Nerdy Girly Gamer

This year has been quite interesting when planning for E3. First off, I was denied a badge twice! I even registered as a Student, and if you didn’t already know, I am a full time student at Full Sail for game art. Which I might add, is one of the requirements for registering as a student. It clearly says you have to be going to school for an industry related program i.e. game art or game development. I faxed in my fancy letter on the school letterhead with all of my information, and DENIED!!!! I was fortunate enough to have someone who got me a pass though. It was so nice of him to make sure that I was taken care of in that regards. So, now that the pass is acquired, its onto planning the other stages.

Hotel! HAHAHAHA We are currently looking for someone who would want to split the room with us. Its going to be $707 total for Sunday night - Thursday night. Check out is Friday at noon. Its at the Historic Mayfair and they have free shuttle to the expo and back!! Finding someone to split the cost with us has proven to be quite difficult!

Flight! another HAHAHHAHAHHA, We are going to be driving to LA. Its actually cheaper to drive than fly! So again, we are looking for anyone who wants to road trip with us. We will be arriving in LA on Sunday before check in, so anyone wanting to come with has to be ready early Sunday morning, depending on your location. I thinking $100 for gas would cover it. Just think, tickets are over 200 round trip to LA right now, you could be saving over 100 bucks by being in the car for a few hours!! lol

The other reason I am looking for someone to road trip with us, is because Rob does NOT drive. I think I will go insane if I don’t find someone else who can take the wheel for a few hours!! 

Hopefully the planning will come along because I am super stressed about it right now. Thank God for Xanex!!!

Friends for me is a weird subject. I had quite a lot of guy friends in high school and only two girl friends. The guys were great because they wanted to go snowboarding and play soccer. Girls were too .. girly for me. As I got older I really didn’t make more friends. I have a couple of women who I still remember and were kindred spirits! There was my long time friend Kathleen who I met when i was in the army. Her husband was my ex’s room mate in the barracks and we hung out a lot!! Then there was my good friend Amber who lived next door to me in Colorado, but because of her sons medical condition, they had to move to a place with lower elevation. After that I tried to make more friends but it was just too time consuming and draining for me to tell my entire life story to someone who was just going to be moving away soon anyways. 

When I got into gaming I realized that I could have friends anywhere and still stay in contact with them no matter what. This was cool but at the same time its not someone who you can go grab coffee with. I was virtually alone all the time because my ex was military and always gone to Iraq. I enjoyed my gamer friends but I always missed that personal contact you have with friends. 

Video gaming events are great for me because I can see these friends and its like we were never apart. We all click like we just talked yesterday even though its been a few months due to real life situations. Right now I am at a time in my life where I actually NEED to have friends close by and again I am going through the same situation. People are leaving/moving or maybe not really as friendly as I might have thought. 

With that being said, I am sitting here staring at my wedding guest list.. We are only inviting 100 people. I thought this was going to be a crazy number because of all the people we know and how would we ever choose who to invite from our gamer family… I have come to realize people who I thought would definitely be there for me are not; people I didn’t even know cared, are being super supportive and caring. I am having to re evaluate my entire guest list. 

I guess what I am trying to say is… I have had a really hard time making friends in my life. The ones I have made I cherish and are from the gaming world. However, some of these friends that I thought meant the world to me do NOT want to be a brides maid and want me to send their invitation to their work?? While others haven’t even congratulated me on the engagement. 

I try not to let these things bother me.. But they do. Over the next two months I really have to crack down on this guest list and figure out who I really want at my celebration. I have to prepare myself for people saying no.

This is how my day goes…

4:00am The alarm goes off and I press snooze!

4:05am The alarm goes off again and I press snooze!

Repeat a few times!

4:30am Get ready for work.

5:00am start driving to work…

6:00am/6:30am Arrive at work.

6:00am/6:30am to 2:30pm/3:00pm WORK!!!

2:30pm/3:00pm Start driving home from work!

4:30pm/5:30pm get home.

At this point I am exhausted and want to take a nap. I can’t though because the kids home from school and I have to make sure they don’t start hanging the pets from the ceiling fan or beating the crap out of each other. I try to get some homework in but that hasn’t really been happening lately. I usually watch a few tv shows on Hulu or Netflix with Rob and then at 10:00pm It is time for me to go to bed. However, I can’t just shut off like that. I have to lay in bed and listen to law and order for a few hours before my brain finally shuts off. Then I am up again 3 to 4 hours later and lather.. rinse.. repeat.

When it comes to the weekends I sleep like a bear ready to go into hibernation. I try to get 25 hours of homework done in about 7 and then try to spend some time with my family before I have to go back to work. The boys usually go with their father on saturdays so I get the majority of the day to do homework in peace. Sundays however are for cleaning and getting everything ready again for the next week. 

Now take all that and pile it on top of other peoples drama and bull shit, friends being retarded, people you thought were your friends being passive aggressive and down right rude. More drama and then more drama… and lies… ohh the pants that are on fire this week!!! I hope they burn your ass, third degree style. 

On a happy note, Wedding plans are going accordingly. We are booking the venue in two months and sending out save the dates. We are only going to keep it moderately low key and limited to 100 people. Save the dates will be going out after e3 though and I am totally excited!! A ton of things to plan and get ready, but I am up for that challenge. I’ll blog more on that later..

I haven’t really been able to game because a few months ago (pre employment) I ended up selling my xbox’s to pay some bills… Now I have a tv with no xbox lol. I have been fiddling around with some Facebook games here and there, but nothing too serious. 

