Perhaps the most interesting update is that there's a new excerpt from Fracture available to read 
). It runs really smooth though and I'm super glad to be able to play things on an HD TV now. And so many of my favorite games are backward compatible! Honestly that was the deal breaker between Xbox One and PS4. There are so many awesome looking PS4-exclusive games, but the lack of backward compatibility was a huge turn-off.Let's see...last entry was the beginning of May. What all has happened since then...
4th of July happened, I guess. Since the holiday was on a Monday, I took Friday and Tuesday off and ended up with a 5-day weekend, which was totally glorious. We fulfilled the tradition of going up to my grandparents' house in south-central Washington and we actually had other family there this time and got to see our cousin whom we hadn't seen in almost 2 years. It's always fun to hang out with him. The weather was cooler than usual up there too -- we're usually miserable half the time because it's too hot to do anything and you can't sleep because you're stuck to the sheets, etc. etc. We hiked down to a waterfall one day and had to wear jackets because the all the spray from the water was making it too cold, and we had to wear coats and bring blankets to watch fireworks Monday night
It was kind of ridiculous.So at the beginning of June I finally caved and went and got a membership at the YMCA. I hadn't worked out at all since last summer before I started my job, aside from walking the dog. So for the past two months, I've been forcing myself to get up at 5:30 each morning and go work out before work. It's honestly not so bad once I'm up -- it's the getting up part that sucks. And it's been nice that it's already light outside at that time during this part of the year. I imagine it's gonna be miserable in the winter. But yeah, between working out for 45 minutes every morning and cutting soda on weekdays, I feel a lot better. Haven't been getting deathly sleepy in the middle of the day anymore, except on occasion if I have to sit through a boring meeting or something. And I can see some muscle definition returning to my legs. Being naturally athletic but miserably out of shape has been frustrating
This past weekend has probably been the most exciting though. Every so often, I remember to look up some of my favorite musical artists and look at their tour schedules to see if they'll be anywhere nearby (which usually means Portland, occasionally Eugene, and rarely Medford). A while back, I looked and saw that The Piano Guys were gonna be in Jacksonville (Medford area) as part of the music festival held there every summer. I also saw that they were gonna be up in Portland at the Oregon Zoo the following night. I got excited and decided we needed to look into getting tickets for one or the other of those shows, preferably Jacksonville since it's only 2 hours away as opposed to 5. But, like most things, it slipped through the cracks and we forgot to make a plan and buy tickets. So by the time we remembered again, the show in Jacksonville was totally sold out and the one in Portland had dwindling availability (bear in mind that this was back in like mid-May and the concerts weren't until July 28 and 29). We kicked it into gear and went ahead and bought tickets for the Portland show, unsure when they'd ever be in this area again.
I got the day off from work Friday and we drove like maniacs up to Portland. The concert wasn't til 7pm, but they were opening the doors at 5, and we wanted to get there early enough to beat rush-hour traffic, AND to top it off, zoo parking is notoriously terrible, so we factored in extra time to get to the metro station. Ergo it ended up being kind of a rush. We got checked into the hotel and left there around 2:30, then got to the MAX station and caught the first train over to the zoo. We ended up having to carry a bunch of stuff, including the folding chairs we'd sit in for the concert, which was a little annoying, but the worst part was just that it was like 95°F plus humidity, which is totally unheard of for Portland. I mean, I'm glad it was like that and not pouring rain like it usually is, but it was still kinda miserable. People were already lining up for the concert by the time we got there, and we heard rumors they'd been waiting since like 10:30am. We did our circuit of the zoo (although most of the animals were hiding because it was too hot) and finally got in line at about 4:30. We got pretty good seats when we finally got into the venue, intentionally placing ourselves toward the back so we could get out easier, but it ended up being so crowded and it really wasn't any easier. We took turns staying with the chairs and backpack while other people were out filling water bottles (they had like 50 water stations set up) or getting something for dinner (they also had a big variety of food trucks set up, which is apparently the norm during this summer concert series). At one point, zoo employees came out on the stage and did a birds of prey demonstration to keep everyone occupied for a little while, and that was super cool.
