since my roommate Alex had pressured me into it thus far, I decided I would even bother to watch the debates and read up on issues. I didn’t do this very often, but since he was watching, I had to anyway. My mindset was still mostly ‘I don’t care’, but I did come to some conclusions, not really enough to pull me strongly in either direction. When November 4th rolled around, I voted regardless, if only to be able to tell ‘those people’ that I voted. The people that would hate me if I didn’t. Hey, you people! You suck! Stop forcing me to care!

So yeah, I voted. At least when people ask I can be like ‘yeah, I voted’. If they ask who I voted for I just tell them it’s none of their business. The wise ones leave me alone after that.

Aside from the political crap (you have no idea how thankful I am that I can turn on the TV without hearing ‘socialism’ or ‘90% of the time’), everything has been going pretty great. School is finally winding down (I’ll be heading home this time 2 weeks from now, and won’t be back till January 5th), and soon I’ll be with Mal again. School hasn’t actually given me all that much trouble this quarter, except maybe the Maya project (no grade yet, but I’m expecting a big fat C- on that one). I showed my animation on Monday, though (a few posts down from this one) and it was met with overall positive responses (and one ‘awww’ from some girl who apparently liked Yoshi). We started to do gesture sketches the other day (drawing naked folks, for the uninformed) and I think I did alright, which is odd since I’ve never been able to really accurately draw a human body. Apparently the only thing I’ve ever really had a problem with was clothes, because once they come off I’m a drawing machine. Sort of. I’m also really comfortable around naked folks (and also being naked myself… but that’s another story), so no odd experiences here, expect maybe for the one male model who was like, “any requests? Need a particular pose? How about the Guitar Hero?” then proceeded to act like he was playing a guitar. Amidst my giggling like a schoolgirl at the video game reference, I accurately depicted his penis. Ah, the wonders of art school.

Speaking of video games, I’d be a complete liar if I didn’t say I wanted to say some things, so I will. Fallout 3. Good lord, it looks so fun. Looks. I chose not to buy it yet (Alex is already 40 hours into the game) since I was concerned that if I did, schoolwork wouldn’t get done. Well, that was definitely a good decision since last weekend was madness in terms of workload. But this weekend, however, the load is much, much lighter. It definitely makes me want to buy the game. Mallory has advised against it, saying that while this weekend may be easy, I might be screwed next week, and I’m already so darn close to the end. I know this, but maaaaan do I want to play it! I’m still on Chapter 4 of Mother 3, too, so maybe I’ll do the game a great justice by choosing it over Fallout.

Another random tidbit: apparently I’ve been being a good, responsible adult with my credit, since they recently raised my credit limit. Score! Now to go out and buy a new TV!

…that was a joke.

Dan recently came into the good fortune of an xbox 360 as well (for a super awesome cheapo price). Speaking of which, I decided that for my persuasive speech, I’d talk about how much better the xbox 360 is than the PlayStation 3. I started doing research and realized that I had to completely go against everything I believed… the PlayStation 3 is a better long-term investment than the xbox 360. There, I said it. And it’s true! Right this second, the games on 360 seem like gifts from the gods. However, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, illuminated by the PlayStation 3. And while I don’t know how long it will take to get to the end of that tunnel, I know that the winner of the console war is the PS3. And I don’t have one :(

That’s it for now. I’m just waiting for the school year to end, so I can continue to wait for December 21st. I’ll be with Mal again in 45 days, and I can’t wait. And I’ll be out of here in 14! Woohoo!

The end of 5 weeks means the halfway mark for school, and I half to admit, I never could’ve imagined it moving quite so fast. Seems like just yesterday we were moving into the dorms again and suddenly that’s 5 weeks ago. With any luck these next 5 weeks will pass just as quickly, as I’m anxious to get out of here already.

Currently on my plate I’ve got a 3D project in Maya due on Monday, and I also have to give a manuscript speech for Public Speaking class. I’ve already made a bit of headway on the 3D project (but not a whole lot), and I plan to try and finish it up tomorrow (it’s simply 3D day—all day).

