The lights and sounds of Atlanta come wafting through the open sliding glass doors of my balcony. It’s really quite lovely. In the distance, I can see mountains and forests. The sky is blood red from the light of the fading sun. The city is beginning to light up. Skyscrapers jut into the night, the glow of electronic illumination emanating from the little squares of glass that dot them. The interstate stretches by to my left, a constant stream of fast moving cars flying towards their destinations.

Night time in the big city.

Ok, so it isn’t New York or Seattle. Still, it’s a far cry from my little house in the suburbs.

We went to dinner downstairs in this “German” restaurant connected to the lobby. The quotes are because of the fact that other than their name and four dishes, it was pretty much a sports bar. Last time I checked, Germans weren’t really big on spinach artichoke dip. I had a pretty tasty hamburger, though. Had brie and bacon on it. Of course, that’s not anywhere near an acceptable level of point usage for a meal, but then again neither are the two candy bars I had afterwards.

Well come on! We got into this huge conversation about Bavarian Chocolate. I was practically crawling with chocolate craving. I haven’t really had any real chocolate in a long time, so I figured what the hell?

Which is why I’m not losing any more weight.

But I digress, and cannot continue as I am meeting Holly across the street in fifteen minutes. I’ll finish this when I get back.

Quick update

I’ve got about 5 minutes to make this entry. I’ve arrived at the Residence Inn in Downtown Atlanta. I’m staying here tonight so that I can attend a conference tomorrow. The conference is the UIE Roadshow on designing an effective user interface. I’m here with my boss Steve and co-worker Dawn. I’ve got my own room on the 22nd floor. Pretty nice deal.

We are about to head downstairs to the German restaurant and get some food. Don’t know what will happen after that. I tried to call Holly to see if she could hang, but she isn’t answering her phone.

I desperately need to shave. I’m looking pretty ragged.

Looks like I’ll be heading up to Jacksonville on August 9th to go to a birthday party for celestialaddict and other Jacksonville Leo’s. Spoke with netgoth about it last night, and she’s up for a party, so I think it shall happen. Ought to be fun to see the gang.

Anyway, I’m outta here. Off to get some crunchy munchies.

I had this whole long entry planned out, but I’m suddenly exhausted. A few drinks, but not enough to get drunk. Just dead tired.

However, I will point out that the Baron Munchausen dinner was incredible, because I got to spend the whole time sitting next to John Kovalick, creator of Dork Tower. He’s a really, really nice guy and we had a blast.

I’ll try and go into more detail tomorrow. I’m off to bed.

Oh…The Gen Con photo album is up, and I have some shots from today in it. Check it out here.

The journey begins

Ok, time for the first of what will probably be many updates about my and ‘s travels to Gen Con 2003 in Indianapolis, Indiana. If you have no interest in hearing about this journey, I highly recommend that you skip reading my journal for the next few days.

We are currently sitting in the food court of airside A at Tampa International Airport. I have just had the “pleasure” of watching Mr. Winn devour a Cinnabon. Ahhh, nothing like the sheer joy of a man and his sugar frosted baked delight. Fortunately he excused himself to wash his hands, so I’m not going to have to deal with sticky hands for the reaminder of the trip.

Not that I should have to worry about his sticky hands or anything, but you never know. We’ve got a pretty long layover in New Orleans.

The coffee here is extremely hot. Too hot. I shouldn’t have to wait to enjoy my caffeine.

Believe it or not, I’m actually going to make an effort no to go too incredibly insane in the whole POINTS arena over the weekend. I’ve had a pretty good week so far. In fact, it was great up until last night. I got stressed out trying to get everything done, and started to binge eat as a result. I knew I should have thrown that fried chicken away. Oh well. One day does not override six.

This is going to be my first experience flying on Southwest Airlines, and I’m really looking forward to it. From what I hear, they are a great company. Will be nice to see if that’s actually true.

Oh! I’m writing this on my laptop. It looks like the laptop is running smoothly again. I got the operating system and all of the necessary software for the trip installed last night, and didn’t encounter one blue screen of death. I did have a problem with the road runner dial up access software, but I’m pretty sure that’s just because their software sucks wind. I went ahead and installed America Online, because I have a screen name through them with my sister’s account. What the hell? As long as it works.

On the romantic front…

I continue to be more and more enamored of netgoth. My days are starting to become measured in the minutes that stretch between hearing her voice or getting some kind of text message from her. We’re trying to go slow, really we are. I promise.

But damn.

Heh…funny thing….and part of that whole small world routine that my life is in recently. I went through her memories last night, and she had some links a photo page on her web site. There were pictures of sketch_says and green_muse from about two weeks after I met them.

Ok. Enough with the rambling. I’ll write more when I actually have something to say.