Over the weekend, I spent a good 10-12 hours taking care of those tasks that I never seem to have time for. I should be feeling great right about now, but my right leg is bouncing a mile a minute as my mind ignores the beautiful orchestral score that is the Morrowind soundtrack.

It’s fuckin’ strange, it really is. I’ve been fully expecting a sense of accomplishment to kick in after each task I complete and in turn, as my to-do list gets narrowed down. But for whatever reason, it just isn’t happening! Instead, I keep going over everything that’s left on my plate and what the coming week holds.

What’s really weird, is that even when my mind is racing as it is. I’ll be able to sleep just fine. Which I should be thankful for, no doubt. But does that even make sense? Some times I’ll hit the pillow and think to myself, “If I don’t stop thinking about all of this, I”ll never get to… ZZZzzz.”

As messed up as I feel right now, I’m more at ease than I would be if I wasn’t organized. I can’t even imagine handling all that I do without the help of Basecamp, Blinksale and now Highrise. If there’s one thing I love about all of those apps, it’s the ability to post something and let it slip your mind. Whether it be sending off an invoice, posting a milestone or adding a task to follow up on an email in a few days – I’d seriously be in trouble if I didn’t have them.

Hmmm, I’ve tried to wrap this up three times now unsuccessfully. How about I just say “fuck” and we call it a night?

Since I started doing freelance work just about a year ago now, I’ve been booked solid. In most cases for 2 or 3 months in advance. It probably would have been even longer, but 3 months was the farthest I would book. During a typical week I would receive anywhere from 10-20 emails requesting quotes or asking about my availability. And this was actually my biggest downfall. I never left enough time to manage leads and take care of odd jobs (software updates, small tweaks, etc.) and I have basically being working 7 days a week since I started freelancing. I did however, learn from my mistake and recently implemented a better timeline structure, but I’m afraid it’s too late. I’m beat!

Back in October I heard from a fellow Canadian designer who was looking for someone to handle his overflow as he was in the same boat as me. Totally over-booked with a slew of leads coming in every day. Obviously, I couldn’t help him out, but that’s not where our conversation ended. We kept in touch and discovered we had a lot in common. Then one day, he hit me with a massive proposition – to join a company he was forming and come on board as lead designer. After much debate and still with a little hesitation, I agreed. Once I settled on a decision, my confidence immediately started increasing and within no time I was completely stoked on the whole thing.

So here I am now, a few weeks after agreeing to change gears and join the team and about to head to bed before my last day as a freelance designer begins. I’m feeling great about things and definitely a sense of relief as I’m sure this new endeavour will allow me to spend more time offline in the real world. Something I’ve wanted for ages.

Oh, the company – right! There really isn’t much to say at this point, at least not from my perspective. I’m joining a team of designers and developers who have been hand picked to work under the Graphics.net banner. I couldn’t even tell you who I’m working with as I haven’t had the time to catch up with the new boss recently. I’m busy tieing up loose ends (and had a little family crisis recently which stirred things up pretty good) while he’s moving into a new home which is located where the office will be – Nelson BC. Obviously, I’ll be working remote, but I was asked if I would relocate. Anyway, once things get going and I’ve got my hands dirty, I’ll update you all on the company and how things are going with it.

Damn, I really think I’m incapable of writing short posts. I had intended this to be a quicky, but here I am rambling again.

Lastly, if you were hoping to have me take on a project of yours, fear not – Graphics.net will be taking on new projects all the time and there’s a good chance I could end up working on it. But I’m sure if you requested me, we could make it happen. At this point, there’s no way of contacting Graphics.net, so just sit tight. It’ll all come together in time.

Back in July we moved a couple towns over from where we were in hopes of landing a bigger, nicer place to live for a few years while we continue to contribute to our “house fund”. Right from day one, things were a mess and continued to go downhill. To sum it up in a single sentence – we have the world’s worst neighbors and the building we’re living in is filled with the most ignorant assholes we’ve ever encounter in our time on this Earth. On Boxing Day, shortly after calling the Cops after I witnessed a woman beat the living hell out of her 6 year-old son in the hallway, we decided it was time to get out of here. We simply couldn’t put up with it any longer. So we’ve had to break our lease and find a place to live ASAP. But obviously, the last thing we want to do is move again which could very well result in landing ourselves in the same situation that we’re currently in. And that would be disastrous.