So: 5 weeks till the end of school, 64 days till Mallory. One good thing after another, eh?

The other thing that I absolutely must mention is the MOTHER 3 fan translation which was released today (well it’s technically Saturday now, but it was released on Friday). So far I’ve played through the first chapter (I think Mal is somewhere on chapter four) and it’s incredible. Great job, translation team! If you haven’t had a chance to download the English patch, head on over to Starmen.net.

And that’s about it for now. Don’t worry, if something interesting happens then I’ll let you know.

and back in black (weedly weedly weedly)

*ahem* Anyway,

So it’s been quite a while since I actually posted anything worthwhile. I figure now would be a perfect time to do so, as I sit here waiting for a video file to finish exporting (ah the wonderful world of Compressor and the 2 hour waits…)

Seeing as how my last real blog post was back at the end of July, I guess I should catch folks up on what’s been going on. In August, Mallory came to visit. She was there for 9 days, and it was great. She’s told me countless times it was easily the best days of her life, and I have to say, definitely mine too. She finally got to see the beach! (Well, the real beach—she had been to the shores of Maine, but hey, if the ocean isn’t warm then it doesn’t count. Trust me, I know. I’m southern.)

I should probably talk about her visit, and I will to some degree, but I admit that pictures speak louder than words. To summarize the best I can, we did absolutely everything there is to do in Myrtle Beach (or at least all the great stuff). We did more in 9 days than most families / people on vacation do in 2 whole weeks. Just a few of the awesome things we did:

• Beach! (hey this was a big deal, and we did it a few times)
• Saw the area (just driving around is a lot of fun, and there’s a lot to see)
• Food (Southern food! Well, not so much, but places she’s never eaten before)
• Shopping (Barefoot Landing, Broadway, Market Commons—although we bought almost nothing)
• Carolina Opry
• Dixie Stampede
• Hardrock Park (Bear… Metal… FAMILY! Go Speedboy! Oh wait, they’re bankrupt now…)
• Quad Date (Justin, Jarrett, and John as well as their fiancees/girlfriends)
• Kite (I had not previously flown one)
• Spa (Mallory had a day at the spa! There’s some pictures of this.)
• Meeting friends (Mallory was able to meet a plethora of my friends, including John Goudelock and some of the folks from my church)
• Video Games (haha, as if it wasn’t apparent enough, when two geeks get together, there will inevitably be some game playing)

There were some other things too, but that’s a majority. Since she visited me last, it’s my turn to see her next, and I’ve already got my ticket. I’ll be spending Christmas (and New Year’s!) with her, particularly from December 21 to January 1. She’s the best Christmas present I could ask for, so I’m incredibly excited! I mean, there’s the whole “I’m going to have to meet every member of her family on both sides” thing, but hey, there can’t be too many crazy people, right? I doubt I’ll get more than two “YOU BETTER NOT TRY NUTHIN”s from family members. I look forward to the whole bunch!

Aside from Mallory and that end of the spectrum (by the way, we’ve been together for 7 months already :D), other things have been going on as well. A good example being that I’m now back in school. Hurray! Actually, I’m done with 3 (almost 4) of my ten week quarter. Yeah, time passes pretty quickly.

This quarter in school I’m taking Advanced Computer Art Applications, Speech and Public Speaking, and Drawing 2. I’ve had plenty of time already to feel out the professors and sort of judge how difficult the quarter will be, and I have to say, I feel like I got lucky. I picked ‘easy’ professors on purpose, but I didn’t get the Speech professor I had picked (got an email saying I was switched to another class). As it turns out, though, it was quite a good switch.

Computer Art (CMPA) is a great class—it might just be the fact I love sitting for hours in front of a screen anyway, who knows. We have to go through 5 applications (Illustrator, Photoshop, Maya, After Effects, Flash—in that order) and we’ve just finished Photoshop. Dan took the same class with the same professor last year and said it was pretty simple, so I can’t say I’m too worried. Dan must’ve liked him, as he’s taking him again this quarter for After Effects class. For the Illustrator class we had to create a logo, and for Photoshop we had to make a collage. We haven’t gotten any grades back (nor have they been posted online), but I’m assuming we did pretty good. Both of my projects have been positively received.

