Moving Forward, Microwaves and Me

The word of the week is garrulous.

May 4 - The Force Of Friendship

Happy Star Wars Day and all that.

In all seriousness, I think today is a great day to celebrate, as Star Wars is a big part of my life… insomuch as I don't belong to any fan clubs, cosplay groups or sundry such things as bigger fans than I do in large numbers. Star Wars has always been a part of my life since an early age and it's one of the few films that, whenever I watch it, I get the same feelings of wonder and delight that I did when I saw it as a young boy.

It's these shared cultural experiences that help people bond with each other, allowing the g33ks of the world to form communities that transcend country, color and creed. As Simon Pegg so eloquently puts it:

When it comes to Star Wars, I'm pleased to say that it's one of the few things that I unabashedly geek out about. I may not have impressive numbers of collectible paraphernalia or costumes or many of the other things that many g33ks may boast of, but I do know that the inner child in me will never lose his love of Star Wars.

Update: Scroll down to the entry for May 9th to see the news about my job application!

May 5 - Me?

Here am in my 40's and my future is wide open, still.

It's also a blank slate, a gray curtain and a path winding through cloudy peaks far, far ahead.

What am I leading up to, I wonder? Will I be that Odd Writer Friend, the guy that most people like but can't be bothered to invite out save to the occasional birthday party? Will I be The Eccentric Recluse, who is always 'too busy writing' when asked to be social but really can't function anymore under the assumed pretense that I'll have a normal life living under others' expectations of what that means? Will I still be a good friend, despite knowing that for some of my friends I'm just That Nice Guy they like talking with every so often whenever our paths happen to cross?

I can't really tell you at this point. By now I should be married, have two kids and be looking forward to my retirement in 10 to 25 years, with a nice gold watch or customized iPad to go along with a well-attended office party to say goodbye and a few rounds of golf with my buddies on the local course...

25 years from now, I hope that I'll be close to retirement, insomuch that I won't be worrying  that my golden years will be spent trying to massage a threadbare pension budget to get me through each month with enough to eat and a place to sleep. I understand that's a worry that's far in the future, but you still have to think ahead and compound interest only works if you start early instead of late.

I do know that I'll still be writing, perhaps with a few people out there who will still want to read those words.

And in case you'd like a bit of a giggle about the choices people can make in their lives, here's Leonard Nimoy singing the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. Personally, the g33k in me thinks it's fantastic:

May 6 - Crossovers

Mixing things up can be a lot of fun.

Some of my favorite kinds of fiction and fanart are those that mix various subjects. Those of you who follow blog know that I've previously posted about this sort of thing, such as crossovers involving Star Wars and Calvin and Hobbes.

This time it's a little different: Pacific Rim and Disney!

I particularly like this picture, that of Kida and Milo from Disney's 2001 film Atlantis, which was itself quite a departure for the studio from their norm - 'mixing it up' if you will. The artist has captured the essence of the film's characters and juxtapose them with Pacific Rim's futuristic realism to come up with a blend of the two that just works perfectly.

It's this sort of creative flexibility that I hope to bring to my own work. Being able to write means being able to take different ideas and combine them into something new that the reader may not have come across before, written in your own voice. It's been said that there's nothing new under the sun but as a writer, if your words make that sun seem new and fresh in the sky, then you're doing things right.

Just don't stare at the darn thing too long or you'll go blind.

May 7 - Cellular Crazy

My phone is driving me nuts.

To be blunt, it's slow and awkward to do anything with the phone, to the point where I don't bother much anymore. I'd rather haul around my laptop, which is a lot more responsive. Sure, I could format the thing and start over, but I'd still be working with old hardware and after setting up my parent's two phones( both have an HTC One M7 ) there's no comparison when it comes to the speed and ease-of-use comparing their phones and mine.

Trouble is, I'm stuck with a year to go in my contract with Telus and I don't feel like forking over several hundred dollars for the 'privilege' of signing another two-year contract to get a new phone. Plus, I don't have the budget for that either right now.

So I'm looking at the alternatives, mainly waiting to buy the HTC One M8 in a year when it's less costly or buying a less expensive phone in the near future. Either way means that I'm stuck with my current snail of an S3 for most of the rest of 2014, so I'll have to make the best of it and resist smacking around when it decides that I need to wait in order to do anything useful.

Then there's this, from Double Shield:

Personally, I find it hard to believe this video. Simple physics tells me that there has to be some catch to the demonstration, perhaps a rubber hammer? If this screen protector does work as advertised, I'd find it extremely therapeutic to put on my current phone.

Especially if it came with a little rubber hammer.

May 8 - Zap!

One of the things I've always wondered about is the warning not to put metal in the microwave.

I was told this as a child and ever since, I've been wary of anything metal making its way into the microwave. I've been less worried the last few years, not having a microwave oven, but still cognizant of this 'vital' fact. Especially since a certain sibling of mine did have a dish with a fork in it make its way into a microwave years ago... and the machine wasn't alive much longer after that.

Ummm... is this safe?

If you're curious about the whole deal, pop over and read this article on how you can safely put metal in the wonder over of our age. Apparently I've worried too much needlessly, but you still won't find me zapping foil anytime soon.

Speaking of food, I finally managed to see the documentary Food Inc. tonight, catching it on television of all places.

Click to zoom in on the Ten Tips...

While I'm a skeptic by nature, always asking for proof, I was admittedly disturbed by the information presented in this particular documentary. I'll admit that I am a bit squeamish: I don't like my food to look like it just stopped moving 10 minutes ago, with heads on the fish or piglets split open on the table.

