Covet’s blog

I’m watching Dirty Jobs right now and he’s making some sort of bird food. It’s a weird mix of dried worms, some random powder stuff and oil. You mix it with your hands and, because the dried worms float, you end up with dried worms all over your arms. As much as I love a good tactile experience, I’m not so sure I’d like dried worms on my arms.

It’s been about a month since I learned that the job I had been contracting in for the past 10 months was finally opened up as a full-time position at N. I’ll save you all the gory details about the interview process and jump ahead to the great news. About a week ago, I was offered the position and accepted! I officially start on Monday, April 6th, provided I pass my background check.

Which reminds me… 95% of the people conducting my background check seem to be from India (outsourced maybe?). I’m not sure if that’s the best idea since this seems like it’s quite an important thing to risk communication errors due to a language barrier.

I’m slowly quitting WoW. I sort of feel sad about it because it’s been a part of my life for the past three years. At the same time, I feel oddly liberated and refreshed. After 2 years of hardcore raiding, it’s nice to get my own schedule back instead of rushing home to go kill e-monsters. I’m not sure if I’ll ever fully quit because I do enjoy the game, I’m just not sure I want to devote as much time to it as I have before.

In the meantime, I’ve been picking up all kinds of new games at work. I tried out Pikmin for the Wii. It seemed like a game that’s right up my alley, but in my initial gameplay, I felt like I was too slow to progress. I still need to look up some information online to see if I’m doing it right. I’ve also started playing Pokemon Platinum. I love it! I wish I had gotten into the game a lot sooner, it’s so much fun.

The guys are out doing some role playing with friends of ours here, so I’ve got the house all to myself, nice and quiet. I’m going to go finish watching Dirty Jobs now. I’ll “cya” later!

I’m not sure how it happened, but I got coerced into making a Facebook page. I guess it’s sort of the same way I ended up with a blog… haha. In honor of my new Facebook buddies, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version of my life since High School. (I can’t believe it’s been THAT long since I’ve talked to many of you. I’m so glad to have gotten back in touch!)

1997 – Graduated High School & started studying General Ed at Palomar
1998 – Started performing with Esperanza de Luz color guard
2000 – Transferred to SDSU, started dating a Marine
2001 – Won a WGI IA Gold medal! That’s right, I’m a World Champion!
2002 – Won a WGI IO Bronze medal! 
2003 – Retired from color guard after having performed at WGI World Championships in an IW team, 10 years dedicated to the sport
2004 – Graduated from SDSU with a BA in Graphic Design, moved to New York City, married the Marine
2005 – Moved to “The OC” (and I LOVED it! though I sure do miss NYC)
2007 – Divorced Marine, moved to Seattle, started dating Brent. Did not attend my 10 year High School reunion and I don’t regret it
2008 – Brent & I both started working at Nintendo (it’s been a dream come true!)
Now – Both of us are still working at Nintendo and happily dating with no plans of marriage or children (the cats are plenty)

I always feel like time goes by so slowly or that I never really do anything notable. It takes a quick timeline like that above to remind me that I really have done a lot and, boy, does time fly! I look forward to catching up with each of you, I can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to.

These past few weeks have been a welcomed break in the usual monotony (see previous entries of “more of the same”). We moved into our new place the weekend before Thanksgiving. It went pretty smoothly, even with the bit of rain that we got towards the end. A handful of friends were a HUGE help in the process. I’m also very  happy to say that our previous apartments didn’t charge us up the wazoo after we moved. When we moved in, the apartments never asked us to submit move-in paperwork for the current state of the apartment. I was worried that they were going to use that to gouge every last penny they could on move-out since there was no proof that anything was pre-existing. We were good residents, too, not even a hole in the wall. We did all that we could to make sure it was in good condition before we moved. There was a coupon for a free carpet cleaning within the first year of residence that we used before we left. We cleaned everything out and only left the fridge and bathroom in need of a good scrubbing (cuz, well, it just wasn’t worth it for us to clean since we knew they were probably going to spend our deposit hiring maids anyway). When I received the final paperwork, we only owed the amount on our final water/trash bill. Yay!

