Go team Venture!

Firstly: a meme, because misspadfoot requested, nay, DEMANDED I do it.

( I'm a meme, you're a meme, we're all memes, hey! )

Also, I really love my job. "Why?" I hear you imaginarily ask into your computer monitor as though somebody were actually listening. Well, because at around 2:00 pm, the cover design group takes a break from their critique meeting to play frisbee. I went and played frisbee at work in the middle of the day.

I've been practicing driving the last couple of weeks. I also took time to study the driver's manual over this week at work (because, frankly, it's the end of the month, and I have nothing to do during the day), and it is about as dreary as it sounds. I also found out really interesting pieces of information, in particular that it is perfectly legal for motorcyclists to ride without helmets. Unless, of course, they are under 18, in which case it is mandated by law that they wear helmets. Because apparently the roads in Oklahoma are magically designed to only cause brain damage when a person strikes their head upon them at highway speed, but only if they are under 18. I really wish they would share this marvel of engineering with the rest of the United States so we could get rid of those pesky helmet laws. Damn them.

Anyway, I'm thrilled to finally be on the road to getting my license (I didn't even realize that was an unintentional pun until rereading it a few times), but I'm just a bit nervous about taking the test, because I haven't taken a test since I was 21. We're going to be doing that 2 weeks from Monday, so wish me luck with all that. This also means that I'll be getting to drive to New Mexico and pretty much anywhere else we go over the next five years because according to Liz, and I quote, "I've been carting your ass around for long enough. It's time to return the favor." I love my charming wife. Really, I do. Her sarcastic cynicism is what attracted me to her in the first place.

zomg, we finished our Beetles puzzle! You know why that's cool? Because it's a White Album poster. I know, right?

It wasn't as hard as it sounds, though, because it's actually two sided, where the back side shows the actual LPs, and we worked on that side. But it's still neat and a rather shiney accomplishment.

So... I really haven't a thing worth talking about. All that's really going on with me is work.

Well, I just remembered something kinda cool. Our Christmas party is on Tuesday, and we have to come up with skits departmentally. I think I may have mentioned this before. The theme is Disney, and I thought it would've been funny to do like a "Where are they now?" special, and all the characters would be drunkards or narcoleptic or a variety of other things. That idea got shot down. So what we ended up doing is turning everybody on staff (besides our department, of course) into various Disney characters. There were obviously a few people who put NO effort into it, but I think mine came out looking rather neat. I'll have to put up the finished results ... whenever I feel like caring.

That's really all. Christmas is soon. I got neat gifts for my family and Liz, and I think she's going to need a change of pants when she sees the things. Yay vagueness.

I felt like making a post. Aren't you excited?

You know who's cool? Liz. You know why? She went out and bought a PS2, which was bundled with LEGO Batman. The first two thoughts I had were "OMG, my wife rox!" and "I sure hope we can afford this..." It's annoying that money is such a concern. I guess that's adulthood.

Speaking of money, I got a raise. Yay. Ryan has said over and over again that you are pretty much GUARANTEED a raise after 3 months of working there and on your anniversary, so ... I guess I can at least celebrate that I'm not a screw up who DOESN'T deserve to get a raise.

Side note: I'm tired of people going door to door trying to sell us crap. WE ARE LOWER-MIDDLE CLASS. GO AWAY. Not to mention that the dog flips out and won't stop barking for 10 minutes.

Back to work. We had a Thanksgiving dinner/lunch today with the production staff (basically that means everybody except acquisitions and marketing. Why they don't get included is beyond me, but I'm not in charge, so whatever). Liz made fruit salad. People liked it, but we made WAY more than necessary, because it seemed like there wasn't that much stuff when Liz was buying the ingredients, so I made her do a double recipe. Long story short: we're going to be eating fruit salad for dessert for a while. Anybody want some fruit salad? It's good, I swear!

