Matt

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Get 10 speeding tickets. Get your resolution here.

This is particularily impressive given how much I read and play games and how often my mom would chase us out of the house during the summer =D

The Instructions:

Bold all of the following TV shows you've seen three or more episodes of in your lifetime. Bold and italicize a show if you've seen every episode. Add up to 3 additional shows (please keep the list in alphabetical order).

7th Heaven
Adam-12
Aeon Flux
ALF
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
Alias
All in the Family
American Idol/Pop Idol/Canadian Idol/Australian Idol/etc.
America's Next Top Model
Angel
Are You Being Served?
Arrested Development
( Read more... )

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( See drakanfyr's results. )

The Ultimate LiveJournal Obsession Test
Category	Your Score	Average LJer
Community Attachment	15.05% You've got pals to cheer you up when you're down, but no audience to applaud you... Yet.	22.53%
MemeSheepage	5.26% You fill out forms at work - why should you fill them out for fun?	27.91%
Original Content	20.97% Monthly bitch sessions and occasional movie reviews	37.76%
Psychodrama Quotient	9.64% Had a comment taken out of context once or twice	16.74%
Attention Whoring	18.18% Slothfully Seeking Susan	20.6%
Take The Ultimate LiveJournal Obsession Test and see how you match up! (By The Ferrett)

So about three weekends back Talana and I woke up from a *long* night of playing board games with Dick (who is now hooked on Mexican Train and Attika =). I'd been wanting to go out to the coast so Talana suggested we drive up the coast on our way up to Salem. The only problem was how I would get home but a quick hop over to the Eugene Train Station and I had a ticket for my first train ride!

We then jumped on the road and headed out to Florence and had lunch at Mo's.






From there we went on up the coast. We stopped off at one of the lookout points where Talana had to check her messages =P





A little further up the coast (I keep wanting to say down because we took a right at Florence ;), we stopped off at a beach to check out the tidal pools.






Talana found a stick and helped me poke the anemones (an-nem-on-nee is a fun word to say =).



We visited our good old friend the Alsea Bridge again...sadly the museum was still closed.



After a while we made it to Lincoln City where we stopped off at the outlet stores and wandered into an Old Navy that was already closed. We're not sure why they let us in but they were definitely restocking the racks and locked the door behind us. We got back on the road and was nearly sideswiped by a car that passed us on the righthand side *after* the lanes had merged down into one! Not Cool!

Despite the hostile drivers we still made it to the beach for one last quick stop off to get our feet wet (in a very, very cold ocean).







I even managed to get a bunch of pictures of Talana ;) The first one is now my desktop background =D






I didn't mean to take a picture of her ass but the camera was slow taking the shot as I pulled down the camera. Still came out nice anyway!

On our way off the beach we couldn't help to notice how cute the little tiny sandals were tucked away in the big ones =)



Right at the top of the beach I caught Talana amused at the number of things prohibited on an Oregon beach!




We then raced back to Salem to catch West Wing which made a great end to a wonderful weekend!

* Click on any of the images for a larger version

Because Tonya and Tyrone asked for it, here is a list of the webcomics that I read on a regular basis:

Updated every day:
PVP
Bob and George
Unshelved
Sinfest

Updated week days:
Real Life

Updated M W F Sat:
Ctrl+Alt+Del

Update M W F:
Concerned
Penny Arcade
MegaTokyo

Updated M F:
Apple Geeks

Updated M Thurs:
Zap (not sure this one is going to last much longer on my regular list)

Updated M:
VG Cats

Updated Thurs:
Nodwick

Updated randomly:
Mac Hall

I am starting to think this winter weather is here just for my amusement =P

I went to bed when it stoppped snowing (around 7AM) and when I got up it had all melted off which made me sad but I figured that was going to happen (it is why I stayed up to see it snow in the first place). I take a shower, clean the litterbox, pack for the weekend, and then head out the door. It literally starts sleeting the moment I get out from under the decks in front of my apartment door and it kept up the whole way into work =D

I keep drifting over to the windows here at work (one of the few days I miss having windows) and staring out at it. I can't get enough of watching it and it is actually starting stick a bit now!

