In college, I was almost universally referred to simply as “gergi”.  Since then, there have been numberous times I’ve come across an old college friend where they can’t recall my real name but can usually pull “gergi” without a problem.  No complaints from me - I like my nickname.

On the other hand, Christina acquired the nickname “killer” at her previous job.  When she quit there last year, she thought she had finally outlived down the nickname.  Unfortunately, at her new job there are many Christinas, Kristins, etc so they mentioned that they’d have to give her a nickname.  Christina foolishly told them about her previous nickname, they readily took it up, and now she’s stuck with it again.

At the wedding this past weekend, her friends family has referred to Christina as “peanut” as long as they’ve known her.  I’m sure it has nothing to do with her dimunitive size.

Most likely, the two of us will be known as gergi and the killer peanut for many years to come.

Dreams are funny things.  Every guy knows that all girls do when having sleepovers is have pillow fights but somehow, when I’m there to see it, it doesn’t seem quite as exciting as I thought it would be.  Granted, in my case, this is almost certainly due to the fact that 1/2 the girls are feline.  That’s right, Argo and Christina are at it again.  Argo has rekindled her love for Christina’s pillow and each night consists of Argo gradually pushing Christina off her pillow until she has the whole pillow and Christina is left with her head hanging off the side of the bed.  It would be funny except that Christina doesn’t seem to find it so very funny and that means I get to deal with the resultant grumpy Christina.  Somehow, I thought these pillow fights had a happier ending…

This weekend, I helped my sister Amye move down in Richmond.  She moved into a good-sized house though she seemed to have enough furniture for 3 or 4 houses.  I pity her for having to get it all straight.  We didn’t get it all unloaded until about 9pm Saturday night and, by that point, no one was particularly interested in helping to get it organized.  I have a feeling her boyfriend is going to be sore for several days (as I am) and my 8-month pregnant sister probably isn’t going to be moving too much furniture for awhile.

I was supposed to repeat the process next month to help my other sister but unfortunately, Erin moved up her move out date to one of my otherwise busy weekends.  My mom is about to have whiplash as she goes from a house of 5.5 girls to just herself in just 2 weeks.

Networking is the key to getting ahead.  It’s much easier to get what you’re looking for if you already know someone that has it, be it a job, a random piece of knowledge, directions, etc.  I’ve collected contact information from most people I’ve become acquainted with and have consistently come across one problem: There is no easy way to store and synchronize the contact information between my phone, laptop, desktop, and webmail.

I use an iPhone to make calls, GMail to send/receive email, my laptop when I’m traveling, and my desktop primarily as a media storage center.  Each of these things needs to have an up-to-date copy of my contacts or else I have to scramble around to find the device that has the certain phone number or email address I’m trying to reach.

Syncing between certain things is relatively easy, like my laptop address book to my iPhone, but even that tends to be buggy — lost contacts, missing information, randomly merged contacts — and only syncs some of my devices.  I even signed up a couple years ago for dotMac, now Mobile Me, primarily to sync contacts between my desktop and laptop and while it worked better than any other solution I’ve come across, it was also susceptible to the same problems and doesn’t integrate with GMail contacts.  I’ve glanced at Plaxo and numerous off-the-shelf solutions but they inevitably disappoint.  The new Google Contact API seems promising but is going to be limited by the support it receives from other application developers.

For our final anniversary-related activity, Christina and I joined another couple for dinner at Quarterdeck, a crab house in Arlington.  The restaurant was one of the more idiosyncrastic places I’ve ever been.  It was right in the middle of the city of Arlington, surrounded by skyscrapers on all sides, with a military base next door.  Yet it was a small wooden building with a slightly worn look and decor that looked like it was ripped off the beach.  It definitely worked for the place though as you usually need reservations to get in and it’s filled with locals.

There was a tourist couple in there though and they asked us how to eat the crabs.  We’d never really though about it but unless you live on the Mid-Atlantic, East Coast, the idea of a crabhouse might be foreign to you (a quick Google search and every first page item except one is on the East Coast).  The best moment of the night was the expression on Christina’s face when Jason told the guy “You just rip this stuff out, it’s not good — it’s the lungs and other things”… she preferred to be in the dark as to what pieces she was tearing away at.

Today was my 1st wedding anniversary and to celebrate, we decided to take a day trip out to Harpers Ferry and Shepherdstown, WV yesterday.  Harpers Ferry is a historic town where the WV, MD, and VA borders meet.  It’s a National Park devoted mainly to the significance it had during the Civil War.  Christina and I had gone kayaking down the river Harpers Ferry lies on awhile ago.  All in all, a short but very nice trip for anyone interested in hiking, history, or kayaking.  Afterwards, we had lunch up in Shepherdstown, a small college town in WV.  Christina checked out a few of the shops and then we headed back home to relax before dinner.  

