Madness Caught Another Victim

Attempting to look badass while wearing a party hat. (Taken with instagram)

This guy is trying to draw every word in the vocabulary of Draw Something and post them on his blog. Some of his drawings are hilarious, like the one below. But most of them are just plain good. Check it out.

My thoughts are with all of the 38 Studios employees who lost their jobs today.

The one thing that got me through my period of unemployment was knowing that I wasn’t alone. At least the former 38 family can provide and receive support from each other.

xo.

EDIT:

Wow. What a way to treat your employees.
http://kotaku.com/5913102/rumor-38-studios-shutting-down-big-huge-games

I saw this article on Boston.com today. It warmed my heart. I can’t imagine raising a child, and I have so much newfound respect for those that do or did. These are things that, while reading, you’d think “well, duh.” But there are so many outside influences that can mess a child up. Sometimes I wish I could go back and re-do my life, and figure out what’s important to me before I do stupid things. If you’re a TL:DR person, here’s the jist of it:

• I hope I raise a child who says “thank you” to the bus driver when he gets off the bus, “please” to the waiter taking his order at the restaurant, and holds the elevator doors when someone’s rushing to get in.
• I hope I raise a child who loses graciously and wins without bragging. I hope he learns that disappointments are fleeting and so are triumphs, and if he comes home at night to people who love him, neither one matter. Nobody is keeping score, except sometimes on Facebook.
• I hope I raise a child who is kind to old people.
• I hope I raise a child who realizes that life is unfair: Some people are born rich or gorgeous. Some people really are handed things that they don’t deserve. Some people luck into jobs or wealth that they don’t earn. Tough.
• I hope I raise a child who gets what he wants just often enough to keep him optimistic but not enough to make him spoiled.
• I hope I raise a child who knows that he’s loved and special but that he’s not the center of the universe and never, ever will be.
• I hope I raise a child who will stick up for a kid who’s being bullied on the playground. I also hope I raise a child who, if he’s the one being bullied, fights back. Hard. Oh, and if he’s the bully? I hope he realizes that his mother, who once wore brown plastic glasses and read the phonebook on the school bus, will cause him more pain than a bully ever could.
• I hope I raise a child who relishes life’s tiny pleasures—whether it’s a piece of music, or the color of a gorgeous flower, or Chinese takeout on a rainy Sunday night.
• I hope I raise a child who is open-minded and curious about the world without being reckless.
• I hope I raise a child who doesn’t need to affirm his self-worth through bigotry, snobbery, materialism, or violence.
• I hope I raise a child who likes to read.
• I hope I raise a child who is courageous when sick and grateful when healthy.
• I hope I raise a child who begins and ends all relationships straightforwardly and honorably.
• I hope I raise a child who can spot superficiality and artifice from a mile away and spends his time with people and things that feel authentic to him.
• I hope I raise a child who makes quality friends and keeps them.
• I hope I raise a child who realizes that his parents are flawed but loves them anyway.
• And I hope that if my child turns out to be a colossal screw-up, I take it in stride. I hope I remember that he’s his own person, and there’s only so much I can do. He is not an appendage to be dangled from my breasts on the cover of a magazine, his success is not my ego’s accessory, and I am not Super Mom.
• I hope for all of these things, but I know this: None of these wishes has a thing to do with how I feed him or sleep-train him or god-knows-what-else him. Which is how I know that these fabricated “wars” are phony every step of the way. I do not need the expensive stroller. I do not need to go into mourning if my “sleep-training method” is actually a “prayer ritual” that involves tiptoeing around the house in the dark. This is not a test. It’s a game called Extreme Parenting, and you can’t lose if you don’t play. And, really, why would you play? You have children to raise.

My boyfriend and I are getting cats in our next apartment. That’s a fact. So we’ve been doing research on cat breeds and decided on the Scottish Fold. They are perhaps some of the cutest kitties around, with folded ears and unique abilities like standing on their hind legs.

I found this cat named Basil Farrow on the youtubes, and followed the rabbit hole down to his owner, La Carmina. She’s this really cute Chinese girl who is a goth model, blogger, author, contributor to CNN, etc., etc. So cute and so cool, and has some of the best hair I’ve ever seen.

Again, it’s always the Chinese ones who catch my attention…

La Carmina’s website.

Basil’s (kitty) website.

Today is my first day as a permanent, full-time employee. Yep, I signed my life away after some back and forth negotiations. I gave them two conditions under which I’d sign and they agreed to one of them. So, yay. In my new hire meeting with HR I got showered with DVDs, gift cards and apparel, which was nice. Working for a gigantic conglomerate does have its benefits.

Today is also the first day that I’m wearing pants to work. Pants don’t really get along with my legs, usually because I’m really short but have always been bottom-heavy, and recently because they don’t last long with my fat thighs rubbing together. But after donating over a trash bag full of my “skinny” clothes to charity, I am left with nothing to wear, forcing me to go out and buy new clothes. So, yes. Pants.

I went to the gym over the weekend and re-started my Couch-to-5k workout. When I loaded up the app it said, “You may want to consider starting over. You’ve been gone a while.” Haha.

I had Mallika over for dinner last night and I cooked up some fresh veggies and quinoa. I didn’t realize how good quinoa is, and flavoring the veggies with some soy sauce made for a delicious and healthy meal!

I’m also realizing how much I’m obsessing over food and my weight. It’s taking over my life and my happiness. I’m actively trying to stop it, and just incorporate better habits into my daily routine, but it’s difficult and discouraging and depressing. Hanging out with Mallika last night was refreshing because she’s such a good influence and has always been pretty healthy and active. What I need to do is surround myself with more people like that, and the rest will fall into place.

xo.

Yes. (Taken with instagram)

What a great Tuesday it is!

The long-awaited Diablo iii is here! After years of being teased about the release date, it’s finally in my hands. Well, it’s on my doorstep waiting to be installed. We got a company-wide email saying, “All right, look… there’s a fully installed version of Diablo on the network for you to copy. Just PLEASE stop downloading it because our Internet is crawling!”

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Today is also great because the new Cattle Decapitation is out. “Monolith of Inhumanity” is by far one of the greatest things my ear holes have heard in a while. I’ve been itching for new music, and this did not disappoint.

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In other news, I’m finally not sick and can hopefully start exercising again. I’m thinking that it might have been silly for me to jump straight into Insanity, being as out of shape as I am. But I wouldn’t be myself without my crazy impulsiveness. For now I just need to move more, instead of sitting on my cushy ass playing video games. My mom told me over the weekend that she’s worried about my heart, because I’m too short to be carrying around so much weight. :(

I’ll check back in later.

About a month ago I got into discussions with my boss about becoming a permanent employee (I’m an independent contractor right now).

Today she came to me with some really bad news and some really good news. The bad is that the salary they’re offering me is less than what I make now. Much less. In fact, it’s less than what I made at my previous job. After crunching some numbers I discovered that I’d have to tighten my spending belt by a lot if I took this hit.

The good news is that they want to put me on track to become part of the development team. A few weeks ago I asked my boss if I could get my feet wet with some front-end dev, so lately I’ve been doing some bug fixes and recently took on a small project by myself. Apparently the feedback has been very good and the dev manager now wants me on his team. Obviously, this is HUGE for me.

But now I’m left with deciding what to do in the meantime. I know I want to be permanent here. The company has been great to me so far, and I’m in an industry where creative people thrive and inspire. I’m not sure if I should remain a contractor (making more money but still not having benefits or vacation time) until I get a dev offer, or take the giant pay cut (with benefits, etc.) and hope I can get transitioned sooner.

Advice?