Things I hate about my job:

At the first of the month we send out our initial contact e-mails to all our authors. Sometimes they e-mail back, sometimes they don't. Today I got an e-mail back. The lady said "I need my audio book by July 29th. Can you do this for me?" To which I responded with the standard response of "I will have to talk to my director of operations to find out if we can do that for you."

Normally this is not a problem, but this lady threw a freaking fit. She said "well, the audio director told me we could do this, blah blah blah." Herein lies the problem: I was not told by anybody that this was the plan. I REALLY hate it that people at my job don't tell the people ahead in the production line "oh hey, this is going to happen and it's already been talked about, just thought you should know."

What else bothers me is that any time something like this happens, the author will run crying like a little girl to Dr. Tate, the founder of the company! a) He can't do anything about it, because he's not the CEO. b) If they do actually get the CEO involved, he usually just tells you to take care of it yourself because it's NEVER as big a deal as the author is making it out to be, or if it IS a big deal he tells the department head to take care of it.

I was talking to Liz about this, and we came to the conclusion that this is what happens when parents give into their kids when they throw fits about not getting their way about something. The parent gives in, and the child learns they can manipulate and it just continues throughout their adult lives! GAH!!

Seriously, if you ever find yourself in the author role of this situation, just talk to the person and tell them "I was told this by X person, if you talk with them I'm sure they will confirm it." Don't go running to the CEO. It pisses the designer off.

This job would be great if it wasn't for the authors.

(side note: I'm aware that this is a really stupid and petty thing to be annoyed about, but... well, I don't have a but. Just know that I know)

(Moderately) new journal theme and (actually) new icons! YAY!!

Much as I love Hiro, the style and icons were getting stale.

Hey, it's weird dream time! This time it is two-fold. I know it's been awhile, but hey, these things take time... apparently.

Dream the First

So I get a scholarship to some prestigious school (it's a lot like Hogwarts, in fact), and I'm really excited about it. I'm there for a week and all these crazy things keep happening that almost kill me, but something/someone saves me at the last moment. At some point I realize that I am, in fact, being hunted. So this is when I start trying to escape. Here's where you have to remember I'm in a giant mansion type building, so there are several hundred rooms, and I've only been here for a week. So, I'm going from room to room, trying to find an exit. I think I've found something and a dozen guys spring up and try to shoot me. I duck behind something and run to another room (One of these instances involves me diving behind a pane of glass. wtf)

So I find a room and think "for sure this is an exit," but once again guys spring up. I am, in fact, on a platform above another room, this platform encircling the room so there is a big hole in the middle. I dive through the hole and someone shouts "he's headed into the service tunnels!" or something like that. I'm running around frantically trying to find an exit. I find what I think is an exit, but it's showers. I find an elevator, but as soon as I get there the leader-lady pops out and is like "At last I've caught you! You were one of the most difficult prey." To which I respond "You haven't caught me yet!" at which point I notice a window, dive out it, and drop about 10 stories into a swamp. I swim out, covered in gook, and run away.

Suddenly a group of bears start to chase me. I take a closer look and realize that they're dogs. I climb a tree thinking "Aha! DOGS can't climb trees!" so I'm at the top of the tree, the dogs barking at me, trying to get me, when a lady (who looked suspiciously like Danielle Rousseau from Lost) calls them off and says "Sorry my dog-bears chased you." I'm freaked out and say "Help me! I need to get out of this place!" She says something to the effect of "Oh, yeah, you're not the first person I've had to rescue from this hunting area." She puts me in her Jeep, and we drive away. I noticed that the school was overlooking a cliff on the otherside, but that didn't end up being important in the context of the dream.

Dream the Second

This one is a bit more PG-13, as a fair warning to everyone. Also, I entirely blame Liz for the context.

