I’ve said it a couple of times on this blog: a large part of my early life was spent feeling like I had something to say or create, but without really a medium to say or do it in. Something inside me was itching to get out, but I felt I was a terrible artist and no other medium than art ever occurred to me. So it never really did come out.

Then I started to blog, and for a while that was a huge if unexpected release. The more personal the blogging got, the more satisfying and liberating it was. Eventually, though, the mainstream did catch up with blogging, and it did get complicated; clients and employers were likely to read everything I would write, and somewhere along the line, fact-checking commenters started nitpicking on every shakespearian overgeneralization that I’d previously used for dramatic effect. So, for a couple of years now, I haven’t really blogged, not like I used to. Fair enough, it was great while it lasted.

Thing is, that drive is really starting to manifest again, that urge to create something, for lack of a better expression. And I’m still looking for the medium to do it in.

Should I simply learn an art? Given that I’m cerebral and love to tell stories, perhaps I should write non-fiction essays, or produce documentaries? Graphic novels? Photography? Return to videogame producing? Right now I’m thinking all of the above.

First insight: I need to invest in a cookbook.

Carrot sandwiches, though oddly tasty, don’t make for a nutritious lunch.

I’ve been thinking about whether to rent out my condo or sell it; I worry about the hassle of having to deal with a bad tenant, but real estate is probably a better investment than the stock market. At least in Montreal.

I was leaning very much towards holding on to it, and then I saw this.

About a month ago, Jonathan showed me a video about how badly the animals we eat are treated. There was no point in making myself sick watching it, I felt, if I was certain I wouldn’t consider taking action as a result. The logic was: I already know these animals suffer horribly, so I won’t be learning much. If watching it won’t change my behavior, then the sole result of watching will be to make me feel bad, which isn’t helpful to anyone. So I refused to watch it.

Oddly enough, I couldn’t put it out of my mind afterwards. Fair enough, I know about the mistreatment, the knowledge is already there, so the video wouldn’t make a difference in my behavior. But why isn’t the knowledge itself making a difference?

I started examining my reasons for discarding vegetarianism outright. Mostly, I like to train and need to keep my energy up. I find it easy to eat a protein-rich diet by including meat. I worry about missing nutrients. A little summary research easily dispelled these worries.

Also, when shopping for the new condo, I had a few arguments with my mother, baby-boomer with a vengeance, where she attacked my decision to live in the city so close to neighbors. I defended it on the ecological grounds that it would be untenable for everyone to live the suburban bungalow life, where a relatively large swath of land is taken up by relatively few people, and a car is required just to reach a decent video store. But meanwhile, I couldn’t escape the conclusion that a similar argument can be made against meat-eating. That is, since many more resources are used to produce 1000 calories of meat than of grain, it’s untenable for everyone to eat meat daily.

But most importantly, the more I thought about all this, the more bacon tasted like dead pig, and eggs like the forced output of unhappy, half-mad hens. And then fate dealt my inner carnivore a final blow by dropping me in Scotland and Sweden for two weeks, two weeks of non-stop meatballs, steak pies and huge slabs o’ deer. As tasty as steak pie is (and God knows, it is), my very cells were screaming for arugula by the time I reached Trudeau.

So here I am, out of arguments against being a vegetarian. There’s no question that it’s better ecologically and ethically. It’s also better for me, and being already very focused on what I eat, I should be able to easily make the small necessary adjustments to ensure I get all the nutrients I need, even to support serious fitness training. And finally, I’m kind of sick of the taste of meat right now anyway.

So I’m embarking on a little experiment, giving vegetarianism a trial run. I will eat a lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet for 100 days starting October 1st. It won’t be anal no-meat-must-touch-my-food vegetarianism, but rather loose pick-the-pepperoni-off-the-pizza vegetarianism. I might not have the thanksgiving turkey, but I’ll have the stuffing.

Another ground rule: no preaching. This post isn’t an attack on meat-eaters or bungalow-dwellers, but simply a clarification of my position. I expect my loved ones to respect this decision, and in my turn I won’t preach or moralize.

100 days should be long enough to feel the effects of the change in my lifestyle and habits as much as on my body, for better or worse. It’s long enough to find it challenging, and to work through the challenges. And maybe it’s even long enough to make a tiny difference.

Today, I became the proud owner of my second condo. We move into it Saturday.

Which means I have a nice condo for rent in the Village, if anyone is interested.

I’d also be interested in any advice/tips anyone would have about the short-term renting out of furnished apartments, and agencies who manage that sort of thing in Montreal.

You know that upcoming trip to Scotland I was talking about in my last post? It was with Zoom, the airline that went bankrupt yesterday.

What I didn’t say in my last post, is that we also have tickets (with another airline), going from Scotland to Sweden, paid and non-refundable. Accommodation and train passes in Sweden, paid and non-refundable. So not only do we lose our tickets to Scotland, but unless we buy another pair of tickets to Scotland at this late (and therefore expensive) hour, we lose the rest of the trip as well.

It’s okay, I said, I have a free ticket with Air Canada, I said. A quick call to Air Canada allowed me to find out that my free ticket would cost me over 600$ in of fuel surcharges and other fees. Jonathan, who had fewer points, would have to pay 1100$ for his reward ticket.

Zoom executives said they were “desperately sorry” for the inconvenience.

Last night I tossed and turned, desperately sorry that Jonathan was going to miss his best friend’s wedding, and miss seeing the family he hasn’t seen in a year, while he wrote our miserable apologies to his parents and the fiancés. It was a miserable night and morning as we scrambled and racked our brains for a way we could afford a new pair of tickets, but kept finding we just couldn’t.