We immediately started looking through the local real estate websites and in a matter of minutes found this gorgeous townhouse located in our prior hometown. It’s only a few years old, has 2 public schools within walking distance and about a block away from Deanna’s work. Needless to say, we jumped on it and ended up being approved less than a week from the time we first inquired. So we’re moving in… on Monday. We’ve had a good 3 weeks to pack and are pretty much set. Albeit, we’re all completely exhausted, but we’re in good shape otherwise. And knowing that we’ll have sound piece of mind in a matter of days is enough to keep us moving.

One big life change is enough to really shake things up, but I’ve actually got a few on my hands. A couple weeks ago I was approached with a job offer that sounded quite good. Enough for me to give it some serious thought. After all, I’ve worked myself silly over the past year and am in a really good position where I can comfortably charge a decent amount for each project and pick and choose the ones I want to take on and who I want to work with. Those are luxuries a lot of people would kill for. So I wasn’t all that certain that I was ready to give them up at this point. When I brought this up, the dude on the other side of the conversation contributed a whole pile of amazing details that I really don’t think I can pass on. In short, I would be working less, earning more and on salary which is basically a necessity when it comes time to buy a home. When I say working less, I mean the lack of having to handle clients and schedule projects, etc. which is basically done on my own time at the moment. At this point I can’t say where I’d be going or what I’d be doing, but it looks like I may very well be getting out of the freelance game.

A few days ago, I posted this photo on Flickr that has landed a ton of comments and resulted in many emails, IMs and phone calls. I’d like to thank everyone for their kind words and support. Honestly, we didn’t plan on letting the cat out of the bag this early, but things just kind of happened really fast. I posted the picture to break the news to my Mom. I sent her to my Flickr account where she was greeted with the pregnancy test and needless to say, shrieks and tears of joy were flowing in no time. I had planned to pull the photo down once I got off the phone, but there were already over a dozen comments and the Adium icon in my Dock was bouncing like mad. So the damage was already done. It’s an exciting time, though. With all that’s going on, and now this. Seriously, awesome!

There’s actually even more I’d like to share, but I’ll hold my tongue for a little while yet. This post is long enough already. Here’s hoping our move on Monday goes smoothly and absolutely nothing like the last.

Work

As you may have gathered, I’ve been working myself around the clock for weeks on end. And while it may not feel like I’ve made much progress, or any at all. I know I definitely have. This month alone I managed to complete a project for my Uncle on the side, along with my top secret Xbox 360 site which is nearing completion and set to launch before New Years. And on top of that I have my day job, where I just built my most elaborate WordPress powered site to date that I’m extremely stoked about.

For a while there, I stopped booking new projects when I found myself scheduling 3-4 months in advance. I’ve recently opened back up with a new weekly routine (including half-day Fridays, w00t!) and have decided to give each project an extra 2-3 days on top of what I would normally schedule. We’ll see how it works out. I thinking working like mad has finally taken it’s toll on me and I’d rather take an extra couple days and be able to breath than crank something out and be working right to the final second on the last day.

My Site

It’s been over a year since I launched the first iteration of this site. While I’m still happy with it, a year is a long time on the interweb. I’ve learned a lot in this time as well and would do a thousand things differently if I had the opportunity. I was planning to spend some time over the holidays to put ino my site, but I doubt that will happen. Mostly due to the fact that I want to spend as much time away from my PC as possible, but also that the Xbox 360 site will be launching and I know I’ll have to put in some decent hours finishing it up.