In this dream, Liz was Buffy and I was Spike (understand now why I blame Liz?) We had just gotten married and were trying to take our honeymoon. This involved getting on a train. We get on at our stop and are about to copulate, when a bunch of people run up and say "Buffy! Spike! You have to help us! DEMONS!!" and much flailing ensued by them and Buffy/Liz sighed as only Liz would do (arms akimbo and all) and said "I can never stop working." So she slays the demons and we get to the next stop and she says "Wait, we already slayed these demons!" and the train conductor says "Well, they're back!" So we slay them again and get on our merry way again, trying to copulate, but people keep interrupting. There was also something in there about going back in time using the time machine from Back to the Future, but I justify it by saying it was destroyed, and Marty McFly shows up and says "well, not EXACTLY..." and we find another one. It was really weird.

(If ever there were a more appropriate time to use my "Great Scott!" icon...)

The funeral was on Friday.

I don't know what to say about it other than it sucked that I even had to be there. Adrian's face didn't look right. He always had a big goofy grin and he just looked... stoic. Not himself.

I hated being in that church. I hated having to talk about Adrian knowing I would never get to see those wacky things he did and that I would never be able to play with him again. Or his mischievous grin. Or that look he had when you were playing a game with him and he knew you were doing something stupid but he didn't want to say something about it. I hated seeing people there that I hadn't seen in forever and knowing that they were just there to mourn him. It was nice to see them, but... ghgh... I can't put it into words.

We went through all his stuff yesterday. My mom wanted each of us to take something to remind us of him, but... I just felt horrible doing it. I ended up taking a pokémon figure, because I always thought of him as the kid who played pokémon. I just kept thinking "this is HIS stuff, we have no right to be rifling through it and picking out things we want." I kept expecting him to burst in and say "Hey, jerks! Stop going through my stuff!"

But he didn't.

Death sucks insurmountably.

We're back in OKC now. Ready to get back to life. Or something like it.

This is really not the way I want to tell people, but... unfortunately I'm emotionally and physically exhausted from this entire day. I hate this day, so much. I would love to call each and everyone of you and tell you, so you can hear my voice and not just ... read it.

Enough stalling... Adrian died this morning.

I still can't even wrap my head around that phrase, and we've had about 14 hours to let it sink in.

This sucks.

I mean... my mom said he was bad. I really didn't understand the gravity of the situation. Honestly if I had known I would have come out a week earlier.

We got here Thursday evening and he seemed relatively alert. I said "Hi, Adrian," a few times and he opened his eyes and said "Hi, Nathan," so I know he knew we were here.

Liz and I thought it was just another trip to Los Alamos, and we would be playing games and joking with Adrian... I think... that's what really hit me. He usually has some snide quip or some insulting thing to say, but he barely even looked at me when I walked through the door.

We brought gifts. We gave him a chess set from Cozumel, and he looked at all the pieces (well... I took them out of the box and showed them to him, but he responded) and said "Thank you!" Not really enthusiastic thank you, but a thank you none the less.

Friday was really bad. He hardly responded to my mom even. He just kind of lay there in the chair. He would open his eyes every once in awhile and say something. Most times it was completely incoherent babble. Apparently his liver failed and the toxins were seeping into his brain. It's exactly the same thing that happened with Odin, only it seemed to affect Adrian's speech whereas with Odin it affected his motor skills. We had about 8,000 people in the house yesterday.

Today... I don't know. I just keep thinking that... *sigh* we stopped for breakfast and if we had been 10 minutes later we would have missed him.

I mean... I don't know. Everybody and their dog came over. Adrian has so much family on his dad's side, and they all came to see him. I had to call his step-mom and tell her, because my mom was just a complete wreck, and we had to get his dad to Adrian a.s.a.p. Forrest called my aunt. I called and talked to a few people (Sara, Peter, J.P., thanks for just listening... I appreciate it, even though there wasn't a lot of talking on my end). There were a lot of people that really cared for him. I can't even put into words how much this sucks and how much I'm going to miss him.

We're all just wandering around like pod people at this point. Our lives seem empty.

We bought a star and named it for him. My mom is going to get the certificate and star chart on Tuesday in the mail, and we got a second certificate for his dad. My mom really appreciated it.

The funeral is going to be either Thursday or Friday. We're finding out what works for Jeff (Chloe's dad)'s family.

Thanks for the big middle finger, life.
I owe you one.

