I need an art project

So I’ll put a few ideas here to inspire me.

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while – Create some really cool clothes for myself.

So let’s see 3 things I’d like to try – White shirt with patterns on it (my style of art yeah!). And hat. I’d like to have a hat that has drawing all over it too.

So I guess what I need is some white t-shirts (maybe I’ll get one of those super cheap shirt packs size Medium) and a pair of jeans also I need a good new hat that I can play with.

So that’s the idea. I’ll get to it and post updates here as I proceed with the work.

I miss exercising???!?!

I hurt my back over the weekend. I’m not really sure how. One night I was sleeping and the next morning my back felt funny. The pain is shifting around in my lower back and that makes my dear Lady B say that she thinks that my sciatic nerve is being pinched. Ouch!

Well that came with a sore throat so Merry Christmas and Bah Humbug!

In an attempt to make myself feel better I’ve gone out and gotten every little thing I can that reminds me of christmas. We have a little tree named Savior. Garlands festooning our window. Our space heater works REALLY well for a house around here and sitting by it reminds me of sitting beside a fire. The presents have piled up under the tree and we’ve been making marvelous shepherd’s pies. I got myself some eggnog and saw the nutcracker. As I write this I’m listening to the music from Narnia and have a warm mug of tea beside me. On Wed I’m going to go and see TinTin – anybody want to come?  My gosh! I love this season.

The one thing I really miss is… exercise WHAT? Well that’s a strange thing for me to say. Those of you who have known me for a while know that I rarely exercise — or that was how things were until about 2 months ago when I started running daily. Now I can’t get enough running in. It feels good and I feel sluggish without getting up early and pounding around the city before the sun his risen above the horizon.

So… I’m looking for exercises I can do that don’t involve my back and get my heart pounding. And so far haven’t come up with any. ***sigh*** well if YOU dear readers can think of some sort of exercise that doesn’t involve back-jarring then PLEASE let me know and I will love you forever.

There is a lot of time in this life…

I want to write a witty blog-post today. I’ve been reading the reviews of some yelpers and my gosh! They write so well! As if they were born with fountain pens in their tiny little fists. And they use words I’ve never even heard of – for instance modelizer. Do you know what a modelizer is? I looked it up. Apparently it’s someone who only dates models.

Well since Bon is a model grade girl I guess I’m a modelizer too .

But in any event I’m jealous. I wish I could write as well as they do. I’d settle for writing even half as well as they do. And that’s not even close to what the great storytellers of our age can do – J.K. Rowling writing thousands of pages and somehow making them all link together and paint a beautiful picture in my mind. How I wish I could do that. After all, I believe the writer is the one who first creates and then begins to turn an idea from a mere wisp of electrical noise and truth into real substance that has the power to move and change us. The writer – the creator who helps us make sense of this life and what it’s all about. What a great thing writers do.

Well… there is a lot of time in this life and I suppose that intention has led to crazier things than a guy with a software job learning how to be creative and connected to people through his thoughts, ideas and compassion. So I soldier on.

All Things Dark

All things seem dark to me today even though the sun is shining and the house is actually quite a nice place to hang out. I guess I’m not really sure why, things are progressing. It’s just that they’re progressing slowly. The new job should be figured out soon enough and then there’s christmas which is just around the corner. But my how dark I feel!

Well in honor of this dark day, I thought I’d make a list of dark things so here goes -

• black cats (though I once owned a very nice one)
• the night
• eyebrows
• paint it black (I think that’s the name of the song)
• evil knights
• my soul (today at least)
• a good suit and tie
• the inside of a coffin
• days that aren’t bright
• outer space (for the most part)
• my inspiration for writing this post

Jury Duty

I’m a registered juror in Alamdea County. It means that I have the privilege of being called on every year or so to show up at the courthouse where I can be told, “Oh actually we don’t need you — you can go home”. That is to say so far I haven’t actually been a juror though I came close – read was in the courthouse – once.