While we’re on this subject, a number have people have emailed me asking about that small orange in my footer and the sudden absence of the (mt) partnership badge in my header. Long story short (and many of you are already aware of this), back in October (mt) Media Temple launched a their new hosting platform, (gs) Grid-Server. It sounded like it was going to be the next big thing in hosting, but turned out to cause nothing but irritation and frustration amongst those using it. I was personally experiencing down time up to 4-5 times a day over a 6 week period. I simply couldn’t stick it out and longer and jumped ship to A Small Orange. Apparently, things are better now, but ASO has been treating me very well and I don’t see myself moving back to (mt) any time soon.

Gaming

So, the PS3 and Wii are out now. Yay. Apparently prices for the Wii have been topping that of the PS3 on eBay lately. That’s madness! Console launches are such BS it’s astounding. Especially these two. I mean, there’s hardly any games worth playing on the two platforms combined. The Wii has Zelda (I hate reading dialog and never played any games in the series) and a bunch of mediocre exclusives that have been said to be more like tech demos than full games. The PS3 has Resistance and a bunch of other good games, but they’ve all received higher ratings on the Xbox 360, where I would prefer to play them anyway simply because of the better controller. Needless to say, I’m more than happy with my Xbox 360 and even if I had the choice of any of the “next-gen” consoles, I’d still stick with the 360.

I’ve now played Gears of War three times all the way through and am on my fourth round, this time assisting my wife. She wasn’t overly stoked at first, but now that she’s got a handle on the controls and played through the first chapter (Berzerker!), she seems pretty into it.

Need for Speed Carbon has definitely grown on me. Now that I have everything opened up, I find that I’m tossing it in just to do a few races here and there on a pretty regular basis. Call of Duty 3, not so much. I’ve popped it in a few times to replay some missions but always get frustrated and end up shutting it off before the end. I’m still having mass problems connecting to games and have pretty much given up in that department. But last night I had a wicked craving to play a WWII FPS and remembered that I had Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood on my Xbox. I hadn’t actually played that one yet, but absolutely loved the first in the series. I think the sequel came out at a time when I didn’t have an Xbox and my PC couldn’t handle it, so I simply never played it. It took a while for my eyes to focus on the low res textures , but once I got past that, I was really enjoying myself. The Brothers in Arms series is completely different from the other WWII shooters out there and I highly recommend you check them out if you haven’t already. I’m stoked to have a new WWI shooter to play now that won’t make me want to pull my hair out.

I’m pretty excited for Lost Planet which is set to be released in early January. The demos are both incredible and it looks like it’s going to be yet another solid exclusive for the Xbox 360. Aside from that, I’m going to pick up COD2 after Christmas and want to have a run through F.E.A.R. again, this time on the Xbox 360. A buddy of mine is coming into town for the holidays and is going to bring his racing wheel, so I’m looking forward to checking that out as well. Considering getting one, but I want to try it out with a few games first.

Annnd, that’s pretty much it. Got my Christmas shopping all done with the exception of some stocking stuffers for Deanna. Looks like things will be pretty relaxed around the holidays, which is exactly what I need right now. How y’all doing with your holiday preparations?

I forgot how much being sick sucks. It really does. You just can’t function as you normally do – and being self employed, it really hits you hard. I’d love to just fill myself with meds and coffee and work through it. But I know I’ll only regret it afterwards. So I’ve been forced to take a couple days off (well, errr, about a full day, actually), which means I’ll be working through the weekend. I had full intentions of writing a nice wrap-up of all my hands-on experience at X’06, but between sneezes I couldn’t be bothered. For now, you can check out my photos from the event. There aren’t a lot as I spent more time with a controller in my hand than the camera, but you get the idea. Be sure to check out photos from Major Nelson and the folks from Gamerscore Blog who were also in attendance.

I’ll leave you with a few of my highlights from the event…

• GEARS OF WAR(!!!): It was amazing to get my hands on this game. I managed to play 2 separate builds of the single player campaign and a few rounds of multiplayer. I’ve watched tons of videos, interviews and seen countless screenshots of GoW and nothing has done it justice. Incredible.
• Forza 2: I wasn’t expecting to see Forza 2 there at all but they had a very early build and had it hooked up to the new racing wheel.

