A Month
Tomorrow is the first mensiversary of my little quest. Many things have changed around here. Living on a tight budget has had some interesting effects on the life of my family. My wife has absolutely perfected her meal plans. We are eating food from all over the globe these days. We have had Moroccan stews and Indian curries, and she has been making fresh breads of all kinds in our bread machine and oven. She is a vegetarian, and if you know anything about me, you know I love my meat. I love my meat and I love my beer, neither of which I have had too much of lately. As a side effect of this diet, I have lost about ten pounds in this time. My face looks thinner and I can no longer do my favorite relaxation pose: sitting with fingers interlocked and resting on top of my belly. Now my hands just slide right down to my waist. It makes me sad. There is one dream of mine that will have to be postponed for a while (see picture on right). Luckily some very good friends have been kind enough to provide me with weekly unemployment beers. Dudes, I love you! Also, we have experienced the triumphant return of the Wine Fairy. You see, our nice neighbor from upstairs used to work in the wine import industry. After many of the wine tastings she used to host, she would bring a few opened wine bottles and leave them just outside our back door. There is nothing more magical than opening your door and finding free wine, let me tell you! Now she is contracting with her old company again and the Wine Fairy is back, at least temporarily.

My wife is a rare mix of a complete technophobe and an avid technophile. She resists trying new technologies out of some unexplained fear, but once she takes the plunge, she fully embraces it and can no longer live without it. Budget or not, we have two small children and there is a lot of shopping of clothes, books and toys that has to happen. In her search for bargains, she has become a fan of thrift stores and taken full advantage of the public library system. She has also joined the FreeCycle network and became a latecomer to the addictive world of eBay. It is simply amazing the amount of free or nearly free stuff you can get your hands on with a little effort. It is also a very good thing that she only found eBay during a time when we have no spare money to spend on random things. She checks those websites constantly, and her mood goes up and down according to the bids she is winning or losing and the free things she finds. I am scared of what could happen if I finally land a job. Oh boy...

The one thing that I am not too happy with is the state of the demo. I am very proud of all the things that I have learned this month. I no longer feel totally lost when reading the many articles and white papers on computer graphics and games. But I need to make the demo into something that truly shows what I have learned and what I am capable of, and that is not the case right now. I need to strike the right balance between proving my potential to a game company and actually writing a game myself. The latter is not an option. We have done well, but I can not remain unemployed for much longer. I need to do a little meditation and thinking right now. And lots and lots of coding!