Halloween, wat?

On Friday we were kind of on a roll so we stayed a bit late working and ate Fallafel King at the studio. When we left, we went to bed a little early since I promised to help teach class on Saturday morning again.

Class went well, but we were both totally exhausted afterward. We had a lot of work to put into our costumes, but we took a short nap that turned into a long nap thanks to my inability to set an alarm.

Although we had been working on our costumes all week, it still took about 6 hours straight to finish them. That includes haircuts and makeup, though.

















We went as Die Antwoord, and it was pretty awesome. Lindsay cut my hair to match the best we could, and we did a pretty good job with Lindsay's bald cap/wig combo. The gold teeth that we spent so much effort to figure out, though... they didn't work so well. Oh well.



















When we were all set we went to Chris and Isara's, and they helped us take a lot of pictures.

Isara was Noodle from the Gorillaz, and Chris was a rocket scientist.







Mary came by right before he headed out and we made a list minute Retro-Ghost costume for her using a sheet she bought for 3 dollars at Goodwill.





Together we all headed to a place near MCAD for a party. I'm not sure who's house it was, but it was pretty busy and loud. We met up with Adam and some of his Target friends. Adam went as "Mike and Dana," who are the two people in the top picture. Most people just thought he was a lumberjack pedophile.









Chris, Isara, Lindsay, Mary and myself all headed out to the Front for some dancing. The place was PACKED, but we made room on the balcony and strutted our stuff for a while. The entire night everyone thought I was Vanilla Ice, and there's no telling a bunch of drunk dudes in a loud club that you're not Vanilla Ice. They will believe what they want.

After were we too hot to stand it, we met back up with Adam at Little T's and got some Nachos. It was getting pretty late, so we took Isara and Chris home, but Adam followed us back to our place for some Rock Band. It was probably 2:30 or 3 AM, and I exhausted, but it was still fun. We didn't get to bed until nearly 5 am, and we crashed. But not before taking some last minute glamor shots.









And a few VERY glamorous shots.







All in all, it was an unexpectedly awesome Halloween. I was skeptical, because I didn't want to work on my costume (the sharpies gave me huge headaches every night), and so many of our fiends all moved away, and a bunch more had weddings and other crap to attend, so I was nervous of having noone to share our costumes with. But it was all good.

There weren't a ton, but the strangers who DID know who Die Antwoord was recognized us immediately, and were usually so excited to see us that they would just shout dumbfounded utterances. I think there were about 6 people, or groups of people, who knew exactly who were we. And that was awesome.

Pro Drums are awesome.

Holy crap. That week flew by. A lot of the week was spent making Christmas cards. Lindsay's Junior Review stress somehow consumed a lot of MY energy. The nights were spent trying to get to the gym and working on our Halloween costumes.

Rock Band 3 showed up with the new Pro Drum kit. Fable 3 showed up the same day, but I've been too addicted to Pro Drums to care much. Pro Drums are fantastic. 4 drum pads, 3 cymbals and the option for 2 kick pedals (I only use one, though) makes the drums even more fun and add a new layer to old songs.

I ordered the keyboard as well, but it was delayed. But again, I've been too busy with the drums to care.

I did give Fable 3 a spin one night, and it seems great. But I've had scattered time for playing thanks to Halloween, so I haven't gone back yet. I might try to tackle the DLC I have waiting for Alan Wake, Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption first, anyway.

Failed plans and wold domination.

This weekend my mom visited. My sister was supposed to come, too, and her baby. But the decided a 4-5 hour drive was too much for a 1 year old.

The plan was to come up on Saturday, get some food, then go to a play with mom while Katie watched the baby. Then, go home, switch family members, and go dancing with Katie while mom watched the baby.

I was helping Lindsay teach her 9 AM class at MCAD, so I was worried that after teaching, cleaning, entertaining, eating, a play and dancing, I was be too tired to enjoy myself. So I was a little relieved when I got a message while teaching that Katie wasn't coming. I was sad, too, but man, I was already super exhausted and it wasn't even noon yet...

So when my mom did arrive, we went to Cafe Latte. Francesca came with. It's impossible not to over eat there. I left stuffed, and my mom grabbed the top layer of a Turtle cake to go.

I hung out with her at home while Lindsay took Francesca back. I helped her with computer stuff, and I think I dozed off for about 4 minutes. When Lindsay got back, we headed out to see Rock of Ages at the Orpheum. It's an 80's hair-metal themed Broadway show, so that's pretty up my alley.