Well, I had more I wanted to write, but I just sneezed and all the sudden my arms feel like they’re gonna fall off. That can’t be good. I’m going to bed…

Seriously though, it’s almost to the point where I don’t know what to do with myself. Time is flying by and I can never seem to get everything done. I hardly do anything at all, outside of working and the daily family stuff. If it weren’t for my Xbox 360, I’d probably sit on my PC day and night. But at the same time, it’s almost painful to sit in this chair at times. Something’s definitely not quite right but I’ll be damned if I can put my finger on it.

Working mass hours is nothing new for me and in all honesty, I’ve put fewer hours in over the past month than any given month over the past couple years. I’ve got a lot more responsibility in regards to family stuff during the week as Deanna works evenings and I’m home with Hannah. She’s doing great with getting her homework done on her own, though. So that’s helped a lot and lets me plug away until it’s time to get dinner ready.

It’s strange being self employed. I recently booked my last project for 2006 – I should be totally stoked, right? Well, I’m not. It’s quite the opposite, actually. I feel as if I have this massive load on my back even though each project has sufficient time alloted and I even have some free time scattered through-out. It’s truly bizarre that I’m feeling the way I am. I’ve been in the opposite situation where I’ve only had one or two projects lined up and found that I was always worrying that I might not line up another one in time, and of course I would be in trouble financially. But thankfully that never happened. I’m pretty sure that a contributing factor is the fact that I can’t help people out with their projects for the foreseeable future. I’m filled with disappointment when I send a reply turning down a project. But the reason I can’t do is because I’m booked… so why do I feel disappointed? I’m totally baffled.

To stack another emotion onto the pile, I feel like I’m missing the boat big time. In what regard, I’m not entirely sure. I’m dying to redesign my site. I’m coming up on a year with this design (or variations of it, at least) and I feel like it appears to be held together with duct tape. Like I’ve tacked one too many things on and now it’s this cluttered mess. I want to do a complete overhaul and build it from the ground up with all of the sections and different types of content that I have now. When I built this one, I was basically just writing textual entries and didn’t have the whole design end. I just slapped that shit on after the fact and have pretty much ruined it with my latest round of changes.

Shit, how do I wrap this up? What am I looking for from you? I wish I knew. I didn’t even plan on writing this, it just kind of happened. Maybe I should keep this up in a series of posts – Memoirs of a Scatter Brained Freelancing Gamer. Anyway, I’m heading out of town this weekend for a few days and I seriously can’t wait to leave everything behind. I was going to take my Xbox 360, but I think I’m going to leave it after all. A complete change of pace is in need.

I will try not to go into explicit details here and just give you the gist of the suck that was our move. We had until noon before the truck and trailer was set to arrive at our apartment. My Dad just picked up a 17′ enclosed trailer that we thought would be more than enough to get our stuff from A to B. After all, we were packed into an 850 square foot apartment. How much stuff could we possibly have? The answer – a [fucking] lot! This was our first mistake. We ended up filling that trailer, plus a 10′x8′ trailer (twice – had to make 2 trips), and finally the back of 2 enclosed pick-ups. Each truck had our TVs, computers and monitors on the seats as well. Luckily for us, my Dad runs a landscaping/maintenance business and has lots of vehicles at his disposal. Not to mention, he brought along some of his crew to help us out. So if there is a positive to be found here, that would be it. If it wasn’t for my Father being one of the greatest people on the planet, we would have been pretty screwed.