Then the man pack arrived around 3 am on Monday, December 1st. It took them about 3 days of driving straight through to go from Michigan’s upper peninsula to Eastern Seattle. C officially became our roommate and C2 and M became our houseguests. B and I weren’t able to take any time off, but B’s schedule includes a regular three-day weekend so he was able to entertain better than I could. We tried to do a few touristy things before the snow hit… Pike Place Market, looking at the Space Needle, I was even able to give them a little tour of N’s HQ (M is a huge N fan!). Ok, that doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but we were able to get out and about.

Saturday, December 13th brought my 29th birthday. I’m not really all that bummed about getting older anymore. I’m pretty happy with where I am in life and I’m thankful for all of my past experiences that brought me here. So it sort of became just another day, but we did manage to go out to dinner. We had a party of 9 people (B, me, the man pack and 4 other friends of ours). Every year for my birthday I generally order a lobster dinner, but I haven’t been able to do that for the past two birthdays for various reasons. This year I settled for a rib eye steak from Claim Jumper. Yum! B and the man pack wanted to get the server to do “something terribly embarrassing” to me for my birthday, but thankfully the server said they don’t do anything like that and that they will bring me a mud pie. Free ice cream you say? I’m in!

The end of last week brought enough snow to keep me cooped up at home for two days. I think we received about 6-8” on Thursday, another 4-6” on Sunday, and now it’s snowing again. The snow is so deep in some places, it goes up to my knee (though Mom says that’s not very  hard to do. Thanks Mom…). The roads have been a mess. Apparently Redmond doesn’t own many snow plows, nor do they believe in salting/sanding the roads, so getting anywhere on your own requires some driving savvy or strong legs. I’ve been getting in to work for the past three days on the bus. A friend and neighbor of ours, K, owns some steer-able sleds that we were happy to use during the wee hours of Sunday morning. We started sledding down the hill our apartments are on at 1 am and stayed out there for a few hours. I wanted to get some pictures, but our cameras are still packed away. I’ll be digging them out over the holiday break so you can share in our Northwest winter wonderland!

As of noon today, Christmas Eve, I’ll be on an 11.5-day break from work. Most places I’ve worked at in the past have given a 5-day break, from Christmas through New Year’s, or just the day of the holiday. N totally closes from the 25th through the 2nd this year. I’m glad for the break even though I’m missing a whole paycheck because of it. I’m planning on using the time to finish unpacking our boxes and hopefully, snow permitting, getting a couch for the living room and a bed for C.

Oh yeah, I know I’ve talked a fair amount about how we wanted a larger place so that we could have space to entertain guests. I’m happy to report that we’ve been able to do just that. With the man pack visiting and K just two buildings down, we’ve had a full house just about every night. Even though we’re missing some living room furniture, we’ve still had enough space for them to play video games, MTG, D&D, and even hang out watching movies/TV. This is exactly what we wanted! It’ll be a lot more comfortable once we’re able to populate the rest of the space with furniture (I’m thinking a big, comfy couch, a few beanbag chairs, and a 50” HD TV. The ultimate gamer den!).

I want to wish everyone a happy, safe and warm holiday and New Year!

It’s 10:30 pm on Wednesday night and I’m trying to keep myself awake for another 2 hours or so. I’ve done all I feel like doing in World of Warcraft (WoW), so I’ll write you guys an update…

This month has been a little crazy. Work’s been jumping like it’s nobody’s business. Holiday season at a video game company will do that to ya… One of my coworkers took a week off for a vacation at the end of October which means that I got all of the graphic work while he was gone. We generally split the graphic work, so it wasn’t that bad. It just got super busy because I was asked to create two important presentations in a short amount of time, along with all of my other work. Then our group is organizing two events back-to-back that need to be coordinated within a week each. Ouch! Needless to say I’m going to enjoy the 4 days off for Thanksgiving and 7 days off for Christmas.