Okay, so I’ve had a bit of time to recoup from the ordeal that was Miami International Airport and I’m no longer riding the high of being on vacation. So, you know what that means: it’s time for Nathan’s update about the honeymoon (Don’t worry, it’s PG. PG-13 at worst)! Rather than actually having journaled about it ever day, I decided to just take notes so we would have more time to enjoy ourselves. But, it’s still conveniently broken up into what I’m dubbing “Day Chunks.”

( Day 1 – departing Miami and sea day )

( Day 2 – First full day at sea )

( Day 3 – Cozumel! )

( Day 4 – Another boring day at sea )

( Day 5 – Grand Cayman )

( Day 6 – Jamaica )

( Day 7 – Yet another boring day at sea )

( Day 8 – Debarking and heading home )

( Day 9 – Damn, now we’re not on vacation )

That’s it. That was our grand adventure. I typed this up in a word document, and it’s about 6.5 pages, so I really don’t expect anybody to have read all of it. Just rest assured it was the best vacation I’ve ever had.

This is the greatest music video ever.



I swear, my next update is going to be about the vacation.

We're back. We're exhausted. We're overwhelmed. Like I said before, I'm not going back through a week of livejournal, so if there is something you REALLY think I need to read, gimme a link.

More tomorrow, with pictures!

Well, for those of you who don't read Liz, we're on our honeymoon! Yay! We're in Miami right now, basically waiting around until it's time to leave on the cruise. At that point you won't hear from us until next Saturday at the earliest (not that either of us post all that often anymore anyway). I'm way excited!

I left work early yesterday, and all my coworkers are insanely jealous. I don't feel bad, however, because I had to bust my ass to get all my work done before deadlines. Most of the deadlines are, in fact, in the middle of next week, so I had to get my layouts done last week and finish up all my cover stuff yesterday and send them out to authors. I feel a little bad, because I know I didn't work nearly as hard on covers this month because I kept thinking "Honeymoon in xx days! I've frelling earned this!"

OKC airport was super easy. The flight to Dallas sucked, because the plane was small and there were bunches of antsy kids. That and I haven't flown since I was about 7, and I've since developed a slight fear of flying, so the first flight was really tense. We landed fine, no turbulance or anything, got to the Dallas airport. We had almost no time to get to our connecting flight, which was on the other damned side of the airport, but the had a shuttle, so it was all good. And our flight was delayed anyway, so my whole "holy crap, we're going to be late!" speech was moot.

Flight to Miami was better, because I'd gotten over the whole "flying makes me nervous," thing. I'm still uneasy, and turbulance scares the crap out of me and makes me thing "If the floor were to crumble out from under me, I would fall to my death," Plus there was in flight entertainment, which was terrible, but it helped to pass the time.

Baggage claim was at the ass-end of the other side of the airport in Miami, so we had to walk for freaking ever. Made me realize just how out of shape I am.

Being by the beach is nice. I haven't seen the ocean since I was about 12 (my Grandparent's 50th anniversary. Kathy, do you remember when exactly that was?), and I haven't been to Florida since I was 7 (that last time I flew), so it's a definite change of pace from the plains and mountains I'm used to.

So, honeymoon time. Unless you're bleeding out your eyes or your organs are exploding, don't call us. I don't have my phone, but Liz has hers, but it's like $5 a minute to talk and 25 cents a text. That, and we're on our honeymoon. Leave us the hell alone. We'll each be keeping individual journals of our adventures, but we won't have internets and we'll be enjoying ourselves, so expect to really long updates when we get back.

Okay, so... I'm going to try to come up with something substantial to talk about, because I haven't had a good update in awhile.

Work is going really well. I've been there for six months, I still totally love working there, making book covers, doing something I really enjoy doing. It's awesome. Unfortunately one of my friends got fired (there are a few people who I've really connected with and consider to be "friends," and he was one of the few). Apparently he was wanting to do things his own way, he had been warned that there was a protocol, was on 30 day probation, but persisted. It's all good for him, though, because he was planning on getting out anyway. It sucks without him, but alas, life goes on.

I started car pooling, so we're saving on gas. We're trying to do everything we can, because we want to buy a home, but unfortunately my mountains of student loan debt pretty much prevents us from getting approved for a loan of more than 5 bucks, which sucks out loud.

