Day... oh who the hell cares?

Big day today! Finished a first pass of my suitcase animation (the one that was gonna be five seconds? It's 29), went into town, bought tickets for The Real McKenzies next month, bought a Sony Ericsson Experia x10 smartphone (which is smaller than your iPhone and more anti-establishmentarianist), saw "Inception", drank a bunch at an Irish pub and am now sitting on my "balcony" (the roof) with a tasty Kolsch on my netbook with no backlit keyboard. Big success.

The smartphone is a big step for me. Normally my phone criteria is "will it survive when I drop it?" But now, after 6 years of wandering the world (okay, Europe mostly) I finally have a damn map and GPS. The challenge is to not become a smartphone introvert. When you can check Facebook in a bar, it's convenient sure but you're a lot less likely to chat up strangers. I'm doing fine so far.

Gamescom is creeping up and I think the demo reel is covered with a couple of days of polish left for the swing and suitcase anims. Good thing too, as the first of my Auslander friends arrives on Sunday with a whole friggin' mob of them on Wednesday. I got some good pointers on Cologne from the expats at the Irish Pub (always an easy mark for meeting expats and foreigners in any city) and now I have a better idea on how to find things to do when I feel like crawling out of my cave.

And speaking of crawling out of my cave, the guy I'm subletting from met a girl on his road trip (nicely done!) and is going to be away for a bit longer, so I think I'm going to stay in Cologne (I know I am alternating between the English and German names for it; my proper laptop can do umlouts, my netbook cannot) for at least two more weeks. Though after Gamescom I hope to have a better idea of what my next work gig is going to be and probably what my next destination is.

No dramatic conclusion or moral to this one. Wait, there is: I'd like to take a moment to thank English tourists for making us Yanks look so well behaved in foreign pubs. Cheers for that!