I am very tired.

Every day at the conference was 12-14 hours long. I almost never saw the sun, which is a shame for being in southern CA. There are a lot of small things that could have gone better, but it could have been a lot worse as well. Client seems happy. The attendees and speakers I talked with said it went well. I guess I did good.

Today I'm playing catch up on everything I missed. It's like getting back from vacation and having to deal with a huge pile of work, but without having the vacation to look back on.

There should only be one of these a year, since it's pretty expensive to do and there isn't a ton of requests for this.

It dose not help that I am working at the mall tonight, tomorrow night and Saturday, like normal. Makes of long days again. Sunday and Monday should be days of rest, as long as I can ignore the length of the lawn.

The conference is going well. Saturday was long, I was up at 4am to make my 6am flight. I got to the hotel at noon (8 hours later, with the time zones) and then worked until 7pm. Whatever I did to my leg last week caused the top of it and my ankle to be bruised, and there was a lot of swelling when I flew. The hotel is nice, the weather is lovely and the convention center if pretty cool. The hotel is a Hilton, and right across the street form Disney (I won't have time to go).

It's not been too stressful. People keep telling me it's going very smoothly. I have no comaprison, so I'll take their word on it. Today I was up at 7, at work by 9 and done by 7pm.

But then I got to met up with my cousin Kelsey and her husband for dinner. It was nice talking to them. They've been in LA a year now. She's a nurse and he work on the camera side of Hollywood. It was fun hearing about their adventures. He actually got stiung by a jelly fish today at the beach.

Won't get to see my other cousin, Amanda though. She's a lawyer and pretty busy.

Three more days, all 6am starts. The conference actually starts tomorrow. The weekend was all set up. Pretty tired every day, so this is not a relaxing trip. But it's been pretty fun so far.

It has been a very busy week. I've been mostly setting up emails for my clients in our system and making reports. Everyone is asking for one last thing before I'm out next week. Though today I'm down to just one person I need to worry about.

Tomorrow I fly out at 6AM for California. I work there tomorrow through Wednesday and then get back Wednesday night. Hopefully I'll have time to hang out with my cousins Amanda and Kelsey. And I'll get to explore and see the area a bit, as I've never been there.

I'll miss the boy and the puppies. But I'm kind of excited. However it will probably be like 10 hour days.

Softball is going well. Last week we lost pretty badly, but that team had a lot, A LOT, of really good hitters. 70% of the team could hit the ball to the fence. And since a decent amount of our players are new, that lead to large gap in our score. But in general we had a good time.

Last night we actually won. Last season we only won one game and that was by forfit. We have a pretty strong in field now. The outfield needs a bit of work, developing skills, but we were short a few people last night too. I pitched well and had some good hits. The team in general seems a lot of fun, both the people we already knew and the new ones. I think it will be a fun season.

I did hurt my leg a bit. I had pulled my left calf on Sunday at volleyball. And then sprinting around bases made it worse. My entire calf feels bruised.

I finished Inheritance by Christopher Paolini last night. It's the fourth and final book in his Eragon series. I general I liked it. I was really craving high fantasy and I had received it for my birthday last year (or maybe Christmas). I like the world. The characters all have depth. How the magic works is cool. My favorite part is that actions have consequences. And they can be far reaching. And they aren't all wrapped up and fixed by the end. I like how all of the characters, even the main one, is flawed and how all of the flaws aren't fixed at the end. I was hoping for a bit of a happier ending. It wasn't sad, it reminded me of the end of LoTR. The big bad is gone and all of the survivors are fine, but no one is really happy.

The one thing I didn't like was there were many cases of a group of characters discussing an issue, and someone comes up with a solution, and then we get "and then he tells them". So all of the characters know the plan, but the reader has to wait until the event takes place to see what they are going to do. It's not a very good way to build tension, IMO.

But all in all, a good book and series. Rating: A-

I signed up for the dracotops_harry fest this year. Ended up doing two different art pieces. Both were done on my tablet with a stylus. I drew and colored them there, and then did some clean up in Photoshop.

It was an anonymous fest (which means I probably shouldn't have signed them, oh well), so here is the reveal post: http://dracotops-harry.livejournal.com/172174.html

My two were, Parseltongue Tied (I love nagas) and Scars.

