This year Thanksgiving was quite a small affair for Anastasia’s immediate family. Usually it’s a big todo, but this year Anastasia and I, Anastasia’s mother, grandmother and a family friend had a cosy dinner (lunch) together in Ocala. Sleep was fairly so-so, I kept on waking up, but I figure that’s just getting used to a new bed. Anastasia and I pottered around for a bit before taking supplies upstairs to the room with the oven so that the cooking could start. I head back downstairs at this point, as I was going to be spending a good chunk of this time trying to get some webwork done. After various attempts to try and get some work done, I keep getting interrupted with requests to bring various things up and down the two floors separating the rooms, so I limit myself to reserach into web hosting for the site that I’ve been working on for the sushi restaurant in Gainesville.

After a while, it was time for the actual meal. It was very different to previous Thanksgiving dinners in that only Anastasia and I ate at the table – the others set up on the couch and chair by the tv and watched football the whole time! As I understand it, they were very important games to watch that day… anyway, much more casual than I’m used to for Thanksgiving.

Afterwards, Anastasia and I head back downstairs and I put her to bed for her post-Thanksgiving-meal-nap (something 98% of Americans seem to do) and I jumped back on my computer to do a bit more work. I eventually found a good webhost that I could use that had everything that I wanted for the sushi site, and ought to set me up fairly well for other US-based sites in the future as well. I ordered the hosting and worked out the various costs for managing it. I talked online to Nik, wrote a whole bunch of emails and just surfed around for a little while. Anastasia meanwhile has finished her nap and been upstairs most of the time having a long catch-up chat with her mother. After that, everyone goes to bed.

Friday was a good day, spent lazing around with Anastasia, just relaxing and enjoying a day off from everything. Played a few computer games, watched some anime, generally just mucked about. Leftover Chinese for lunch, leftover Thanksgiving food for dinner, a lazy day with the only harder bit being packing up as much as we can into the car at the end of the evening in preparation for leaving the next day.

Yesterday morning saw us pack up the last of our stuff, then head off to Gainesville. We managed to get back early enough that we missed the traffic going mental for the University of Florida vs. Florida State University football game. I’ve been told that this is a huge rivalry and is one of the most attended games out of the whole season. I went along with Anastasia to the game, and had a good time. There was a guy the section over from us who was dressed up like the Heisman trophy, which was really, really cool. It’s a pretty big deal to win the Heisman and this year the quarterback for UF, Tim Tebow, is a very strong contender for it, even though he’d be the first sophomore in history to get it. Anyway, good times at the game, then today was mostly recovery.

Well, yesterday I had a very groggy start after waking up at 4.45am and not getting back to sleep for about an hour and a half. It was a fairly long day at work, with some actual work to start off, then just helping everyone pack up the whole place into boxes. It was weird seeing the office with nothing in it but boxes. Anyway, after that I did some webwork at home, talked online to Nik and Ian (work-related), some more work, then crashed.

This morning was the big move. I got to the office early to find a very cranky boss – the movers had showed up earlier than expected, and he was the only one there to let them in to get started. Anyway, I calmed him down and people started trickling in to help out. The move to the new place was a success, we unpacked a bunch of stuff then got to leave – Thanksgiving is a pretty big deal here and all that jazz. Anastasia and I picked up the turkey for our Thanksgiving trip, got home, packed up, then left for Ocala. There were some issues checking in (the rooms we were going to get didn’t have any ovens for cooking the turkey!), but eventually we got checked in and sorted out. I chilled out with Anastasia for a while, since her mother and grandmother (with whom we were spending Thanksgiving) got lost on the way. We brought our supplies in, then ordered Chinese for dinner while we were waiting. When they arrived we ate, then back downstairs to our room to go to sleep. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving!

Today Anastasia and I have been together for four years, which is one heck of an achievement, particularly given that it has been long distance from Florida to New Zealand more or less from day one. Today itself wasn’t especially full of romantic stuff as I had a long day at work, Anastasia had classes, etc.

This weekend we celebrated rather well, though. On Friday night, we went out for dinner to Tapas 12 West. This was lovely, the food was good and it was just a lovely experience for the both of us. I even got to try some cinnamon ice cream, which was pretty nice! A quiet evening in for the two of us after that. On Saturday we drove out to a lovely bed and breakfast a little out of Gainesville. Our hosts were great people, the whole place had a really great, relaxed atmosphere to it. The place is sitting literally on the lakeside with a stunning view out over the water. There’s a hot tub to relax in and the room we were staying in was really spacious and comfortable. The bed in particular was super-comfortable and I had some of the best sleep I’ve ever had on it… I woke up feeling like I’d had a good night’s sleep even with less sleep than I would usually attribute to that. It was weird waking up so early and feeling so refreshed after so little sleep, actually. I reckon I should try and get one of those beds….