It was pretty good. The singing and music was great, the energy was high, and everything was fun. But the drama wasn't really there. I'm always amazed at the amount of investment I put into some of these shows. Even silly stuff like Wicked and Avenue Q, I do get into it and care for the character. Not in Rock of Ages though. The story came a distant second to the music and attitude of the late 80s. I'm not really complaining, I just didn't think it was firing on all cylinders.

Afterward, we ordered a pizza and watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I've seen it (and like it) but I thought my mom might enjoy it. When my mom went to bed, I stayed up and played some Amnesia: Dark Descent. I probably played it too late.

The next day I tried to get wake up, but couldn't drag myself out of bed until 10:45. I was feeling like CRAP, probably from all the crap I ate the day before, but I really wanted to go someplace that my mom would like for breakfast. Since it was such a short trip, I felt like I couldn't just send her on her way.

But I was regretting it instantly. I felt like vomited every second we were in the car. We went to Yum! and I couldn't think of eating anything but a cup of chicken noodle soup. Luckily, it did make me feel a little better. Not 100% or anything, but at least I didn't want to hurl.

We went to Whole Foods and Target to grab some stuff, then my mom took off at around 3 or 4. I played Enslaved, and actually finished it. I think I'll post some more thoughts on it soon.

By now I was feeling a lot better, so I worked on my Halloween costume for a couple hours. Eventually the fumes from the markers gave me a huge headache, so we watched some finished up the sixth season of the Office.

Lindsay is on the Junior Review panel at MCAD, so she had to be up super early and went to bed. I played some Civ 5 and it was pretty epic (I'm still playing my first game).

I declared war against Egypt, who (as far as I can tell) is the biggest Civ besides me. They had multiple cities spread across the continent, and I'd have a rough go against cities in the past. I had been moving troops over as fast as I could from my starting continent (which I conquered a long time ago) and I had stealthily set up a city right in the middle. As I got bigger and dropped off more and more troops, I kept getting warnings about building too close for comfort, but I kept apologizing and saying it wouldn't happen in the future. Once I had gunpowder and riflemen and siege equipment, I made my move. I quickly attacked the north, then steady marched through the south. With my Samurai, Cannons and riflemen, they didn't stand a chance. I lost 2 units, one being a previously wounded ship that I was sick of micromanaging.

It was a lot of fun. There's a mid-game doldrums I've heard about, and I think I was in the thick of it before the attack. I was growing but with no real purpose. Decided to attack gave me a purpose. I am sure I will go on to try to conquer the world. But now I need to explore much further, as I've conquered every civilization I've met (except the Romans, who I've befriended... for now.)

Pets.

My mom is visiting. She wanted a picture with all of our pets (minus Oliver, since he would throw the other cats into a frenzy). Here they are.

Legendary week.

Ryan and I finished up Halo: Reach on Legendary earlier this week. It wasn't so tough. We didn't get credit for beating one of the earlier levels though, so once we beat the final level, we went back and played it. The first time, when we were still finding our groove, it might have taken an hour. Maybe an hour and a half.

By the time we beat the whole thing, we were well-oiled machines of destruction and raced through it in about 20 minutes. I didn't realize how much better we'd gotten until then, but it was true. All of the conversation about who's doing what, calling out for help, figuring out who was rushing and who was hanging back... all of that was unspoken and understood. It was fun, but I think I'm done with Halo for a bit.

We're working on some holiday cards right now and it's kind of fun. I like doing cards more than product because it's pretty much just artwork, and not call-outs and stuff. So I'm pretty happy doing that.

I downloaded Costume Quest, too. It's cute.

Fatherly visit.

My dad came up to visit this weekend. It was a short trip, up on Friday, back on Saturday.

I took off a little early from the office to clean the crap out of the house. I did a pretty good job, and was finishing just and he arrived. He brought Shoes with him, the family dog who is now getting very old. It's good to see Shoes, it was the first dog we got that I remember being around for Puppy-hood, but these days it's a little sad because she's creaky just acts so old.

We went out to Buca for diner. Lindsay had been craving it for a week or two, but twice we had gone and it had been too busy to bother waiting. So I made a reservation and we had a boatload of Italian food.

