Category Archives: Personal Updates

And so it goes…

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2011 is a few hours away from ending, and like twenty bazillion other people in the world I’m reflecting back on the previous year. For some reason I’ve decided that you, my faithful readers, may be interested in this.

I don’t know why.

Probably because I’m an egomaniac.

Yeah, that’s it.

So anyway…

Went back to school this year. That was pretty damn cool, even if I did have to go to an out of state school because the University of South Florida is run by a bunch of chode monkeys who wouldn’t even acknowledge me when I tried to appeal the fact that they rejected my application. Funny, that. One of the things they tell you when you go to a two-year college here in Florida is that if you graduate with your Associates degree you are guaranteed admission into any of the public four-year universities in the state. Turns out that simply isn’t true. Like, at all. In any case, I’ve been attending the University of Maryland University College and I’m doing quite well there. My grade point average is 3.65 and I’m on track to graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science in the Summer of 2014.

Work is…work? My company spent a lot of money installing SharePoint 2010 and I spent much of my time this year learning new skills to help me program in and administer that software. Part of my training involved a two week trip that included New York and Las Vegas. It was pretty cool, but shockingly enough after two weeks of intense training even “exotic” locations like Las Vegas get old and you start to yearn for home. Not to mention the amount of weight I put on while I was out there.

Oh, yeah. Health wise? This year sucked donkey balls. I managed to stay off the cigarettes (it’s been about 13 months now), but beyond that it’s been almost nothing but disappointment and setbacks. I was diagnosed with gout and as a result I gave up eating meat back in May. You’d think that being a vegetarian would be good for the waist line, but I’ve struggled mightily ever since. I think part of it has to do with the sheer amount of carbohydrates that go into your body when you aren’t eating animal flesh. Who knows? What I DO know is that I am, yet again, back up over 280 pounds. I haven’t weighed this much since we got back from the Goth Cruise, and I’m up 40 pounds from where I was just a few years ago. The gout episode completely derailed my running routine, and I’m still not fully back into it yet. Most of my clothes aren’t fitting properly, I have low energy, and my self-respect is pretty much in the shitter as a result. The last few weeks have been a bit better in that regard, but I’ve still got a long way to go before I start to feel comfortable in my skin again.

Krystalle and I celebrated our 8th anniversary back in July. Jareth turned 21. Alex turned 16. Kimmy split from her husband. My kids are getting older and I have my best friend at my side. That’s pretty awesome.

Theatrically? Did two shows. Should have done four but two of them were canceled (three, technically, but the second wouldn’t have gone up until January). I had my first ever theatrical role, and I had the privilege of, yet again, being the first actor to play a role in an original production. That would have happened twice this year, as I was supposed to be in a musical where the part I was playing was written specifically for me, but that fell through.

Celebrated my 10th season with Jobsite…but ironically haven’t been cast in anything yet for said season. Still one show up in the air, though.

Managed to whip the finances into pretty decent shape for a while there but the last few months have reversed a bit of that. I pulled a major remodeling surprise on Alex while he was out of town for Thanksgiving, and as glad as I am that I did the work the investment was considerable. It seriously needed to be done, though. That room was a health hazard, and that wasn’t ENTIRELY his fault.

All in all it was a good year. It wasn’t a great year, but it wasn’t a bad year. It was very busy. At times it was hard, and on many occasions the one thing I wanted more than anything else was sleep.

That’s still the case, really.

Happy New Year, my friends.

 

The Rainbow Hippie Argument

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Love the trees!

Image courtesy of mendhak via flickr

Back in the Summer of 1992 I was working my one, and only, renaissance festival. What is amusing about this is that the show was not, in fact, the one I had grown up around. Despite being closely tied to the Bay Area Renaissance Festival for many years, the only gig I’ve ever actually been an official cast member at was Scarborough Faire in Waxahachie, Texas.

Like many folks who traveled and worked with the renaissance festival circuit, I set up a tent in the woods back behind the festival grounds to live in during the time I was employed at the show. The small section I “lived” in during that time was populated by myself, my friends Holly and Donnie, and a Rainbow Hippie.

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Leaving Las Vegas

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If I told you I was going to send you on a trip that would involve spending a week in New York City followed by a week in Las Vegas you’d probably think that was going to be pretty cool. I sure did. For a while there it was. I can honestly say, though, that after two weeks I’m ready to go home.

I’ve been taking part in some pretty intensive training to help me get up to speed on some of the technologies that we’re adapting at work. I spent five days in New York learning about C# and 7 days in Vegas learning about accessing data and building web applications in Visual Studio 2010 with .NET. The New York leg of the journey was pretty awesome, both from a learning and playing perspective. Vegas, however, has completely kicked my ass. 10 hour days on stuff that’s either really difficult to wrap your head around or mind-numbingly easy mixed with the insanity that is the Las Vegas strip. The resort we are staying at is right behind the Hooters hotel on the South end of the main strip, and the whole environment outside of our little resort is just nuts. Hell, it’s a little crazy here. I’m sitting right next to a window that is looking out over the pool in the resort, and as the week went on the parties our there got progressively louder and more raucous (I note with no small amount of amusement, however, that so far it’s pretty dead out there on this lovely Sunday morning…I guess everyone is still recovering from the parties of the previous evening).

