How long have you been together?  Since May of 2007. 

How long did you date?  See above.

How old is she?  26.

Who eats more?  Me, although she eats faster.

Who said ‘I love you’ first?  Me.

Who is taller? Again, me.

Who is smarter? Well... Emily's told me she thinks I am, so I probably won't get my ass kicked for saying that I am.  Probably.

Who does the laundry?  Inasmuch as it gets done?  Usually me.

Who does the dishes?  Both of us.  She washes, I dry.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed?  Me.  Until I get up, at which point she sprawls out to take up as much of the bed as she possibly can.

Who pays the bills?  Both of us.  I pay a little more, but I also make a little more.

Who mows the lawn?  We don't have a lawn.  If we did... probably neither of us.

Who cooks dinner?  Both of us.  It's pretty close to 50/50.

Who is more stubborn?  Tough to say, but I think Emily wins out.

Who kissed who first?  She kissed me first.  On our second date, we went bowling after dinner.  After getting trounced in the first game, I suggested a bet - winner of the next game gets a kiss on the cheek.  I won the next two games.

Who asked who out?  I did.  We met for coffee in Middletown.

Who proposed?  The topic came up a number of times, I think she mentioned it first, but I'm the one who actually popped the question.

Who is more sensitive?  Definitely her, I think.  Or at least, I hide it better.

Who has more friends?  She does.  I can't keep them all straight.

Who has more siblings?  Emily wins again.  She has a brother and a sister, I just have one brother.

In the absence of anything about me to post, I shall instead put up yet another cute wee kitty pic. 

So, it's come to my attention that certain people think I'm not posting often enough.  No idea what they're talking about, none whatsoever.  Yup.  Anyhow, a couple new things...

I have a roommate - a roommate of the four-legged, furry variety, that is.


According to the good folks at the CT Humane Society shelter in Newington, her name is "Jelly", and she's about a year old.  I dunno if that's what I'm going to call her, though.  I haven't really settled on a name yet, mostly I've just been calling her "wee kitty", or some variation thereof.  Regardless, she's quite the adorable little furball, and possibly the most affectionate cat I've ever seen.  When I first saw her at the shelter, she was looking around with those big eyes and rubbing against the glass of the cage, begging someone to pet her.  What can I say?  I'm a sucker for cute cats.  By the time I'd finished filling out the adoption paperwork, she was happily cuddling up to my chest, and since I've brought her home, most of her waking hours tend to be spent on my lap.

I've been a little worried about her for the last day or two, because she seems to have picked up a cold in her brief stint at the shelter, and as such has been sneezing a lot and not eating much.  Today, though, I got her to eat some of the dry cat food I put out, so I'm hopeful that she's getting better.

Hey, how about more cute wee kitty pictures?



OK, maybe the glowing eyes bit detracts ever-so-slightly from the cuteness, but you get the idea.

Second bit of new goodness, a finally have a new camera with which to take cute cat pictures.  And other pictures, too, but I haven't gotten around to putting them up yet.  YOU try doing photo editing with a cat draped across your wrists.  But anyhow, yeah, no more film hassles for me.  Yay!  It's a Kodak Z730, and so far I'm pretty pleased with it.

Well, I'm just coming off a much-needed week's vacation.  A vacation which not-so-coincidentally coincided with Initiation at Cleo, which was fun in ways that - well, if I told you, I'd have to kill you.  Or something like that.  But believe me, it was fun.  Aside from that and adopting the wee kitty, however, I got a lot less done than I'd hoped to.  It's not surprising, really, but still - I would've liked to get some more cleaning done around the apartment, at least.

Let's see, what else has happned since my last post in... September??  Sheesh.  Umm... let's see, I got a new bass for Christmas.  It's an acoustic/electric, so, y'know, I can actually play it without having to lug 60 pounds of amplifier and other stuff around.  Granted, playing with a 15-piece jazz ensemble kind of requires the amp, but there'll be other occasions where I'll appreciate the opportunity to play unplugged.  Plus, I like the tone better than my old bass - it's got a sound that's a little closer to that of an upright acoustic bass, without being as tall as I am.  The upright'll have to wait until I buy a new car.