Liz's sister is here for the summer. We're going to try not to kill each other.

J.P. asked me to do some freelance stuff, which I'm super stoked for. I'm going to be making an album cover. Progress shots will be due!

We got Jim Gaffigan tickets. I'm super excited for this, because he is one of my favorite comedians. It's in July, so it's a lot to wait for, but still, I'm stoked.

This is why Adam Sessler is my hero.

This is why Isabella Rossellini is my hero. (very VERY not work safe, but funny)

And this is why Trent Reznor is my hero.

My goodness, I have a lot of heroes today. Perhaps this is a good opportunity for a Hiro icon. Oh wait.

Iron Man was AWESOME. I am so entirely ready for the sequel already.

If you haven't seen it, please do. And be sure you stay after the credits, because there is, indeed, a stinger.

http://www.monstercampmovie.com/

This movie looks so awesome it hurts.

Reasons why my job is awesome:

1. We were voted the #2 best place to work in Oklahoma for small-medium businesses.
2. Because of this, the CEO of the company decided to let everyone leave at noon.

AWESOME.

Now, to add some "wtf-ery" to your day, this link. Top 10 Places To Not Visit.

For those too lazy/linkophobes, this puts OKC as the #4 worst place to vist. And Chernobyl is #5. And Baghdad is #10. And OKC is on this list for weather.

WTF.

First off, there are WAY worse places for weather like... oh, I don't know... anywhere in the gulf coast? And it mentions blizzards and unpredictable weather. Haha... whoever wrote this artical has clearly never been to Denver. Or anywhere in the North. Secondly, who in their right mind would put a perfectly inhabitable city, with a THRIVING commerce, as a bad place to visit on the same list that contains a place STILL suffering from radiation poisoning? And as a worse place! It's just asinine.

In other news, the AI in Mario Kart Wii cheats to endless degrees. It makes me the angry.

I think my journal needs a new theme. I've had this one for entirely too long. Like... more than a year. That's way longer than I've had before. I just haven't been terribly inspired to make new icons. I'm using all my creativity at work.

Other things that I'm thinking about updating: my website. As fun as the current one is, it's not very user friendly and... well, it's kind of ugly. I need something a little more streamlined. That and I need to put some new work on it.

Transplant needs to be updated, too. It's been since last May. Well, there's a Sara-style filler in June, but that only counts in the way that I love Sara. I actually have comics drawn and scripted, I'm just too lazy. That and I have all these adult responsibilties now, so my sad little webcomic has taken a back seat.

Take for example that we're starting the search for a house today. Hopefully we'll be all set with moving in and everything by August and we'll have a month of overlap for this place. Basically we need to get out of the dead-end that is renting, and have a house that we can like... paint the walls and build additions. And with the starting a family.

Yes, you read right: Liz and I, the ones who were so adamantly against having kids for years, are planning on having a family. Her clock is ticking and mine is... doing something. I dunno, I've always liked the idea of being a dad, because I think I could probably do a better job than some fathers who will remain nameless *cough*AllTheMenInMyMom'sLife*cough*

I'm wicked sunburned. We went to the arts festival yesterday with my work, and somehow nobody thought to bring sunscreen. We played scavenger hunt. This involved finding things and taking pictures of them. Highlights: we needed a picture of a worm. We couldn't find one, so Joey did the worm. We also had to do group pictures with strangers, so we went up to random people and said things like "hey, can we pretend to mug you? It's gonna be fun!" Good times.

That's all for now.

Egads, I'm all married. I just want to take the time to say thank you so much to everybody who came. I know it was way out of the way for some of you, but I'm very happy that everybody who did come was able to, and I understand why the rest of you couldn't. It was an absolute blast for those of you that missed it. Yesterday and Friday was a high-octane stress day for me, just because we had to run back and forth to the airport about 5 times, and one group got lost.

