Recently in Personal Category
Today is my last full day here in Iceland, which gives me a little time to reflect on the last few days (but a full roundup of FanFest will have to wait until I get back and have some time to go through my pictures). It's actually sunny today for the first time since Wednesday, though I've spent almost all my time over the last few days either inside the FanFest venue or out with various people around here.
Visiting Iceland has been a really interesting and fun experience, especially being here and spending time with people from all over the world. While GenCon always has a lot of people from outside the US, here at FanFest, the attendees are mostly from outside the US -- I've heard people speaking dozens of different languages, not to mention English with as many accents, and it really gives you a feeling for the fact that the world is a much bigger place than you can possibly realize when you spend most of your time in a single place. I've been able to meet a lot of people I have considered friends here, even though we'd never met in person before, and I will be taking home a lot of great memories.
The most fascinating thing about being in another country has been seeing all the little differences between being here and being in the US. Nearly everything here seems a little smaller (including my bed in the hotel room and the bit-too-small duvet), the smell of sulfur when you run the hot water (due to the fact that hot water here comes from geothermally-heated springs under the ground), the fact that you get a yellow light before a green light on the traffic signals, and the way cars actually expect to cede the right of way to pedestrians (quite a change from the mess on campus, for sure). I think just being exposed to a different way of doing things and a different environment has been incredibly healthy for me as a person.
The worst thing about this trip is that it really hasn't been long enough for me to really feel like I have learned as much as I should about this place, and I wish I had time to learn the language and culture here. I was really excited about coming here, and it has not been a disappointment; I can't wait until I get the chance to take a trip like this again.
Visiting Iceland has been a really interesting and fun experience, especially being here and spending time with people from all over the world. While GenCon always has a lot of people from outside the US, here at FanFest, the attendees are mostly from outside the US -- I've heard people speaking dozens of different languages, not to mention English with as many accents, and it really gives you a feeling for the fact that the world is a much bigger place than you can possibly realize when you spend most of your time in a single place. I've been able to meet a lot of people I have considered friends here, even though we'd never met in person before, and I will be taking home a lot of great memories.
The most fascinating thing about being in another country has been seeing all the little differences between being here and being in the US. Nearly everything here seems a little smaller (including my bed in the hotel room and the bit-too-small duvet), the smell of sulfur when you run the hot water (due to the fact that hot water here comes from geothermally-heated springs under the ground), the fact that you get a yellow light before a green light on the traffic signals, and the way cars actually expect to cede the right of way to pedestrians (quite a change from the mess on campus, for sure). I think just being exposed to a different way of doing things and a different environment has been incredibly healthy for me as a person.
The worst thing about this trip is that it really hasn't been long enough for me to really feel like I have learned as much as I should about this place, and I wish I had time to learn the language and culture here. I was really excited about coming here, and it has not been a disappointment; I can't wait until I get the chance to take a trip like this again.
Well, with less than two weeks now until I go to Iceland I realized that I am long overdue for posting again, especially since I've only posted a handful of times since getting back from Arizona. It's not like nothing has been going either; Marc came down a couple weeks ago, and last weekend I went up to Chicago.
First off, as far as recovering from surgery goes, everything is going well on that front -- healing is going very nicely and I'm back at work again (unfortunately). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything will be just fine while I'm away -- I admit that having some sort of horrible medical problem thousands of miles from home gives me the willies, but I realize how irrational that really is.
So what've I been up to for the last couple months? I have to admit, a lot less than I'd hoped. I did manage to do a fair bit of writing, but between taking care of things post-surgery and just generally feeling a bit of a malaise I probably squandered an opportunity to push through a lot of things I really should have. I have continued to watch a lot of movies, and I'll try to post some short reviews in a bit. Marc also got me to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I had never seen (it was good, obviously).
Last weekend, I went up to Chicago and Marc and I had dinner at Giordano's with Sam and Gracie on Friday. Saturday, unfortunately, Marc had to do some work so we went downtown and I spent a few hours at a coffee shop doing some writing while he was working on his rollout. I was surprised how much I got done really -- I think leaving myself disconnected from the internet actually got me to focus on my writing -- a trick I'll try to put to good use in the future. I even managed to get back and work on some projects I had left a while back; I'm thinking that maybe this weekend I'll try heading out to in the morning and doing the same thing and see if I can't get more done.
