I don’t know why I’m at work, so I’ll muse about 2011

I’m pretty sure I can count on one hand just how many people are in this office today.  Granted, I’m not complaining at the fact that I’m getting paid to sit here and do absolutely no work, but man, I certainly wouldn’t have minded sleeping in this morning.  But instead, I trudged out of bed at 6:30 a.m. to go run around the ‘hood in 36 degree weather, and here I sit, waiting for a few hours to pass, since I made it all the way out here already.  So with that in mind, and since I’ve pretty much seen the entire work-safe internet now, I suppose it’s not a bad time to sit back and catch up on some writing.  And with the end of the year literally right around the corner, why not use that as a topic?

Since I’m at the office, and don’t ever visit my own sites on the network for paranoid fear that they’ll one day find my online identity, I’m musing most of this based on what I can remember off the top of my head.  But the good news is that, as a whole, I don’t think that the encapsulated 2011 year was a very bad year at all.  Compared to 2010, it was a much improved year.  At first blush I want to say that it wasn’t anything magnificently spectacular, but the more I think about it, I guess I can say that 2011 was a pretty decent year overall.

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Dragon-Con 2011 Photos: That is if you didn’t know where to look already

Shit, all these photos were uploaded on the 5th, and subsequently updated on the actual photos page.  But I thought it would be fun to torture those of my friends and anonymous readers who think I’m Mr. Spot-On-The-Money Reliable at getting photos up right away, who wait for me to put up an actual update notification on the brog FP that photos are up, and make them read some of my stories and experiences before unleashing the rest of the photographs.  But anyway, here are the rest of all the photos I took during Dragon-Con.

Overall, Dragon-Con was fun.  It was nice to stay at one of the host hotels, even if it wasn’t the Marriott, thus requiring some creativity in maneuvering about at times.  If anything at all, such luxury meant I didn’t have to worry about getting a DUI when I drove home after a night of drinking at 4 a.m.

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Dragon-Con Stories: The missed connection

If I had one genuine gripe about Dragon-Con weekend, this would be it.

She laughed with me, and not necessarily at me, at my completely failed attempt to pop off the cap of my Blue Moon bottle on the door hinge, resulting in a shattered bottle tip, and foam gushing out.  She gave me no indication, be it through our lengthy conversation or body language, that she minded my lame flirting and loitering around her, while she was stuck at another convention’s marketing table.  The words came easy, and the topics transitioned seamlessly as we conversed about various topics from movies, Emma Stone, whom I name-dropped as a comparison to her own eyes (which is obviously a good thing), to anime conventions and costumes, based on the cornucopia of people to watch.  What started out as an innocuous complimentary remark turned into a pleasant encounter.

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Dragon-Con Stories: NoMoreLoko

Firstly, I don’t know why this image looks so posterized; there is still much I must learn about my new camera, and I guess this is the fault I get for relying on Auto settings, combined with the ambient color-changing neon lights of PULSEbar.

But anyway, after waking up Monday morning with a hangover, a lot worse than I could have expected from just one Four Loko (along with about seven beers), I said that I don’t ever want to drink again, which will remain true until the next time I decide to drink.  But one thing that will remain true is that my fascination with Four Lokos can officially be said to be completely over now.  The shit is truly the Devil’s piss, and even after being burned by it for the first time at New Year’s, I couldn’t stand that I still had three extra cans, that ultimately would need to get drank some day.

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Dragon-Con Stories: Asian guys with fancy cameras

A few months ago, I was on the prowl for a new camera.  At first, the biggest holdup with acquiring a camera was the debate I was having with myself, if this was going to be the time that I stop bullshitting around, and finally get myself a nice, DSLR, and aspire to actually take some nice photographs.  Granted, the drawback to that option is obviously the price of a good camera.  Or, alternatively, with the improvements beyond my old Sony Cybershot’s capabilities, simply get yet another point-and-shoot camera, which would be cheaper, portable, and more conducive to my typical array of photographic bullshit activities.

Right before I went to Miami, I got my new camera, and it was a Canon PowerShot, or a point-and-shoot.  This decision had nothing to do with cost, as I could very well afford a DSLR if I wanted to go in that direction, but I chose to go with point-and-shoot, based on a conversation I had about Asian guys with cameras.  Considering a big chunk of photographs I take comes at places like Dragon-Con, or nerdy and/or public events, I thought about all the times I see awkward and/or creepo and/or fake-nice-to-girls-only Asian guys running around with fancy-schmancy cameras.  And it occurred to me, that quite frankly, I just don’t want to be like any of that.

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As a whole, 2010 sucked. Good Riddance.

I often think it is cliche the way people sum up entire years, this time of year, but then again, it’s so often done when things aren’t very good.  I can be fortunate to say that I haven’t really had too many bad years as wholes, and the last one that genuinely comes to mind is back in like 2002.  With all that in mind, in the pessimistic world we live in, I suppose it simply is easier to blabber about something when it’s more like a trainwreck than a sappy, warm, feel-good story.

In a nutshell, 2010 has sucked great big, gigantic, sweaty goat balls, overall.  I’m ecstatic to see that it’s mercifully coming to a close, and I’m praying that 2011 treats me, and treats Jen a whole lot better than 2010 did, because I’m not sure if I’ll have enough black hairs left to turn white by the end of next year if this shit keeps up.  With great trepidation, I clench my anoos, fearing that there’s still time for more discouraging, cringe-inducing bullshit to occur, and as evidenced by recent events, there’s no such thing as coasting to the finish.

But not to say that 2010 was 100% pure rubbish.  There were a few good things that happened this year.  And to start off this conclusive post on a positive note, let’s get the good shit out of the way so I can talk about all the shitty shit that happened that most people are more intrigued about anyway:

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The 2010 Dragon-Con post and photos

That time of the year has come and gone again. People stayed over at my house again. Another year has passed where my boy Evan has followed me to Turner Field, and inexplicably watched the Mets beat the Braves, in spite of their polar opposite records (the Mets suck). Another year that over 50,000 nerds descended on Atlanta, on the same weekend as 10,000 gay black men, and 60,000 college football enthusiasts, with there bound to be some overlap here and there. Another year, another Labor Day Weekend, and another Dragon-con.

The difference is that last year, I discovered the secret to enjoying Dragon-con, and I actually looked forward to applying such a theory to this year’s. That being said, another year has passed where I look back and estimate that I consumed somewhere around 23 or so beers during the weekend, another year where I took a lot of photographs, and another year that the overall conclusion is that it wasn’t a bad weekend.

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