Drawing 2 isn’t so bad either. I mean, yeah, drawing totally sucks, but our professor doesn’t grade us too harshly. And that’s good, because drawing is definitely not one of my strong points. I got a 84 on the first drawing project, and then an additional 2 points after making some corrections (she allows us to take her advice then redo some things) for a total of 86. Better than the C’s I was getting in Harmon’s class back in Drawing 1.

Speech and Public Speaking initally worried me a bit, not because I have a problem speaking in front of people, but simply because I hate doing it. I’m not a shy person, but I prefer to keep quiet, and speech class is definitely going to take you out of that comfort zone. As it turns out though, our professor is fairly awesome, and grades very easily. I did my first informative speech on MOTHER 3 and got a 98, so I’m fairly certain I could choose any subject and I’d be a-ok.

Besides schoolwork, we spend our time eating, sleeping and playing video games. My sleep schedule actually hasn’t been too horribly bad. I normally get 6 or 7 hours every night and only on the weekends do I do my ridiculous ‘go to bed at 9am’ thing, and even then it’s not all the time. We’re also located in Oglethorp House, which puts us right above JO’s, which happens to be the best SCAD dining facility, so we’re being well fed all of the time (I still had to tighten my belt after the first two weeks though, hm…).

As far as gaming goes, I personally haven’t been playing much of anything, but other folk have been playing a good bit of Brawl, GTA 4, Dead Rising, Halo 3, and even a bit of Crazy Taxi (well, at least for a few minutes one afternoon). Ian and Taylor alternate playing Call of Duty 4 on xbox live, too. I have Animal Crossing sitting in my DS in front of me, but I seldom remember to pick it up, unfortunately. Every once in a while I remember to play on Saturdays, other than that, usually not.

Another big thing: since I last wrote, Fobbies are Borange actually ended. Yep, after 42 episodes (and a crazy number of other songs and ridiculous stuff), the series is finally over. It was met with predominantly positive feedback all throughout its history, and under Jon Kay’s influential design hand, there should be some sort of FaB apparel showing its ugly head in the Fangamer Store in the near future. Loids are not Christmas (LanC) is the spiritual successor to FaB (even though it started before the end of FaB), and deals with the first Mother game. It’s also completely unscripted and usually does pretty well bringing about a large amount of comedy. I play the role of Ninten, and due to the attention and appreciation he’s been shown, I’m going to do another small series after LanC ends (the last episode should be this Saturday) where Ninten simply talks about issues. I’ll probably keep them under 3 minutes and they will probably still show up on Ben’s radio show (now on Saturday nights at 7pm EST instead of the old Friday night at 11pm).

Another new thing in the pipeline is “30 Minutes”, a half-hour show that Dan and myself have been doing on The Camel for the past two weeks. It started out as Dan just suggesting that we have our own Ustream show, but we never actually prepared at all. That’s more or less been the theme, and we’ve rated our own show about 1 to 2 out of 10 stars. We admit it’s pretty horrible, and don’t necessarily plan to plan—but you might enjoy it anyway. That link above has the recorded episodes on the page, so check it out when you get a chance. Who knows, you might actually laugh. Once.

And with all of that out of the way, I think you (whoever you are) are finally caught up with everything that’s going on. Almost 4 weeks of this quarter are over, leaving only 6 more. When I get back from school I’ll have about a month or so before I see Mal (75 days from today), which is what I’m most looking forward to this holiday season. I’ll try and do better about keeping this thing updated (and hopefully by updating more frequently I will eliminate the need to write ridiculously long posts) in the near future.

A month has passed since my last entry—since then the con has come and gone, and I have unsuccessfully written more about my Wisconsin trip. Before I get started on some of the con stuff, I’ll try to more or less summarize by day some of the events of Wisconsin. I would like to revisit this list at some point to add more detail, but for now, you’ll have to deal with this.

