Category: life

A little about me, Part 1

I don’t know who, if anyone reads this blog. I assume there is only myself and perhaps one or two others who occasionally drop in to see what is going on in my life. I don’t do any of the things I am supposed to to make this site successful in anyway. I don’t link to other blogs or post comments on their forums. I pretty much write about once a day on whatever seems to be of interest to me. I assume that this will continue to be the case. I have never described myself here, I never thought it was necessary. If you read this blog you already know me personally and there would be no point in posting a picture or writing out a long description. I’ve also never poured much of myself into the site. I don’t know html and I am reluctant to attempt “learning” a new language (the BASIC, Visual BASIC, and C++ I “learned” are all completely useless to me), so the site remains in the default template with just the colors changed around. There are no pictures of me, no about section, and I’ve never once gotten e-mail from someone about the site, though the options is there…

What am I doing with this blog? Why do I continue to do it? Who am I? Finally, why should you care? These are questions I am going to attempt to answer in the next half a dozen posts or so. Perhaps I will canvas a few of my favorite blogs, try to get someone to notice me. I am not optimistic. I will answer the first question now though. This blog is my journal, where I write about the things that interest me, where I write about who I am and what I have been doing (though it has been particularly light on that subject). Why a public journal? All journals are eventually public. When you die and your children, family, or friends begin to sort through your things they will find your journals, and they will re-discover their mother, or father, brother or sister, son or daughter. They will learn how you saw yourself, this blog is the same thing, I am just not waiting for my life to expire to share all of this with you. I do so in the hopes that getting to know me, will make myself and you closer, closer to each other and to everyone else… When we realize that the people and things that we are so busily hurling our hate at, or worse our explosive devices, are just like us it, it becomes much harder to belittle, marginalize, and kill them. I realize it is a large hope and naive and idealized one, but I do not believe there is any point to being pragmatic when it comes to dreams. I also write to improve myself, I have dreams and hopes, one of those is to write. Write so that when people read what I have said they are moved, touched. That when they have put down what I felt important enough to commit forever to written words, they will have to think. They can hate what I say or they can love it, as long as they feel something. As long as they are moved and changed I have not failed. This of course has not happened, and I have the suspicion that I am failing a lot more than anyone should ever be comfortable enough. You do not get better without working and here is my work, for everyone to see. Here is where I hope to grow and improve in the craft.

I promise more. My next post will concern itself with who I am and what motivates me.

On cooking

In the last month I’ve finally started to learn how to cook. So far I’ve learned that it isn’t as difficult as it looks, and that even a moron (me) can cook. It’s only a matter of collecting the ingredients and following the recipes. My mom spent the first 20 years of my life trying to get me interested in cooking and making my own meals. She failed miserably, but by no fault of her own. I was very resistant to the whole idea. Why learn to cook when your mom makes superior meals for you everyday? I failed to think long term and when I moved up here to Davis, I could only make 4 things, scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese, quesadillas, and Top Ramen noodles. Those and some frozen meals pretty much got me through my first year here. You can only take so much of that kind of thing though before you go crazy. I mostly just didn’t eat. Very healthy of me I know, but that too gets tiresome. So I bought a cookbook and another one and with some encouragement (translation: a lot of encouragement and coaching) from Diana I started cooking. It turns out it’s a lot of fun and tasty! We’ve picked up an Indian and an Italian cookbook and I go through those and find recipes that I like, I show them to Diana and then we have dinner dates where I cook for her or she cooks for me. Of course this is always at her place, the kitchen in place is disgusting all the time, my roommate cooks but never cleans. The cleaning is by far the worst part, it seems the better the meal you make the more dishes it requires you to dirty. Great meals require a 30 minute dish washing session at minimum, good meals take about 15.

I’m having fun and learning a lot, the problem now is that I’m always looking for more recipes and spending way to much time scouting out the cooking section at Borders!

Thoughts and a mini review of Neptune’s Ark

I guess that last post was my 100th, so congrats to me for making it that far. I finished reading Neptune’s Ark today. I’m not going to put up another review here, full of spelling errors and bad grammar. Instead I’ll just say that if you love the ocean and the life that is in it, if you love the California and western US coastline, if you are put in awe by the power of time and evolution, you need to read this book. Here is my tiny review, if you require more:

A deep look at the evolution of the pacific coast of the North American continent. It also looks closely at the life that was born, prospered, and languished there. Wallace’s work is scientific
and factual, yet poetic and haunting. He creates a yearning for the ocean physically, mentally and spiritually.
The parts of the book that most affected were the recollections of the genocide we humans waged against pinnipeds and cetaceans, from the 18th through the 20th century. Reading the stories of Russian sealers clubbing to death seals by the 1000s in a day bring my blood close to boiling. The horror is that I know these actions are repeated today, if not on the same scale, the violence, horror, and needless deaths of these animals is a crime we humans will never be free of, and this is only one species… It is hard at times to be optimistic about our species…

Life, Shivah and other things.

What am I doing today? I slept in, which was bad. I then got up and rushed off to the pool to swim. After doing that I came home and read my email and news. Then I decided to find out if I really have graduated from college. I cycled down to campus and the registrars. Waited 10 minutes in line and then… found out I don’t know. Nor does UCD apparently. They told me that my graduation status is pending until the end of August. It has to go to the Academic Senate, for some reason. I was also told to talk to my Major adviser. So, why I wait for the end of August, I’ve sent an email to me adviser and payed all my debts to the college. There is nothing in the UCD’s system that says I’m not graduating, which is good. Last time I tried this I found out right after the ceremony that I wasn’t graduating. It’s been a month or more since then and no such email. I’m staying positive.

In other news, I need to quickly finish Neptune’s Ark and start reading Mainspring which I need to review for Steampunk Magazine. I’m also playing an independent adventure game called Shivah, which so far is very good, very cerebral. I want to review it as well.

I’m also trying to come up with a life re-format plan. You know, make some changes, small, but substantial, that will make be a better, more organized person. So that is what is going on.

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