TWIG Notes XI: Year in Review

Don’t you get tired of those year in review news specials, where the network tries to recap what was ‘important’ in the past 365 days? Well, I am, but that won’t stop me from an end-of-2007 look back at my own life.

Quitting Jobs. If you asked me in December of 2006 if I’d be quitting two jobs in the span of a year, I’d probably call you crazy. Or I’d call you Larry, or Jim, or Loki the Trickster and Norse god of mischief, strife and fire. However the fact is, in January of this year I quit my job at EA and joined Riptown, only to resign from that job twelve months later. Okay, technically I still have five work days to go at Riptown, but that’s really just a formality. Do I regret leaving EA? No. But in hindsight I probably made a bad choice in where to go. With 2008 bringing a new job, I think I’m back on track.

Moving. It’s actually kind of fun living in different places. The unpleasant part is the actual act of moving: the packing, the hauling shit from one place to another, and the unpacking are activities to avoid in life. Thankfully, our situation in our latest home looks to have improved. Where once I was worried we’d be moving again in the spring of 2008, at this point in time it’s more likely we’ll be able to stay another year. Sure, the ladyfriend and I both dream of a bigger place (like two bedrooms perhaps) but we’ve got a pretty nice home to live in right now.

Marriage. To a woman, no less. It was a lot of planning, a lot of money, and a lot of food, but I think it was all worth it. We had fun, throwing a party for friends and family at a local speakeasy. We got to play dress-up and have the attention on us for a change. We had some old man read a bunch of legal text in front of us and our parents. We got to sleep in a penthouse hotel suite that was bigger than any property we’ll ever own. Both of us got to wear some nifty shiny rings. If I had to do it all over again, would I do anything different? No! Well, maybe I’d lobby harder for the cage dancing go-go girls. But everything else was perfect.

The No Baby Clause. If marriage wasn’t enough of a ‘life choice’ to make, we followed it up a few months later with the decision to never make little Garretts. This wasn’t a rash, poorly rationalized decision like my nipple piercing back in 2000. This was years of weighing pros and cons and thinking about parenthood. Needless to say the cons of parenthood won out big time.

It was a big year in terms of changes. In fact I don’t think 2007 will be equaled in life-altering decisions until I turn 40, have my mid-life crisis, sell my collection of Frank Herbert novels, buy an Audi and have hair plugs. That’s less than eleven years away!

See you in Two Thousand Eight.

Pre-Christmas Sequestering

It’s the final weekend before Christmas, and not only are major shopping areas likely clogged with deranged shoppers fighting over last-minute gifts, the radio tells us the roads are a nightmare because - gasp! - there’s a mix of snow and rain falling. So today will be spent mostly indoors, unless the weather breaks and we can go for a walk without getting soaked.

The last week of work before the break was also mostly a wash. I’ve been relieved of almost all duties, and all that’s left is transferring knowledge and backing up the work that I’ve done, to pass on to whichever sucker fine person is chosen to continue in my place. The final week of work, after New Years, will undoubtedly be boring. One of my colleagues has insisted that we go out for drinks on my last day, which was somewhat surprising, considering I believed I’d just disappear without much of a peep. In the year I’ve been there, I may have made three or four friends. Not so much the hang out on weekend kind of friends, but the keep in touch indefinitely kind of friends. Ironically a couple of them already quit working there before me.

This may be the last post until Christmas day. So, Merry Christmas to both of my readers! Keep fit and have fun.

Eating at the Grownup Table

Last night the lady and I finally set a date to dine at Brix, made possible by a generous wedding gift from people I work with. We’d eaten at Brix once before, while scouting possible wedding party locations. It’s easily the most upscale dining I’ve ever done; normally when blogging about food I’d use silly metaphors to describe the experience, but considering what we ate I think doing that now would be a mistake.

With the gift certificate offsetting a very large portion of the cost, we decided to eat like rich people (as opposed to our other visit, where we ordered the least-expensive entrees). First off, we each ordered a martini and an appetizer, the seared pork tenderloin on broccoli cheddar puree and a bourbon and apple braised pulled pork on leek. The tenderloin was the most tender pork I’ve ever had — I’m used to pork being tough and chewy, but this rivalled a beef steak. For the main course, the ladyfriend ordered grilled mahi mahi with lobster and marscapone ravioli while I enjoyed cinnamon seared wentzel duck with risotto and a cracked pepper blueberry demiglaze. Both dishes were simply amazing: neither of us had eaten mahi mahi before, and the duck was a far cry from the one time in my life I’d eaten such fowl. Dessert consisted of warm chocolate cake with sour cherry confit for the lady and an apple tart with vanilla cognac gelato for me. Again, just superb food. Add in a B52 coffee and the total for our fancy dinner was nearly $120, far more than we’d ever spend for ourselves on dinner, ever. But for one night we ate beyond our means thanks to the nice people at work. I would recommend Brix to anyone looking for fine dining and an carrying an open wallet.