Tuesday (June 10th) - arrival, ate food (JDs) with casey and tara, picked up movie (the notebook), didn’t watch anything (mal was overwhelmed and sick)

Wednesday - made pancakes, went to nature reserve (1000 islands), hiking, disc golf, pizza for lunch, went to visit steph and play games, jimmy johns, watched everything is illuminated followed by drop dead gorgeous

Thursday - mal had to work, hung out with casey from 10 am to 3 pm, tried to go go-karting but it rained, went bowling (filmed it), ate burger king, went to a few gamestores, watched the notebook (tried)

Friday - Radio / LanC 1, Swingset, Tetherball (ouch), Culver’s for lunch, Ben called during swing fun time, Applebee’s with Mom and Rob, go packers, cheese factory, went to the mall

Saturday - got up at and left at 9 am with mal’s dad for the 1 hour trip (stopped to get brats), played disc golf in the mucky dirt, went to eat at chili’s, then to the lake and walked along the beach with mal’s dad, to the house then the recital, went to eat at ____, drove back (stephen drifts off a bit)

Sunday - buffalo wild wings with steph, bought candy at walmart, movie

Monday - morning, sushi, photo taking, talking to parents, Mallory got sick again, leaving

We actually watched a movie every night (except the first night). Like I said, I’d like to go back and fill in more info about all of this, but I’m not sure when or if that’ll be happening.

Con stuff will be coming. At some point. More than likely I’ll just link you to the con page: http://fishsticks.fobby.net/photos/chicagocon/

Anyway, Mallory is coming on August 19th and staying until the 28th. I’ll probably write more during or after that.

Lessee, the last post was June 2. A LOT has happened in my life since then, so sit back, grab a coke, and get in a comfortable position—this is gonna be a long one.

When we last left our hero, he was preparing to go to Wisconsin. I left on the 10th of June. The week leading up to that was absolute madness, and I don’t think I’ve ever been as stressed as much as I was that week than in my entire life. I did my best not to worry about too much (and to my knowledge I did a good job of avoiding any and all worry), but good lord did I think about stuff. My mom always told me horror stories of how she’d bring boyfriends home to meet her parents and my grandfather would be extremely hard on them and yell and make them feel really bad, so that didn’t help my situation any (for some reason I was really nervous about meeting her father). I even went to the beach to try and tan for a week (this alone proves this is love—I would never go to the beach for anyone. Sand? P’shaw!)

I did alright sleeping until maybe the night of the 8th. Trying to sleep on the 8th and 9th was absolutely ridiculous—I had a lot of trouble sleeping, just lying awake knowing what was so quickly approaching. I prepared the best I could for the 10th, and even got Mal a few things that I wanted her to have, and then woke up on the 10th ready for action.

Now, Mom had to work and Dad had to work. The plan was for dad to come back from work a wee bit early to take me to the airport (leaving your car there for a week costs a buttload of money). My flight left at noon: 12: 05pm. You’re supposed to be at the airport an hour and a half early, but considering Myrtle Beach is a rather small airport, I said an hour early would be fine. Anyway, I got up that morning at 9 am and got ready. Dad was supposed to pick me up at 9:30am. I heard the hourly chime go off—it’s 10 am and still no dad. Hmmm… that’s not good. 10:30 rolls around and still no sign of him. I give him a call and express the severity of the situation. “Dude, you needed to be here at 10!” “Oh I’m sorry, I’m on my way though.” On his way, gaaaah. He’s finally there by 10:45 but the airport is half an hour away. He arrives and tells me he has to go inside the house to use the bathroom. “There’s no time for that!”, I scream. He kind of hesitates (I think he really did have to go), then we jump in the car.