Perhaps you've heard of a certain game called World of Warcraft?  Well, it's not as addictive as some people say.  Not QUITE.  Suffice it to say that this game's so good, Kathy (who generally disdains games, PC games in particular) went out and bought it.  While having to pay a subscription fee to play is kind of a pain, I feel it's balanced out by the fact that I've spent enough time playing it that I didn't buy any other games until just recently.  It's weeks of entertainment.   It's so good, I even made a t-shirt about it.  Why yes, I am a nerd.    Thing is, I made it using one of those iron-on transfers, so it doesn't look as good as it might otherwise, but hey.

Unfortunately, between WoW and time constraints for certain of our players, our weekly D&D game at Duane's is pretty much dead.  Which is a shame, really, 'cause I liked playing a priest who got drunk and swore at people in Gaelic.  Ah, well, Conn, ye'll be missed.

So, then - that about covers the last few months, and will hopefully keep whoever's not been getting enough of this blog happy for awhile.

Aarrgh.  The company in charge of my student loans (which I consolidated several years ago at what is now an unpleasantly high rate) is giving me a hard time.  Here's the story - I called them in July to give them my address change and to end my unemployment deferment so I could get back to repaying the loan.  At the time, I was told that my next payment would be due mid-August.  So far, so good.

So, a month later, I'm looking in my mailbox for the statement from the company.  Nothing.  So I wait a few more days... and wait.  Nada.  Finally, late last week, I get a statement from them.  Payment date is 8/19, statement date is 8/24 - and the postmark on the envelope is 8/29.  Now, it appears, I've been charged a late fee on my account.  Let's see... they send me the statement (including the stub I'm supposed to include with my check to them) a WEEK AND A HALF AFTER the payment is due, and then charge me 'cause I didn't pay promptly?  Mailed the statement out a week and a half after the date, that is, so by the time it got to my mailbox, it was two whole weeks. 

This is, how should I put it - a steaming load of bullshit.  I received a voice mail from them today asking to call back by the end of the day - however, they didn't call me until 7:30 this evening - when, due to my schedule  getting messed up by the holiday - I was still working and out of range for my cell phone.  I get home and call back - you guessed it, they were closed.  Now, I realize that I'm hardly the world's most punctual person, but at least when I don't get stuff done in a timely fashion, I don't try and penalize people for not responding in a "reasonable" amount of time.  I expect a delightful half hour, minimum, on the phone tomorrow trying to straighten this snafu out.  Oh, and did I mention that this comes after I worked an 11 hour day today, plus another hour and a half or so of driving to work and back home?  Pardon me, I need to go drink heavily now.

Yay, I finally have internet access in the new apartment.  I'm slowly getting things in order around here - I picked up a new bookshelf last week, so I can finally get the rest of these boxes of books (mostly gaming books, surprise, surprise) emptied and out of the way.  My biggest problem right now is the mail - I've had a few important things (student loan bill, reminder of the date for Beth's wedding, credit union statement, etc.) that should have shown up by now, but haven't.  In addition, I had a bit of a problem sending in my rent check at the beginning of the month - it never left the outgoing mailbox.  After putting it in on a Monday morning, I looked in ther box that Friday night, after seeing that my checking account balance was higher than it should have been, and found the envelope was still there.  Grrrr.  I don't know what's going on here - some of my mail (check stubs from work, my cable modem) did arrive OK, so perhaps it's mostly problems with address changes.  It looks like I'm going to have to call around to make sure all these places actually processed my address change properly, an experience I expect is going to be only slightly more enjoyable than stabbing myself in the eye with a rusty fork.

My car continues to do odd things that puzzle mechanics.  Two weeks or so ago, I went to start the car after finishing up at my last stop for work, and got nothing but a loud bang from the front of the car.  I opened the hood to discover that the battery had somehow managed to blow apart like a cheap firecracker, splitting across the top in two different places.  Neither the tow truck driver nor the mechanic I had the car towed to had ever seen anything like it - their best guess was that corrosion on the battery terminals had caused the battery to overheat and blow open.  On the plus side, now that this has happened, I figure I have at least another 6 - 12 months before something else bizzare happens.  My car's pretty dependable like that. *knock on wood*

Problems aside, however, I'm liking it here.  I'm still getting used to a few things - washing the dishes on a regular basis is something I've still got to work on - but having my own place is a wonderful, wonderful thing.  Once I've finished unpacking and setting everything up, I'm thinking about having people over for some sort of housewarming party.  Nothing huge or excessive, of course - this place isn't all that big, and I don't want to antagonize the neighbors any more than necessary.