Afterward, we went home and played RockBand. My dad loves to sing, so even though he seemed a little put-off at first, Lindsay only got in 1 song before he took over the mic. We played a few songs out of my hundreds-deep RockBand Library, but there weren't a ton that he knew well enough to want to bother singing. Then I remembered The Beatles RockBand, and pulled that out. That was much simpler. It was more a question of what song NOT to sing.

After an hour or so it was getting late (for him) so he went to bed. Lindsay had to teach Saturday morning, so she went to bed too. I took advantage of the quiet to start Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Sc-sc-scary.

The next morning my dad and I went to the studio while Lindsay was teaching. We were looking for my stockpile of art left unsold from shows. We couldn't find it anywhere. We headed home and Lindsay met up with us at Ghandi Mahal when her class got out. I guess my dad wasn't too familiar with Indian food, but he predictably really liked it.

He left right after, so Lindsay and I had the rest of the day to do whatever. We went to West Elm and bought some furniture. Upon returning home, we found that none of it assembled correctly. Bummer.

On Sunday we had to go return everything to West Elm, so we took the opportunity to get some burgers and Five Brothers. It's really, really rare we eat hamburgers, but every once in a while the mood strikes. Sunday was one of these days.


That night I finally got around to watching the Watchmen. I own the comic and have read it a couple times, but after seeing the movie, I think it might have been better in a few key ways. Maybe that's blasphemy. Maybe thanks to my familiarity with the book allowed me to enjoy the movie more because I understood the world right away.

If I had to recommend one, I might recommend the movie. Although maybe that's not saying a lot. I like the book, but I've never been in love with it or anything.

Sc-sc-scared.

It's 2:30 AM. I'm sitting in a the dark with my headphones on. I just quit playing Amnesia: The Dark Decent for the night. I quit because I couldn't take anymore. That game is scary.

I've always been a fan of scary games. Seeing screenshots of Resident Evil in GamePro magazine was the reason I got a Playstation. The first gaming experience that Lindsay and I shared with equal investment was probably Fatal Frame. The early Silent Hill games used to fascinate me even though I didn't really get what was going on (and still don't).

Lately games have been a lot less scary. Resident Evil became an action series. Silent Hill just became a mess. And Fatal Frame kind of faded off. Dead Space had it's moments and even Bioshock was a little creepy in the beginning, but they're defintely shooters and adventures, not horror.

I'm only an hour or so into Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but it's probably more scary than anything I've ever played. I downloaded the demo when it was released and couldn't even make it through the whole thing. I got to the part in the flooded cellar, with the footsteps, and I turned it off. I knew I had to buy it.

I finally got around to starting it last night. I wanted conditions to be right. I wanted to be alone, in the dark, with headphones on. And I wasn't really disappointed. It's not the kind of horror that stays with you all through the night. When I turned it off, it was off and I wasn't jumping at the slightest movement or huddling under my covers. But while I was playing, I often found myself sayings 'I don't want to open that door' or 'I'm not going down that hall' or 'why am I playing this?'

I'll see if it remains scary throughout. It seems like it couldn't, but the reviews don't seem to mention it getting noticeably less frightening. We'll see, I guess.

When I turn off Amnesia thanks to nerves, I think the final line from Destructiod's review: "Pick it up, but you should know that you might be so scared that you'll have to put it down."

Animal Weekend.

This weekend Lindsay and I slept in a lot, I think. On Friday we ran some errands, and ended up going on an hours-long walk to Minnehaha Falls with the dogs.









On Sunday we went to the Zoo with Jesse and Chris C. It was fun and I took some pictures, but none were super great. These where the best.







After that we worked at Infinitea with Francesca. I finished up the first pass on my first Iceland piece, and I guess I wasn't super thrilled.



Yeah. But here's a bonus picture form the Apple Orchard from our anniversary!

Windows on Mac.

I intalled Windows 7 on my brand new MacBook Pro. It was easy, although I didn't read the directions thoroughly and thought it was a failure at first.

Basically, from OSX you need to run BootCamp which partitions the drive and allows you to install Windows. Once windows is installed, I thought I just needed to download the BootCamp driver updates from the Apple site. The step I missed was inserting the original OSX disc while windows was running and install BootCamp on the mac-side.

So for a while, nothing worked very well at all. As soon as I took a step back and realized what I'd missed, everything worked perfectly. Well, except the fact that I underestimated how big Windows 7 actually is... So once I finished the install, downloaded Steam and a couple games and realized I had less than 1 gig of space left, I wiped it clean and started again. Oops.