We’re on our way to the airport. Dad was supposed to pick me up early so we could grab a bite to eat—I was crazy hungry and wanted to munch on something. About halway to the airport it starts to occur to me where I’m going and what’s happening, and my stomach starts to get all willy-nilly and such. “Crap.” Literally. We stopped at a Burger King and we both ran in to relieve ourselves. After waiting on some guy who took a good 10 minutes. By the time we both were done it was about 11:10 and we were still 10 to 15 minutes away from the airport. We didn’t have enough time to eat so we just jumped in the car and flew down there.

I was crossing my fingers on the way, because, quite honestly, it would suck to have to reschedule a flight because you couldn’t make it to the airport on time. We got to the airport around 11:25 or so, and I jumped out of the car and ran inside. The airport was empty—*whew*. I got in line and checked in my bags. Dad came in, I told him I had to run and we parted. I got through security in an extended amount of time—I kept taking off my stuff trying to figure out why the buzzer thing kept going off. I just kept setting it off and they had to take me to the side and frisk me (boy was that fun). Eventually it occurred to me that I just never took off my belt, which is a seatbelt, so the thing was big and metal. Duh. *facepalm*

I get through security and I can finally see the gate. Thank goodness, I made it. I’m also starving. I took the time to grab a 6” marinara meatball sub from Subway and stuff it down my pie hole just before the plane started boarding. I swallow the last hot (read: hot) bite, and took a deep breath. This was it. This was what I had been waiting for for three months. I get on the plane.

And then I realize that I’ll still have another flight so I calmed down a bit. I sit down next to a nice old lady—backstory time: up to this point I had never flown by myself, but I always thought that if I had to do it, I always wanted to sit next to a nice old lady. Something about them seems like it would make the trip smoother or something, not that I expected her to give me homemade cookies from her purse or anything, but hey, who knows. Anyway, throughout the flight I was talking to her and the inevitable conversation of why we were flying came up. When I started to explain the story behind Mallory and myself, she was completely enthralled and wanted to hear more.

I talked to this woman for the entire flight. Turns out she was 70-something (at least I’m pretty sure that’s what she told me), the perfect age to be a nice old lady, just like what I wanted. She thought it was so amazing that we met on the internet, and called me young and foolish for pursuing it, but at the same time acknowledged that if I never pursued it I would never know. She said that I looked like a fine young gentleman (not like other ‘hoodlums’ my age) and that if the girl I was meeting was half as nice as me, we should be fine. I assured her she was absolutely wonderful, and she seemed quite convinced. When the plane landed in Detroit she stopped me getting off the plane and gave me her address. She told me that she had gotten very into our story and wanted to know how it all turned out, and to mail her a letter, even if it just said “Everything went well!” Later when I got back from the trip I wrote a page of stuff and even included a picture of Mallory and me together, so I’m hoping that made her day brighter.

After I parted ways with the woman I was in the Airport of Destiny™. I headed over to some pizza place and got a personal pan pizza and a drink (gah, no sweet tea was already killing me). I sat down and gave Mallory and then Ben a call. I talked to Ben for a while—originally I was going to call him to have him calm me down, but as it turns out, talking to the old lady for 2 hours had made me feel incredible already. I honestly wasn’t nervous in the slightest, it was awesome. After I talked with Ben for a bit I headed toward the gate. The next plane ride was much less eventful, sitting by people who didn’t really want to talk at all (or acknowledge my existence). Instead, we’ll jump to the good part.

I’m about to get off the plane and arrive in Milwaukee, where she’s supposed to pick me up. I get off and walk the long path to the baggage claim. I can honestly say that I remember every detail of that hallway and I doubt I’ll ever forget. When Mallory and I had talked about meeting, she said she wanted to sneak up on me, so I kept my eye out for her. Then it occurred to me that she may not even be there yet so I gave her a call.

Nope, she wasn’t there. She was about 15 minutes away from the airport, actually. I waited on my baggage for about 10 minutes, grabbed it, and sat down. As I sat there, I realized the next thing that would happen is that I would be meeting her. The absolute girl of my dreams, the one who I had already fallen madly in love with and had looked forward to meeting for the last three months. She had wanted to sneak up on me so I sat in a chair facing away from everything, although I could see behind me using the reflection of the glass in front of me (heheh, genius). I sat for a good 10 minutes, probably.