We finally got all our stuff out of the apartment, about 2 hours later than expected. When we rolled into the new place, there was a moving truck backed into the loading area and the moving room was half-full of someone else’s boxes. Deanna and I made a trip out in the morning to sign the lease, pick up our keys and make sure everything was good-to-go. At which time, we confirmed that we would have the elevator and moving room booked for the afternoon. 15 minutes later, we track down the person who’s in the middle of moving out who claims he had booked the elevator 2 weeks prior. Long story short – he wasn’t in the reservation book for that day and the manager was willing to tell him to take a hike so we could get in there, since we had our reservation in place. But once again, the awesomeness that is my Father steps in and offers to come back the following morning with a few extra guys so we can get in quicker. Since we didn’t have any rentals besides a couple of dollys and some moving blankets, it wasn’t a big deal to leave our stuff in the trucks and trailers over night. Inconvenient, without a doubt. But not the end of the world. I agreed not to be a dick and kick this dude out on his ass and we set our new move time for 9am Friday.

My Dad was going out of town for the night and offered his place to us, which is only 15 minutes away. Sounded great, but we had the 2 cats and fish to worry about. Hannah was spending the night at our neighbor’s, so she was taken care of. Deanna hopped up into one of the enclosed trucks and found our clothes, bathroom stuff and bedding. We decided to camp out on the floor of our new place so we could be with the cats and set up the fish tank. Sounded like a good idea at the time.

After we got settled, we started checking things out. This is when we discovered that the property managers had hired the worst painters this world has ever seen. Apparently, they use airbrush type things to paint the apartments and by the looks of the windows, they stand about 10 feet back while painting. There’s over spray on every window, every door handle and window cover. And every counter and floor was caked in paint drops. And now for the best part! Not a single door in the entire apartment would close. These genius painters had painted over the door latches. The little tongue that sticks out to keep the doors shut was literally, jammed in and painted over. Every, single, one of them. Now, I know that can’t be done without trying. You would have to keep the door know turned while painting it for that to happen. So maybe these thought they were being funny? Or maybe it had something to do with the cases of beer we saw in the laundry room when we originally saw the apartment. At which time, it was in better shape than it was when we moved in.

I wish that was all I had to complain about, but there was no running water in the kitchen. The water in the small bathroom was spitting out dirt. The lint trap wasn’t connected to the dryer so there was lint everywhere. Someone had put their fist through the master bedroom door and instead of just replacing the door, they filled it in… and did a very poor job. We found the previous tenants soap and toothpaste stains in the main bathroom. There was a huge hole under the sink in the small bathroom where we found moldy insulation. Both of the toilet seats were broken. About half of the lights had blown bulbs, the other half were painted over. The floors were disgusting and nothing had been cleaned. But someone did vacuum.

To wrap this up – we were all moved in Friday by 2:30pm. Deanna went down and spoke with the management about the state of our new home and they sent someone up right away who replaced all the door knobs, toilet seats, light bulbs, and a bunch of other stuff. The cable guy showed up around 2pm, so I had to scramble to find the cable box and modem, but he got us all setup. We’ve been unpacking non-stop and setting things up which has been pretty fun. Despite being totally exhausted and completely stressed. Tomorrow, we’re heading out to pick up a few things including a new desk for myself. Mine didn’t survive the move and I’m actually writing this from my wife’s computer. I’ve been ‘offline’ since Tuesday, and to be honest, it’s been alllright!

I’ve got photos of all of this that I’ll be uploading to Flickr as soon as I get my machine up and running. Probably over the next couple of days. This was definitely a learning experience for us and hopefully future moves go a little smoother. There were actually a few more big things that went horribly wrong or just plain sucked, but I feel like I’ve complained enough for one night.

I know some of you must have some great horror stories of past moves. Let’s hear them!

We couldn’t have been happier the day we found an apartment 2 towns over with an extra bedroom, in suite washer/dryer, central air conditioning and an additional 250 square feet. The beauty of it, aside from all the things I just mentioned, is that it’s only a little more than what we’re paying now. Since we don’t have enough in the old savings account for a down payment on a house yet, we figured we owe it to ourselves to better our home. Being that we’re all home bodies, in only makes sense. Especially with me working from home. Needless to say, I’m snatching that extra room and setting up a little office for myself. It will be much easier to separate work when I can literally close the door and walk away. Right now, it’s always there. The last thing I see before I go to bed and the first when I wake up. Really looking forward to having some space between work and real life, to say the least.