After that, we went to have dinner at the Twin Anchors, which is, I gather, a bit of a Chicago institution. It certainly had the crowd to match -- we had to wait about an hour and a half for a table, so we spent most of that time wandering around the neighborhood it's in, which is really pretty neat. In addition to a beautiful cathedral -- the first real cathedral I think I've ever seen, as opposed to just a church (Edit: Evidently they call it a church, I'm not sure what actually makes a cathedral a cathedral) -- it had a lot of the kind of old architecture that I'd really like to live in someday, and the kind of neighborhood close to the heart of a city I'd like as well.
The restaurant was very good, though it is small and cramped. Marc's ribs were probably the most tender I've ever had, and were very good (he let me have a few), though I can't speak for the sauce (I prefer my meat without sauces usually). My steak wasn't mindblowingly spectacular, but it was pretty good, and the ambience at the place is pretty hard to beat. It was evidently a big hangout for Frank Sinatra back in the day, and a ton of other celebrity photos and news clippings and other assorted accoutrements cover the walls. A scene in The Dark Knight was also filmed here, although in the movie it is nearly empty, which is hard to believe considering how crowded it was when we were there!
After that, Marc surprised me and took me to the last Second City show of the night, which was my first time to Second City and really I think the first real live show of anything I've seen in a very long time. The show we saw was Campaign Supernova, and it was pretty good -- there were a few kind of meh sketches, but the good ones were really good, and I had a lot of fun. The only bad part about it was that we went to the late show, which has some extra improv and sketches being tested out for the next show stuck in it, so we didn't get out of the theatre until almost 0200, which was a little later than I had expected! Well worth seeing though and I would definitely like to go there again and see another show sometime.
This week, heading back to work has been a little tough -- it hasn't helped that I seem to have either come down with bad allergies or a cold, though. This morning I woke up and felt like I'd been run over by a truck, so I actually called in sick -- something I'm pretty loathe to do when I'm trying to get back in the swing of things as best I can before I fly off on another two weeks of vacation!
Speaking of which, I'm getting really excited about going to FanFest the closer it gets, despite all the recent craziness in the Icelandic financial sector that the CCP CEO felt necessary to calm fears about in a dev blog. Despite the fact that the last time I spent any time around Eve devs I came down with a terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease, I really am looking forward to hopefully talking to more of them, and with any luck making a better impression this time. I am also promising to take lots more pictures, both there and in Boston on the way back, and I'll be posting those here so everyone can see what it was like.
Look for at least one or two more posts this weekend, and then I'll probably try and get something up next weekend before I depart. And, while I can't say I'll be liveblogging from FanFest exactly, I will try to post regular updates while I'm there!
First off, as far as recovering from surgery goes, everything is going well on that front -- healing is going very nicely and I'm back at work again (unfortunately). I'm keeping my fingers crossed that everything will be just fine while I'm away -- I admit that having some sort of horrible medical problem thousands of miles from home gives me the willies, but I realize how irrational that really is.
So what've I been up to for the last couple months? I have to admit, a lot less than I'd hoped. I did manage to do a fair bit of writing, but between taking care of things post-surgery and just generally feeling a bit of a malaise I probably squandered an opportunity to push through a lot of things I really should have. I have continued to watch a lot of movies, and I'll try to post some short reviews in a bit. Marc also got me to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I had never seen (it was good, obviously).
Last weekend, I went up to Chicago and Marc and I had dinner at Giordano's with Sam and Gracie on Friday. Saturday, unfortunately, Marc had to do some work so we went downtown and I spent a few hours at a coffee shop doing some writing while he was working on his rollout. I was surprised how much I got done really -- I think leaving myself disconnected from the internet actually got me to focus on my writing -- a trick I'll try to put to good use in the future. I even managed to get back and work on some projects I had left a while back; I'm thinking that maybe this weekend I'll try heading out to in the morning and doing the same thing and see if I can't get more done.