She called again when she was there. I told her I’d see her soon, hung up the phone and swallowed deep. It all sort of sank in all at once (that which didn’t probably just ran out of my ears). I sat there staring at the glass, and waiting on that moment. Soon I saw a figure bend down next to me, but behind me. I knew it was her and I stood slowly to my feet. I turned around and there she was—there was a feeling of ‘my god she’s beautiful’ and ‘wtf, am I actually here?’ all at the same time. I embraced her.

We let go then I grabbed my stuff. She begged to carry something so I let her take my camera bag. We started to head back toward the car. We weren’t talking a whole lot, it sort of reminded me of when we had first gotten together—we didn’t say much for days. We stood next to each other standing on the moving platform toward the parking lot. I held my hand out in front of her. She grabbed it. We locked fingers and I knew it was real.

We got to the car and put my things inside. We got in the car and for the next two hours made idle chit-chat and Mallory played ‘tour guide’ with Wisconsin. Turns out that 96% of Wisconsin is cows and farms. We held hands the entire way back home.

Here’s where I’m going to abridge this entry. I was there for a week, and in that week I did a few things. First off, I proved to myself beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is real. Our relationship exists, and although we’re far away from one another, we’re still crazy in love. Like, love. The next thing is that I fell more in love with her than I already was—but I guess that was a given. I have a lot of new (and fun) experiences that I’ve added to my “Things I’ve Done In Life” book, and I’m so happy that I shared them all with someone as wonderful as her. I plan on going on about the trip in detail, day by day, after Mallory and myself have a chance to sit down together and go over everything so we get every little detail. Well, maybe not every little detail: I’m sure there’s things you don’t want to hear about, heheh.

Fast-foward. I’m coming back home. I’m broken. There’s a song by Jack’s Mannequin entitled ‘Bruised’, and it fits pretty well (and it hurts to listen to it). I heard it on the flight home and it really killed me. I didn’t break down until I got back home, but then it hit me and it hit me really hard. I haven’t felt that bad in a long time. It occurred to me, though, that if we’re going to be in this sort of relationship, we should probably get used to feeling like this. It hurts, it doesn’t feel good, but it’s a situation where you just have to reflect on the good times and try to ignore the fact you can’t be together all the time. It’s something I’m still trying to deal with.

After I got back, I was glad that I’d get to see her in less than a month (yeah, really!), but it was just going so incredibly slow. The next few days we talked quite a bit—every day (as usual) and for prolonged periods of time.

Four days later (Thursday), my dad’s father passed away. He was 79 years old, and had battled Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s for years. He was a very influential preacher in his hometown of Mt. Storm, WV. We drove up on Saturday morning to be there for the viewings on Sunday and the funeral today, then spending Tuesday with my mom’s family and driving back on Wednesday (as a side note, we’re taking a detour on the way back home to swing by and meet Ben Carignan, someone who has been an incredible friend to me for a long time). During the viewing I met tons of people I had never met before—most to all of them were family in some way, shape or form. There was one girl who kept eyeing me from across the room—she’d meet eye contact then look away. I pointed her out to mom and said that she wouldn’t stop looking at me. Mom said that maybe she wanted to ‘meet’ me. I just said that I hoped not, because I’m sure the idiot didn’t realize we were related. Then again, this is West Virginia, and while I’d expect cousins to marry in Alabama, it probably goes on here too. *sigh* What’s worse is that my mom told me that someone in her family (slightly distant at least) just married their cousin. Sorry, there’s just something a little weird about being attracted to your cousin in any way. Maybe it’s just me.

I’m done for now. I’m still here in WV staying in a trailer in front of my grandma’s yard (that’s vacation here—hurray rednecks :D). The funeral starts in an hour so I have to get ready. I’ll be back at a later post to perhaps talk more about my grandfather and of course about the trip at some point.