I love this face!

Just heard a slight whimper from downstairs as I am sitting here writing in my blog and I walked downstairs to find Cora next to the screen door, whimpering to go pee! Just a minute ago she was knocked out under the couch but at 10 weeks she can already walk down to the door when she needs to go.

So proud. ~.~

Maximum Level Reached

I've spent countless hours the last several weeks playing Restaurant City on Facebook. During work, while watching TV, before dinner, after dinner, during dinner, at night... all hours of the day spent monitoring and managing my restaurant.





Finally, I've reached Level 27 -- the maximum level possible in this game. Not sure all that time spent was worth the miniscule wave of achievement felt as I earned my last $300 cash bonus for leveling up.

But what makes a game addicting? What makes it so powerfully engaging you remember to play 2-3 times a day? That's exactly what I'm trying to figure out as I design a Facebook game for one of our unsaid clients. Hint: it's for a product that just launched into the marketplace and by product I mean car. :P

This is the first time I've ever designed or strategically planned for a game, especially one that will have so much exposure. It took us several rounds of presentations to get the idea sold to the clients and so far I've built experience maps, prototypes, content plans and design specs for it. We are scheduled to release the design assets over to the developers next week and the game will hopefully launch sometime next month. Eek!

Good Morning

This is what I wake up to in the mornings. Super cute, but super annoying when by morning I actually mean 4:30am.

Ooopsie

After a nap, I groggily walked downstairs to start heating up some food for dinner. My mom left an array of cooked Indonesian food on the kitchen counter and I just started mindlessly putting stuff in the microwave and the stove for reheating.

A minute later I notice that the flames under the soup pot were much higher than normal -- I've never seen the flame go up the side of the pot like that before. In fact, it smelled a little like burning.



Turns out genius little me accidentally left the cork pot stand stuck to the bottom of the pot before putting it on the burner. Ooopsie.

Please let me sleep!

I can't believe it's been about 3 weeks with the new puppy and I haven't had the chance to write a single thing about her! Exactly 3 weeks ago we went to Sandra's co-worker's house in Lawndale to look at her 7-week-old puppies. There were 10 total but only 6 survived.

Max immediately fell in love with the runt of the litter, who they called Pookie. She was the smallest of the group but had the cutest face. Jo-Anne met with us and picked up the largest of the group, Tiger.



We weren't fully prepared for a puppy so our first stop was Centinela Pet Feed. We named her "Cora" in the car -- short for Coraline. Her skinny body and long tail reminds me of the rats in the movie. She knocked out in the car and didn't do much. She looked so frail for a 7-week old puppy. I remembered Lulu as meatier and more playful at this age but I thought maybe it's because she was the runt and was malnourished.



Jo-Anne called her puppy Lady and the next week was puppy week at Rapp. We took turns watching the pups while we both worked/had meetings but most of the time they played or slept in my cube. Lady seemed to be twice Cora's size. They were very feisty when they played together. After that first week, Lady stayed with us for the next 10 days while Jo-Anne was on vacation. Luckily, I also had quite a few days off between my summer flex days and 4th of July holiday.



We always had to keep a close eye on Lady because she would steal Lulu and Cora's food when we were not watching. She was always so hungry! She seemed to be about a week ahead in development and did things like bark, jump, run up and down the stairs a full week ahead of Cora. She was also more playful and rambunctious.

After two weeks of puppy terror Lady went back home with Jo-Anne and Cora was stuck with Lulu. Lulu is a lot more tolerant of Cora without Lady around and even lets her play with her face in the mornings. The other day I completely stepped on Cora's leg and she cried for about 30 seconds during which Lulu came quickly to see what was the matter. I'm hoping these two get to become best buds so they can keep each other company while we're at work.





So the biggest difference in my life so far is that I have not had a good solid 6 hours of sleep in 3 weeks! Cora wakes up every morning at 4-4:30AM to ask to go outside, and then wakes up again at 6am to play. No matter how much we try to tire her out in the evening, she always wakes up at the same time. At first I was worried that she was unable to hold "it" longer than 4 hours but during the day she's shown that she can. Not sure why she seems to have an internal alarm clock that likes waking me at the crack of dawn.