Sometimes, I read other people's journals and I wonder how I'm getting away with it.

"It" being "not having a sucky time of things lately."

I guess I've had a fair bit of crap going on, and I certainly go through plenty of "why me" when the shit hits the fan, but right now I honestly just don't have anything to complain about.

Er, Knock on wood.

Of course, as a journal writer that can mean Boring Times Ahead. No one wants to read about my many attempts to get the NPC database project complete. Nope. Or how many cute shirts I bought today. [Zero, since it's ugly and rainy again. I swear, it's a California conspiracy.]

Some people *might* be interested in reading about my ship party for Console, but I keep half-writing entries and they all turn out poopy.

Suffice it to say:

The party was held close to the office in a cute little catering venue surrounded by little stone garden grottos. It boasted an open bar for 3 hours. (3 Tom Collins(es) and 2 glasses of wine, thank you.)

There were only 6 women present out of 60 attendees. Welcome to game development. (At least 2 of my other ship parties had a closer to normal ratio...)

A bizarre story: One of the other 5 women, our admin assistant Kim, came into work on Tuesday with a cast on her wrist. (She got a new red one before the party on Wednesday.) I didn't find out until the party that Kim broke her wrist by hitting her husband. Apparently it was all just joking around, too - "we play rough", she says.

Something that caught me off guard: There was some mad chivalry going on - guys taking my coat and getting me drinks and or water whenever required. Felt weird coming from people I've worked with for months. It's not like I magically morphed into a girl overnight or something...

The Geek(tm) moment of the evening was the pinata. Not just any ordinary pinata. This was a pinata shaped like the icon to our console development software package. I told you we were geeks. We took turns hitting it with a hockey stick. Most people before me just tapped it a bit, but I gave it a good hard whack and ripped a hole in it, causing a few candies to trickle out. [We didn't need blindfolds because we were all drunk anyway. Several people missed entirely.]

A group of us adjourned to a local dive bar afterwards, right across the street from SimCompany. I spent half of the rest of the evening "ballroom" dancing with an engineer named Wombat. (No, it's not his real name.) It's funny - I can do the swing/ballroom dancing while drunk, but as soon as the dancing stops I stumble around with all of the grace of a wounded rhinocerous.

When I wasn't dancing, I went to sit down and became, apparently, Princess Athena, because I was surrounded by a small group of guys who extolled my praises for the rest of the night. [As I recall, they were hooked once they found out I was a programmer in college.]

It was just like being in the old Computer Science lounge in college, except the guys didn't reek of body odor. And they were much more palatable to the eyes.

But it was a little awkward, being as I was with these people that I've worked with for a while now. They were being very kind and getting me water, though, which helped immensely in fending off any sign of a hangover.

AI got several day-after emails from these guys, making sure I was OK and one apologizing if the extra attention offended me in any way. (I do recall the guy was a little too eager to cop a feel. Grr.) It honestly reminded me of my old (brief) days frequenting the fraternities in college.

So that was the ship party. Fun, although it would have been nice if there was a little less attention paid to me, as it's sort of embarrassing in retrospect. I prefer to be "one of the guys" as opposed to "the one sitting with the guys." Sheesh. It's like they've never seen a girl before.

Maybe they haven't.

---

Lest you think this is normal operating procedure:

Last night, Hunter and I went to what we were told was an impromptu "party" at Ray and Laura's house.

We arrived about a half hour after the "party" started. And we were the only guests there.

And we continued to be the only guests there for an hour and a half, before a single extra guest showed up.

What a BLOWOUT party, right?

The sad thing was that Ray and Laura did expect more people. Ray had set up all the liquor on the bar, and he had set up a game where you guess a number from one to six and do the corresponding "mystery" shot.

Ray and the 5th guest Jason were the only willing players.

Before Jason arrived, we were hungry, so we called a local pizza place and ordered two large pizzas.

You want to know what the bill came to?

$42.37. For TWO fucking pizzas.

[shakes fist] Caaaaliiifooorniaaa!

Apparently this was not an isolated rip-off. Laura has ordered from a couple other pizza joints and the going rate appears to be about $20 a pizza.

What the fuck, people? Californians can't even make decent pizza, let ALONE a masterpiece that would be worth $22.

Where's my fucking Papa John's?

So be warned, East Coasters. The only thing you'll be able to afford in California is sushi.

If you're lucky.