5 More Minutes

Sometime in the fall of last year, I had a day at work that was abnormally stressful.

I'll start with that.

I woke up with a headache, I was behind in my work, and it seemed that every customer in the building was hellbent on keeping me from catching up.  I took a 5-minute break to meditate outside and find my "happy place."  It was London in the 1800's.  Sitting atop that roof inhaling the cool, clear breeze as I looked down upon flame-lit street lamps and horse-drawn carriages really put my mind at ease.  It put my spirit at ease.  I was able to finish my day with grace and efficiency.

Well, yesterday I needed another 5-minute meditation break.  It was a very similar situation.  Only, due to the change in my job title, it was the likes of event coordinators and booking managers and our billing and accounting departments that kept me from my to-do list, rather than whiny customers.  Either way, I needed to escape for five minutes to exist somewhere not work-related.  This time it was an empty classroom.

I sat in the dark, legs crossed, with my hands strategically placed in front of my sacral chakra, palms facing inward.  I practiced deep breathing and calmed my mind.  In no time at all, I found myself sitting on Big Ben, looking down on the same scene as before.  Only this time, as soon as I began to relax and enjoy the breeze, the scene was ripped apart as if it were an image printed on a sheet of paper that was being pulled in 12 directions at once.

I heard the rip - I felt it.  Other scenes of tranquility that I've used in the past began to flash in and out of my mind's eye - a glass dome in a rain forest, a tree house in the heart of the jungle, a solitary island in the middle of the pacific.  Each scene appeared for a fraction of a second, only to be replaced by another.  Finally, I landed in the desert.

The earth beneath me burned my feet.  I saw a stone about 2½ feet in length, sliding across the rocky desert surface as if being magnetically pulled across the expanse of sand - or perhaps it was moving by its own will alone.

I thought to myself "how is this supposed to be a happy place?"  As soon as the thought left my mind, the sky turned to night as if a deep blue blanket were suddenly thrown over the sky.  The moon glowed with the intensity of the sun, and the stars screamed out for attention as they painted the earth with a soft blue glow.

I laid back and began to take it in, when all of a sudden, more rocks like the first one came out of nowhere, glowing with a bright white light.  There were seven of them.  They circled above me, then exploded into different directions.  I stood, bewildered.  They had gathered behind me.  One stone swept my feet out from under me as the other six cradled me...catching me.  They lifted me up toward the sky and the stars shone brighter and clearer than ever.

It was amazing.

Once I realized that I had been ascending for quite a while, I looked down to see how far I'd gone.  The instant I began to ponder my height, the stones lost their glow and dumped me out.  They didn't disappear, they didn't just move out from under me - they dumped me out.  As I fell, the lights in the sky faded and darkness swept the surface of the sand.  Just before I landed, my eyes opened and I awoke with a gasp.

I was sitting in the classroom...in the dark.  My hands were gripping the floor next to me; my fingers had dug themselves into the carpet.  I was out of breath and I had tears streaming from both my eyes.

I took a few moments to gather myself up.

It was supposed to be relaxing.  I rationalized that I probably fell asleep and was dreaming.  If so, then it was the most vivid dream I've ever had in my life.  Dream or not, I cannot help but think that this radical meditative experience has to mean something.

And here's the strangest part: I understood.

Just like before, I felt a peace.  But it wasn't a relaxing peace.  It was just a...peace.  When people said things, I understood what they meant.  But it wasn't just that - I understood them.  I could see what they were trying to communicate.  I could hear their intentions.  I continued to return e-mails and handle my responsibilities, but everything seemed to fit into some grand scheme that for some reason I had never noticed before.

It's like if someone painted an immaculate painting across the entire Wall of China, and I was walking along looking at it up close, one detail at a time - never thinking that if I were to take a step back, I could actually see what it's a painting of.

Even today things have been making a lot more sense.  It's to the extent that I feel stupid for going all this time without seeing how some things in my life are connected - how they influence each other.

I've always been a "big picture" thinker, but what do you do when you find that your entire big picture can fit between the pixels on the HDTV of the universe?

I am such a geek.

Well, it's 11pm and this geek has a lot to process.  Be sure to check back tomorrow for my Facebook Fridays post.  It should be good.  If not, I'm just gonna make stuff up.

