Conclusion of Variety

I decided it was time to visit the dentist. It had been around three years since I last went and I figure I was due. Dental insurance was optional and I was recommended by our insurance representative, and the dentist receptionist that I didn’t need to worry about insurance and it wasn’t worth it. Stephanie also told me that her mom hadn’t been to the dentist in over 10 years and was fine.

I find a coupon that is a cleaning and x-rays for $50. Seemed like a good deal and I set up an appointment last week. My first appointment was yesturday which was the x-rays and the bad news. My old filling when I got as a kid were leaking (or something) and I had two small cavities.

Today was my second appointment which was the cleaning and drilling. Both went well and took a total of about 2-3 hours and it only set me back $900. Now I am all numbed up, blew over half my saving but at least there aren’t any holes in my head.

I’ve been sick since Wednesday (May 25). It started off as a mild soar throat so I didn’t worry about it too much and just pumped up on Vitamin C and took it easy on Thursday night. Friday I was feeling pretty worn out and didn’t do anything. On Saturday I stayed in most of the day and only got out to get a haircut and in the evening I started feeling better and went to see “Hictchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.” On Sunday I felt better and I went out. On Monday I went to a game and after grabbing dinner my throat flammed up real bad.

The next day I felt awful and ended up going to the doctor and he prescribed antibiotics. This was the first time I had seen a doctor in 2-3 years. I was glad I had the insurance as the appointment only cost $10 but the medication cost $45 ($20 discount). I thought it was going to be cheaper. Tuesday night and Wednesday I stayed at Stephanie’s place as mine was trashed (roommate hadn’t done his dishes in over two weeks). She was great.

My Thursday I was back at work and am feeling much better today. I walked to work for the first time in over a week and hoping to be my usual self by Monday.

Not a lot happened this weekend but on Friday Stephanie and I went and saw Pageant. A full review can be found here: Review of Pageant.

The rest of the weekend was layed back. Stephanie and I stayed in on Saturday and I actually took a nap. On Sunday I was suppose to get surfing lesson from my roommate but he bailed so Stephanie and I went to the beach and read.

As soon as I got back from Vegas my old roommate and good friend from New Mexico, Erik, show up in San Diego to find an apartment so of course I had to hang out with him. Wednesday night we went to World Curry, a bar, the beach and then back to my place to catch him up on gaming books.

On Thursday we went to play an “Unknown Armies” oneshot which was a lot of fun and again got to talk a lot of gaming and hang out. It was the first quality game that Erik had been in awhile so he was really excited and it looks like he will be joining us regularly depending on his schedule. He had also found an apartment by that time.

On Friday we went down to Old Town and met up with Jonathan and Michelle for margaritas and mexican food.

Since Saturday was the weekend I met up with him around 10am and we went down to La Jolla and ate at the IHOP. I ended up parking in the 1hr section and it took us about an hour to eat. When I got back I noticed my tire had been chalked and knew not to mess around as my brother got a parking ticket in almost the exact same spot but parking was real bad at the time and I didn’t want to drive around looking for another spot. So, I backed up about 6 in right on top of the chalk. We then went to the beach and hung out for awhile. When I got back I didn’t get a ticket but my tire hadn’t been rechalked so I don’t know if I outsmarted the meter maid or not.

After that we headed for the movies and caught “Kingdom of Heaven” which was ok. Orlando Bloom sucked, the guy who played the head muslim kicked ass. After the movie we relaxed at the “Living Room Coffee House” in Hillcrest which is a couple blocks from where Erik is moving.

After that we had dinner with Scott and Dede and got to chat with them and play with the baby. I have actually been taking echinacea and vitamin C because everyone around seems to have a cold and Scott and Dede, and baby Conner were all right in the middle of it.

After that I dropped Erik off as he had to leave the next morning. This gave me a chance to relax on the weekend. The other strange thing was that I spent the entire weekend at Stephanie’s because I have officialy moved in for the weekends which was convenient as last weekend was PB Block Party. I’m glad I avoided it as I heard it was insane with drunks abound by 3pm and my courtyard was litered with beer cans, a beer bong, cigarettes and cigars. Beer boxes and cans litered the streets of PB.