So, we’re all excited and started packing right away. Literally, the evening we put our deposit on the new place, Deanna started packing. And she hasn’t stopped! Day in, day out for the last 2 weeks. There’s maybe been a day or 2 that she hasn’t done something in the way of preparing to move. But that’s it! She may only be 5’3″, but the girl’s a machine! Me on the other hand, not so much. I’ve lent a hand here and there and packed the majority of my own shit, but I feel like I’ve done nothing in comparison. I guess sitting on your ass for 10-12 hours a day will turn you into a lazy bastard. Who would have thought? Best of all, I totally pinched something in my lower back this evening simply standing up. I was laying on the floor, playing with Gaius and when I got about half way up-right, I felt a tight pinch. I didn’t throw it out or anything, but I get this nice little jolt of pain every once in a while when I bend the wrong way… which ever way that is? You’d think I was pushing 50, but sadly I’m only half way there!

T-Minus 11 days, and counting.

Since July of 2005, I’ve been working from home. Up until recently, for other people. Some shit went down and I found myself in a situation where I needed to find a new source of income stat! After sending out a few emails and replying to some quote requests, I had a few weeks of work lined up in a matter of hours. I’ve decided to stick with it for a while and see if I can make a go in the world of full-time freelance web design.

When I last Rebooted I re-organized my homepage. Giving things that get updated more frequently better exposure. Since my priorities have shifted in the real world, I need my site to reflect that. I’ve moved the portfolio back up to the top half of the homepage which now spans the entire right column. There’s also three examples shown instead of just two.

I don’t seem to be spending nearly as much time reading news online these days and in return, I haven’t been updating Quick Bits as often as I once was. You can now find it in the bottom right corner of the homepage. While you’re down there, you might notice the album covers are back. For the past month I’ve been using a fancy Last.fm script that displays your top 10 artists of the week and lets you listen to some tracks from each. Pretty awesome, except for the fact that Last.fm has been plagued with shitty servers for as long as I can remember. I’m not quite sure why I didn’t take that into consideration when I made the decision to include the list – or maybe I did and figured it wouldn’t be that bad. In any case, it was causing my homepage to take up to a minute to load at times. At best, there was still a 10-15 second delay, which is not cool. Back to updating the covers by hand. And before you suggest it – I’ve tried out the Scrobbler plugin that pulls album covers. At any given time, there’s at least two or three albums in my top 10 that don’t have covers in the Last.fm database, so a shitty placeholder image was put in it’s place. And let’s not forget, I’d still be relying on their servers to get the data – scrap that all together. I might go back to using the WordPress links manager so I can have them appear in random order.

A couple weeks ago, I quietly rolled out a new “feature” that a couple people noticed and commented on. I actually had absolutely nothing to do with it. I mentioned that would love to have my comment form stay at the top of your browser window while you scroll the comments – mostly for my own use to make it easier to reply to comments, but I figured it would make things easier for everyone. Neo Geek, who’s no stranger to these parts, offered his services and in no time had it up and running. I’ve since worked with him on a couple freelance projects and I must say, the guy’s a bit of a genius. One of those dudes that can just make shit happen. He even built a WordPress plugin out of one of the requests I had for him. Wasn’t it nice of him to share?

Now, to address some more of those questions you might have for me…

• “What happened to Back in Black and when is it coming back (again)?”
  I currently have the two styles as separate themes. This was done for a couple reasons, both of which are irrelevant now. To carry over all the changes I just made to Pretty in Pink, I’d basically have to do all the work again for Back in Black. I simply don’t have time for that right now. I’m going to look into a better method of switching the stylesheet and hope to roll that out over the next couple weeks. I’ve already had someone suggest a method they created, so I’ll be checking in with them soon. I also needed to get the (mt) Media Temple logo in there by the 9rules badge as part of the partnership deal. So, a bit of both.
• “You haven’t reviewed anything in a while – why not?”
  I was actually planning to review all three demos that were released for the 360 during E3, but my Post E3 wrap-up took a lot more effort than I expected. And again with the lack of time. I’ve basically been working 60 hour weeks for the past couple in a row. I’m very tired. Regardless, I have a couple already started for some games that you’ll see in my “Currently Playing” section on the homepage. Can you guess which ones?
• “So, you’re doing freelance work full time now. Can you take on my project now?”
  A lot of people have got in touch over the past few months requesting my services. I turned the majority of them down simply because I had a full time job and didn’t want to spend all my waking hours working – although, I seem to be pretty close to that at the moment. I do have quite a bit lined up at the moment, but I will always be looking for new projects to work on. So by all means, get in touch if you have a project you think I would be a good fit for.