I heard back about the apartment today, and everything's set for me to sign the lease and move in!   Unfortunately, I won't be able to sign for it and start moving in until Tuesday afternoon or so, which means I'll be crashing at Cleo one last time over the weekend.  It also means that I'll have a tougher time getting stuff moved in.  I was hoping that I'd be able to get Duane to assist the process, as he's taking this week off from work.  Ahh, well - I'm FINALLY gonna be getting out of this town.

Now, of course, I face the near-Herculean task of, y'know, cleaning and packing up all of my stuff.  Guess I'd better get to work...

...somebody hand me a shovel!

Shockingly enough, the rain held off today and I was able to go to the Southern Connecticut Renaissance Faire today.  Sadly, I wasn't able to find anyone else who was going, which kind of limits the fun to be had, but hey - a faire's a faire, and I've been jonesing to go for almost a year now.  Anyway, this was the first time I've managed to check this one out.  It's a bit smaller than the faire up in Woodstock, and it doesn't seem to be quite as well organized (judging from the lack of content on their web site, at least), but it has the distinct advantage of only being 30 minutes away from here, instead of the hour and a half or so it takes to drive up to Woodstock.  The merchants were pretty much the usual mix of weapons, clothing, jewelry, etc. - in fact, I recognized more than a few of them.  One claimed to recognize me, or at least the armor and shield I was wearing.  Whether or not I'd actually bought said items from them in the past, I have no idea.  Speaking of buying... I ended up getting a new set of bracers, as my old ones were pretty crappy, and a brooch for my cloak.  I was eyeing this bronze (bronze?  brass?  one of the two) neck torc, too, but by that point I'd spent all the cash I'd brought with me.  I guess it'll have to wait for the next faire.

As usual, I slacked off in the picture-taking department.  What can I say?  I'm too busy enjoying the happenings to go digging for my camera and trying to set up a halfway-decent shot.  That, and half the things I end up admiring end up being the bodices of female faire-goers, and taking such pictures might get me slapped and/or skewered with a sword.   I did end up posing for someone else's camera, however.  The encounter was a little weird - this woman stopped me and, after asking if I worked for the faire, asked if anyone had ever told me I looked like Leonardo DiCaprio.  I'm assuming that was supposed to be complimentary.  As one might imagine, I was more than a little confused by such a question.  And, no, no one has ever told me that I look like Leonardo DiCaprio.  Thank God.

I've come to the conclusion that something about me leads people to think I'm an employee of whatever location I happen to be at.  It happens on a daily basis at work (I have to tell them that I don't work for Stop & Shop, so I really don't know the answers to 95% of their questions).  It happened when I wandered into Best Buy a week or two back.  It happened while I was wandering around the casino at the Mohegan Sun gig.  And today, I had two or three people asking if I worked for the faire.  Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm especially annoyed by all of this, more like just slightly amused, but... why?  Is there a tattoo reading "STAFF" on my forehead that I've somehow failed to notice?  All I can figure is that there must be something in my body language that makes people think I'm not just another customer/visitor/whatever.

Next up on the calendar of geeky goodness is Connecticon, next weekend.  I was considering running a D&D game for it, but it seems that their RPG schedule is more or less full at this point.  Which, considering that I hadn't gotten around to actually working out the details of the game I wanted to run, isn't really that bad a thing.  If a slot opens up, I may end up putting the game together at the con, similar to what Duane and I did last year.  In the meantime, though, I plan on stocking up on Pocky and caffeine.

I just might have a place other than Cleo to stay for the con this year.  I went to check out the apartment in West Hartford on Thursday afternoon, and while I wan't exactly overwhelmed by it, it seemed like a pretty decent place.  It's kind of small for the price, but it's in a pretty decent neighborhood.  Like I mentioned earlier, being within walking distance of Dragon's Lair is kind of a nice perk. Off-street parking and, gasp, air conditioning are pluses too.  I'd planned on dropping off the application fee after work yesterday, but things somehow ended up taking far, far longer to finish than they really should have, and I didn't finish my last store until 6:30.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to take care of it on Monday, either, since that tends to be a fairly busy day for me between work and my rehearsal in Westbrook.  But, hey, all things are possible with enough caffeine to speed you along.  At least, that's the theory.