This morning, however, I found out that American Express will be refunding all card members who booked Zoom tickets and now cannot use them, even if they aren’t stranded, even if they don’t have the AmEx travel insurance, even if AmEx never recoups the expense from Zoom in their turn. I called and spoke to several CSRs, including managers, to ask over and over again if they were SURE we would be refunded, and had it spelled out to me in 14 different ways that we would be.

AmEx, je t’aime.

And so it looks like I have to finish my dress after all.

Iron Man the movie hit the theaters yesterday, and the game hit stores. The PS2, PSP, PC and Wii are the ones I got to produce. The next gen SKUs were done by Sega’s own studio.

Last night we went to the movie, then home with the newly purchased game and I watched Jonathan play. The evening was a very cool ride, a happy culmination to 18 months of hard work.

When I produced Happy Feet, access to assets was complicated by the fact that the movie was being produced in Australia. Nevertheless, the whole team got to see the movie at various stages of its production. I had therefore seen it three times by the time it was released.

With Iron Man, the film crew was extremely open with assets, and we visited the set, witnessed some scenes being shot, met director, cast and crew, saw flight animation tests and the Iron Monger suit in the “flesh”, visited Stark mansion and saw Iron Man suit concept art, but I never read the script or actually saw the movie. Consequently, having been allowed access to some information, without seeing the finished product, just made the whole thing extremely tantalizing.

And last night was the biggest payoff a superhero fan could wish for. The movie is awesome, definitely up there with the first Spider-Man for superhero movies.

Go. And make sure you stay until the end of the credits

This has been brewing for many months, and today I can blog it. Late last week, I resigned from my post as Game Director. I won’t go into the specifics of my reasons for this move here, but suffice it to say I haven’t taken employment elsewhere as a videogames producer (or any other position for that matter). In my estimation, Artificial Mind and Movement is an employer of the highest integrity, humanity and professionalism, the best I’ve worked for. Nevertheless, I haven’t enjoyed being a game director there in a while.

Considering how highly I esteem A2M, I doubt things would be better elsewhere, so I haven’t traded this job for another one. Wanting more control and flexibility over my conditions, the manner in which my work is done, and consequently the final result, I’ve decided to just leave, trust the future and see what interesting doors open.

In the meantime, I’ll pursue two avenues: freelancing, and working on a special project. I’ll write more about each shortly.

I’m taking a night class in graphic design - I have a lot of ideas for web-based side projects, and taking the class is cheaper than hiring a designer. Plus, there’s a weird, alchemical quality to the skill of graphic designers, which I see as an “art with rules” that I’ve always been curious about.

I worried that a night class would cater mostly to housewives looking to “have evening activities”, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. The teacher, a self-described old-school old fart, seems to be aiming to train professional designers. This is not my goal, but it’s definitely going to be an honest class.

Nevertheless, in every course one seems to meet the same archetypes of obnoxious classmates: the Oversharer, who feels the need to provide long personal stories illustrating each element of the lesson. These seem particularly common in management classes, and thankfully graphic design doesn’t lend itself well to this. However, no night class I’ve ever taken has ever been without a Commentator, the one sitting in front making unfunny jokes on everything the teacher says, thinking it’s banter, but really just delaying the proceedings needlessly. Who are those people?

A large part of the game Mass Effect involves conversation with other characters. They say something to you, you pick among a choice of replies and they react to what you say. Depending on how charming or intimidating your own character becomes over the course of the game, more extreme dialog options become open to you. Experimenting with how characters will react to different lines is most of the fun of the game for me.

But I knew this could get really good when I was admiring a beautiful view with Kaidan, my male subordinate, and he inadvertently let slip something that suggested he was into me.

Now, it doesn’t matter that poor Kaidan looks like Erik Estrada and is written the way a male game designer thinks I want a man to be (basically a 32-year-old telekinetic virgin). I felt the same fuzziness, the same “whoa, did I just hear that?” feeling in my gut as when a new romantic interest is expressed in real life. I wondered how far it would go, and suddenly all my conversational choices with Kaidan revolved around nurturing the budding flame.

Later in the game, I met Liara, a knockout of a blue-skinned alien chick who’s also a socially awkward scientist. No matter what conversational options you choose, Liara wants you bad and overcomes her geeky shyness to let you know it. Indeed, nothing you say seems to turn her off (written the way a male game designer wants a woman to be?). She wasn’t particular about the fact that I’m a female, either. See, her race, the Asari, only has females (yah). In fact, she’s so easy that the first time I played through the game, I accidentally slept with her. And by trying to be a weeeee bit coy with Kaidan, I ended up crushing him.

So the next time I played it safe, acting all but abusive to Liara (because let’s face it, I felt she’d violated me in the first playthrough) and playing mother hen to Kaidan’s paper-thin male ego, and successfully ended up with him in the end.

In a surprising development, last night the two of them confronted me to make a definitive choice. Oh, the drama. I opted for Kaidan but noticed that I did have the option to ask if I could have them both. Now THAT, my friends, is replayability.

In other situations in the game, I wanted to choose one option to see what would happen, but just couldn’t morally bring myself to do it, or would feel truly sorry for the impact I’d had. I couldn’t abstract away the emotions just to satisfy my game designer’s curiosity. And that’s huge.

Mass Effect doesn’t come close to giving me as powerful or complex emotions as I’ve felt watching great cinema, but it comes closer than any game ever has before, and to me that’s a step forward for the medium. I guess the most important thing it made me feel, then, is hope.