Thursday, November 09, 2006
Hey, everyone,
Just a quick post. I passed my latest belt test today, giving me a red belt with one black stripe. Next up is two black stripes and then my black belt. How exciting!
J(5) came along, though, and took some pictures and some videos, then posted everything on snapfish.
Click here to see! You'll need a snapfish account to see these, which is free to sign up. We can host the videos there for 30 days, after which, who knows. We might post them up on YouTube or something. Heh.
There's some pictures from a previous class, first, then some pictures from this class, and finally a bunch of movies J(5) has taken. One of the last ones is of me performing my board breaks, so you can see what I'm talking about when I say 'jumping back kick'. Note, I had to do that one through *two* boards. Nice.
Okay, gotta eat and sleep. Ta!
-N
Just a quick post. I passed my latest belt test today, giving me a red belt with one black stripe. Next up is two black stripes and then my black belt. How exciting!
J(5) came along, though, and took some pictures and some videos, then posted everything on snapfish.
Click here to see! You'll need a snapfish account to see these, which is free to sign up. We can host the videos there for 30 days, after which, who knows. We might post them up on YouTube or something. Heh.
There's some pictures from a previous class, first, then some pictures from this class, and finally a bunch of movies J(5) has taken. One of the last ones is of me performing my board breaks, so you can see what I'm talking about when I say 'jumping back kick'. Note, I had to do that one through *two* boards. Nice.
Okay, gotta eat and sleep. Ta!
-N
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Hi,
Well the writing hasn’t quite paced itself quite like I wanted it to. My hope was that I could just decide I wanted a re-write of my story then just sit down and writewritewrite for about a month and be done. Well it didn’t quite work out that for, as near as I can tell, a couple of reasons.
1) I do a lot of stuff during the day. Especially, these days, TKD and related activities. Getting in better shape and practicing my kicks takes up a lot of my time, and so I can’t just sit down and write every day. Especially considering that after a full day of work and a session of TKD, I’m pretty much too tired to write anything.
2) I think I’ve discovered that I’ll really never be a writer for the same reason I’ll never really be a good programmer. I can’t really just sit down and churn out a thing for hours on end. When I was in college my roommates, CSC majors all, would sit down in front of a computer for 8 or more hours at a stretch and just code and code and code until their assignments were done. I can’t do that. I need breaks, and variety, and whenever I sit down to write, I’ll get a couple of paragraphs in and decide I just need to go check some thing out on the internet.
So yea, the pace hadn’t gone the way I might have hoped, but recalling that I’m still just writing *for fun*, I’m not worried. I can just step away from this thing if I want, come back later, leave it alone, whatever makes me happy. That’s rather the point.
I’m also still kind of hemming and hawing about whether or not I want to go through a traditional publisher or just self publish online. See, the traditional route for fiction writers is to get oneself and agent. If you can convince and agent that you have a good book that could sell well, the agent will use their contacts with publishers and get your book published. I suppose, in terms of risk, I might as well try the agent route. If no agent picks it up, I can simply self-publish. I’m just not sure what my goals are with this story. Do I even want a best-seller? Do I just want to finish it off real quick so I can build a studio and start playing around with music? Hard to say, hard to say.
Allow me to paint a scene for you.
It’s morning, earlier this week. The alarm goes off and J(5) and I slowly crawl out of bed and get our morning routine going. I wash my face and put in my contacts while she shifts herself out of bed and puts on her robe and her glasses. Then while I’m brushing my teeth, J(5) brushes her hair. It’s an older green hairbrush, missing many teeth. I’ve asked her several times if she wants to replace it. The answer has always been no. There’s some early-morning twilight streaming into the window, and Tigger is hanging out in the bathtub hoping someone will turn on some water for him to drink.
And J(5)’s hairbrush explodes.
I don’t mean that it breaks. That might imply that the handle snapped off or that it lost a couple more teeth. I mean that this plastic thing shatters with great force into about 7 or 8 pieces and falls all over the floor.
J(5) looks at half a hairbrush and I attempt to stifle giggles behind a towel. “Oh, heavens, truly a tragedy has struck us this day.” We then go around and pick most of the big pieces of hairbrush off the floor and I actually have to go through her hair and pick out *chunks of hairbrush*. The lesson here? J(5) has real, real, thick hair.
Another story. On Wednesday we went shopping for food because…well…we didn’t have any left. And what did we see when we strolled into the dairy aisle? Egg Nog.
It’s that time of year again, people, that glorious stretch of time between Halloween and New Years when you can buy Egg Nog right off the supermarket shelf. That glorious elixir, that divine drink, that bodacious beverage. It’s here! It’s amazing! It’s Egg Nog!
Now there are good Egg Nogs and there are bad Egg Nogs. The good ones are creamy, delicious, and think enough to stick your cat to the wall. The bad ones are watery, lame, and usually have ‘low fat’ written on the side. Why bother?