I need to wrap this up as I’m already going to hear “I told you so” from my wife in the morning. I should listen to her more. There really is no such thing as “a quick post”. Heh. Anyway, I spent my Saturday night re-jigging my site. I actually managed to get out in the real world and hit-up a rad ska show this afternoon in Toronto. So that should make up for it.

I scored an Xbox for $100 CDN on eBay last Sunday and it arrived Wednesday. I hit the video store that night and rented Far Cry Instincts and Burnout Revenge. I’m not too big a fan of the Burnout series. They’re fun for a bit, but get a little out of hand. Deanna on the other hand, just loves them! I can hear her playing in the next room as I write this – “Whooo! Burnnn!” She’s crazy good at it too. We were just playing for a bit and she totally smoked me in every race type. I’m having fun with Far Cry. It’s actually quite a bit different from the PC version and looks absolutely beautiful. I’m really stoked on having an Xbox in the living room again. It’s a great console and I never should have gotten rid of it. Now, time to mod it!

We pulled the GameCube out of Hannah’s room and blew the dust off it. Started playing Resident Evil 4 again from the beginning. Man, what a great game! Definitely one of the best I’ve played. Deanna and I have played it through 3 times already and still finding things we missed or didn’t notice before. I rented Super Mario Strikers for the weekend. Figured it would be a good family game. Tons of fun as you’d expect from Nintendo. Hannah and I kicked Wario’s ass just before dinner.

Speaking of Hannah, she’s been pretty into a few PC games lately. Kids games of course, but they won’t run on Deanna’s computer so she has to use mine, which I don’t have a problem with. She does however, since I’m on it 24/7. She really got hooked on a couple games around the end of December and when I went back to work after Christmas break, she hardly had time to play them. Since we live in a small, crowded apartment, there’s not really a whole lot to do. I could watch TV or read. I hate TV and just about all I read these days are feeds and design books – which still gives me the feeling that I’m working. I picked up Metroid Prime Pinball for Nintendo DS. Hannah’s Nintendo DS. I always thought the DS was too gimmicky, but that game is great and so addictive! The dual screen makes it so much better since there’s no scrolling. You can see the whole table all the time. Really neat!

Since I’ve hardly watched any movies over the past few months, there’s lots I haven’t seen. We’ve been renting quite a bit again and I really enjoy it. It’s nice lighting some candles, grabbing a fresh cup of coffee and chillaxing on the couch being entertained. I almost forgot what it was like.

Working at home is great. It really is. No commute. No stinky, busy city. No douche bags in suits running down the street, yelling on their cell while trying not to spill their $5 coffee. But it’s really easy to get wrapped up in your work when you don’t physically separate yourself from it. I found that out the hard way. Often enough I get the feeling that I should get away from this screen, but will justify it by doing something that’s not work related. Reading feeds or checking up on my site. I’ve only recently started classifying time I put into my site as ‘work’. Otherwise, the 4 hours I set aside for work on a Sunday turns into 6 after I’ve spent 2 hours on my site that I didn’t count as work time. Kind of sucks having to spend a bunch of money on ‘toys’ to entertain myself. But with it being the middle of Winter and spending so much time at home, I feel it was needed. Otherwise, I very well could have worked myself into a comma. And I have to admit. I do feel like a kid in a candy store with all this new stuff to keep me busy. Please, by all means, entertain me!