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Three weeks have passed since I quit, but I still haven’t figured anything out or produced anything. Everyone tells me I’m on vacation because I cashed out 3.5 weeks of vacation when I left, but I’ve had a hard thinking of it that way. I sort of wish I had just not thought about doing anything for the first 3.5 weeks, but I’m too neurotic of a person to do that. Especially when everyone and their mom/coworker/friend is constantly reminding me how I need to find a job. Most of the time they’re giving me leads, which I appreciate; I guess I’m just not in the right mindset at the moment. Kelvin claims I seem happier; I don’t know if that’s true, but I feel a lot less stressed, that’s for sure.

I’ve been trying post more here, but as you can see, I can only come up with menial crap to talk about since my life is pretty uneventful these days. I’ve also made more of an attempt to be an apartmentwife, though I’m still failing at that. I’ve cleaned up the kitchen a bit, but it always seems to get dirty again. Laundry is never ending as always, and the apartment is still a mess. I’ve recently started a grocery delivery service to get into eating more veggies and fruits; I go into more detail about that another day.

Also, for some reason, there’s been a bunch of lunches and get-togethers I’ve had to go to the first couple weeks after I quit (most of which I didn’t take pictures of). I kind of wished I had quit a couple weeks later so I could have gotten another paid holiday with Labor Day, but oh wells.

Cryptic Studios launched their new game, Champions Online, at the beginning of September. Several of my friends are playing it, but I can’t really get into it. MMORPGs might not be my thing. Cryptic threw a launch party at the 300, a local, snazzy bowling alley. Bowling is another thing I don’t get. I don’t think it’s particularly fun, and my shoulder was really sore for a couple days after.

We used our Steam handles because we are dorks

Kelvin right before bowling a strike, which is a rare occurrence

I also went to a local meetup of folks who play on the Team Fortress 2 server I play. It’s interesting to place faces with some of the players, most of which are apparently Asian. I was amused to find the creepily silent person on the server is also a creepily silent person in person. We met up at Cryptic Studios and then had dinner at CB Hannegans.

Meeting up at the game room in Cryptic

Avery toasts Brian, provider of inflatable Dragon Age swords

We’ve seen our nieces a couple times, including yesterday when there was a family dinner for Naomi’s 4th birthday. Kelvin gave Naomi Zubbles, which are colored bubbles that don’t stain. Apparently, some toy maker had this vision of creating colored bubbles and spent 14+ years trying to make his vision a reality. His colored bubbles finally went for sale this summer, and Kelvin bought a set for Naomi to support the inventor.

This guy lived the American Dream!

Colored bubbles don’t sound all that amazing, but it apparently was technically difficult, and the final product is really fun! It looks scarily dark, so every time you spill or drip the liquid on you, it looks like someone opened an ink pen on you. However, the product dissipates away after a few minutes. It stays a little longer on clothing, but most of it fades away, and it will completely wash out as it’s water soluble. Along with cool looking bubbles, you can make a terrible mess that completely disappears.

Hana and Naomi happily get their dresses messy. Later on they started
deliberately putting it on their face, calling it “makeup”.

Totally fun stuff, if a bit on the pricey side (~$20 bucks for two bottles shipped). While I half expected the kids to spill the bottles, I was slightly horrified when Naomi started pouring some of it into the lawn, but she only got 1/5th through the bottle before adults began panicking and yelling at her to stop.

After bubbles, we had dinner, cake, and then presents! Greer made this decadent bowl of chocolate mush, consisting of chocolate cake, chocolate pudding, Skor bars, and Cool Whip.

Naomi with her bowl of chocolate mush

I grabbed a couple Barbie things from Toys’R'Us to go with the less-permanent Zubbles Kelvin got. I gave her a Barbie outfit (to which I got a wonderfully lukewarm response of “Barbie clothes? I don’t need any Barbie clothes.”) and a gaudy Barbie tiara-mask thingy (to which I got a surprisingly ecstatic reaction where she immediately put it on and wouldn’t take it off all night).

Naomi wears both her mask AND her crown

It rained a couple weekends ago. I love the rain, especially when I don’t have to go anywhere. The air feels moist and fresh, and the first rains of autumn, with the wet streets and leaves all over the ground, make me think of the holidays since we don’t get snow here. Unfortunately, Mother Nature realized it’s still summer, so it’s gotten freaking hot again. Tomorrow is the first day of fall, so hopefully there were be some cooler weather so I don’t steam to death in my apartment. (I’ve getting a lot of napping done because it’s easy to sleep through the heat.)

New thing I learned today: Zubbles was named “Innovation of the Year” by Popular Science in 2005. They didn’t go for sale until this summer because of production complications.