Umm... does anybody have an awesome survey or something they want me to do? I'll do it. Honest.

I think I need a nap.

So, who misses me updating several times a day despite not having anything to say?

Gaffigan was awesome last weekend. I had every intention of actually updating about it, but... then I didn't. Pretty much his whole set was new jokes, with maybe 5 minutes of old stuff, but it all segued seemlessly into new stuff. Awesomely exciting. We also got him to sign our ticket stubs. We were going to have him sign a bag of bologna, but one of the cats stole it. Stupid cats.

Work is work. There's nothing new to report there. So far I've only had one author this month tell me she didn't like any of the covers, but all she wanted was red shoes, so I gave her red shoes and she was like "THIS IS AMAZING!!!11box"

We just got back from The Dark Knight. It was amazing, and it makes me sit back and wonder why all the cool people die young. I seriously forgot that it was Heath Ledger, because he was just perfectly insane.

Sara is getting married tomorrow. I suck for not being there, but I crovals you forever anyway. Plus the Bear will be there, and she's basically just me with boobs, so nobody will really miss me. Right?

My birthday is on Thursday. What are you getting me?

I think my journal needs a new theme. I've had this one for entirely too long. Like... more than a year. That's way longer than I've had before. I just haven't been terribly inspired to make new icons. I'm using all my creativity at work.

Other things that I'm thinking about updating: my website. As fun as the current one is, it's not very user friendly and... well, it's kind of ugly. I need something a little more streamlined. That and I need to put some new work on it.

Transplant needs to be updated, too. It's been since last May. Well, there's a Sara-style filler in June, but that only counts in the way that I love Sara. I actually have comics drawn and scripted, I'm just too lazy. That and I have all these adult responsibilties now, so my sad little webcomic has taken a back seat.

Take for example that we're starting the search for a house today. Hopefully we'll be all set with moving in and everything by August and we'll have a month of overlap for this place. Basically we need to get out of the dead-end that is renting, and have a house that we can like... paint the walls and build additions. And with the starting a family.

Yes, you read right: Liz and I, the ones who were so adamantly against having kids for years, are planning on having a family. Her clock is ticking and mine is... doing something. I dunno, I've always liked the idea of being a dad, because I think I could probably do a better job than some fathers who will remain nameless *cough*AllTheMenInMyMom'sLife*cough*

I'm wicked sunburned. We went to the arts festival yesterday with my work, and somehow nobody thought to bring sunscreen. We played scavenger hunt. This involved finding things and taking pictures of them. Highlights: we needed a picture of a worm. We couldn't find one, so Joey did the worm. We also had to do group pictures with strangers, so we went up to random people and said things like "hey, can we pretend to mug you? It's gonna be fun!" Good times.

That's all for now.

Things of note in apathetic list format:

-Our department is moved into the new office, more or less. We cleaned and painted today. We have green walls. I drove the golf cart.
-My authors this month are super pain-in-the-butts. Argh.
-I discovered that some of my coworkers not only have amazing taste in movies, but music as well.
-The Movie Gallery next door is closing, so I bought some super cheap DVDs (and found out about the aforementioned amazing tastes)
-We also bought and watched RV and Man of the Year. The first was surprisingly not terrible, and the second was a lot darker than I thought it would be.
-Have I mentioned that we're getting married in two months? It's a little scary, but exciting too! (you punks better be coming. I will seriously cry.)
-The strike is over (old news), and Heroes won't be back until November (lame news).
-I'm thinking about growing a beard again. Maybe it won't look white-trash this time.

I think that's all that's really important. Actually, none of it's really that exciting. This is my boring life.

So, I don't know if I mentioned before the guy at my work who annoys me. Basically he's one of those people that doesn't quite get the clue that he's annoying, and he decides to be your friend despite your best efforts. To go so far as to say I hated him is rather strong, but to say he got under my skin would be accurate. See, he asked me all these questions that anybody working as a designer should know, or at least have some vague memory of. He kind of sucked, and didn't get the concept of white space, and anything you told him you had to tell him about 13 times, and he still didn't quite get it.