This is all for now.

-R.

Facebook Fridays: Painting. Kittens. Green.

So it's not quite Friday, but I'm sure it will be by the time I'm done writing this post. It's been a pretty crazy week. I think this method of microblogging is really working because I don't feel like I have to store up all these things in my head until the next time I get around to putting them down. I can pretty much update my status from my phone and forget all about it until that coming Friday.

The Perplexing Practice of Portraiture

I said last week that I'm choosing not to display my recent art to people unless they contact me with serious inquiries.  I'm still standing firm on that, but I had to go out with a bang.  So I put together a YouTube video of the creation of my most recent piece: Marley & Me.  The video got 25 hits in the first few days, and I've already had a serious inquiry about it.  The thing about this painting is, though, that the face actually looks nothing like Bob Marley.  You know it's supposed to be him because of the reggae-esque music playing in the background as I paint using only the colors red, yellow and green, leaving the black background in the shape of dread locks.  Yet without the context of the piece as a whole, the face is just a face - it's not his face.

That's the weird thing about doing portraits.  It's ridiculously easy to make it look like a face.  Picasso painted a veritable Mr. Potato Head atop the body of each of his subjects, yet they still pass as human faces.  However, recreating a specific person's face is much more difficult.  They say that to make a face recognizable, accentuate the prominent features.  I've found that it's the exact opposite when it comes to painting realism.  The familiarities are in the subtleties.  I decided to do this painting upon finishing another portrait of someone with whose face I am extremely familiar.  It turned out fantastically.  I guess I got prideful and thought that if I could do one face, I could do them all.  Every time I make noticeable progress in my skill as a painter, I'm inevitably reminded of the long way I still have to travel.

A Tale of Two Kitties

When we got the twin kittens, we had just seen my little sister's performance in the musical Cats.  The whole premise of the musical is that every cat has not only the name by which humans choose to call it, but also another name with which it is innately born, and no two cats have the same name.  So although we named the kittens Max (short for Maximus) and Appa, they showed us through time that their true names are Leopoleon and Alistasia.

And Leopoleon peed on me in my sleep.

I can't really blame him though, seeing as how I'm dead-set on toilet training them.  We are currently in phase 3 of the process, which involves a bowl of litter set inside the toilet seat.  I think it's brilliant because I love the thought of never having to buy (or clean up) litter for the rest of their lives.  However, one of their lives is en route to a screeching halt unless he finds a better way to show his disapproval of my toilet training methods.  Appa's a good girl.  I feed her bacon.

Accidental Activism?

I'm not sure if being eco-friendly is considered activism...I think the term these days is "environmental awareness."  I didn't mean to go green, honestly.  It was a completely selfish transition, fueled by frugality and the desire for more money.  It all started when I woke up at 4:30 one morning with the burning urge to check my Facebook on my phone.  The screen was blinding in the midst of my otherwise pitch-dark room, so I turned the brightness on the screen all the way down.  I've left it that way ever since.  It's done wonders for my battery life (and surprisingly, my eyes).  In the spirit of battery saving (and thus less time spent sucking power out of my wall to charge the dang thing), I also turned off my 3G network.

Then, our best friends just re-did all the lighting fixtures in their house, so naturally we did what any good best friends would do: we took their old fixtures from their attic when they weren't home.  Mostly because they have fans, and we live in Tejas, where it's stupid hot.  So now that we have fans in our ceilings, we don't use the A/C as much.  And speaking of A/C, we also went out and bought a digital programmable thermostat with an Energy Star option which essentially programs the thermostat to use the least amount of energy and save us the most money possible.

So there you have it.  I managed to pull off painting a portrait of Bob Marley without actually having to paint his face, our kittens are blog-worthy because they pee on people, and we have effectively reduced the amount of energy we use on a regular basis.  I hope it shows in our energy bill.  But if not, at least I can take comfort in knowing that we are one step closer to being "that couple."

This is all for now.  See you next week, and remember to avoid the Noid.
-R.

P.S. Hey look at that, it's Friday.  I win.

Facebook Fridays: Changing Gears...Again.

Let's get down to business.