Man.  Going from being more-or-less unemployed to working 40+ hours in a week is taking a lot of getting used to.  This week's been particularly bad, of course, given that I have to straighten out the inevitable mess that a major holiday leaves in the stores I cover - and I only have 4 days instead of 5 to do it in.  Consequently, I've been working about 10 hours a day for the last two days - and that doesn't count the two hours or so that I have to drive from home and back.  I've been putting a whole lot of miles on the car  doing this, too - but hopefully, I'll be getting a new place to live soon, so I won't be doing as much driving.

I'm going to check out an apartment in West Hartford tomorrow afternoon.  From the description, it looks to be a pretty nice place (well, aside from it being on the third floor, which is going to make lugging my bass amp around more interesting than I'd like), and I sort of know the area it's in (heheh, right near Dragon's Lair on New Britain Ave.)  Pricewise, it's $725 a month, which is at the upper end of my price range.  More about the place tomorrow... assuming I'm not exhausted by another long day of working and driving.

I GOT THE JOB!

Granted, I was 90% sure this weekend that I had it, but it's really damn nice to know for sure. I actually got a case of the first-day, "oh,man, I'll never learn to do all this stuff" jitters, which is pretty unusual for me.  But, thinking about it, I'm sure I"ll be able to handle it.  For those who I haven't talked to about it already, I'll be visiting supermarkets in the Hartford area, taking inventory and setting up displays of Boar's Head products.  (Right now, no doubt, Gimpy Jon is reading this and making yet more comments about me and meat.  Somebody is too easily amused, and when I say that, you know it's bad.)  Anyway... since most of the stores I have to cover are as far away from here or farther as hartford, I'm gonna need to kick my apartment search into high gear.  I haven't quite decided where I'm going to look for a place - I'm waiting to hear from the insurance agent if living in, say, Middletown or East Hartford will result in my car insurance payments being any lower.  I hope so - I think every insurance company really sticks it to single guys under 30.  Bleagh.

After my gig on Saturday, I stopped by Trinity for reunion weekend.  It was really cool to see a whole bunch of people I hadn't run into in a long time - Virg, Kathy, Gimpy, John Brigham, etc.  Shame on those of my friends who didn't show up (you know who you are! ), 'cause they missed a great time.  It would've been nicer overal if it weren't so freakin' hot, but hey, you can't have everything.  Speaking of the weather - wearing a tuxedo in this heat and humidity for a two hour gig, outside, is NOT FUN.  I spent the last 7 months or so waiting for summer to arrive - now I can't wait for it to end. 

I thought about bringing my camera to reunion, but decided I didn't want the hassle of bringing it around with me.  However - I do have a roll of pictures dating back to November which I'd thought were lost, but reappeared when my mom cleaned out her purse.  I don't know if I'll have the chance to scan them before the weekend, but I'll saee what I can do.

Well, I just got back from a job interview for a merchandising position with Boar's Head in the Hartford area.  I knew that having experience working in a deli would come in handy someday.  I've got a pretty good feeling about this one - the interview went well, and it's definitely a job I can do.  I should hear back from them within the next few days, so time for some more finger-crossing. 

In a shocking departure from my usual habits, I've actually been going out and getting some exercise the last few days.  Specifically, taking walks around the neighborhood.  Based on the time I take doing it (about 45+ minutes), I figure it's about a 2 1/2 mile route.  I don't know how long I'll be sticking with it, because it's not going to be nearly as much fun once the weather gets hot and the bugs come out in force.  The route I've been walking takes me down by the salt marshes behind my house, so I may need to douse myself in insect repellant if I want to keep doing this.  On the plus side, I've found that having my iPod with me makes this whole exercise thing considerably more enjoyable.  There's also some nice views along the route - perhaps I'll bring my camera along some time and see if I can get some nice shots.

And speaking of photos - I got some back this weekend and posted them.  Yay!