I noticed I got somewhat frustrated having to return to this (and my dirty apartment) after the quiet relaxed living at Stephanie’s. However, this weekend hopefully things will return to normal and I can get some laundry done.

I ended up surviving Vegas. After all the hype I was sorely disappointed. It was like a giant expensive carnival. I really don’t see the point. I had my fill (within the first night) and have no need to go back.

We left for San Diego around 2pm on Sunday and arrived about 7:00. The traffic was pretty bad on the strip so it took us about 20min to get to our hotel. I used Priceline to get our hotel which was “The New Frontier” a rundown place with a country western theme. The first thing I had to do when arriving in the room was kill a moth.

We didn’t waste anytime and jumped into our evening clothes for a night on the town. NO plan we just went ahead. We went looking for something to eat, went in and out of Treasure Island, and then ended up at the Mirage where we ate at a deli. Problem with the deli was that the sandwiches were too big. We decided to split a BLT which must have had a pound of bacon on it. We had to take most of it off.

We then stopped at a little bar that had live music and we got drinks. When the music ended we decided to leave. We walked down the strip for a ways and ended up at the Bilagio where we found a dance club where you could keep your seat if you went up to dance. We really liked this place and stayed there until it closed at 1pm.

The next day we got breakfast at Treasure Island then proceeded to go casino hopping. We started with the Wynn and headed down the strip stopping at The Venetian, Paris, and New York. This absolutly sucked as there was nothing to do, the casinos were repetative, boring and fake. You were constantly harassed by sales people, and guys passing out escort cards not to mention the constant advertising. By the time we got back to the hotel we were exhausted and miserable. We took a 4 hour nap.

When we woke up we decided to see a show. Stephanie wasn’t particular so I chose one called “Bite” which had vampires. We walked down to the Stratosphere, payed to go up the elevator, come back down grabbed something to eat and saw the show which was fun and silly.

The next day we grabbed some Starbucks and hauled ass out of town. Vegas makes itself out to be money but it felt like an overpriced circus or carnival. Even the expensive casinos had a trailer trash feel to them. Overall the evenings were more fun than the days with the dancing and the show being a lot of fun and everything else sucking.

May 1st 2003 is when Maya and I packed up and moved to San Diego. Of course it feels like it was five years ago that we moved here because so much has happened. I remember Maya saying that it takes two years to really get settled. Well, I’m defianitly settled and feel great about where I am.

What has happened in two years.

• May 1 2003 – Moved to a 1-bedroom apt in Lakeside.
• June – Maya gets a job w/ Wayne Foster Entertainment
• July – I get a job w/ Silver Lining Mortgage, Joe comes to visit
• Augest – JR, Robin, and Lee visit and go to comic con, Go to Game Fest and meet Erik
• October – Ceder Fire
• November – Maya and I go back to Las Cruces for Thanksgiving
• December – I got to my first Gencon. Get fired from Silver Lining Mortgage. Start doing temp work
• February 2004 – Get a part time job w/ Susan Gilbert doing data entry and graphics, First Champions game
• April – rpg-sandiego meet up at Fiesta Island
• May – Maya and I seperate. I start working at TRIO Display
• June – I move in with Eric and Claudine
• July – Comic con
• Augest – I start dating Stephanie
• September – Jonathan and Michelle get married
• November – Erik disappears. Jorma becomes new roommate. Family comes down for Thankgiving
• December – Second Gen con. I return to Las Cruces for Christmas vacation
• March – Stephanie and I go to Disneyland and I have my first meeting with Maya


• May 2nd – today

A lot has happened. I have no regrets about moving to San Diego and love it here and I have so much to look forward to including weekends with Stephanie, Vegas, and Erik moving down. This is not how I expected San Diego to turn out two years ago but I glad it went the way it did.