But there is one brand, one type of Egg Nog that stand head and shoulders above the rest. Broguiere’s. Available in many fine CA area stores, this Egg Nog is the golden standard by which all other Egg Nogs shall be compared. It is thick, rich, and creamy, with just a hint of something extra that makes it better than all the rest. (I think it’s honey.) They’re something like a ‘local’ dairy down here and they get their stuff sold at Bristol farms, so it’s expensive, but it’s got some truly epic flavor.
They also sell it at a local store called Cooke’s down here, and so on Thursday, determined that she would have her blessed Egg Nog, J(5) and I stopped there to pick some up. We were, therefore, quite downtrodden to find that Cooke’s didn’t have any of it yet. J(5) was distraught, livid. She lost her will to survive. She threw herself off the Golden Gate Bridge! No, she didn’t. But she was now even more determined to get her Egg Nog. No matter what she had to do to get it.
Friday. J(5) and I had some extra hours, so we get off at noon, go swimming, and then we are on the case. Our mission? Bristol farms. Broguiere’s. Egg Nog. No prisoners. We make it to the store (traffic was awful). We get inside and J(5) bolts off to the dairy section to search for the Nog while I get a basket. We meet in one of the isles and J(5) has three bottles of this stuff in her hands. They’re a quart each, and in glass bottles. (This stuff is awesome!) I think three is too much, but J(5) starts to put them in the basket anyway. Then, tragedy strikes.
J(5) clinks two of the bottles together, and one of them must have been weak, because it breaks, right at the bottom. We stand and watch, helpless, as the nog is wasted upon the floor. We stand there like idiots for about a minute, then inform the local constabularies that there is some cleanup on isle 7. Then we scurry off.
All is not lost, however. We still have to two bottles and, joy of joys. Some of the wasted Nog is present on one of the bottles. J(5) starts to lick it off, but stops when she finds a shard of glass. Heh.
We continue to shop around the store for interesting food items. (I pick up some relatively inexpensive sherry and balsamic vinegar for culinary experiments). The entire time, however, J(5) refuses to entrust the bottles to the basket again. She caries around her treasure by hand.
We make our purchases and leave the store. We have gone a grand total of 10 feet from the entrance when J(5) stops and sits on a bench. She cracks open a bottle and drinks deeply from the most perfect of all beverages. A smile crosses her face. Mission accomplished.
Man, I love that girl.
Halloween was a bunch of fun. One of the biggest Halloween celebrations takes place in West Hollywood, and I went up there to check it out for the first time this year. They close off a good half-mile stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard and let thousands and thousands of people in ridiculous costumes wander around. We got there relatively early, 6:30. I really recommend this for two reasons. One, we could find parking. Two, there is enough space that you can look around and see peoples costumes, thus completing the point. By the time we left, around 10:00 or so, the place was so packed you couldn’t see anything but the people on stilts. It was really a bit much. We took off and made a brief stop at a house party with some friends and then went home and slept in a bit the next day. Good times.
The one danger: Kevin Federline was performing on one of the stages set up along the parade route. Through careful time management, we successfully avoided hearing his performance. Mission accomplished.
Ordered some video games, quite excited about that. Especially because now I can officially make up a Christmas list that doesn’t contain anything I already own. Look for that.
And…that’s it for me! Thanksgiving is coming up, so Vegas, ho for me!
-N
Well the writing hasn’t quite paced itself quite like I wanted it to. My hope was that I could just decide I wanted a re-write of my story then just sit down and writewritewrite for about a month and be done. Well it didn’t quite work out that for, as near as I can tell, a couple of reasons.
1) I do a lot of stuff during the day. Especially, these days, TKD and related activities. Getting in better shape and practicing my kicks takes up a lot of my time, and so I can’t just sit down and write every day. Especially considering that after a full day of work and a session of TKD, I’m pretty much too tired to write anything.
2) I think I’ve discovered that I’ll really never be a writer for the same reason I’ll never really be a good programmer. I can’t really just sit down and churn out a thing for hours on end. When I was in college my roommates, CSC majors all, would sit down in front of a computer for 8 or more hours at a stretch and just code and code and code until their assignments were done. I can’t do that. I need breaks, and variety, and whenever I sit down to write, I’ll get a couple of paragraphs in and decide I just need to go check some thing out on the internet.
So yea, the pace hadn’t gone the way I might have hoped, but recalling that I’m still just writing *for fun*, I’m not worried. I can just step away from this thing if I want, come back later, leave it alone, whatever makes me happy. That’s rather the point.
I’m also still kind of hemming and hawing about whether or not I want to go through a traditional publisher or just self publish online. See, the traditional route for fiction writers is to get oneself and agent. If you can convince and agent that you have a good book that could sell well, the agent will use their contacts with publishers and get your book published. I suppose, in terms of risk, I might as well try the agent route. If no agent picks it up, I can simply self-publish. I’m just not sure what my goals are with this story. Do I even want a best-seller? Do I just want to finish it off real quick so I can build a studio and start playing around with music? Hard to say, hard to say.
Allow me to paint a scene for you.
