God damn, this year has been a bit bumpy so far.

So I havent updated this blog much lately, surprise, surprise. Most of you likely already know the major points from this update from elsewhere, but I figured I should probably post a few things here on SG as well.

Sadly, that trip to Japan ended up getting cancelled. There was a little too much uncertainty after the big quake off their NE coast. We were offered the opportunity to receive full refunds on everything, so we decided to wait. In retrospect, having talked with some people in the areas we were visiting, I wish we had not cancelled, but... We've decided to shoot for next spring. I'm a bit heartbroken that it got cancelled this year, considering this is the first year it's gotten as far as all being booked. Stuff has always come up in the past, preventing the trip from even being scheduled. Next year should be good though!

An additional bit of stress this year was a near miss with some health stuff. Back in January, I'd gone to the doctor for my first ever check up. I figured now that I'm in my 30's, I should probably get checked over and be sure I'm in good health. My doctor reported back that outside of one lab value that was off, I was otherwise in good health.

However, that lab marker is generally an early sign of one of quite a number of different health issues, some of which can be pretty bad.

A few months and a half dozen tests later, it had been narrowed town to two things: either I am one of a small number of people who's bodies are just naturally that way, and the "abnormal" value is actually my "normal", or.... bladder cancer.

May was a stressful month, waiting for that last test. The week before last I finally had that last test done (which wasnt any fun!), and got my results: I'm a mutant! So now filed away in my medical record is that one of my lab results will likely always be slightly off of baseline.

Christ, I dont know that I'd realized until after all of this wrapped up just how stressed it had been making me. I had a good time out with a bunch of friends afterwards and made many toasts to getting to keep my internal organs. Yay for keeping one's internal organs!

But I'm still feeling like I'm catching up on rest, even a week and a half later. I'm certainly feeling more relaxed than I have in months, but am also feeing kinda drained.

So yeah, this year has been a mixed bag. On the one hand, I could label it as a bad year so far. But considering how close I came to it being so much worse... I'll take it. At least I have my health. And cheers to that!

God, it's been a year and a half since my last blog update. Facebook has swallowed me whole!

Any of my friends on here that I'm not friends with yet on FB should look me up there. I actually am sort of active on there! Mostly just trivial crap, but hey, it's something.

Life has been busy this past year and a half. I've been enjoying the newfound freedom that finally buying a car has brought. It didnt change my life that much, but it is nice needing to rely on others less.

Things with Jojo are still going quite well. We've had a few bumps along the way, and still have llittle bumps here and there, but our relationship is definitely going strong. It's almost enough to make me want to resign from the Dating Sucks group on here. Almost. But I figure relationships and dating are different enough things. Besides, I'd miss reading some of the stories in there.

Work has been mostly more of the same. My responsibilities have continued to grow, but so has the position. I'm doing well. Our new administrator is so much different than our old one from a few years ago. My old boss micromanaged me to the extent that it would have been impossible for me to do anything wrong, and I didnt really even need to try to prioritize. Now I just get told a broad scope what to do, and the details are left to me. I like it, but it's certainly a lot more pressure. But.... pressure aside, I actually am pretty satisfied at work. That's a wonderful thing.

We've moved recently. We fell in love with a building we'd looked at a while back, even though we knew we couldnt afford to live there. Through odd circumstances, I ended up finding a lease that needed to be taken over in that same building, that had been written with some attractive promo rates. Even more coincidentally, this unit in particular was the *only* other unit in the building with the floor plan we wanted. It's wierd when it feels like the universe is listening to your desires. So we're living on the north waterfront now, and pretending we're much higher class than we really are. We're locked in at a good rate until the middle of next year, so we're going to enjoy it while we can.

This spring we're finally making it to Japan for the first time. As it gets closer and closer, I'm starting to stress about it more than a little. So many more plans to make when trying to avoid the inevitable language barrier issues. I just joined the SG Japan group. I'm sort of hoping to meet a Tokyo-ite on there that will exchange some tour guide duties for dinners and booze. We'll see if that goes anywhere. However that turns out though, I am excited!

I think that's enough for tonight. I should get to bed, as tomorrow looks like it may be a long day. I've been feeling an itch to be more active on here though, so maybe anyone that still reads my blog (ha!) will see me around a bit more often.