I do have something in the works as far as the gaming industry goes and it will be going live shortly. I am trying to cram that into my already hectic schedule!! If only there were more hours in a day. Maybe if i only required 4 hours of sleep I would be sitting pretty. But, unfortunately I think my body requires a full 8 to even function. I already have to drink about 20 gallons of coffee to even keep my eyes open at work! 

Oh yeah, I also have to throw in exercise in there somewhere! I plan on walking down the Isle a whole-lot-less than what I am now! 

and that is my word vomit for the day!!

I have been officially working for more than two months now. My gaming has gone down the shitter!! I haven’t been able to play much of anything at all since I started my job. Mostly because I am exhausted by the time I get home. I do miss the days of being able to hang at home with my kids and play games. Maybe in the near future I can schedule some time to play.

I haven’t posted in a while because I am still adjusting to this new fangled thing called “work!” Yes, thats right! I got a job!!! Wooohooo!!! I absolutely love it! Its 15 an hour with benefits, 401k and about 30 days paid vacation a year. Its pretty flexible too, so I can go in at 6am if I want. I really like that about the job because I can get off work at 2:30 every day and still have time to get other things done. 

I am still going to school for game art and have finally completed my 3DF class with an A! Yeah baby!! Next I will be taking Fundamentals of Art II which deals with more traditional assignments and some sculpting. That should be interesting. If you figure in all my transfer credits and the classes I have already taken, I will be done with school March 2014. I know that seems like a long ways away, but every single class I am taking is about game art. I got all the basic classes taken off from transfer credits. I am so exited about this program! I really enjoy making this stuff better than actually playing it. 

I haven’t had any time lately to game and that has made me a little depressed. I haven’t even logged into SWTOR in like two weeks. Its really sad and I am thinking of hopping on today before it gets too late. Its funny because I got an email at work saying that my Khem missed me and wanted me to log on. Talk about a guilt trip. 

Other than that, I have been trying to not be involved in other peoples drama filled lives. As hard as they are trying to pull me in, I think I have done a good job at staying out of it. It seems that drama whores try to pull you in and as soon as they see you are not interested, they tend to leave you alone. I really do love this industry, but seriously, I don’t have anything to do with any of this drama! I work 40 hours a week, have kids, school and a boyfriend. All of those things are way more important to me than petty he said - she said bull shit.

I am excited for Pax East! I have my passes and I am waiting to get my plane ticket. I will grab it soon though. I am hoping this hotel issue works out. We are looking to stay with someone, so I am waiting to hear if that is a go or not. Currently I do not have any jobs lined up and thats ok. I am really excited to see all of my friends and have a great time. I am going to be picky this year about who I work for. I don’t want to work for a company if I do not like their game or product just so I can have some work. I already have a job so the situation has changed now. If I am going to work at PAX East, then it will be for a game or company that I absolutely love and can be enthusiastic about the entire weekend. BioWare comes to mind… I love LOVE LOVE SWTOR. 

Anywho, that is about all that has been going on lately. Hopefully I will have some more interesting things to talk about this week. I have been sooooo busy its crazy! I wanted to get back into reviewing things and writing some articles. I had so much fun doing that back in 2008-2009. But once I stopped making the magazine I kind of fell off the grid in that perspective.

Until next time, God Bless.

Incase you didn’t know, I had applied to this job… I passed the phone interview and was asked to come in for a personal sit down to go over my resume and they had some questions. I was super nervous because I haven’t been on an actual job interview in quite some time. When asked why they should hire me, I blurted out “Because Im awesome!” It was like word vomit! It just came out and then I had quickly decide how to recover from my mistake! The lady doing the interview thought it was funny though. I have been sitting here all week waiting to hear if I got the job or not and today I got the call. I was sent a formal offer and we went from there. 

So, in my excitement (and just had gotten my income tax return) I decided it was time for some very long awaited retail therapy. So here is what I bought today.

Batman baby converse (for Bella), 3 pairs of jeans, three cardigans, 4 shirts, three pairs of boots, hello kitty socks (woot), some jewelry, Kindle Fire, iPhone 4s, monitor, ps3, hero2 camera, pink ps3 controller, uncharted 3, nerf guns, pink princess mini kitchen (for Bella), more nerf guns, Thor hammer and mask, Hello kitty purse, Hello kitty iPhone 4 cover, router, clothes and shoes for rob (Had to force him into retail therapy). 

I feel completely fulfilled now and I am ready with the proper clothing and shoes for work. I completely forgot to mention my new work lunch box! yeahhhh buddy, its Star Wars yo! 

I get my very own cubicle so I am hoping they let me bring in my Darth Malgus to brighten up the work space :) 

I am planning on chilling all weekend and getting in a good dose of SWTOR until my start date on Tuesday! 

Until Tomorrow….

xoxo

I have posted a few videos and blogs on my weight loss project. I had this big huge plan to get things going for real and It really hasn’t gone anywhere.

Here is my first video

So I started Your Shape Fitness Evolved and was planning to do something with this game to get my ass off the couch. Ultimately I flaked out as usual when it comes to exercise and 5 months later I have only accomplished to cut soda out of my life.

Then I watched a documentary on doing a juice diet and I tried that too..

Yeah that lasted 5 days and I was so hungry I couldn’t take it anymore!!! I was super tired, super cranky and just overall feeling like crap.

Now here lies the issue. I really WANT to lose more weight! I have lost about 30 lbs since I stopped drinking soda, but that isn’t enough. I really need to come up with a game plan that is effective for me! 

Thats my rant on weight loss and the lack of motivation I have been feeling as of late.

grrr…