Well this year was a little bit strange. I kept THINKING I was going to be traveling all over the place. I think my first summons was back in July and I am pretty sure that I was going to do something back then (or maybe I did) so I deferred my jury duty. **HUGE sigh of relief**. They re-scheduled me 6 days before the magical 6 month period where I could defer again if needed and of course I never plan that far in advance so that I’m “leaving my options open”. So I just purchased my plane ticket for an epic trip to the orient – Bonny and I will be stopping in Japan and Taiwan, my two old asian stomping grounds, for some food and to visit new relatives and old friends. And I bought the plane ticket to coincide with the start of my deferred jury duty service.

OOps… well you know how the government is… not very flexible or easy to reach but I had to see if there was any way I could defer my um… scheduled deferment. So I called up the jury hotline and sat holding my breath while I dialed my way through a few automated call systems so that I could get to a real person.

Finally after waiting on the line for like 20 minutes I got a real person on the line and explained that I had made a terrible mistake and was wondering if there was any way to serve my jury duty on some other date. Well, at first the answer was no. You should have thought of that before, but then I said, “I am happy to server as a juror but I made a mistake. Is there ANY way I can do it some other time.” Turns out the answer is “yes” — you just have to jump through some hoops.

They’re going to allow me to serve early on a standby basis. What I have to do is call every day at 10:30 and 3:30 and see if they’re in need of jurors in their next jury cycle. Yay! Well I can do that. I have free time right now (since I’m in the midst of a grand-scale job hunt) – so for the next couple of weeks I’m going to be on the phones twice a day to the courthouse looking for that golden opening they claim will allow me to fulfill my duty before my trip.

Lesson learned??? — Take a deep breath, evaluate your options and do what you can to fix problems like this one. Usually something can be arranged even if it is the government you’re negotiating with.

I Love Lee Child

And his Reacher novels. I just finished another one, “Worth Dying For” – It’s so suspenseful and well written. I always wonder how some people can be so good at writing and not getting lost as they spin out their tales. Maybe that’s just the way some people are. Maybe Lee Child is a literary bloodhound!

Well I do think that he’s gotten better over the course of writing what… something crazy like 12 novels now. I mean his plots used to be good but you could kinda see the twists coming — oops… there’s a baddie peeking out from behind that house and I think he’s trying to cover up the fact that he wears pink underwear. That’ll be a bombshell! But these days the plots and twists are SO tight. I didn’t know what the baddies were trafficking up until the last 60 pages. Woo hoo! A+ on suspense.

I wonder what his days are like. He pumps out one novel per year and probably is a millionaire as a result. I bet he lives in New York in a penthouse apartment and lives half his life in the world or Reacher, his protagonist. Maybe he writes the stories while sitting at cafes though given who reacher is it’s probably done at sports bars or boxing arenas. What I like though are the details. He does a great job of being very explicit down to the makes and model numbers of guns and trucks and that makes the stories seem very real – I FEEL like I’m in that world and for a time I’m a badass super-hero one man hobo good-hearted psychopath who can solve the worlds problems with violence and distance. It’s a thrill ride!

Scratches Dents Dings

I dinged up my car last night. I had just awakened from a dream-filled sleep and I guess my mind was still asleep because when I got into my car and attempted to reverse out of the parking garage (as I do every time I leave home) I didn’t pay attention, got the wrong angle and ended up grinding the side of my Civic against the cinder block wall.

Now I typically try to look for the sliver lining in cases like this. For instance when my car was scorched by firefighters while putting out a fire in the building I used to live in I re-christened the car 2-face owing to the fact that one side was pristine while the other side had all the plastic slightly melted. Strangely enough I got to really like the melty look. It’s unique and cool and provides me with an excuse to tell a great story.

Now these new dings leave me with a couple of problems. First off… now both sides of the car are slightly damaged. Granted the scrape damage isn’t that severe — in fact if you’re willing to use your imagination it might look a bit like the speed lines that get drawn into manga comics. Still, I need an excuse (or reason) to explain away the scrape damage lest the name 2-face stops making sense.