Goodnight!

Wow, it's been a while. It seems I am pretty much always behind in the whole updating my blogs thing. Just about anyone that reads it knows me in person anyway, so I guess it's no biggie.

So at the moment I'm taking a break from getting ready to head to the airport after bit. Work is sending me down to Irvine for a week for training on a piece of our new EMR software. I'm not actually looking forward to it that much, as I'm not wild about the week long interruption in my life. Especially since I'm a bit broke (more on that next paragraph), and cant tack on any extra days to go do fun stuff. However, I'm taking this all as a good thing. With the job market how it is, I'm choosing to interpret them sending me to training as a sign that my job is stable. Really, could I ask for much more than that right now? Anyways, if anyone has any reccomendations for some stuff to do in the evenings during the week in Irvine (I'm getting some spending money from the office, so cool restraunts/bars are just fine), I'd love to hear them.

Last month I had a dental checkup. Not surprisingly, this is the story that ends with me feeling kinda broke. Anyway, I've had this little lump that comes and goes on my gums for the past handful of years. The thought had been that it was an allergic reaction to something. So this time it was there when I was at the dentist, and it turns out it's an abscess. Ended up being that the root canal I had done like 7 or 8 years ago had failed, and I had a decent sized infection up there. Funny that it'd never hurt or anything. So first they tried a re-treat of the root canal that failed. Then they did a neat surgery called an apicoectomy, where they peel back the gums, cut a hole in the jawbone, then remove part of the tooth's roots and put a filling in from the back of the tooth. Right now I'm in a holding pattern to see if that truly got rid of the infection. If it didnt, I'll have to get the tooth pulled anyway. I'm a bit worried about that, as the area has started to be a little sensitive the past day and a half. I really hope I dont lose the tooth. It's a back molar, and wouldnt be missed that much, but I've spend a lot of money on it the past two months. My dental plan's annual limit is $1500, and I've done more than twice that on this one issue. Looks like I might slack off a little bit on other dental visits for the rest of the year...

In other news, I got a new phone. And I'm not on Verizon anymore. D'oh. I finally decided I was tired enough of carrying around both my ipod touch to keep up with emails and stuff, and my phone for phone calls... Well, you know how that ended. I'm now the proud owner of the iPhone 3GS. It's actually pretty sweet. I am surprised how noticable the speed difference is. Stuff launches more quickly, and runs more smoothly. The Katamari game seems to run very smoothly now. So with this change, my txt limit went up, so I'll probably be texting more. Which will be nice, as now just about no one I know will count as "mobile to mobile" calls. I have to say though, the line to get one was kind of nuts. I'm not an apple fanboy, and would not have done the launch day line ride, if I werent leaving for a trip, with my old Verizon plan not even offering national calling. The line was huge, and a little scary how many people were twittering on their old iphones about being in line to get their new iphones. Ew.

All in all, it's been a busy and expensive last couple of months. I never did do a blog on Sakuracon, and at this point it doesnt look like that's going to happen. But things are going well. If real life keeps you moving enough that you dont spend much time in front of the computer, that cant be a bad thing, can it?

Ahhhh, springtime!

The weather has been good this weekend, which has put me in a good mood. Combined with the fact that this is a short week at work due to leaving for Sakuracon on Thursday, I am in good spirits.

So my birthday was a couple weeks ago. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about being 29. For the most part, it's just another year, but it's hard to believe I'm soon to be in my 30's. I dont feel like I'm pushing 30. Although maybe that's the important part. Either way, it was fun to get together with friends and do some birthday celebrating.

I've been meaning to start doing this for a long time, and I'm making it a point to finally get around to it. Theoretically from here until some unforseen date in the future, each time I update my blog, I will post up a new "what bar is this?" photo for people to guess. The first person to correctly guess which bar it is (Not you, Jojo! You're with me when I take these!) gets points. I dont think these points are redeemable for prizes, but they're points none the less.

Do you know your portland bars well enough to know whose wall of booze this is?