It got better when on the day of the wedding, I made sure I had my tux and my shoes, and I made sure all the groomsmen had theirs. It was about 30 minutes until the ceremony when Forrest said "do you have the rings?" and my heart sank. I'm like, "oh crap!" and so I'm frantic. I run and talk to one of Liz's relatives who knows the city because it's his old stomping ground, so he drove back to the hotel at top speed, got the rings, and we had to start the ceremony without them. He got back, Forrest got the rings from him, and all was well. Liz called while this was going on and asked about them and I said "yeah, um... it's being taken care of," because I figured she might have strangled me if I told her I forgot the rings. I told her afterwards and she said "yeah, we had our own issues, so it's all good, and we got them, so it's good. I probably would have cried if you told me when you didn't have them then, so it's good on you."

That was my wedding experience. Fun fun, we have a story for the grandkids. Bye everybody!

Holy crap, I'm getting married tomorrow.

For those of you that missed it because you're either too lame or don't have facebook, Liz and I pulled the most excellent prank yesterday.

You know how you can set your relationship status? Well, early in the morning Liz and I changed ours to single. I changed my status to ":(" and Liz did hers to "is crushed." Needless to say, chaos ensued. There was an ensuing onslaught of "What the heck?" and "Are you guys okay?" and "What happened?" comments. There were a few people, namely Jean and Hannah, who were clever enough to see past our ruse, because they are such clever girls and know how devious we two are.

It was slightly less funny (but still totally hilarious) when my coworkers said to me, "That is a terrible prank!" today. Apparently word travels fast. I have maybe 3 or 4 of my coworkers on facebook, and they clearly saw the status and spread the word. Some of them had apparently wanted to say something about it yesterday, but were too worried I was going to start crying or jump off the building (those are her words). My creative director even said, "That is so mean! We were thinking about throwing you guys a shower, and then we all freaked out!" As she was telling me all this I was giggling uncontrollably (it was in an IM. Because we're very lazy in our office). I'm still giggling as I think about just how panicked they were.

I feel a little bad about it, just because I know a few people probably went into cardiac arrest, but come on, it's all in good fun.

What's cool is that they're still actually going to be throwing this shower, which totally makes my coworkers way cooler than any of yours.

I've been getting called about 10 times a day on my cell phone. It's this mysterious 866 number. Usually that's bad news, or it's a solicitation. This has been going on for... oh, about 2 weeks now. They call incessantly, and never ever leave a message. Usually they call while I'm at work. I don't take care of personal business at work. The only time I will answer is if it's my mom, because it may be about my little brother, or if it's Liz, because if she needs anything she can just IM me, and she would only call if it's an emergency.

So, really, I'm fed up with it. I looked up the number yesterday, and found it's a debt collection agency. I'm riffling through my head thinking about bills, "Okay, cable is paid, phone bill is paid, water and electric aren't due yet... it can't be Care Credit [they were harassing me a month or so ago about my past due balance despite my paying them monthly. Apparently they had my bank account information wrong, so rather than trying to contact me they just kept adding more late fees. In a fit of rage, we paid the whole amount despite my minimum payment being like $10, so I know it can't be them], and JC Penney isn't due. The only past due thing I have is for the Medical Center!"

So I talk to Liz and find out we've been sent to two collection agencies for that. Which makes no sense. So I'm thinking "okay, if they've sent a third one after us, I'm going to personally call them and tell them to stop being idiots."

Collection agency three calls this morning. Lo and behold, they actually leave a message, telling me to call back and a reference number. I call back about 10 minutes ago.

They're trying to get money from a Lauren Gribowski. They have been calling 10 times a day for someone who I've never even met. I have been getting calls and text messages for this person since I got this phone. I don't know who I should be pissed at for this one, so I'll be mad at Lauren for not updating her number.

Like I said to Liz, "I'm so pissed, I have to update about it," so here I am.

Dude. Nintendo dropped a huge bomb that I somehow missed: Mario Kart Wii was originally slated for June or July, but about a week ago they officially announced that it will be released April 27th. 2 days before GTAIV. Which is an insanely ballsy move on Nintendo's part. That's way exciting.

That's... um... all. Well, sort of. I had this really sweet cover for one of my authors that got totally turned down. Everyone in the office loved it, but she was like "this isn't my story, wah wah," and I was like ":(" She's parapalegic, her book is called "God Knew I Loved Pizza," and the cover I made was a wheelchair with pizza for wheels. Awesome, right? But she didn't go for it. Oh well.