Work has calmed down to a dull roar. Still busy, but there is the occasional half hour or hour of slow time. Where I either have nothing to do, and spend it organizing and planning for future due dates, or I'm waiting on like two or three clients to get back to me on something. (Three project activities is about my max to juggle at one time.)

It looks like we won't be hiring a new person for my department at this time. Early summer is slow for my department and the sales figures they were hoping for are not there yet. So we have less work coming in than we expected. Hopefully we can manage it. My only worry is if I get one or two more really high maintenance clients. Those are the ones that fill up my day.

The boy friend and I have been on a cleaning kick. I guess one can chalk that up to Spring cleaning. It's nice having a really clean house some times, when we have the time to focus on it.

Softball has kind of started. Last weekend we had a preseason cook out at our house. Not a lot of the team showed up, but we had fun meeting those that did. We were supposed to have a scrimmage game last Monday, but it was rained out. So we will meet everyone else this Monday. It sounds like one of our top players got hurt and might not be able to play. And while winning isn't everything, it's discouraging for the players if we loose all the time. So I might talk to the commissioner and see if the guy who can't play will transfer to another team to help coach (with Jess and I we really don't need a third) and then we can get some higher skilled players from that team.

Today I am also now working Thursday and Fridays at the mall. I had to switch off of Mondays cause that is when the softball games are.

Summer sand volleyball starts in a few weeks. I missed that sport so much, I can't wait to start up again.

Another Friday, another post.

Work is kicking my ass. I worked 13 hours yesterday, and 10.5 today. And I only left then because I had to work at the mall tonight. And I'll be in the office tomorrow too.

This is due to two big and annoying projects. One deals with me having a temp check through a ton of submitted papers against a copyright database. Then I have to email the authors for those that had problems and get new files. Yesterday I sent out 49 emails. Today, 71. And of course each email then comes back with clarification on what the problem is, and then one or two more until I get a good final paper. I spend all my time emailing, and thus have no time for any of my other projects. And the irony that I have to use email to do this collecting is not lost on me.

The other project that I have to work on is for a client who was never happy with anything I did while they were working with me on collection. And now they are being a big pain with making the book. So now we have a book that has been laid out, and tons more content to put in. Content that I had collected, but wasn't told was needed the first time I downloaded the data. SO I volunteered to help with the edits. Since I can use the collection system quickly, and I have the InDesign skills to do a good job. I don't think any other salaried project manager at this company would offer to come in on a weekend and do book edits for production.

I think it will be time to talk about a raise soon.

Life is also kinda stressful at home with money issues and the fact that the living room furniture is still in the kitchen.

I just powered through Artifice, a gay sci-fi web comic. I don't know you reqed it to me (Cai?) but I really liked it. First, it's done, not a WIP. Which is nice. My RSS reader is getting full of the ongoing ones. Also I loved the world and the plot. It a comic where at the end you are, "Oh! Of course, that makes complete sense. I wonder how long the main character had the planned?"

I'm planning on starting on the comic's next one soon.

Rating: A

A little late on this, but this weekend I hope to find a CSA to join. If I do I can get a $200 healthy living bonus at the end of the year, and that would almost pay for joining. It'd be nice to get fresh veggies all summer, but I really should have looked into this last month. Now I have to find one that drops off near us, that also has openings still.


I would have really liked to go north this weekend to see the family for Easter. But with gas so expensive and all of the trips up there I have planned for after Laura and Jack (and new baby) arrive all summer, I decided I should stick home and save up for those future trips.


I'm doing a new running routine suggested to me by my co-worker John. It's one he's been doing and got from Runner's World. It's working well, I never feel exhausted after, but the next day I can sure tell I've been working out. It's all about running/walking for a half and hour, and slowly building up your stamina. I'm not splitting it up by weeks though, since sometimes I only run once a week. I'm planning to do each group 4-5 times. I'm running on a bike path near home, which is fairly flat and means I don't have to worry about crossing a lot of roads or running by cars.

Run-Walk This Way Start and finish each workout with five minutes of walking. Then, alternate the following run/walk ratios for 30 minutes.

WEEK
1: Two minutes running/four minutes walking
2: Three minutes running/three minutes walking
3: Four minutes running/two minutes walking
4: Five minutes running/three minutes walking
5: Seven minutes running/three minutes walking
6: Eight minutes running/two minutes walking
7: Nine minutes running/one minute walking
8: Thirteen minutes running/two minutes walking
9: Fourteen minutes running/one minute walking
10: Run the whole time!