Anyway, we’d had dinner that night at one of the local restaurants called Cowboys, which was nice enough but nothing stellar. Breakfast at this B&B is whenever you happen to feel like it (which adds to the whole “relax” factor), so you don’t have to be up between the hours of first light and second light in order to “enjoy” your food. The food in the morning (after a great night’s rest) was really tasty, and we had a lively discussion with our hosts over breakfast as well, which was really neat. We spent some more time chilling out in our room, sampled the hot tub again and just generally enjoyed relaxing together, talking about everything and nothing.

After enjoying ourselves thoroughly at the bed and breakfast, we came back into Gainesville and had a leisurely lunch at the Bento Cafe before walking down to see American Gangster at the movie theater a couple of buildings over. That movie is superb by the way, and I would thoroughly recommend it. After all of that it was home for the evening for me, Anastasia had a brief sorority meeting to go to, but other than that we just did some more relaxing with each other and enjoying the feeling of accomplishment at having come as far as we have. In some ways it seems like a much shorter period of time, like it has flown by… certainly I know being able to be with her here in Gainesville has made my life far more enjoyable and makes time fleeting. Other times, when we have been apart for so long, time has seemed to drag on… and while in some ways that is the traditional lovers’ lament of time dragging on without each other, for me it is certainly true. Sure I have other things going on in my life, but it’s never as complete, never as whole without Anastasia being there to share in it with me. I love her dearly and can not imagine my life without her in it.

This week I made the general decision to stay in New Zealand after Christmas until I head to Japan, which was by no means easy to do. There were a lot of things that factored into this choice and certainly the financial consideration was a significant one. Although the flights aren’t nearly as expensive as I had thought they would be, when I look at my finances I don’t know that I can really justify flying back again, particularly with no regular guarantee of work, since my work permit for the US runs out at the end of December and I wouldn’t be able to continue my work as a production assistant. In some ways the money thing seems silly, like I shouldn’t be basing these kinds of decisions on that, but it plays a part whether I like it or not at the moment. So anyway, that was probably the biggest decision about what I’m doing with myself that I’ve made in a few months.

Monday was Veterans Day here in the US, which means that Anastasia got the day off school but I still had to go to work. Work this week has mostly been a whole lot of emailing candidates and other people that send in their materials to be considered. I also had to set up an account with Dell for acquiring our new computers, do a bunch of testing, and write up/edit a bunch of contract paperwork for the transition to being Ignition Entertainment rather than as Artificial Studios. On the web front, I’ve done some work on the sushi site, I’m making good progress there.

When Anastasia and I did some grocery shopping on Wednesday, we somehow managed to leave a bag behind at the store… which we then went back and got the next day, so it was all fine, just a bit annoying. On the way home from work yesterday I tried to pick Anastasia up from school and failed… instead of being where she usually is at that time, she was slightly different and so I ended up missing her completely. Oops!

Today I’ve done some web-work through the morning, looked some stuff up for my boss and dropped Anastasia off at work. A good chunk of work today was spent figuring out what to do for our moving company… we’re shifting offices next week before Thanksgiving, and after dicking around for a month or so and not doing anything with the contacts that Barrett looked up, Jeremy tells us to make it happen within the day (or at least by Monday) or there’s hell to pay… what the hell? Well, I sorted out a couple of companies to come look at the place and give us quotes on Monday (ballparked over the phone first) and arranged for people to be here when they were here if I wasn’t going to be. Although I’m not expecting any pats on the head for getting it right…

Anyway, got all that sorted, did a bunch of play testing and then went home to do a bit more web-work before embarking on Anastasia and I’s weekend. This coming Monday is our four year anniversary, so we’re spending the weekend on and with each other, which will be lovely. I’ll post more on Monday.

Well, this week was a bit of a typical “work week” in that I went to work each day, worked, came home and other work on most days, then did something to fry my brain and relax. The weekend was mostly about relaxing, as it was fairly busy at work this week. We’ve been putting together milestone documents and I’ve been going through resume after resume, portfolio after portfolio, sending out emails to all of the potential candidates for our open positions. I’m the acting Human Resources manager at the moment, apparently. In other work news, I dropped in at the local sushi restaurant and had a preliminary meeting to get the job description and details for their website. Ought to be a small but nifty kind of job.

Other than all the work stuff this week, I went to Lea’s softball game on monday, read some manga, finally finished watching the anime version of Ouran High School Host Club (thanks, Jen!) and talked to lots of people from all over the show online. Anastasia has had Engineering Day today, and preparation for it yesterday, so that’s eaten up a bit of Anastasia’s time as well… she certainly seems to enjoy it though, so it’s to the good. ^^

The other thing that happened this week is I got my delayed celebrations for my birthday – Anastasia put sparklers into enchiladas for me, which was awesome and hilarious. ^^ Apart from that, Anastasia, Lea and I had another cards night with some sake, which was a lot of fun… once again, I’m reminded that I’m an alright card-player, but not a great one. Still, I have a lot of fun playing anyway, which is the point, is it not?