The concert got started right on schedule and was an absolute blast. I love The Piano Guys' music but they're also hilarious and stop and talk between songs and make it a really fun experience. I definitely recommend seeing them live if you ever have the opportunity. During one of their songs that features a full-scale orchestra in the recorded version, they brought a group from a local youth symphony out to play with them and they were so good. They ended the show with their rendition of Rachel Platten's "Fight Song," which they've given a Scottish twist and meshed with "Amazing Grace." So naturally they brought out some guys with bagpipes. THAT was awesome. I have a few videos up (but shhh, we weren't supposed to be recording) over on Twitter if anyone wants to check them out.
Getting out of there was kind of a pain because of the crowd (and of course my mind was going to all the disasters that have happened around the world lately and I was thinking about how we'd all be killed if even one person panicked and people started stampeding). We made it back to the hotel and absolutely crashed. We'd originally planned on going all the way home the next day but had decided kind of at the last minute to stay another night in Eugene on the way home and take our time. That meant we finally got to stop at the huge outlet mall in Woodburn. We've stopped there a few times but have always been in a hurry, and for once we actually got to do some real shopping. They have all the stores that matter...by which I mean Asics, Under Armour, and Nike. I said "treat yo'self" and probably spent too much money, but it was well worth it.
We made it home a little later than we'd wanted to last night after getting stuck in traffic behind yet another fatal car crash on highway 97 (you may recall my journal from last summer detailing a similar situation). I'm not kidding when I say that stretch of highway is an absolute death trap because people drive like absolute morons. Our kitties and pup were glad to see us when we got home though, and I'm always ready to see them again even if we've only been gone a couple of days.
So tonight my sister and I are finally going to see Jason Bourne and I'm freaking pumped. We'd wanted to go to the premiere, but she's a nanny for a family with a little 3-year-old girl and they called and asked if she could work that night so we didn't get to go. I hate going to movies on week nights, but on the plus side the theater is usually pretty empty.
I'm also freaking pumped for the Olympics, particularly volleyball (shouldn't come as any surprise). The US women's indoor team is so epic -- I've seen the majority of those girls play in person while they were in college and already being so familiar with them is a lot of fun. I went in and looked at the event schedule on the Olympics website and signed up to receive reminders for all volleyball events, both men's and women's, both indoor and outdoor. And even though volleyball is the highlight, I just love watching sports in general. It's gonna suck being at work during the day when I'd normally just be at home staring at the TV in a vegetative state (because I kid you not, it always seems like our TV is on 24/7 during the Olympics). I'll no doubt be streaming live from my work computer with headphones in, getting absolutely no work done. It's gonna be exciting.
In other news, I've been getting back into working on my Italian (hadn't realized how much I really knew until we were at Olive Garden over the weekend and I could actually read some of the extra details on the menu). I seriously recommend Duolingo for all your language-learning needs. I wanna try to learn Russian so bad by the Cyrillic alphabet complicates things so much. I'm also finally on the verge of getting an Xbox One, now that the prices have dropped again in anticipation of the Xbox One S. So many of my favorite games are already backward compatible, and I've been going through major Fallout withdrawals, so I need to play Fallout 4. And the new Mirror's Edge. And Deus Ex: Mankind Divided when it comes out. I may wait until the end of the week because Friday is payday, but it's gonna happen.
Okay, back to work. Peace.
). But hey, MONEY. It's been nice to be able to actually chip away at my car payments and student loans and still be able to afford other stuff I want/need. Of course having money also means I had to file taxes for the first time this year, and while it would have been fine under normal circumstances, abnormal circumstances turned it into a nightmare. Health insurance is required in Oregon (maybe it was everywhere, I don't even know...thanks, Obama) and you have to enter health insurance info on TurboTax. I was covered on my mom's plan while I was a student, but then when I got my job, I was covered by my employer. But TurboTax only lets you enter one thing, so I put my employer insurance. Then they sent me a letter asking for health insurance coverage for the rest of the year and wanted me to send an amended tax return and some other forms and whatnot. I did that, a mere day before the deadline they'd specified in the letter...and then got it back a week and a half later with insufficient postage. ???????????????????????????? No idea why it took so long to come back (we think it probably got all the way to the IRS headquarters and then they were like "lol nope" and sent it back, which is the BIGGEST WASTE of resources ever. So I re-packaged everything, wrote up a formal business letter explaining what had happened, and then took the thing to the post office to make sure it got mailed correctly......and it didn't get there the day it was supposed to. According to the tracking information, it has now been delivered, but I'll believe it when I see it, so to speak. So if you never here from me again, it's because I got arrested for tax evasion or something.