But, like I said, it works like a dream. So far I've installed Company of Heroes, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Mount and Blade: Warband and Civilization 5. They all run better than I hoped, so I'm happy.

That's not saying a ton, since only Civ 5 is a recent game, but the others really chugged on my PC laptop, but I've really wanted to play them. They all fall into that punishing-in-an-awesome-way category that my favorite games always fall into (Farcry 2, Demon's Souls, Frozen Synapse, Bushido Blade) so I'm really excited to finally be able to explore them a little deeper.

The first 1/2 of the week was a normal, busy and tiring week. Maybe too tiring for some, because on Wednesday Lindsay made the decree that Thursday we would all go to our house, play WoW and Demon's Souls and not do anything. So on Thursday, Francesca came over and we spent all day playing Demon's Souls, WoW and not doing anything. I guess that's the perks of working for yourself.

Friday was more normal but I kind of felt like crap. I went to the gym towards the end of the day because I felt like crap and I was hoping that would help. It did, but I also hadn't eaten anything and I got really hungry/tired/not awesome.

Lindsay and I went to Yum! and I got some fish tacos.

Tonight I played some Halo with Ryan, who finally got his copy from Gamefly. We've played through the other Halo's on Legendary together, but I think it might be too much for us this time... It seems much harder than previous versions.

It could just be that Ryan hadn't played Halo in a year, so we was pretty rust to just jump into Legendary.

Other than that, I've spent a lot of time getting my computer up to speed. Besides the Windows deal, I want to make sure everything is as neat and tidy as I transfer over my digital-life. I want to avoid just dropping all my crap thinking I'll sort though it later. I'm even going through my iTunes library, letter by letter, trying to cut out the fat.

Same goes for fonts, Photoshop brushes, photos, art files... everything.

I'm pretty set to go as far as art goes, I've installed the CS5 suite and Painter 11, although I have yet to tweak everything to my liking.

Wow. This post is long. I'm sure it's quite boring too. I guess I should go to bed. I think I had more to say, but I'm sure it was not even as enlightening as the rest of this fabulous post...

1 year.

Dang. I just wrapped up the project I've been working on for a week. I would be happy if I never saw *Licensed Artist Deleted* crappy art again.

Around quittin' time on Friday I was pretty exhausted, but we went out to dinner with Adam and his new lady friend. We were going to go to Buca, but there was quite a wait. So instead we went to a nearby Indian place that was pretty good.

She seemed really cool, but it's hard to tell because Lindsay and i dominated the conversation with stories of pooping, warts and pets.

Afterward I went home and played Civilization V until the early morning. I had tried the demo, and when my turns ran our (I think the demo lets you take about 100 turns) I went a head and bought it. I've never played a Civ game, but I've tried a couple times. Usually upon booting it up, I look at the map, make a move or two, and say "whatever." But I think Civ V does the best job yet of introducing you to the game (even better than Civ Revolution for the consoles). Or maybe I was just in the right mood

This weekend was Lindsay and my 1st anniversary of being married. Which means we've been together 8 years. So on Saturday we went to an apple orchard. It wasn't exactly what I was hoping, because it was way too crouded and more of an industry than the quaint one we visited a couple years ago, but we bought a bomb-ass pie and some apples and made the most of the time there. I was taking some pictures but my camera ran out of batteries in the first 10 minutes. Aw, snap.

We had a bit of time before dinner so we went and picked me up a new MacBook Pro. So slick.

We went to dinner at a fancy-ish restaurant called La Chaya. We were both in the mood for soup and salad so we didn't try much of the menu, but it was dang good.

We were going to see a movie, but we decided to go watch Ghost Adventures (season 3 just came out on Instant Watch) instead. I started installing programs and setting up my new computer. And I played some more Civ V on the PC in the background.

On Sunday we spent most of the day at the studio. We both had work to do, so it wasn't too fun. Adam came by and we got take out from a new Chinese place next door. Which reaffirmed what I already knew, Chinese food is my least favorite of all the Asian foods. I just don't care for it much (for those keeping track, the top 3 are probably Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese... or Indian).

Today was a busy day, but now I'm alone in the studio with the dogs. Lindsay's in class and I'm thinking about heading over to the gym. But first I've got to take these dogs out.

That was an enthralling final paragraph.