General Update

I've gotten out of the habit of posting for the last few months, and now I find I don't post because I've got so much I know I haven't posted about I don't know where to start.  So I'm going to give a sort of general update here... which, considering my habits on the occasions wherein I do post, will probably end up rather long.

It's been a very good few months.  I've got a new job that I'm enjoying about as much as I can enjoy a job.  sheeplass has started working, too, so that's been somewhat of a change in our lives, though obviously a much greater change in hers than mine, since the time she's at work I am, too.

I'm playing a lot less World of Warcraft lately... after over 1,500 hours (70 days!), most every activity becomes boring, and while I still play occasionally, it's no longer very frequent.  I've dropped out of my scheduled raids to do other things, thus returning the game to what I enjoyed about it to begin with -- it's an MMO that you can log on, play for an hour or two, and log off, without having to organize your life around it.  I've no intention of leaving the game entirely any time soon, as I still enjoy it, it just no longer makes it to the top of the "things I want to do" queue as often.

Hmm... other hobbies.  I've been planning out the end of my D&D campaign, which has run for years and taken characters from level 1 to their current level of 18.  They've been following a specific plot since around level 10, and I'm looking to wrap it up around 20-22, so they're close to the finale now.

I've also been digging out some other games now that WoW isn't occupying much time.  I have the Oblivion expansion to play through, as well as Neverwinter Nights 2 to finish.  Both are games that I started a while ago during previous non-WoW-playing periods, but that I want to finish.  I've also gotten my chemistry textbook back out; I've been teaching myself a college course in general chemistry, and am more than halfway through that.  I don't see how people do scientific math without a stack-logic RPN calculator... my beloved HP 48GX broke, so I had to procure an HP 50g to replace it.  (Actually, I can see just fine how people do scientific math without one -- they take longer and write a lot of intermediate steps down -- I just don't like the answer.)  Really, though, I'm looking forward to getting a good enough grasp of chemistry to move on to the really interesting stuff in organic and biochemistry.

Microsoft gives me a free membership to an absurdly large gym and fitness facility (it has 4 pools, a spa, a medical clinic, 3 restaurants...) so I've gone back to working out there three times a week.  It's not as convenient as when I worked downtown (and had a gym in the building I worked in), but it is just across the street from where I work now, so it's pretty easy to get over there.  I still wouldn't say I enjoy it, but it's a necessary evil for living a long and healthy life.  In any case, I'm in better shape now than I had ever been, which is nice, so I like the results even if I don't much care for the effort.

It's been a pretty eventful few weeks... faecat and ironman4do got married a few weeks ago, and I was a groomsman in the wedding, so there was a weekend of wedding-related activities.  They're very cute and it's good to see them so happy together, as we've known them since they first met.  We (sheeplass and I) went to see Rent with them last week, which was an enjoyable evening out.

Mainly, though, I spend a lot of time with my wife.  We went and played pool in downtown Bellevue last week... we are both appallingly bad at pool, and of ten games only one did not end with some automatic-loss condition (scratching on the 8-ball or the break, inadvertently sinking the 8, etc.)  However, I'm sure we'll get better with some practice.  We've also just picked up the LEGO Star Wars video games, which are cute, fun, and made for cooperative two-player play.  We always look for games with a two-player co-op mode; we're both nerds and like video gaming, but it's not usually an activity designed for playing together like that.  (Though now that I think about it, that's what we turned World of Warcraft into -- we almost always played our characters together and chose complementary character classes.  Though the game has many things geared for 3-5 people, you can accomplish a whole lot with two if they're two characters whose skills complement each other's well.)  We're also planning to take tango lessons next month.

So, for those who have asked me to update my journal, there's the brief update.  Overall, life is good, I have the best wife on Earth, and I haven't been bored in years (unless you count time spent at work.)

And now that I've got all of that posted, I can return to my regularly scheduled commentary on science and complaining about politics.  :-)