Today Comic Con organizers announced that San Diego Comic Con will be coming back to San Diego. Anaheim and LA were both campaigning hard for SDCC and I’m pretty surprised that they lost.

I have attended San Diego Comic Con for 11 years. Over that time I have seen my favorite convention balloon and become less of a comic book con and more of a pop culture con. I remember the first few years, Hall H was the only line and I stayed far away from the convention and drove in every day. After a couple of years, I attended as Press, got a closer hotel room and learned the shuttle was my best friend.

SDCC is the furthest from a comic book con that you can get. In fact, comics seem to get pushed further to the side every year. Movie companies, television shows all see SDCC as THE place to create buzz about your IP.

In the last few years, we’ve seen Twilight explode, 2 hour lines increase, and a stabbing. But even with all that, I still can’t wait to go back. Even though I work my butt off doing coverage for GamingAngels (all by myself), I think of SDCC as my vacation.

The long lines, the lack of any advantage to being press, and the horrible hotel reservation system has made me reconsider attending SDCC. With the money I spend there, Matt and I could go on a real vacation. Which might win out in 2011. The big factor will be the hotel reservation system. If they don’t change vendors or drastically change how they do reservations, I won’t be back at SDCC. Instead I’ll be taking Matt somewhere. Maybe Maui again.

No workout for me today, unfortunately. Matt has been sick with the stomach flu. I’ve come down with a really bad headache. So going to spend most of tonight offline. Going to write a couple of articles and then lay in bed and read.

I’m excited in general about life and things to come. ^_^

After a great day out gaming and celebrating a birthday, today was just blown to bits. I’d be happy just to have a normal weekend, but we haven’t been able to get there yet.

This morning I was going to take my first baking class. I’m trying to make sure I have a work/life balance. That’s not meaning work, it means GA. I have a horrible time at balancing free time and GA. If I don’t watch myself, all my free time goes to GA because there is always something to do, something to improve, or something to write on. All the time ignoring Matt and not relaxing.

Today, GA was taken down again by Hostgator. They stated it was due to CPU load. I have worked a total of 9 hours on this today. But I did take a break to work out because I was waiting for support to get back to me. In the end, one fab support guy pinpointed at least one plugin that was causing major problems. I can’t believe it took all week for someone to give me even an idea of what is wrong.

Hopefully we will have found the culprit and we won’t have more downtime. ^_^

Now to spend the last hour of the weekend with Matt.

While wedding planning, I couldn’t wait for the whole thing to be over. Every night after work I was spending hours on wedding stuff, then hours on GA. Only to go to bed exhausted and then do it all again. As it got closer to the wedding, the wedding started to bleed into my work day. But really only from the problem vendors. But that is another story.

During all of that GA had another level of stress and drama that I think may have just ended about two days ago. Finally. Some people love their drama. I try to stay away from it and hopefully we’ve had the last of it for along time.

There’s work stress as well. Things seem rather unsure at my job which is sad because I think it’s the first job I’ve really loved. I have plans for whatever happens and if I have to start looking for a new job, but at least I know that I do love being a Business Analyst/Producer and making the move from IT was the right thing to do. I was miserable in IT. In the turn of a recession few places where spending money on IT, so you had to bandaid systems that really just needed to be replaced. In an instant my position had turned into a babysitting job waiting for the servers to scream. It may be my Gemini roots, but I get bored faster than most people.

I do have more free time since the wedding. I have played more games this week than probably all of the last month. What games am I playing? A beta of something awesome I can’t mention, LEGO Harry Potter on the DS, and Civ V. We played Civ for like 5 hours last night. I’ve also had time to read, cook dinner, and organize the gifts from the wedding (for thank you cards). Last night I made chocolate covered strawberries as a treat. Tomorrow I attend my first cooking class, baking. Should be fun!

I’ve found that while I’m still stressed concerning work, I have time to do things that I love and help make me feel better. It’s nice having the time to unwind. One thing I do need to add is working out. I’ve left that off for a week while our Eliptical gets fixed.

