Categories
Miscellaneous News

A 2014 Year in Review

Matt Inman (The Oatmeal) holding my handcuffs for a pic at Denver Comic-Con, June 2014
Matt Inman (The Oatmeal) holding my handcuffs for a pic at Denver Comic-Con, June 2014
Wow. I have not been here in a gazillion years. I wasn’t even sure I’d remember how to log in, but fortunately my browser remembered my password, even though I didn’t.

So, no posts for the entirety of 2014. How pathetic. Here’s a quick rundown of what I did in 2014:

Things kind of went to hell at work, through no fault of my boss or anyone in my department, but I definitely don’t harbor any fluffy feelings for the H.R. department. It led to a craptastic summer depression that segued into horrible weight gain, and I still haven’t bounced back from that. Yay? I have, however, revamped my professional website (pmcarlson.com). And possibly my resume.

The sis and brother-in-law finally bought a house, and I spent much time flying out there to hang out in it. It’s a large 100-year-old Victorian that’s currently getting pummeled with snow and ice, with a large backyard, a garage, and my own bedroom. It’s pretty sweet.

I didn’t go to any professional conferences in 2014, but I did fly out to Denver for their Comic-Con and for my friend Jacqui’s 40th birthday. The weekend had its ups and downs, but overall it was a good time–plus I got the Oatmeal to hold my handcuffs for a pic. 😀

National Champions!
National Champions!

My 8-ball team won first place in the Vegas tournament! We are officially the National 8-ball Women’s Team Champions….in the trophy division. That’s kind of like the kiddy-pool of divisions. However, we got awesome trophies that say FIRST PLACE, and really cool leather jackets with National Champions stitched on them, along with our names. It was pretty awesome.

Kayaking on some river in New Hampshire, Labor Day Weekend 2014
Kayaking on some river in New Hampshire, Labor Day Weekend 2014

Laugh Factory marquee
Let’s see, there was also kayaking in New Hampshire, going out onto the ice after a Kings/Bruins game, new glasses, a visit to the mantis shrimp in Monterey, a new GoPro (won it at the department holiday party), a visit to Nerd HQ, a new niece!, and a one-time foray into speed-dating.

And also, my stepbrother died, last March. Which sucked.

So, that was 2014. Some good, some bad, and totally over. Hopefully I can be better about posting in 2015.

Categories
Miscellaneous

Sleepy Friday

Yeesh! All the late nights this week caught up to me today–slept until eleven, had breakfast, then took a nap before my 2pm appointment. I don’t think it was enough, ’cause it felt like the walk across the parking lot was 20 miles instead of, you know, a parking lot. Then the Coffee Bean gave me a regular latte instead of vanilla, so that happened. Blech.

But at least I got in some practice at the pool hall after my appointment, which was necessary since I’d missed league this week thanks to excessive working. I practiced draw shots and shots on balls frozen on the rail (which I used to be good at, but have been sucking mightily at lately).

Mostly I’m just happy to be home, chilling on the couch and watching more of Lost Girl. (Don’t judge me.)

Thank gawd it’s only Friday!

Categories
Hobbies Video

Improving my 8-ball game

Totally spaced on posting yesterday, sorry about that.

League was last night–another two-win night, not that great. Talking to Delayne made me realize I’ve been ignoring a valuable tool for learning more–YouTube. I’ve been reading a lot, and asking questions from the better players in the league, but really, how could I forget about the wealth of info to be found on YouTube?

Having since corrected my lapse, I’ve learned that my stroke probably sucks, I’ve been under-appreciating the importance of the tangent line, and I tend to aim too low for the ever-troublesome draw shot. Here’s one of the videos that I think is particularly well-done (despite the frequent misspelling of “possible”):

Who knows, maybe this is the season I’ll learn how to make a jump shot!

Categories
Blogs Miscellaneous News Travel Work

So much has happened since June!

Let’s see…

In July, I took out my bike a few times, hung out with friends, bbq’ed on my new grill, got busy at work, and generally settled in to my awesome apartment that I still love.

In August, I got super busy at work (thanks to Pacific Standard Time!), celebrated a birthday (the towel one), started my own little poker group, and spent a few days in Dallas VISITING MY BRAND NEW NEPHEW who is awesome and wonderful and will rule the world.

In September, I BOUGHT ALL THE THINGS for my nephew (and not-yet-born niece), launched most of my work projects, got my hair cut, had a bunch o’doctor appointments (kidney stones are still there *sigh*), started on ADD meds, joined a pool league (Wednesday nights!), spent a small fortune on a new pool cue, and took an auto repair class for women at Santa Monica College with Michelle (awesome class, I highly recommend it!).

This month, I shall be going home for a week to spend even more time with my totally awesome nephew, and, as all the gods are my witness, I shall lose some weight off my enormous posterior. No really, I saw a full-body reflection today, and it was NOT PRETTY.

I’ve also been reading a lot of The Bloggess, and if you haven’t discovered her yet, you should hie thyself over there ’cause she’s hysterically awesome. Start with this post if you don’t believe me.