Hockey season has taken over, and I’m not sure I like it.

I mean, I like going to the various hockey games and such, but we went to one Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of last week, there’s one coming up on Tuesday, then another on Friday. Again, don’t get me wrong - I like hockey, but I’m feeling like it’s dominating my free time. And it wouldn’t be so bad if we were kicking ass, but we’re battling mediocrity this year, so it’s not even good hockey. About one in five games is interesting; the rest of the time… well, I’ve been getting a lot of reading done.

Of course, going to the games isn’t just about the hockey, it’s also part social. I get to see my friends there that I don’t normally get to see, so it’s fun. It’s just the hockey gets in the way sometimes. Plus, each game is three hours of your evening, gone. Here’s hoping next season is better.

Jenn and I went to breakfast at IHOP on Sunday, which was nice since we don’t normally go out to breakfast. I had a chicken fajita omelette, which was tasty but stuck with me all day, and Jenn had a standard ham and cheese omelette.

After breakfast, we went on a grand tour of the city, running errands.

Stopped by the dollar store and picked up eight huge Laffy Taffy bars for the creation of my taffy masterpiece, the “taffy brick.” It’s a 7.5” x 2” x 1.5” brick of grape Laffy Taffy. I always said they should sell taffy in bricks; since they didn’t start doing that, I took it upon myself to create one. I took pictures and I’ll see if I can get them up here soon.

We also ended up stopping by the comic store (gotta get my monthly fix) and visiting my parents, among other things. Lots of travel time, but we got a lot done.

Sunday evening Jenn put up some garland around the house and I worked on a beading project I’ve had going for a while but never seem to make much progress on.

I also played a little more San Andreas. This time I went on a mission to romance a casino croupier into giving me her vault access card so I can pull a heist on the casino. Now, normally I’m down with this stuff in San Andreas, but this time… well, in order to start dating the croupier, you have to dress up in a gimp suit. Then you kill her boyfriend and go into her dungeon in his place. After that, you have the option of picking up a new melee weapon: a giant, purple, double-ended dildo. Because I somehow need to go Clockwork Orange on someone?

Now, like I said, normally I’m down with whatever they throw into this thing, but they sort of crossed the lines of good taste here, so to speak. Maybe Rockstar’s giving its Manhunt game a nod here; I don’t know, I never played that one. But come on. There’s bad taste, then there’s bad taste. I’m not sure I’m on board with this.

At work the project I’m on is picking up speed on an exponential level. My job over the next couple of weeks is to start teaching some of the other engineers around here how to use the software that my group’s working on. I think they’re jumping the gun a lot on this, since we don’t have enough done to really do anything effective, but whatever.

They want me to sit in a conference room for half a day with these guys. I guess that’s fine; my primary work focus will be getting them going. But then I also got an email from my manager and it looks like they want to put all of us in a “bull pen,” a giant open-group sort of work environment.

That’s where I draw the line.

I can’t work in an open setting like that, folks. It’s disruptive. I can’t concentrate. Not to mention my stress level goes through the roof in a situation like that. I chose a small, one-person cube over a larger, multi-person cube when I moved to this new department because I can’t work with other people in the same area. I need my space. Now everyone’s going to the same area? This is actually something I’ll consider looking for a new job over. I’ll train folks, but keeping communication lines open doesn’t require me to be stressed out and irritated by my work environment.