In the end, I still stress out about things going on around me that I have no control over. But hopefully on a daily basis, I’m learning to decompress better. ^_^

This weekend was crazy. I was hoping the first weekend back could be relaxing and normal. Why? Because adjusting back to work was difficult and I wanted to spend the weekend relaxing and cleaning the apartment.

Friday night on the way home, about 6 cop cars go speeding by me at 100 mph. Turns out they were headed to my place. Although around the corner so I couldn’t see what was happening. I think I saw a cop with gun drawn, walking through our parking garage as I was pulling in.

Saturday, Matt had to work so I figured I would use the day running errands. I mailed stuff, went and got an oil change and then come home to relax only to have the power shut off. For the next 3.5 hours the power was out leaving me, 10 candles and my ds. At least I got further in LEGO Harry Potter.

Today, we went to visit the parents, which was a fun trip. We also brought back the rest of the stuff from the wedding. Which leaves me with a new chore this week: thank you letters.

A nice part of this weekend is that I had time to read. Almost finished a book actually. I hope that this trend continues. While I work on GA, alot, I’m hoping to increase my relaxation time and my time with Matt. I’ve already stated that I’m cutting down my convention time to go on real vacations. I believe I need the R&R.

At least I was able to wrap emails up this week. I came up with a new staff plan tonight. Also tagged and uploaded our honeymoon pictures. While life is uncertain on the work front, overall life is good.

Today is our 2 week anniversary. No, I won’t be celebrating every week, but this week was our first “back to normal” week. So it’s worth celebrating.
We got married on September 5th. The days leading up to the wedding were a mix of relaxing and panic. It was actually very odd. I didn’t finish some of the decorations for the wedding until right before the wedding. Yes, I was painting table number quotes three days before the wedding. Arriving a day before everything we thought we would have Friday to go through Solvang. I’m not sure why we thought that because once we got there, we hit the ground running. I had forgotten all about my nails and I had to get it done last minute Friday night (was totally overpriced btw).
Saturday we had the rehearsal which a couple people didn’t make due to traffic. But the rehearsal went smoothly otherwise. Then headed over to the bar for the wine tasting. I believe the wine tasting was a hit! I’m so happy that we could offer that to all our wonderful out of town guests that came up to share our wedding with us. From what I understand, many people bought some wine too! I hope the Wondering Dog had fun! Later that night was the rehearsal dinner which was SO SLOW. It may have been a four hour dinner. I was so exhausted by the end and just wanted to go to bed, dreading the 6:30am wake up call we were going to get.
The day of the wedding went smoothly. The filming was pretty well planned. I was actually surprised and how fast things went. I thought we’d be sitting around waiting for the 3:30 ceremony. When they asked me to get into my dress at 1:45pm, I thought they were crazy. But before I knew it, we were late to lining up, no sitting around needed. The ceremony was beautiful, although it was very sunny. Hopefully our guests weren’t too warm. Walking down the aisle, I could only pay attention to Matt. Like everyone warned, the day went so fast. But I tried to take out time and have moments both with Matt and my friends that came to join us. I think with hosting a smaller wedding, we really were able to connect and see everyone. I loved that so many people danced! The arcades were also a hit. I can’t wait to own arcades in my house, because I know that at any party I have in the future, people will always have fun playing them. They even got competitive at the wedding!
I’ll do a future post talking about the honeymoon. I believe we are still a week from getting our pictures from the wedding. They should be beautiful. Our friend, Dan, took the picture attached. Yes, we went to the vineyards to take pictures. We actually traveled quite a bit, trying to capture the beautiful scenery and the moment.
It’s been an amazing 2 weeks. Even while getting back into work and the routine. I’m not sure why it feels different, but it does. I feel more like a team. Instead of “oh he’ll do that when he gets home”, I try to do what I can and see if we can share more of what needs to be done. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to articulate it. I know that having 7 days/nights where it was just Matt and I and nobody or anything else was amazing. I never even turned on my laptop. Again, more about how the honeymoon has changed my outlook on life later. ^_^
Until then, it’s been a great 2 weeks. Here’s to many many more.