On the whole, I have to say that California really doesn't "do" St. Patrick's Day as much as the east coast does. I mean sure, there are more people wearing green than usual, but it's not really that many, and there aren't any decorations up anywhere or parades that I'm aware of. It's just kind of a day. There's an Irish pub next to my apartment complex that I expect will be packed tonight (they've added tents to the parking lot), but that's about the only place that seems to go all-out here...

I feel bad that I've been so remiss in updating my LJ. After GDC a number of things were going through my head that couldn't be spread to the internets, but then the things that COULD be said got pushed to lower priority by the Santa Ana winds: on Sunday night I slept with my mouth open apparently and Monday morning had a wonderful, scratch sore throat for my enjoyment, so I called in sick and spent the day mostly trying not to cough, although by the end of the day I had developed a fever. It broke Monday night (and I do have to say, it's such a wonderful feeling when a fever finally breaks even though you spend the rest of the evening sweating), but practically no sleep I called in again on Tuesday. By around 12:30 I was actually feeling good but I figured I'd stay out just to be safe. Yesterday I came into work, still with a sore throat, but sometimes you have to suck it up and I know that I'm going to have the throat now for a few days after I get better. But a fever crept up as soon as I got to my desk and pretty much everyone at work told me I looked like death warmed over and to leave before I infected them, so I went home and again slept a lot. Today I'm at work and feel fine except for the fact that I can't talk much, so let's hope it's over now. But basically, because I was feeling so crappy I never got around to LJ updating. Ah well, so that's what's been up with me. Well, part of it. More to come. ;)

Forgive the poor quality of my cell phone camera, but it's what I had. So this has been the situation in the vending machine in the kitchen for a couple of days now:



The Ding Dongs are stuck behind a couple of bags of the mini-muffins, but nobody apparently wants them. So if you have a Ding Dong craving, you'll have to buy out the muffins first!

So Lucasfilm has filed suit against Gen Con for allegedly screwing up the money (including not making the donation of the auction proceeds to Make-a-Wish). Interesting. I kind of thought by now Peter Adkison would have gotten Gen Con LLC. to a point where it actually knows how to correctly process money, seeing as its business is totally about running cons. It'll be interesting to see (if we do) where in the process between CG and LFL things got messed up and if it was incompetence, malice or just really bad communication that made LFL file suit.

On my way into Disneyland today, two teenaged girls on the tram were talking about getting jobs. One to the other:

"You like to travel, right? You should get a job like receptionist or something, that'd be perfect for you."

I've made a few changes to the way I keep track of things in 2008. First off, I'm tagging my LJ entries as I make them. I don't know if I'll go back and tag everything prior to now, but at least if I get started I'll be in the habit. I'm also journaling (on paper) all of the board games I purchase and play so that I can give myself a nice little "look at what I did" summary at the end of the year. It should be..... interesting. :)

In unrelated news, I also finally got my checkbook all reconciled -- I hadn't done a full accounting since before my Europe trip back in October. At least I'm not hand-to-mouth anymore or I'd have been so screwed. On the other hand, I also didn't notice at the time quite how much bleeds into fees for international transactions. Next time I definitely need to remember to pull a bunch of Euros in advance... But, almost four hours over last weekend and we're all caught up again. I think three months is the record length for getting behind since I opened my BoA account when I moved to CA. Not a record I really want to get close to again.