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Here there be cactii

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Sometimes I worry that I’m a bit too much of “that guy.” I’m currently sitting pool side at the hotel I’m staying at in Phoenix, Arizona for the NOREX International Roundtable. I’m wearing the standard black t-shirt with the nerdy saying on it, working on my computer, and sitting in the shade. I haven’t gone anywhere near the water or the pasty older folks who are part of the conference and frolicking in it. I’m not even drinking right now, settling instead for a tasty bottle of Fiji water.

Truth is, though, that even sitting here in the shade with my sunglasses on I’m getting a headache. That might be a result of trying to strain through my sunglasses to see the screen, or it could just be because I’m slowly but surely turning into Gollum.

Time will tell, precious.

From a “fun things to do when not in the conference” perspective this trip has kind of been a bust. My foot is currently gimped thanks to the fact that I was running with the wrong shoes for several months. I have inflamed tendons in my left foot and I’m wearing a compression sock and a splint. I can’t run. I can’t even walk all that far. I am surrounded on all sides by beautiful desert landscape and I can’t explore any of it. That, of course, is also part of the problem. I’m surrounded on all sides by desert. The only thing here to do is go to the casino next door,and I’m not really a gambler. I’ve been spending the daily credit that they gave me, but that’s about it.

Oh. I’m also not in the pool because I forgot my swimsuit and all I have is my cargo shorts and that’s really kind of ghetto.

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Cable Anxiety

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I recently made the decision to cut the cable cord in our household and convert all of our televisions over to internet and over-the-air programming. By dropping cable television and our cable based phone service (all four of us have cellular phones) I’ll be saving about $135 a month. I spent about $300 on equipment needed to facilitate this transition, which I figure I will make up in about 4 months of not having to pay the monthly bill (I will still be paying $20 a month for Netflix and Hulu Plus).

What’s surprised me the most about all of this is how much anxiety the decision has caused me.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? I’ve had cable television since I was very, very young. We were one of the first families on our block to have cable, and it has never been an option NOT to have cable in a household I lived in. I’ve lived with having cable so long that I’ve gotten to the point where I feel like it’s something I “have” to have as opposed to something I “want” to have.

Isn’t that strange?

I’ve actually found myself wondering if I’m doing the “right thing.” Yes, those exact words went through my head. The “right thing.” Like it could possibly be some kind of monumental mistake to cancel our cable television and phone service.

I wonder if it’s not one of many signs of how hard we’re pushed to consider these kind of things necessities by “the man.”

In any case, the transition continues apace. I have one more television left to hook up the antenna to and after that we’re pretty much done with cable. I’ll just need to return the equipment. We will undoubtedly miss having access to Bay News 9, but I can no longer justify spending that kind of money for 10 minutes of news every night. Besides, I’ve already found a 24 hours weather broadcast channel from one of the local stations.

A Puppy For Christmas

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One year I asked my Mom to get me a dog for Christmas.

I don’t remember how old I was at the time, but I must have been fairly young. Young enough that the memory of that particular Christmas is the only crisp one I have of that particular time in my life. You know how there are certain memories you have that are so bright and vivid that the minute you think of them you feel like you are there in the moment all over again?

Yeah, this is one of them.

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Winding Down

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2010 is drawing to an end, and in only a few days we’ll be hosting our last (and biggest) party of the year with our annual Nightmare Before Christmas party. As I sort through the various Christmas Cards (none of which will be reciprocated this year – sorry folks), I stumble across the occasional Holiday Letter. This is kind of a tradition on the Andres side of my family. I have quite a few of the ones that my Grandmother sent out, and every year my Mother and Uncles do their own versions that they include with their Christmas Cards. I even did a few myself, but with my immersion into the world of blogging it seemed like most of the people who I would send out that letter to would already know what was going on. When you consider the fact that I kind of suck at getting out cards to begin with, putting the additional pressure of writing a letter to include with them on myself seemed kinda pointless.

So it goes.

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Putting on the rose colored glasses

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I had a thought this morning. I wanted to write something, but I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to write about. I did some work on other things for a few hours, figuring that perhaps at some point during that time period I would have an idea and I could subsequently transform that idea into words.

It didn’t happen.

So, I thought, I’ll dig through the photos on my computer until I find a picture that I haven’t posted before that inspires me to write about it. I did some digging, and I came up with the image above. Technically speaking I have posted this image in the past, but it was on my old web site that has now been completely retired so for many of you this is “new.”

The picture is of my old boss, Brian.

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Playing Dressup

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It is October 31st, 2010.

Halloween.

In the grand scheme of things, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It is, however, also a holiday that often makes me feel very awkward when it comes to actually participating in the traditional method of celebrating it.

I have costume anxiety.

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Sometimes I really hate my brain

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So.

It is almost 6:00 AM on a Saturday morning. I should be sleeping. I wanted to be sleeping. Instead, I had a nightmare that got me out of bed about 30 minutes ago. One of those nightmares you don’t even want to tell the details of because they are horrible and embarrassing. I’m awake now, and sitting here doing that I’m almost always doing at this time on a weekday. Drinking coffee, eating my breakfast of two frozen waffles with peanut butter in between them, and drinking coffee.

If I didn’t have an insanely long (and mostly self-imposed) to-do list for the weekend I’d be even more upset about that.

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