It’s morning, earlier this week. The alarm goes off and J(5) and I slowly crawl out of bed and get our morning routine going. I wash my face and put in my contacts while she shifts herself out of bed and puts on her robe and her glasses. Then while I’m brushing my teeth, J(5) brushes her hair. It’s an older green hairbrush, missing many teeth. I’ve asked her several times if she wants to replace it. The answer has always been no. There’s some early-morning twilight streaming into the window, and Tigger is hanging out in the bathtub hoping someone will turn on some water for him to drink.
And J(5)’s hairbrush explodes.
I don’t mean that it breaks. That might imply that the handle snapped off or that it lost a couple more teeth. I mean that this plastic thing shatters with great force into about 7 or 8 pieces and falls all over the floor.
J(5) looks at half a hairbrush and I attempt to stifle giggles behind a towel. “Oh, heavens, truly a tragedy has struck us this day.” We then go around and pick most of the big pieces of hairbrush off the floor and I actually have to go through her hair and pick out *chunks of hairbrush*. The lesson here? J(5) has real, real, thick hair.
Another story. On Wednesday we went shopping for food because…well…we didn’t have any left. And what did we see when we strolled into the dairy aisle? Egg Nog.
It’s that time of year again, people, that glorious stretch of time between Halloween and New Years when you can buy Egg Nog right off the supermarket shelf. That glorious elixir, that divine drink, that bodacious beverage. It’s here! It’s amazing! It’s Egg Nog!
Now there are good Egg Nogs and there are bad Egg Nogs. The good ones are creamy, delicious, and think enough to stick your cat to the wall. The bad ones are watery, lame, and usually have ‘low fat’ written on the side. Why bother?
But there is one brand, one type of Egg Nog that stand head and shoulders above the rest. Broguiere’s. Available in many fine CA area stores, this Egg Nog is the golden standard by which all other Egg Nogs shall be compared. It is thick, rich, and creamy, with just a hint of something extra that makes it better than all the rest. (I think it’s honey.) They’re something like a ‘local’ dairy down here and they get their stuff sold at Bristol farms, so it’s expensive, but it’s got some truly epic flavor.
They also sell it at a local store called Cooke’s down here, and so on Thursday, determined that she would have her blessed Egg Nog, J(5) and I stopped there to pick some up. We were, therefore, quite downtrodden to find that Cooke’s didn’t have any of it yet. J(5) was distraught, livid. She lost her will to survive. She threw herself off the Golden Gate Bridge! No, she didn’t. But she was now even more determined to get her Egg Nog. No matter what she had to do to get it.
Friday. J(5) and I had some extra hours, so we get off at noon, go swimming, and then we are on the case. Our mission? Bristol farms. Broguiere’s. Egg Nog. No prisoners. We make it to the store (traffic was awful). We get inside and J(5) bolts off to the dairy section to search for the Nog while I get a basket. We meet in one of the isles and J(5) has three bottles of this stuff in her hands. They’re a quart each, and in glass bottles. (This stuff is awesome!) I think three is too much, but J(5) starts to put them in the basket anyway. Then, tragedy strikes.
J(5) clinks two of the bottles together, and one of them must have been weak, because it breaks, right at the bottom. We stand and watch, helpless, as the nog is wasted upon the floor. We stand there like idiots for about a minute, then inform the local constabularies that there is some cleanup on isle 7. Then we scurry off.
All is not lost, however. We still have to two bottles and, joy of joys. Some of the wasted Nog is present on one of the bottles. J(5) starts to lick it off, but stops when she finds a shard of glass. Heh.
We continue to shop around the store for interesting food items. (I pick up some relatively inexpensive sherry and balsamic vinegar for culinary experiments). The entire time, however, J(5) refuses to entrust the bottles to the basket again. She caries around her treasure by hand.
We make our purchases and leave the store. We have gone a grand total of 10 feet from the entrance when J(5) stops and sits on a bench. She cracks open a bottle and drinks deeply from the most perfect of all beverages. A smile crosses her face. Mission accomplished.
Man, I love that girl.
Halloween was a bunch of fun. One of the biggest Halloween celebrations takes place in West Hollywood, and I went up there to check it out for the first time this year. They close off a good half-mile stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard and let thousands and thousands of people in ridiculous costumes wander around. We got there relatively early, 6:30. I really recommend this for two reasons. One, we could find parking. Two, there is enough space that you can look around and see peoples costumes, thus completing the point. By the time we left, around 10:00 or so, the place was so packed you couldn’t see anything but the people on stilts. It was really a bit much. We took off and made a brief stop at a house party with some friends and then went home and slept in a bit the next day. Good times.
The one danger: Kevin Federline was performing on one of the stages set up along the parade route. Through careful time management, we successfully avoided hearing his performance. Mission accomplished.
Ordered some video games, quite excited about that. Especially because now I can officially make up a Christmas list that doesn’t contain anything I already own. Look for that.
And…that’s it for me! Thanksgiving is coming up, so Vegas, ho for me!
-N