Tonight, we went to Maggianos for dinner.  We had our reception there after our wedding but we didn’t actually get to eat at any point that evening…  We figured we might as well see if the food was any good!  Very satisfied, we’ve decided to try and make dinner at Maggiano’s a regular in our (many) future anniversaries.

While I think many people including me, are still scratching their heads on how I came to be married, I’ve found that while married life is very different, it isn’t quite as different as I expected it to be.  She never leaves, she’s even more persistent on knowing everything about me, and she has all kinds of crazy notions on how we should spend our time and money and yet overall, the joy of the last year has been worth the hassle.

I recently worked on a document that was to be published and needed a pretty thorough editorial review before I could publish it.  Not having an editorial staff on-hand, I sent it off as a first draft to several friends and family members.  I felt a little more confident when the “early” reviews came in as they all affirmed that I was in good shape.  A couple had one or two tiny recommendations but even my mother-in-law thought it was solid.

I’m a fairly critical person, in general, and of no one more so than myself.  I’m constantly striving for self-improvement and, often erroneously, assume all others are as well.  I tend to keep most criticism to myself but when asked, I generally try to provide constructive criticism to help people out.  I genuinely enjoy helping people out with my observations.  Occasionally, I’m sure my criticism comes out even when I don’t intend it to be as such — I’m sure Christina would agree with that.

Reaffirming what I knew already, my mom sent me her suggestions on my work.  I most certainly got both my critical nature and desire to be helpful from her as I glanced through the several pages worth of suggestions that she had for me!  Unsatisfied, she then sent me a rewritten alternative version.  Let the writer beware (when he asks his mom for help!)

Good fences make good neighbors, or so they say.  As a frequent host for various get-togethers, there have been a number of times where one group of friends encounters a different group of friends.  Your high school friends come to the same party as your college friends, your work colleagues attend the same event as your family, etc.  While it’s always a challenge and a concern on their compatibility, typically things work out well.  Granted, that is not always the case or else wedding planning seating would be easy — Don’t want to sit your boss next to your mom who might just tell him what she thinks of her son’s position in the company!

As a frequest participant in an ever-growing group of friends who get together and play regularly on XBox Live, I’ve been a spectator in many clashes of personalities or disagreements on how to play the game “right”.  Particularly as friend of friends, relatives of those friends, and work colleagues of those relatives join our group, certain personalities start to grate on others.  We have our own version of the The Guy Who Never Stops Trash-Talking and the Silent Types.  We have Whiners as well as Winners.  We have Guys Who Take Games Too Seriously and even a girl who believes a pink chainsaw is the answer to most questions … and quite often, she’s right.

I do not play online against random strangers very often and with a fairly large regular group of friends online, I don’t have to.  There is a greater sense of fulfillment of beating my friends in a well-fought match or even losing to a friend in a brilliant unexpected move than there would be against random people I don’t know.  While some were unknown at first (e.g. a friend of a friend), most have assimilated into the greater group and form strong friendships.  Just as important, playing with my friends doesn’t allow the gameplay to degrade — everyone is friends with everyone else for a reason and eventually, people will come around and resolve their differences.

A few days ago, I was playing poker again and really having a bad run.  I hopped into yet another game I was predestined to get sucked out on but a strange thing happened while I was playing.  Another person at the 6-handed table starting asking me some pretty random questions.  At first, I assumed it was someone who recognized my username from when I played on PokerRoom.  That site was my preferred poker site until it left the US market.  I was pretty well known player on that site as I had tremendous success there.  After a few minutes though, it became apparent the player knew me personally somehow.  I was a little leery and didn’t really want to get involved in a conversation with some random person who somehow knew me so I was a bit cagey with my responses — given then I usually refrain from talking at all, it was surprising I responded at all.  It was fortuitous that I did though.  When he asked if I still played spades, I did a double-take on the username of the player and realized exactly who it had to be.  It turned out to be my best friend from high school, Joe.  My sister Amye once tracked me down online but I knew she played so that was just a funny coincidence.  My friend and I hadn’t spoken in years and I had no idea what he was up to.  It was the most incredibly random meeting yet.

I tend to be quite self-conscious about the image I portray to others. I always try to put my best out there so that people don’t get the wrong impression of me. The past couple days, I’ve gotten a few choice quotes thrown my way:

To my cousin-in-law from his girlfriend: “Does Shawn ever get tired of winning at everything?”

From a frustrated friend during our Gears session: “What the %!@^# is your secret?”

Both of those are great for my self-esteem… so the following put me back in my place:

From a friend’s fiancee: “He’s such a good looking guy. Have you told him that he doesn’t need to make that face that makes him look like a douche all the time?”