In other news, about a month ago we had a new addition to our household. His name is MIPS, and he's been a joy to have around. Sometimes he behaves a little strangely, but he's generally good company. Plus, since Jojo gets home a few hours before I do, he's happy to relay messages to her from me at work:


Here's hoping each of you spent some time out in the sun this weekend!

2009 sure got here quickly!

Things have been good lately. It's a nice note on which to start the new year!

Christmas was fun. I've had the chance to see more of the people I missed on xmas due to the weather, and have been doing the belated gift exchange stuff. So far the gifts I've given seem to have gone over well. Jojo enjoyed her gifts, and gave me a very kitchen themed Christmas! She got me an icecream maker I'd had my eye on a few months ago, a new indoor grill (the neat George Foreman with the interchangable plates, my old grill was worn out), and a kit for making root beer. I havent used the root beer kit yet, but I am looking forward to it. When I was a little kid, we had a fridge in the garage that had a keg in it that was usually full of homemade rootbeer. Ever since opening the box that it came in, the apartment smells like rootbeer, too. The extract is just that potent, even still sealed in it's bottle.

Also over the holidays I bought myself a new little server. It's actually a pretty cute little guy. It's the HP MediaSmart EX470, which I have been using to help get my home network a little bit more organized. I'm happy to see that my main PC is now doing nightly backups, and I will be getting the other computers in the house doing the same pretty soon. I havent decided what all to do with website hosting on it yet. The OS comes with a handy little web portal to access files and photos and stuff over the internet, but I think I may want to redesign and personalize it prior to opening it up to the general populace. However, I am getting my photos a little better organized, so I may be having more pictures in my blogs soon.

I've also been using it to organize all my old backups that I've accumulated over the years. That's....going to take a while. I started in on an older set today, and have been finding old songs and music videos and stuff I'd downloaded in 1994!!! Good god, file sizes were huge and video quality sucked back then! I was a patient teenager to put up with that on dial up!

New Years Eve was good. Got to go out with a good bit of the gang. There were some people missing, but it was good. Even met some new friends that seemed pretty cool. We did our usual pub crawl, which was a little bit of a bust... Quite a few bars were closed. What the hell? Since when do bars close up for NYE? We ended up ringing in the new year at On Deck, which is a little sports bar across the street from my place. It was surprisingly laid back there, and they handed out champagne to everyone before midnight, so all was good. I got to kiss Jojo at midnight, for our 3rd New Years together. Then the first meal of the new year was breakfast at the 24 hour hotcase house together with my mom and Jojo, which I would say is a perfect way to begin, and also helped mask my hangover.

All in all this is probably a pretty boring blog update, but that's what I've been up to. My life seems to have slowed down just a little bit lately, and I am enjoying it. It's nice to have some peace from time to time. Hell, I've even been reading again.

I hope all of you have had a good start to this new year as well! Let's keep the good times coming!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Melted snow.

Well, it's Christmas eve, and it's been a real nice year. Hard to believe how quickly it's gone by. Sadly, the weather has been sufficient that the family we'd expected to visit will not be making it here for the holiday. So, we're still going to cook the big dinner we'd planned on, it will just be for two! I suppose opening presents and eating until we pop is still a pretty good day though. I would have considered taking this Friday off of work, but between the vacation, being sick for a few days, and then this weather... I just dont feel like I've spent enough time at the office lately!

Since we arent getting anyone by this year to see our tree, I wanted to put a picture up on here. If you look closely, you can even see some of the handmade gifts that Jojo made for people.



Happly Holidays everyone!

Hmmm, been a while.

The vacation to Florida was fun, I'll probably end up uploading some pics at some point here. Did the whole DisneyWorld thing with Jovan. The flight there was good, and the vacation itself was great.

However, the flight back seemed very long and tiring, and now (I am blaming this on the flight), I am sick. Bleh. I was supposed to be back at work yesterday, and still havent been in yet. I feel really bad missing work right after my vacation. The office hasnt had IT help for pushing two weeks now. Been trying to do a little bit from home, but between a high fever and bronchitis, I've been a bit lacking in productivity.

Guess that's why I'm updating. I cant think straight, and I'm bored as heck. Blah... Anyone have any good reccomendations for feeling well quickly? Been taking my vitamins, and got some codeine cough syrup today. If nothing else, the cough syrup should help me sleep tonight!