Full Disclosure

Today I made it official - I gave notice that I’d be leaving my job shortly after New Year’s Eve. I’ve secured a new job at Propaganda Games, a video game developer owned by Disney. I’m very excited as it’ll be a position as lead UI artist, something that I worked as in some capacity at EA before leaving them. It took a while to decide to get back into game development, but after a full year at a design/application development firm I’ve come to realize that video games is where I want to be. I’ve played games since I learned to ride a bike, from ridiculous BASIC-programmed games on Dad’s TRS-80, to the hundred-plus games we had on the C64, through all the Nintendo consoles to my current love affair with the DS. It’s a medium (and a development environment) that keeps me interested and is something I’m passionate about. Well, maybe not as passionate as I am about Zooey Deschanel, but it’s up there.

A couple of days ago I used the phrase “I hate my job”, which might have been a little harsh. But for a while now I haven’t looked forward to work at all, and that’s a pretty good sign that I wasn’t where I belonged. There’s a good number of reasons I didn’t like it, which isn’t terribly important to this post. And while it wasn’t all bad — I did learn some things, some that I would never have learned had I stayed in video games — there was enough bad to overshadow the good. By the time I leave I’ll have been there almost exactly a year, which is short in the grand scheme of things but a long time to be somewhere you’re not happy.

Overall Riptown was just a bump in the road. It took some time away from games to know that’s where I wanted to be. On top of that, through the rigorous interview process (and friends who currently work there, that also spent time at EA) it sounds like Propaganda has made serious strides in addressing the main problem with game development: poorly managed overtime. I’m not naive enough to think there will never be some OT working in games, but from all accounts I’m going to a company that actually puts effort and gets results when dealing with time management.

Plus, I get a free copy of Herbie: Fully Loaded.

The Sushi Conundrum

It wasn’t until I moved to Vancouver that I started eating and enjoying sushi. This can definitely be chalked up to the fact that, for the entire time I lived in Kamloops, there was only one restaurant that served sushi — and also served chinese food at the same time. Clearly not authentic, and I can’t recall anyone having good things to say about their sushi either.

Finding legitimately good sushi takes time. For every good sushi joint I’ve been to, I’ve been to a bad sushi joint. Good sushi, to me, means sparse amounts of japanese mayo (if at all), salmon that doesn’t taste briny, green (not black) nori, rolls that are not disguised by a coating of tobiko, and true green tea (not that brownish ricewater tea or jasmine tea). Oh yes, and it should also not come around on little boats. If you see the boats, leave. Why? Because those boats have been on the water for days, like little Tom Hanks rolls on a raft in Sushi Castaway. I realize judging good sushi is subjective, and some people generally don’t know what good or bad sushi really is. I’d like to think I have a fairly decent ability to judge the good from the bad.

Twice I’ve had what I consider to be the worst sushi (or sushi-related food) ever. One was a roll consisting of ground beef, a Kraft cheese slice, a leaf of lettuce, and a dill pickle. I’m not sure what this roll was called; perhaps it was a Barfy Roll. Today I had an appetizer from a sushi restaurant, and I’m quite positive no one in Japan has ever eaten something remotely similar to this: a Kraft cheese slice wrapped around a skewer and deep-fried. One bite and my ladyfriend and I shared a look that said to each other, “I know this taste, and I know it’s not something meant to be eaten.”

I’m not sure what possesses a “chef” at these places to use Kraft singles as ingredients. No restaurant, anywhere in the world (unless the place is named “Uncle Bob’s Grease’um Cheese’ums”) should serve Kraft singles as food — because it’s not food. It is akin to serving Spam sashimi, or Pizza Pop donburi. Maybe we got what we deserved, ordering something with cheese at a sushi place. We probably should have been mindful of the fact that cheese belongs on a sushi menu as much as Dom DeLuise fits in a Smart Car. Logic dictates that it just doesn’t work.

The most wonderful time of the year

Tomorrow is surgery day. It’s actually a very minor procedure, a far cry from the two previous operations I’ve had (hernia and ulner nerve). In fact there is only going to be a very small amount of local freezing done just beforehand — I’m not even sure it counts as anesthetic. Regardless, it will cause some pain and recovery won’t be much fun… though it’s doubtful recovering from any kind of medical procedure is ever “fun”. I’ve booked the rest of the week off work, which is good timing since I pretty much hate it there. Yup, I said it. It’s been almost a year since I jumped ship from EAC, and in retrospect I don’t regret leaving when I did. Maybe I just wish I’d found something better to jump to. Altogether it’s just a bump in the road, though. Onward to better things, methinks. Stay tuned.