So I was thinking of a few solutions to this problem. My favorite so far is to get some glow-in-the-dark paint and paint all the scraped parts with the glow-in-the-dark paint. Then when the sun sets, I can claim they’re acid spashes or sparks that are showing up because I go so darn fast! I was sorta thinking of doing this anyway. I figure if I make the damage “intentional” it sorta lets me OWN my mistake and make it an opportunity to try new things. Honestly if the car weren’t damaged then of course I’d never dream of touching it up with paint or drawing on it or anything – after all that would ruin the resale value. But now that the car is um… unique I feel absolutely fine with turning the car into a style experiment and it’ll be fun!

Retro

People say that old cars are more fun to drive and they’re right. Old clothes are more fun to wear too and I’ve seen people who have been turning old rotary phones into cell phones. Why is this the case, after all newer and bigger are always better… right? Well no. Because fun is the best and perfect is boring.

Let me put it this way, which would you rather have? A great girlfriend (or wife) who goes crazy every month and sometimes drives you crazy by trying to dress you in animal hats or a plastic mannequin of a supermodel? Ok, not quite fair. The plastic mannequin can’t carry on a decent conversation and isn’t all that soft when you try to hold it, but you but yeah… one has personality one doesn’t.

Can things have personality? Yes! So what things am I talking about – anything people can love

-Fancy hats

-Light sabers & storm trooper gear

-Certain classic cars

-Polished wood

-Anything handmade

-Victorian pistols – anything really that transports us to another age

Basically anything where a pointless amount of extra effort has been put in to make the thing beautiful – unique is nice too. So let’s all appreciate effort and craftsmanship. It’s more fun!

Jingle Bells In The Bay

It’s December and I’m out wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Sweet! I don’t think the weather was this nice even during the summer. No chance of a white Christmas here in the bay, but that’s quite all right with me. Bring on the heat wave I say!

Christmas tree lots have sprung up all over the city. It’s a little strange seeing Christmas trees here in the bay. They must have been imported. They definitely don’t grow around here – after all we live next to Oakland for a reason. Around here the Christmas trees are all tiny dwarf trees because we have to put them into our apartments and we can’t fit huge-ass trees in our tiny living rooms. I guess it’s convenient since these smaller trees are cheaper. I wonder if it costs a company less to hire a dwarf or a short person than a tall person… “Sir, you’re too tall and we can’t afford you. If you have any short friends we’d be EXTREMELY interested in interviewing them”. I think that’s illegal – heightism? My GOD! I’m right. According to Wikipedia and Saul Feldman short people are paid less than tall people – and what do you know… most CEOs are tall. Fascinating!

So after all this careful research and thoughtful writing one conclusion I’ll leave you with is this. If you’re short and want to live in a place where it’s illegal to discriminate against you for being short move to Michigan and live happily ever after amongst your fellows dwarfs and giants.

We stomp around while we talk

It’s said that walking is a good way to deal with stress — I believe THEM because when I was managing my consulting business (getting clients for myself a few years ago) I had this huge room and I practically wore holes in my carpet walking in circles around the card table I’d set up to act as my desk.

“Blah blah blah…. sure we can do that…”, STOMP, STOM, STOMP, STOMP… pick me pick me pick me pick me.

“Blah blah blah…. um it’ll have to be fair to me… but of course you’re a fair guy and I didn’t mean to imply that you’re not but…”, STOMP, STOMP, STOMP… pick me pick me pick me.

I used to work alone at my house in my room in those days. These days I work at The HUB (a warehouse full of desks which various self-employeed people share so that we don’t all get lonely) – and at clients’ companies. And what do you know, I’m not as unique as I thought I was. Turns out that lots of people stomp around while they’re on the phone. Execs stomp in their private little glass cubby holes and worker bees get up and stomp around in herds. It’s like watching some crazy sort of square dance going on – and I should know because I’ve been going to lots of square dances.

If everybody stomps when they talk on the phone then just imagine – the tweed coated day trader is stomping around in New York talking to the besneakered befreckeled bepimpled software engineer in San Francisco and the bejazzled bemoomooed old lady is dancing around with the white-shirted Comcast customer service representative in Mumbai. It’s fantastic. Like one giant party and all because of stress and the telephone. Thank you Alexander Graham Bell!