Stephanie and I have been dating for about 9 months and are crazy over each other. So, we started talking about taking our relationship to the next level. The problem of course was deciding what level that was. I had been wanting to see more of her and it seemed like that would be to move in together.

This seemed a little fast to me which I guess is relative depending on the people in a relationship (some people marry after a week of dating). The other problem was that she owned her place so if we were to move in together it would be me moving in with her.

My original solution was to rent my own suit or 1 bedroom and make both places ours. Stephanie thought that idea was silly which I was fine with. My next solution she seemed to like more and that was for me to move in with her during the weekend. This way we can spend more time together, and get use to each other on a mundane level. But we will still have our own space during the week and don’t having any financial commitments.

I’m excited and nervous about this. We planned on starting the weekend of May 21st but it looks like it will be pushed up a week due to the PB Block Party where they close Garnet (the main street in PB where all the shops and restraunts are).

The first time I came to San Diego was for Comic-Con 97. It was me and my friend, Kurt, Scott, and Erik. Kurt had lived here before and I remember Erik saying that you would love to live in San Diego. I was thinking the same thing and now I am here.

Yesturday, I received an email from Erik saying that he got a confirmation that he will be moving to San Diego. He doesn’t have a date yet but I’m assuming he will soon.

Obviously I am extremely excited about this. Erik was my second roommate (my first was Joe) and we lived together for about 2-3 years. He was always very supportive and a great gamer having run one of the few fantasy games I played in and also a well done, if not short lived, in a crash and burn kind of way Tribe 8 game. Of course he was a player in many of games and was one of animated players I had ever seen (an instance of him jumping up on our coffee table while growling comes to mind).

Of course there were instances of a few parties and many other good times including a few fun SCA events, not to mention Comic-Con, Anime-Friday and other such nonsense.

So, I look forward to him coming down so we can discuss old memories and create new ones. It should be fun.

Had a nice weekend. On Saturday Stephanie and I went and saw “Reverse Psychology” in the Diversionary Theater and I loved it. On Sunday she came over and we went to the beach and read.

And in a strong effort to get myself into trouble I took this picture of Stephanie on the beach while she was sleeping. This will probably result in an equaly, if not more embarrasing picture of myself at some point in time. But she is so damned cute I can’t help but share.

Pic of Steph

I have also decided to move any reviews to another blog called Reviews of Variety which will review books, plays and movies. I’ll be movie all my reviews from this blog to that one.

At work I started a recent project to convert our online catalog. The orignal which just a bunch of regular pages that displayed the information but did little beyond that. There was an online form that allowed customer to enter their informaton then cut and past the product information of what they wanted. Otherwise if a customer wanted to order something they had to call and we have standard business hours.

All this is limiting for an internet business so from the second I started working at TRIO I had intentions of changing the entire catalog. The bosses were resistant to the idea wanting to keep the personal touch of a person. As months went by I managed to convince them that a database driven online catalog would be better and we could always keep the number for that personal touch if the customer wanted.

For the past two months I have been experiementing with online catalogs and I like the php/sql variants and went with one called oscommerce which is open source and seems popular. I set up the shopping cart, actually went live with it for a few weeks testing it on jewelry displays and am now ready to convert the entire catalog over.

The problem is we have 1000s of items. If I were to try and enter all the items it would take me forever plus I have other things to do. I knew I was going to have to hire some help. I talked with the bosses and they agreed but there was the problem of space and computers in the office. We didn’t want to buy more computers just for a few months of data entry.

If then occured to me that you could access the shopping cart from anywhere and I decided to hire people who could work at home. After a few meeting with the boss I managed to convince them to allow me to do this. I set up a system of how to keep track of everything and just finished hiring four data entry people in which I am in charge of.

This has been very exciting for me as I have never been in charge of anyone. If anything I have had people on the same level that I have had seniority over. I had to advertise on craigslist, type up instruction and go over the process with each one. They turn to me when there is a problem and I have had to set specific requirements and keep track of all the data.

It has been fun and educational and the data entry project should last for 1-2 months and then the new catalog will go live. I can’t wait, I can’t remember the last time I was this excited about my job.