Anyway, long story short, he got fired. I'm not saying I'm glad he's gone, but he really was just dead weight. I shouldn't talk bad about him, because it's not like he was just a nasty person and like... kicked puppies and flipped of babies or anything. In fact, he was nice, but... I dunno, he bugged me. Probably because he just invited himself to go to lunch with me, when more often than not I just wanted to be alone. It bothers the crap out of me when people just invite themselves to come along with me or my group, without anybody offering, "so, does anybody else want to come?" It's more like he says, "oh, you're doing this? Hey, I'm coming with!"

It sucks to get fired, I know, so I feel bad for him about that, but he has to at least have known he wasn't very good at the job. A project that took everybody else a half hour took him between 3 and 5 hours. That, and he really didn't fit in with the company. It's a Christian publishing company, and he was... well, not very Christian. Which is not to say I'm exactly the model Christian, but I'm at least able to hold my tongue when necessary.

Today was also the "farewell from our department!" for Steven. He's going to be a producer for the music side of our company (How cool is it that I know a record producer?) We played Apples to Apples (which is the best game ever, by the way) and had a pizza lunch, and we gave him a giant guitar shaped card. It rocked.

We get two new people tomorrow, to replace those that left today. Here's to hoping they aren't obnoxious.

I started filling this out like... 3 days ago. I just finished now.

( Couples Brand(tm) survey )

That was excitingly pointless.

So, I found out today that typesetting for poetry books is the most boring activity in the universe. Which is saying a lot about the typesetting I normally do. I really did want to stab myself in the eye with a fork. I also found that when typesetting, it's really important to not get engrossed in the story, because you end up missing a lot of stuff.

The back office where I work has officially been dubbed The Dungeon. Because, despite the wall of windows, it's the darkest office in the building. Go figure.

My new coworkers are really nice. It's kind of eerie at times. They keep asking me how I'm enjoying the new job, and one of them offered to drive me to Arby's for lunch today, despite it only being like... a block or so away (I still don't drive. I was going to walk to McDumbell's, which is also only a block away).

One thing that really drives me crazy about my coworkers is the fact that they "reply all" to almost every e-mail sent to them. Although it's not all of them, like I initially thought. It's only like... 5 people. Who always have something to say. That apparently everyone needs to know.

Know what? I'm hungry. Time for me to end this friends page pollution.

Holy freaking crap yes I got a job!

A job that pays $28k a year. A job where I get to design. A job where I get to do something I actually enjoy. A job with benefits, and bonuses, and room for raises. A real, honest to goodness, J-O-B.

Holy crap I'm walking on air.

Apparently my eyes are really crap and my lenses are super out of date, because I was at work yesterday and Brandon was mocking me. He came in to talk to Jonathan, the other guy in my office, and he (Brandon) said something to the effect of "so, were you planning on buying dinner for that monitor first?" because I was like... 2 inches away from it. So I told him I had enough of his tomfoolery.

Although, honestly, I think the monitor is complete shit, too, because I can see just fine at my computer at home sitting at a normal distance away. Really it's a combination.

So, that's my pointlessly amusing story from work for this week. My work amuses me, and so do my anecdotes.

I haven't much else to talk about. I would talk about Harry Potter, but I fear certain people may destroy me. That and I haven't actually read it yet, because it's Liz's book. So I've just been playing video games all day, which doesn't happen often.

Oh yeah, I got like... $150 Amazon gift certificate from my aunt and uncle, which I promptly blew on a couple DVDs and games: Super Paper Mario, Lego Star Wars II, Prince of Persia: Two Thrones, a George Carlin thing who's name I can't remember, but is from the tour Liz and I saw for my birthday last year, and season 5 of Degrassi for Lizi.

It's hot.