Hey!  Long time no see.  You're looking well.  Have you been working out?  On a diet?  Haha.

Speaking of which, I've picked up the wonderful habit of running every day.  So far, I'm up to about three and a half miles a day going around my neighborhood.  If you can believe it, all of this running has made me even skinnier than I was at the end of the school year.  Haha.  All told, I think I've lost about 7 pounds this summer.  I find that it provides me that "alone time" that I like to have to think about stuff going on and to just calm myself down.  At the same time, I'm getting a goodly amount of exercise in the process.  My goal by the end of the summer is to be able to run from my house here in Long Beach to my cousin's house in Carson which is more or less 8 miles away.  Should prove to be interesting.  On top of that I try and do crunches every night until my stomach feels like jello.  Gots to be sexy for Fall quarter at Santa Cruz.  Haha.  Other than the working out, the summer has been pretty much the same since my last entry back in June.  Still playing video games, still arranging music, still sleeping at ungodly hours and waking up in the afternoon, still crazy after all these years (there's a nice Simon & Garfunkel reference for you).  Also been trying to get out of the house more.  I realized that you have lots more fun when there are others around.  Go figure.

Well that about wraps up this installment of my blog.  For those of you in the Santa Cruz area, I'll be gracing you with my presence Sept 10th.  For those of you in the Long Beach area, I'm not going to be around much longer, so take advantage of me while you can.  Um...wait.  Take advantage of my time.  Not me.  That's just dirty.

Peas out.

Here's what I do every day now that it's summer.

Wake up around 1.

Lay in bed for about an hour.

Get up and shower.

Drink my protein shake and take my vitamins.

Read a bit.

Play video games.

Eat.

Play video games.

Watch TV.

Eat.

Arrange music.

Go to bed around 4am.

It's getting rather repetitive...

So the year is winding down and its time for everyone up here to go their separate ways for 3 months.  I honestly don't know what to think of this year in general.  It was a definite improvement over last year for a number of reasons.  Reasons which I won't go into specific detail about, but nonetheless were reasons enough to make me feel that things were getting better.  I guess you could say that this is my sappy end of the year blog in which I reminisce about all of the things that occured these past nine months.  Well it kinda is.  I've made a whole lot of new friends, learned a little bit more about myself, and made a important decisions that I know for sure will shape the rest of my life.  I always get all sentimental and mushy around this time of year only because I know full well that I'm gonna miss this place.  For all of the whining and bitching I do about wanting to go home, when I'm actually there in Long Beach, all I can think about are how my buddies from NorCal are doing.  I suppose that what they say is right.  The grass IS always greener on the other side.  Putting that aside, it doesn't diminish the fact that this place, and more importantly, the people in it, hves been good to me and I couldn't see myself enjoying myself nearly as much if I were anywhere else.  So for now, I shall take my leave.

See you later Santa Cruz.  I'll be back before you know it.

So hey there!  Just got back from the Memorial Day Weekend extravaganza.  Actually, this whole weekend thing started for me the weekend before Memorial weekend.  I realized that before I were to go to Kublacon, I needed to paint my army and get it all nice and pretty to make a good impression for all of the nerds present there.  Suffice to say, I slept very little and by the end, my hands were stained black from all of the primer and paint I had gotten on them over the week.  The actual convention itself was a blast.  Never before have I seen such a large concentration of the social "elite" in one place before.  And when I say elite, I mean guys that wear all black, don't wash their hair, have chains attached to their wallets, live in their basement, and call it "The Painkeep".  In any case, I felt a lot better about my own physical appearance when I actually got there.  Also, I learned to hate people that refer to themselves as "LARPers".  For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, a LARPer is a Live-Action Role Player.  They're the creepy people you see playing D&D dressed up as their characters and speaking elvish to those unfortunate enough to come into contact with them.  The convention was full of them and it took every ounce of willpower I had not to run up to one and just tackle them to the ground.

The actual gaming itself was awesome.  I've never in my life played so much 40k in a weekend.  I learned a lot about the game too and what my army's particular strengths and weaknesses were.

The highlight of my weekend came when I was playing my last round of 40k.  Who do I see walk in the door, but the man himself, Andy Chambers.  One of the founding forefathers of Warhammer 40k and perhaps one of the bigger names in the tabletop miniatures business.  He was making his rounds checking out the armies there and scoping out the scene.  The coolest thing about it was that virtually nobody realized who he was or that he was even there.  I went up to him and asked him to sign my Chaos Space Marine Codex.  Geeky, I know, but the man is a sort of nerd hero to me.

All in all, it was a great convention and I can't wait until next year when I go back and kick some LARPer ass.  For real this time.

Peas.