Food Inc. went deeper than that, looking at how the ignorance of the public can be taken advantage of in yet another way when it comes to corporations making profits. I was aware of the slant that the filmmakers put on some of their subjects and parts of the film seemed unnecessarily shocking. Overall I came away from experience with a much better understanding of how our modern food system is controlled behind the scenes and how it's changed over the last two decades, not for the better either.

If you haven't seen it, I do recommend a watch of Food Inc, if only to train your eyes to open a bit wider as to what you're eating. Having simplified my own diet over the last few years, cutting out sugar and many other things that I took for granted in my food, I definitely think that a higher awareness of what you're eating is critical to a better lifestyle for everyone.

You are what you eat, after all. Don't eat garbage that's cheap to buy.

May 9 - THEY HIRED ME!

It's official as of this morning: I start my new job on May 20th!

I got a call yesterday afternoon, asking me to come by this morning to look over the paperwork and then finalize things with my signature - which I happily did. There are other details to take care of but I was done by early morning and floating on air by noon, with an odd sense of relief deep in my belly.

I'm now employed by the government, for wage that I don't have to apologize for in my head and hope to stretch to make ends meet week to week. It's not say that I can immediately go out to get a mortgage and a car and all the other things that people seem to think they need, but it certainly a wage higher than any I've earned before and hopefully the start of a solid uphill climb for me, financially speaking.

It's funny, but half the people I told about my new job this weekend congratulated me and then immediately added "It's great that you've got a real job now."

Seriously? Isn't any job a real job when it's providing you the money you need to shelter, clothes and feed yourself and/or your family members? I've struggled for two decades now, with some good years and some bad, to make some headway in this strange walk of life that we all find ourselves in. I've done well enough, I think, to keep my sanity in the face of the huge obstacles I've faced and overcome as well as maintaining my equilibrium while working on the problems that still remain in my life.

Will having a 'real job' supposedly will solve all this by simply throwing money at those problems?

I'll admit, not being in debt at all would be wonderful. At the same time I wonder how many people simply work to live and have few driving interests in their life, save paying their bills and getting in some quality family time. For me, I don't have immediate family responsibilities( kids or ailing relatives / spouses / parents / siblings ) so I don't see that as something affecting me. Nor do I yet have the wherewithal or time to volunteer in a meaningful way to local or national causes.

I do have stories inside me that I want to tell and things I want to do.

To date, the events of my life have necessitated my full attention to keep them from dragging me under and now I'm just beginning to see the shore after my long swim. I want to work for myself and write but seeing as my skill set and talents run mostly to writing, I don't want to wear myself thin trying to write on both sides of the paper: creatively and financially.

But, most importantly: I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!

May 10 - Movie and Party Night!

Yesterday I finally got around to seeing the new Captain America film: The Winter Soldier.

It wasn't bad, not by a long shot, though my favorite of the two is still The Avengers.

If I had to describe The Winter Soldier, I have to say it was a competent and solid film from start to finish, with a few slow spots and some excellent special effects. If you wanted me to elaborate, I would say they spent far too much money on things blowing up and not enough money on locations that weren't in an urban setting. Definitely worth my money though.

In the evening I attended a birthday party for a friend, a former coworker.

It was at a restaurant I've never been at, Earl's, which is a fancy steakhouse downtown. Not the sort of place I would just drop in and grab a bite to eat, as their menu is rather pricey. All the same, it was great to just sit down and enjoy myself, especially as I knew at least half of the people there and got to catch up with some old friends who were as glad to see me as I was them.

The shaggy blur on the far left is me... nice shirt, right?

Amazingly, one of my friends there had a Pebble Smartwatch and we talked shop about it for a few minutes. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say that I think smart watches are still the future, though they're definitely not the present. Current offerings are still well below what I consider a balanced bang for the buck and I definitely don't want to pay a premium for cutting-edge technology when it doesn't deliver on some of the major things I feel that a smartwatch should have in order to get my hard-earned dollars.

Needless to say, I'll be watching things closely over the next year.

May 11 - For The Good

It's been a pretty good weekend.

I worked both days and they were very pleasant, with no undue stress and everyone full of smiles with the great weather we're having here, even with the bit of rain we got yesterday. What really had me floored was how unperturbed my current employer was when I told them that I had another job that was full-time and that my availability had dropped essentially to the occasional Saturday as of next week.

Considering that until I saw next week's full-time schedule, I had only been getting a few days a week, I don't think they expected me to be around much longer and this probably is a relief to them in some ways. I am going to be staying on for at least the next few months for various reasons, in the main that I don't want my benefits to lapse during my initial probationary period at my new government job; that would be silly.

After work today, I removed about a dozen people from my blog's FBook group. I did so because they had never visited the group and were obviously not interested in following what I'm up to, which is fine, as I'm still friends with them. Yet I still wonder what that means sometimes when you're not keeping up at all with other people's lives.

That's not to say I'm not guilty of the same thing, when it comes down to it. I spend hours every week crafting my blog for a small audience of friends and family, numbering in the hundreds, of which perhaps a dozen drop by every week to see what I'm up to, for good or bad. I did mention a few weeks ago that for some reason the month of April saw my blog  receiving around 100 hits a day, which is unprecedented and to be honest I still don't know why exactly I was so popular. The numbers have dropped in half already, not even halfway through May, and I expect they'll be back to normal few hundred by June.

Still, it was rather neat to see the numbers jump and it's a bit of a mystery; I may never know why I had so many anonymous visitors.

Who knows why people are visiting my blog? Most of my visitors don't leave comments and I can only guess as to why they pass on through here. I don't have timely information about current topics, unique art or even a sort of nouveau-writing style, so your guess is as good as mine.

What I do hope is that they'll keep coming back.

Lots to do and little time over the next few months, see you all next week!