In the meantime, I think I mentioned that B and I are moving to a new, bigger apartment. Right now we’re in a teeny, tiny, 550 sqft 1br/1ba. Our living room has been consumed by computers and Magic cards. It made it really difficult, ok, impossible, to have friends over. We were planning on moving into a larger 1bd/1ba at the end of our lease so that we could comfortably entertain guests, a 2bd/2ba would’ve been a possibility if the price was right. As you all know, we got word that one of B’s best friends, C, is planning on moving in with us. I’m so excited on many levels. C is such a good guy and I think he’d really like the community and culture out here in Seattle. Plus we now get to move into a 2bd/2ba!

We did the usual apartment hunting thing. B wanted to wait until we were a little closer to the end of our lease to see if there was a condo for rent (since most of those want you to move immediately). We took tours of a few places and also of some apartment complexes. We double-checked our current apartments to see what they could offer us. Finally, we went to look at the last place on our list and just really liked it. The area is beautiful, all of the apartment buildings are 4-plexes, it’s a smaller community (100+ units) and it’s sort of tucked up off of the main road. The floor plan lends itself to having guests if we’re creative with our space. I admit that the living/dining room area is shaped a little funny, but it will certainly be nice to have more room. 

Our official move-in date is Thursday, November 20th, but we’re planning on having everything moved in over the weekend. Which means this weekend is full of fun while we pack and prepare to move. Yay!

I’m going to stop rambling now and hopefully get B to go with me to pick up the latest expansion of WoW. If I don’t happen to write an update before then, have a very Happy Thanksgiving! Om nom nom nom.

I’m starting a blog… and I actually intend to keep up with it! I guess I’m a little behind the times in this regard. Everybody and their dog seems to have some sort of blog these days. Even MySpace and Facebook come with them! I admit that when they first came out, I was a little shy to write journal-type stuff online. I try to protect my identity online as much as possible and as open as some people are on blogs, well, it just didn’t sit right with me. As time went on and as I wrote update e-mails to all of my friends, it became clear to me that finally starting a blog was a good idea. I can write as much (or as little) as I want without spamming your inboxes. You can bookmark the page and refer to it at any time to see my recent happenings. So here it is everyone. My blog. Enjoy!

I suppose there’s no real good way to start a blog, so let me fill you in with all the usual things in my life right now. I admit the reason why I haven’t sent an e-mail update lately is because there really hasn’t been anything new going on! B and I are still working for “the big N.” In fact, B just got hired as a full-time employee! No more contracting for him! Even though he’s doing the same job at the same facility as he is now, this comes as a big relief because it’s a little increase in pay and some really great benefits. Definitely one weight off our shoulders. I’m still contracting with about 8 more months to go. It’s amazing how little time has gone by. Usually we’re all proclaiming how fast time goes by (and this calendar year it certainly has!), but this is different. I feel like I’ve been at N forever, but it’s only been about 4 months! Everything seems to come in spurts. There are times where I am twiddling my thumbs searching for things to do and there are times where I’m so busy I hardly feel like I can take a lunch break! I’m loving what I’m doing and I know my group appreciates me.

We’ve been so spoiled by the summer that it’s hard to let it go. Summers here are the perfect temperature (mid-70’s to low-80’s), sunny with clear skies. It’s absolutely perfect (if only SoCal was that mild, it’d be unbeatable)! Unfortunately it only lasts 2-3 months! We’ve started getting peppered with rain again, a sign that Fall and Winter are just around the corner. We didn’t do as much as we wanted to this summer, but we did get out of the house to enjoy it quite a bit. We went hiking at Snoqualmie Falls, shopping at Pike Place Market, and even got a chance to visit some friends in Victoria, BC, Canada for 2 days. We still want to get out to hike Mount Si and rent canoes to putz around in the Sound, among other things. These are things we can look forward to next year!

B and I unofficially celebrated our 1 year anniversary. I joke that he’s off the hook with usual anniversary stuff because we don’t really know when it is. We met online a long time ago, but were just friends. When we met in person in Las Vegas, we were still just friends. I guess you can say we started dating last October when I went to visit him in Michigan, but then what day counts? Bah, who knows. The important part is that we’re still together and happily enjoying each other’s company.

I think that’s about it for now. I’ll keep this page updated with random musings, observations and personal updates. Check back every so often to see what I’ve been up to!