Is it sad that this is the most snow and ice I have seen since I left SC a year and a half ago =P

* Again...click for bigger versions

So earlier this evening I got to go play in the snow at Talana's parents' house (who also treated us to a nice dinner). Then when we get back to Eugene and are heading out of the hospital after visiting Tonya (aka retrieving my laptop ;) it starts to snow pretty hard with a bit of rain mixed in and I ended up coated from head to toe by the time I made it back to my car. Unfortunately, it stopped shortly after and even though Weather.com kept calling for it all night, we have only been getting little tiny splatters.

Until now!



* Click for larger versions (and yes I know my digital camera sucks)

Sitting up all night waiting for it to snow is something that I grew up watching my dad do and I guess it must have stuck with me a bit because I am incredibly giddy at watching it snow right now! I am going to wait another hour or two for it to lighten up (and for the snow to get deeper) and then I will snap a few more pictures!

So Talana and I are bumming around Best Buy and end up looking at some older Disney movies when she says, "You know what I have been wanting to watch recently? Flight of the Navigator" My jaw drops and I go, "Are you kidding? That is one of my all time favorite movies!" So we run to the Family section of Best Buy's DVDs and start looking for it. We don't spot it at first and are about to give up with I spy it on the other end of the aisle and snatch it up and show it to Talana who whoops with excitement. We buy the movie and on the way out of the store she says, "We're both dorks but you are my dork!"

A great week (Portland/bowling/Powells last weekend, Risk and Settlers and Wed afternoon, our game launching (21,000 as of today), hanging out with Talana and friends, good movies) that ended in a truly, amazingly magical weekend! That is all I am going to say ;)

I can't decide if this is amusing or not:

Garfield Strip Randomizer



It combines random panels from a big library of Garfield strips. Sometimes the result is pretty funny, sometimes it isn't really. I was a huge fan of Garfield growing up even I will admit the strip has been getting steadily less funny in recent years. The bad thing is that these random strips are only slighlty less humorous than the actual strips. Hmmm...

It has been a great week for me so far!

I ended up moving on Monday. We have been having trouble at our house (tension among roommates) and when the basement started to flood it pushed a couple of the guys over the edge into wanting to end the lease. Ben and I took a deal to the landlord where we would lose our deposit but we could go ahead and move out without paying the full lease break fee last Friday. I found out yesterday that the landlord accepted the deal so I won't end up having to pay an extra $300. Always a good thing!

Tuesday night I headed up to Salem to have a game night with Talana, Tyrone, and Dick. We ended up playing a game of Lord of the Rings Risk (Dick won), 2 hands of pairs Cribbage (Tyrone/Talana won the first, Dick and I won the second), a game of regular Risk (Dick won again), and at least *5* games of Settlers (I may be forgetting a couple but I think I won first, Tyrone won second, Dick won third, I won the fourth, and Talana won the last one...go honey =). Keep in mind that a typical game of Settlers takes about 3 hours and you know how long it can take to play a game of Risk! We ended up playing right up until Talana had to go off to her sub job on Wednesday (she managed to get one last turn in on her way out the door). Tyrone, Dick, and I then played yet another game before Tyrone has to crash for a nap before work. Once Talana got back from work (she had a half day) and we got Tyrone off to his shift, Talana and I crashed for a while. We woke up and went out to dinner and swung by to get Tyrone as he was gettting off work. At this point it is already 10 o'clock at night and Talana and Tyrone turn to me and say "want to play another game of Settlers?" Hehe...I think it is safe to say that they are hooked!

Our game, Marble Blast Ultra, finally made iit through certification and launched on Wednesday afternoon (while I was asleep). It has already sold more than 11,000 copies in the last 48 hours! Those are just the ones that we can sorta track by watching the leader boards for high/low scores. That is more copies than any game we have shipped has *ever* sold over the course of 4 years. Pretty exciting! I can't wait to see what it ends up looking like after another 6 months =) I might even be able to afford to buy a bed this year =P

And to top off an awesome week, Talana is heading down to spend the weekend with me (though I suppose I will end up having to share her with Jenn and Tonya a bit =P)! A wonderful way to end the week =D

So Talana gave me my Christmas gift yesterday =)

It turned out to be a trip to the coast which is something I've been wanting to do with her for a while now! I'm glad she ended up doing it despite my driving her crazy all week (how was I supposed to know that my persistence in trying to go see her on Sat and Sun was interfering with carefully laid plans ;) She picked me up a little before 11AM and proceeded to take me on a very fun tour of the backroads of Lane County so I wouldn't know where we were going. Ever ridden on the backroads near Eugene/Cottage Grove with Talana? She knows them all like the back of her hand and can take them at top speed! Really fun! She succeeded in confusing me so badly that I didn't know where we were until about 8 miles outside of Florence =D