After that, we went to have dinner at the Twin Anchors, which is, I gather, a bit of a Chicago institution. It certainly had the crowd to match -- we had to wait about an hour and a half for a table, so we spent most of that time wandering around the neighborhood it's in, which is really pretty neat. In addition to a beautiful cathedral -- the first real cathedral I think I've ever seen, as opposed to just a church (Edit: Evidently they call it a church, I'm not sure what actually makes a cathedral a cathedral) -- it had a lot of the kind of old architecture that I'd really like to live in someday, and the kind of neighborhood close to the heart of a city I'd like as well.
The restaurant was very good, though it is small and cramped. Marc's ribs were probably the most tender I've ever had, and were very good (he let me have a few), though I can't speak for the sauce (I prefer my meat without sauces usually). My steak wasn't mindblowingly spectacular, but it was pretty good, and the ambience at the place is pretty hard to beat. It was evidently a big hangout for Frank Sinatra back in the day, and a ton of other celebrity photos and news clippings and other assorted accoutrements cover the walls. A scene in The Dark Knight was also filmed here, although in the movie it is nearly empty, which is hard to believe considering how crowded it was when we were there!
After that, Marc surprised me and took me to the last Second City show of the night, which was my first time to Second City and really I think the first real live show of anything I've seen in a very long time. The show we saw was Campaign Supernova, and it was pretty good -- there were a few kind of meh sketches, but the good ones were really good, and I had a lot of fun. The only bad part about it was that we went to the late show, which has some extra improv and sketches being tested out for the next show stuck in it, so we didn't get out of the theatre until almost 0200, which was a little later than I had expected! Well worth seeing though and I would definitely like to go there again and see another show sometime.
This week, heading back to work has been a little tough -- it hasn't helped that I seem to have either come down with bad allergies or a cold, though. This morning I woke up and felt like I'd been run over by a truck, so I actually called in sick -- something I'm pretty loathe to do when I'm trying to get back in the swing of things as best I can before I fly off on another two weeks of vacation!
Speaking of which, I'm getting really excited about going to FanFest the closer it gets, despite all the recent craziness in the Icelandic financial sector that the CCP CEO felt necessary to calm fears about in a dev blog. Despite the fact that the last time I spent any time around Eve devs I came down with a terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease, I really am looking forward to hopefully talking to more of them, and with any luck making a better impression this time. I am also promising to take lots more pictures, both there and in Boston on the way back, and I'll be posting those here so everyone can see what it was like.
Look for at least one or two more posts this weekend, and then I'll probably try and get something up next weekend before I depart. And, while I can't say I'll be liveblogging from FanFest exactly, I will try to post regular updates while I'm there!
So it's been over three weeks since my last entry, and that's pretty unacceptable, at least for me, so I'm going to try to bring everyone up to date with how I'm doing and what I'm up to since I got back. In short, things are going pretty well, I'm recovering nicely from the surgery, but I'm not completely back up to 100% quite yet.
Continue reading A long overdue update.....
Well, I apologize for being so remiss for the remainder of my Arizona trip, but the hospital's network didn't want to cooperate with MoveableType and at the hotel....I was just lazy. So, in an act of contrition, here's an attempt to bring everyone back up to speed. I fear it might be a little long, so I'll tuck it behind the cut.
Continue reading Home again, home again, jiggedy-jig..
...magnesium citrate is not as bad as it was built up to be. Kind of like flat, too-old lemon-lime. I was expecting something on the order of the fermented shark Anthony Bourdain had in Iceland from the way my mom was talking about it.
I've been fasting all day, basically, and it's starting to drive me a little bit batty, especially since the hotel we're staying at has a reception between 5-7 every night, and I can smell the popcorn drifting from the lobby in our room. Still, there's not much longer to go -- in 14 hours, we'll be heading to the hospital, and 6 or 7 hours after that it'll all be over. Pretty hard to believe really.
Anyway, I'm hanging in there. Thanks for all the well-wishes I've had the last few days, and I'll try to let everyone know how I'm doing as soon as I can.
I've been fasting all day, basically, and it's starting to drive me a little bit batty, especially since the hotel we're staying at has a reception between 5-7 every night, and I can smell the popcorn drifting from the lobby in our room. Still, there's not much longer to go -- in 14 hours, we'll be heading to the hospital, and 6 or 7 hours after that it'll all be over. Pretty hard to believe really.
Anyway, I'm hanging in there. Thanks for all the well-wishes I've had the last few days, and I'll try to let everyone know how I'm doing as soon as I can.