I passed up my first opportunity to do a Facebook Friday post because last week I was too busy taking my wife to see Wicked.  Then the following Saturday, I did my first performance painting as part of a dance recital.  So it was a pretty busy weekend.  This weekend will be just as eventful (we've got Glennda's mom for the weekend), but there are some teenagers having a pool party right outside our bedroom, so I can't sleep anyway.  It's 1 in the morning, by the way.

What's in a name?

I find myself occasionally checking the App Store for new apps I can download for free and then hardly ever use.  I found an app called "Robot Unicorn Attack."  While not free, I was still tempted to buy it purely on the basis of its ridiculous title.  This made me start noticing...okay, looking for...crazy titles everywhere - especially Netflix.  With titles like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla and The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies (which is actually the one and only film to officially fall into the horror-musical genre), who actually needs to watch these movies?  Scrolling through the titles is entertainment enough.

The painter behind the curtain.

So, that show I did really jump-started my painting.  I've done a lot of new work, but am hesitant to post them up online.  I want to sell them, and the hush-hush nature of the whole thing adds an element of value - like each piece is a well-kept secret that only a select few are allowed in on.  Plus, I don't want to be one of those approval-hungry artists who constantly needs people to tell them how remarkable their work is.  I know how good I am, and how good I'm not.  The ultimate compliment would be to tell me how much you'd pay for one of my paintings, and then to buy it.  So if you're interested in buying, let me know and I'll show you what I've been up to.  Some of them are actually pretty freaking cool.

As a man's wife thinketh...

My wife believes in me.  She read one of my recent posts and said I should be a 'real' writer.  I joined a group of freelance writers who submit articles and then get paid based on how many people actually read them.  We'll see how that goes.  I've also taken every single post since the beginning of this blog and put 'em in a Word document.  I've gotten myself an official ISBN that I will use to publish it as a book and put up on websites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble for people to purchase.  I shall call it A Fool's Gold: One Man's Ignorance is Another Man's Bliss.  So that's that.  But then tonight, once I'd finished painting my first portrait (which turned out alright - the first painting I've been happy with since the cherry blossoms), she suggested that I become a tattoo artist.

Wait a sec, hold up.  What the heck of it?

You have to be an apprentice for at least a year before you get your first paying customer.  Plus, tattoo parlors are rarely in the best part of town, and your income is based on the frequency of your business, which means it's fluid and never steady.  This is not something into which most wives-of-two-years will generally suggest that their husbands invest their time and energy.  Usually it's more along the lines of moving up some sort of corporate ladder and creating a stable financial situation upon which to build a home and a family.  I mean, don't get me wrong - being that there are about 15 more tattoos I plan on getting over the next couple decades, I just about freaked when she actually suggested that I look into it.  But I guess I just never pictured her being supportive of that kind of job choice.

Although, there are a lot of people I could spread the gospel to in that field.  And, if I were to work in a tattoo parlor, I'd be able to get my dreads and labret piercing (and of course, tattoos) without my employer complaining about lack of the appearance of professionalism.

It really is crazy, the things I'll consider doing when my wife says she believes in me.  Her opinion outweighs the rest of the world to me - if she says she thinks I can do it, that's all it takes to me to believe in myself as well.  She just said it in passing, and probably had no idea that it completely rearranged my view of our future.  I guess we'll see how it all plays out.

Well, I think this Facebook Fridays deal might work.  Let's see what this coming week has to offer.

-R.

I Could Write This In My Sleep...In Fact, I Probably Am.

In Avatar, Ripley tells Marcus Wright that he has to journal about stuff when it's fresh on his mind.  So that's what I'm doing.  Because it's always a good idea to do what Ripley says, even if she is just putting on the facade of a nerdy humanitarian botanist geek woman.  She'll always be a half alien queen hardcore action chick in my book.

What's going on right now is I'm watching Comedy Central Presents on my wife's Windows 7 Media Center laptop while waiting for midnight to see what's going to be on woot.com tomorrow.

Oh man, look at that.  It's tomorrow.

What!?  Another laptop!?  Are you freaking kidding me!!?!?  Alas, another day shall pass in which I have no temptation whatsoever to purchase a semi-useless and un-budgeted-for item.  Whatever shall I do?  I guess I'll just have to save that money and invest it in my future or something.

Oh well.

