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If I were having coffee with you…

It would be a very late (or early) coffee this time. I’m occupied with life, which is a good thing. It’s been a time that’s not free of productivity, luckily. Most of that is the emotional kind.
 
The Doctor Who group that I’m a part of had its first pub trivia night in a while. It’s also the first one for this year. I got the lowest score. I attribute it to having a bit of trouble holding onto memories of some past Christmas special episodes. The quiz was entirely based on just the holiday Who episodes, after all. I do hope to do slightly better next time. It was fun, and there were even a couple of new members that joined in.
 
This weekend started off with a visit to the Tet Festival at the OC fairgrounds. That’s one of the many local celebrations of the Lunar New Year. It was an enjoyable way to take in such a vibrant culture. It was also a comfortably warm day!
 
I started off today trying to figure out some future excursions. The theme this time is museum trips. Living in the Los Angeles area means there are quite a few places to take in the arts and excellent museums. I am keeping some favorites in mind, like the Getty Center and The Huntington. I’d also like to visit some I haven’t yet or haven’t in a long time, such as MOCA and LACMA. Visits to some that I’m new to, such as The Paley Center, are also on my list.
 
I’m looking forward to another interesting week, with a birthday celebration this coming weekend (I hope.) February is around the corner.

More sharing: #WeekendCoffeeShare: In Which I Talk a Bit about Art

Featured photo by Ganapathy Kumar

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Here we are, nearly a week into a new presidency, and I see that there’s news that the Doomsday Clock has been advanced 30 seconds forward. This advancement is due to the statements of a single person, our new President. I don’t come here to dwell on the dark times ahead, only to occasionally vent about it.

On a lighter note, pub trivia was enjoyable last night. It involved a written quiz, mostly dealing with Doctor Who Christmas specials’ trivia. I got 4 out of 20 (the worst). I totally would have done better had I simply re-watched the most recent Christmas special episode. It was good because it wasn’t overtly “Christmas-y.” There was even a superhero who faced a powerful villain. The superhero, I should add, was “accidentally” created by an encounter with The Doctor.

4/20 whoops!

All who participated got beautiful blue pen/stylus combos. Also, since I was rather hungry, the fish and chips were mighty delightful. A friendly lady and her mom were the newest to show up for the meetup as well. Even though I missed who I’ve been missing, it was still a welcome diversion from the larger world. That crept in a bit as we were wrapping up–it’s nearly inevitable with a group of sci-fi and fantasy nerds that something that threatens the foundation of our fandoms (science is under siege currently) would get even a passing mention.

Gallifrey One is nearly here but still feels far away.

 

Featured photo credit: Matt Quinn

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Frost. It happens out here too.

It’s another Wednesday. This one is the last of January, so it’s got some importance.

I check the outside temperature: 39 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s going to be another chilly day in Southern California. I decide that I’ll be layering a bit towards the warm and toasty side. There’s no need to be shivering during my walks.

I wrapped up my self-assessment for work yesterday, so there’s going to be a performance review meeting looming soon. It feels like the years are going by faster, and I think that’s due to things not settling into a dull routine daily grind so much at work.

After work, it’s time for another meeting of the Real Timelords of Orange County, at our favorite pub. This time, it’ll be the return of the pub quiz. I still have some gaps in my Doctor Who knowledge, but the best way I know of to fill it in a bit is to be around these fellow fans.

Pub food. Yum! Photo credit/original: Edward Franklin

I’ll also be seeing one person in particular that I look forward to seeing again every single time we part. Yes, my girlfriend. It’s hard to put into words how awesome that is, how happy I am, and how much like a dream it still feels like, after almost three months. Perhaps it’s still the honeymoon phase, but I can at least start to see further than a few weeks of the future. I hope that this will continue to extend further and further out.

We’re looking forward to the annual Doctor Who convention, Gallifrey One, just over three weeks away. Soon, I’ll be checking to see which panels I might like to attend during the daytime portions, and even some evening activities as well. I’m slowly increasing my daily step goals, in preparation for the miles of walking that are coming.

February is nearly here! January has been exciting and scary. I’m looking forward to less of the latter in the comings weeks.

 

More Wednesday writings: WRITE ANYTHING WEDNESDAY #103

Featured Photo Credit: DG Jones Flickr via Compfight cc

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393Px-Bingo

One thing I’ll be doing at Blizzcon…playing BINGO. No! Really…

Whatever happens, make sure you print out your bingo card before you go, and then throughout the weekend, cross off everything that you see on there. If, by the end of the weekend, you’ve nabbed five across, you win!

I’m printing my Bingo card right now…

via WoW Insider

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As Blizzcon draws nearer, I’m happy to see that my guild tabard from the folks at Swagdog.com has arrived! I’ll wear it at the conference so that any guildies looking to find me can do so. I think this is the first custom-made t-shirt, I’ve ever ordered. It looks pretty well made.

tabard - Ryagas of Azuremyst realm
tabard - Ryagas of Sanctity guild - Azuremyst realm

Yeah. I’m pretty die-hard when it comes to WoW…

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KurkenlinePTR adventures…or, I should have just gone to Shadowmoon Valley…

A sign of things to come? This line took 2 hours and was to tame The Kurken, one of the exotic beasts that hunters will be able to tame in the upcoming patch. The long wait was due to a certain orc hunter who would kill The Kurken occasionally while another hunter was taming it. That probably won’t happen on PvP servers (it’s an alliance starting area), but I can see this happening on PvE servers. I believe that type of harassment is reportable on live servers, so it might not happen too often…

At any rate, two hours later, the job was done:
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Warcraft music available on iTunes – WOW Insider

Most of the albums available were included in past Collector’s Editions of Blizzard games, such as the original soundtracks of World of Warcraft and The Burning Crusade, and even the Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos soundtrack.

Here’s a link to the iTunes Store page. This is pretty neat, I think. I was not looking forward to extracting the music from the game files and filing in the information manually for each track. Also, this little morsel is there:

D3-Free-Track

Looks like I’m late to the party. The other tracks seem to have been there for a while. They’re all iTunes Plus tracks.

via Wow Insider