Our first stop was Mo's Restaurant there in Florence (world famous chowder...mmmm....sooo good):



From there we wandered through several of the nearby touristy shops and picked up a bag full of salt water taffy that we chewed on for the rest of the day. After we left Florence we headed up the coast (North is right on this coast...very weird...) to the Heceta Head Lighthouse:



We literally walked up to the lighthouse just in time for a tour. I was forced to conclude that being a lighthouse manager had to be one of the most tedious jobs possible (wind a crank every two hours, fill kerosene every eight hours, polish/clean light all day). It sounded even worse for the lighthouse manager's wife (who had to clean all day, every day in case of surprise inspections). The weather was overcast and windy (light rain) which had the waves whipped up into some pretty impressive choppiness (the wind would blow water off the crest of the waves which made for a really cool effect). After we walked back down from the lighthouse (only got lost once =P) we continued to head up the coast. The view from the highway is absolutely breathtaking! We ended up crossing the Alsea Bay Bridge:



and the Yaquina Bay Bridge when we reached Newport:



Fortunately, we were never forced to flee a tsunami hazard zone!



In Newport we headed down to Old Town to wander through the touristy stores:



and hung out with the sea lions a bit:



After that it was time to start heading back to Eugene. We did stop off briefly at the casino in Florence:



where I lost $20 in less than ten minutes and then hung out with Talana as she played blackjack and gave her bad luck =P On our way into Eugene, Talana suggested we stop off and get chinese takeout from Lok Yaun (which is my favorite restaurant) and then we watched the new episode of West Wing back at my place:



Talana then had to head home to Salem so that she could be up in time to sub this morning.

It was a really good day and I had a lot of fun! The Oregon coast is old hat for residents but there is still a lot of neat and fun things for me to see at it. Ultimately, Talana gave me what I most wanted for Christmas: a day alone with her =D The rest was just really cool icing on the cake!

* Just as a note: since neither of us had a camera, I kinda had to make do a bit on the pictures =P However, we *did* go to visit Paragon City from Tyrone's City of Heroes game (it was awesome and it turns out that Talana can fly...sorry Tyrone...we'll take you next time ;):

I hate learning to write a new year on my checks...feels like I just got 2005 down =P

I got to spend most of the last week with Talana which makes for a wonderful holiday in my book =) We didn't quite plan that but it just kinda worked out like that. Went to see "The Producers" on Tuesday (great movie btw: "Remember when Uula dance? Uula dance again!") and I got to meet Tyrone's boyfriend (RJay) and Talana's sister. We ended up hanging out with RJay at Talana and Tyrone's apartment for New Year's Eve. RJay seriously has to be the most hyper person I've ever met but he is a lot of fun! I had a really, really great time with Talana on New Year's Eve. Later in the evening we got to spend time together alone for a while and talk about a lot of things. I am madly in love with her and she doesn't quite know what to make of that but in the end we came to the profound conclusion that I am her boyfriend and she is my girlfriend and that makes us both very happy and is all we really need for now =D

That is the sound of my jaw hitting the floor followed by the rest of me.

Holy moolah Batman! Can we say Christmas bonus!?!

Let's just say that Talana no longer has to feel guilty about my driving up to Salem for quite a while...I've got it covered =D

The best compliment I've ever received in my life:

"damn you for making me giddy :P"

"All women are crazy. The trick is to find one who is crazy in a way that is compatible with you."

She is weird in all the right ways for me =D

I'm *finally* done with Marble Blast Ultra! Six months ago I was supposed to only be on the project for two weeks and then get back to my own project. Hah!

Ah well. It is done. I have my name in the credits of my second shipping title and it is on the Xbox 360 no less =) I will also be getting a percentage of the royalties which has the potential to add up to quite a bit and that certainly isn't a bad thing ;)

So I now I get to chill for a few weeks before diving back into my original project (an artist tool). It'll be nice to have a break!

Last week I had just gotten off the phone with Talana and walked into the breakroom and my coworker is like, "Why do you have such a stupid grin on your face?"

Then earlier this week my roommate turns to me and says, "Matt, you have been in such a good mood for the last couple of weeks! Ever since you started going out with that girl, you have had such a positive energy/aura that it has been fun just being around you!"

=D