The last thing I bought on woot was a TV antenna that you plug into your USB drive to watch and record live TV on your computer.  Turns out the drivers are only compatible with Windows XP.  Being that the two laptops we have are this one with Win7 and my old Dell which is currently running Ubuntu 9 from a flash drive, I don't think internet TV in bed is going to be an option at the moment.  Although, I could always use it on one of the 3 desktop PC's we've got in our office (The one I built from scratch, the one she built from scratch, and the one we bought online because the ones we built broke - don't worry, I fixed them.  Mostly.), but why would I sit at my desk watching TV on a 17-inch monitor when I have a wall-sized HDTV sitting in my living room?

And here's the more pressing question: why in the name of all that is holy (i.e. cow, mackerel, guacamole, crap, and just about anything Robin says to Batman) am I rambling about my computer situation at 12:20 in the morning?  I should be sleeping.

hmmm....

But instead, I am in the mood for hilarity.  I shall call upon one of my previous writings to serve this purpose.  Below is a copy of a letter I sent out to all of my co-workers in Dallas earlier this year, to let them know that I was planning on moving to the Fort Worth branch this summer.  It is rare that I write a piece of literature that caters to my own sense of humor so much so that I actually laugh out loud every single time I go back to read it.  Enjoy.

Greetings, fellow Kaplanians.

As you all (hopefully) know by now, my time here at the Dallas Center is quickly drawing to an end. A wise man once told me, "If you don't get a bachelor's degree, you'll never make it anywhere in life and I'll disown you as a son." Oh wait - by 'a wise man,' I actually mean 'my father,' and now that I think about it, I actually don't remember him ever saying that. Or anything remotely close to that, really. Regardless, I'm still going to go for it anyway, because I like the thought of being able to say "I have a bachelor's degree."

Beginning this summer, I will be pursuing a BFA in drawing and painting, with a minor in business at the University of Texas at Arlington. My wife and I are moving to the Arlington/Fort Worth area during the first week in may, so my last official day as a KSA at the Dallas Center will be Thursday, April 29.

My decision to strive for a BFA was originally because I thought it stood for "Bachelor's of Freaking Awesomeness." Eventually I realized that it actually stands for Bachelor's in Fine Art, which explains why there's so much drawing and painting involved. According to statistics which I made up just now, modern painting is the most lucrative form of fine art, as it's the only industry in which one can slap a handful of paint onto a blank canvas and still get away with charging exorbitant amounts of money for it.

I know that you all love me to death and would give an arm and a leg to keep me here, but honestly, that's really disgusting, you guys. And besides, you will probably need all four of your limbs at some point in the future, so you'll probably want to keep them attached. But I did know a girl in college who learned how to play Minesweeper using only her toes, so if any of you do happen to lose both of your arms in some kind of freak accident while I'm gone, I can give you her number - she can show you the way.

All this to say, this is not a 'goodbye' note, so much as a 'see most of you later' note. Although I won't be working here anymore, I will be KSA'ing over at the Fort Worth center. The center director over there and I have been in cahoots over the past few months, arranging the terms of my transfer. Sadly, she declined my repeated requests for permission to coat myself in blue makeup and grow dread locks to become the first ever Na'vi KSA, but in spite of this minor setback, I will continue to serve on Team Kaplan for at least the next two years (provided I don't get fired for skipping work to run around in the jungle hissing at wild animals and hitting them with sticks).

It's been said that, "If you catch a man a fish, you can sell it to him; but if you teach a man to fish, you lose a wonderful business opportunity." I'm not sure how that ties in to what I'm talking about, but I'm sure it is somehow connected. Because it has the words 'business' and 'opportunity' in it. And 'fish.'

In closing, I've had the time of my life working with all of you (more specifically, the February 2009 to March 2010 time). I'm not really the type to get super mushy when saying my goodbye's, but I am the type to get super hungry when I smell bacon. In fact, if any of you feel the urge to visit me in Fort Worth during the next two years, it would totally make my day if you brought bacon. Bacon's pretty much the best food on the planet. It's even fun to say. Bacon, bacon, bacon...

Now, you are all in the loop. This has been a public service announcement brought to you by the letter R, and the number 29. Thank you for reading, and have a sensational week.

