NEW YEAR!

Well hello there Mr. 2010!

I'm excited by the new year. This year is going to be bursting at the seams: new job, new state, new home, new everything. I hope to settle into a routine here in California and get some coolness rolling. I think I've had quite enough transient moving around for a while thank you very much.

Cathartic Television

There is something about M.A.S.H. I can't really explain. When it comes on I feel like a dose of a drug has entered my system. I completely relax and zone out. It really does the trick. I have the entire series on DVD so I often find myself going to it to relax. Which is where the problem is. My DVDs are in storage somewhere on the peninsula. So I am at the mercy of Nick at Nite for my M.A.S.H. fix. Hrmph.

My wife has her first day of work tomorrow. Which ROXXORS. I'm about to find myself with a week that represents no chance of a phone or in-person interview (most everyone is on holiday vacation) combined with a lot of time by my lonesome with nothing to do. Perhaps I will develop a M.A.S.H. iPhone application with my spare time...

Displaced Christmas Eve

So it is Christmas Eve and we are in Palo Alto, CA. It feels weird; I grew up here and yet I now find Christmas without snow to be... wrong somehow. It is currently 61 degrees (16 for those of you in the world of Metric) and the skies are crystal clear. Hm. This wrong-ness is magnified by spending Christmas in corporate housing. Nothing like being in (essentially) a stranger's house in an odd city / state to make you feel ill at ease during the holidays. But we are finding ways to feel comfortable.

For instance, right now we have a house guest over. A good friend of my wife's that she hasn't had the chance to see in years drove up from Southern California to enjoy the 24th and 25th with us. I'm glad they can hang out during the Christmas season since my poor wife hasn't seen a soul she knows well (except for me) since July 30th. That is a LONG time to ask anyone to be detached from their peeps.

As for me, I'm excited to go to my aunt's house tomorrow for Christmas dinner. There is always a ton of good food and fun to be had there. But speaking of tons of food I just let my belt out another notch, making my waist officially 40 inches. I've packed on the pounds the 2nd half of this year. As soon as we are through the holiday feast zone(tm) I am back on Weight Watchers to return to 180lbs (~81kg for you Metric people again). I always feel better at 180. It'll likely take me about 1/2 a year but so the hell what; I've done it twice, I can do it a third time!

Have a good one people. Be safe out there.

Helping dad

Yesterday (and I did mean to blog this yesterday, it was just a busy day) I took dad to physical therapy. It was the third time I joined him on his endeavors. I'm actually not sure if I am helping him as much as I am helping his wife who has been carrying 100% of the "help-dad" load since he came down with Guillain-Barre.

The PT takes a TON out of him. Simple things like walking across the room or sitting down on a rubber exercise ball and keeping balanced are herculean endeavors. But the whole time he just keeps trying to push himself harder (even to the point where the therapist tells him to stop, he is going to hurt himself). That's just the kind of guy dad is; if you tell him he can't do something he sees it as a challenge. Actually I don't think that's 100% accurate. I think being told he can't do something pisses him off and triggers some sort of "oh yeah?!" neuron that he can't resist obeying. I may have inherited that...

Anyway, speaking of random brain activity a memory flashed back into my head while watching him. When I was really young the family went on some sort of vacation. I don't know how old I was, where we were or even why we were there. We were at an indoor pool and I remember swimming. I also remember starting to have trouble and was going under. I can't really remember why, but I do remember the pool being very choppy (maybe a lot of kids swimming and splashing?) and perhaps that was the problem. I remember going under and the next thing I know this explosion of water went off right next to me. Dad had jumped into the pool and already pulled me out of the water. I remember his smiling face and then the memory kind of ends. It's like 4 seconds of VIVID recollection book-ended by memory abyss. Watching my dad struggle across the floor in PT (in good spirits and chatting up the therapist as he went, by the way) suddenly rose this memory into my head.

Life's funny, huh? I feel like I should end this post with some sort of lesson I've learned or deep conclusion but I think I'll leave it here. Hope the story was at least entertaining.

Off to the DMV! :)

Out of work, in temp housing, and trying to avoid insanity!

Hello everyone!

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Jeff Gregg and I am a 34 year old video game designer who has recently found himself without a job, lacking a permanent home, and staring at a surplus of time. My last employment had me working in Vancouver, British Colombia (up in the Canadias). When the project in Canada got canceled and my employment ended my wife and I (hello, wife!) decided to move back to where I grew up: the San Francisco bay area. There are lots of jobs to pursue here in the game industry. And, my wife has already gained employment here at a not-for-profit gig.

Another reason we moved down here is for my father. He has recently been diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome (more info at this link) and he needs help. It is good to be near him in his time of need.

Thing is, we moved down here during the December holiday season. Which means that really every game studio around here is shutting down for "X" weeks to celebrate either (A) the birth of Christ, (B) Consumerism, (C) the festival of lights, (D) Kwanzaa or (E) all of the above. All this means that while I have been having lots of good phone interviews and one in-house interview, I am stuck with a lot of time and nothing to really do with it. Helping my father DOES consume some of the time and there are a lot of other BEAUTIFUL things on our list (registering the cars in California, getting a DL road test since my license is from out of country, etc.) but really I spend a ton of time with not much to do at all.

So I decided to get back into online blogging. I'm going to spam out what I am thinking and what I need to be doing into the internets until I come up with a plan. I'm going to make this up as I go, and anyone out there who happens to be reading is welcome to come along for the ride.

That's it for now; I need to go eat more cookies and put on a few bonus pounds so I can really lose a good # of fat cells as part of my new year's resolution!

'Till next post!