-G'PO

Project Robo-Dog, Imaginary Journalists, and Facebook Fridays. You know you're curious.

I recently took up the alter-ego name Mustafo Monkovit out of sheer wacky inside-jokeness resulting from a crazy night of aimless driving around Fort Worth with my wife this past week.  It's my Russian name.  And hers is Bruschetta Monkovit.

I kind of went on a spree with alternate identities from varying ethnic backgrounds, such as Juan Quatro the Magnificent, the last remaining descendant of the legendary Don Quixote, and a terrible street magician.  And then there's the Japanese KazanInu-Mekka, which translates (very) roughly to "Volcano Robo-Dog."

All this to say, I tend to dance aimlessly around random, off-the-wall topics, following them up with the inevitable closing statement that is bound to contain some kind of arbitrary observation and begin with the phrase "all this to say."

That's because whenever I think of something of actual substance about which I might blog, the option of actually blogging about it is conveniently unavailable to me.  So I usually condense it into a micro-blog and stick it on my facebook as a status update, like "I blame Mario Kart for my habit of throwing banana peels out the window while I'm driving" or "I don't procrastinate at work. I delegate tasks to my future self."

No one would've guessed that these statements are but mere morsels of the feast of blog-able content that flew through my mind too quickly for me to even grasp it, much less tame it and tie it down to this webpage.  The status about Mario Kart is but the echo of a fleeting monologue that digs into the effects of racing games on my lead-footed predisposition, as well as the incredible restraint I demonstrate by not throwing all my trash out the window as I drive up and down I-20 five days a week.

And while the procrastination idea may be something that you'd expect to see on one of those graphic tees by which teenagers find themselves all too amused these days, it was actually the tail end of a conversation I had with my inner monologue about what I would actually do if I were able to communicate with the past and future iterations of myself.

The truth is that there is a journalist inside my head, sitting on a wooden crate in a dimly-lit room; an old-fashioned typewriter sitting atop his lap as he endlessly punches away at the old creaky keys - a 30-page discourse on every thought that passes through his tiny, imaginary world.  Seldom does he ever publish an article, though; and when he does, his vision is too blurry and his memory too faint to dictate properly the essay to my antsy fingertips.

The posts in this blog serve two purposes: firstly, a method of record-keeping so as to provide a means by which I may look back and accurately assess my progress toward my goals, and secondly, my own entertainment.  When ideas never make it to this blog, but are instead thrown off-course into the sea of collective information that is proprietarily owned by Mark Zuckerberg and his evil empire of soul-stealers, they never live up to their true potential, and usually wind up serving the exact opposite purpose than that for which they were intended: they provide records of times in which I was either too busy or too distracted to actually write something substantial, and they provide entertainment for others.  I'm not too worried about the second part, but it's the first one that gets me.

All this to say,* I need some way to put ideas down on paper on the fly, in such a way that I can remember the ideas as they were when they first hit me, while not taking more than a few moments to write them down.  Then once every couple weeks, I just need to vomit them all down in this blog and then edit the post to make it something that's interesting enough for me to want to actually go back and read one day.

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I guess I'm already using facebook as that always-accessible idea-jotter-downer.

Huh.

Looks like now all I need is some kind of routine to get myself in the habit of going through all of my old facebook posts and saying "What was I thinking when I wrote that?"  (...which is actually something I already think to myself pretty frequently.  Like when I read my status from last night: "Dude. Big fights make for great make-up sss...shopping.")

So it's settled.  I hereby commence Project RoboDog.  Phase 1: make a point to update my facebook status whenever I am struck with a thought or idea about which I would most likely blog if a computer was in front of me at that moment.  Then, every Friday, review my RoboDog posts and draft an actual blog post about the ideas they represent.

I didn't blog at all in May, and there were so many times I wanted to.  We'll see how June goes.  Facebook Fridays, here I come!

-R.









*You had to see that coming.

So that's my life.

I've been doing a lot of thinking about our future.

I say 'our' and not 'my,' because I gave up the notion of having my own future the day I permanently fused my soul with that of another person.  Leave it to me to make marriage sound like something out of a sci-fi novel.

Anyway.  I am totally excited and totally terrified.  Excited because I've been doing some networking, and I think I've got a good group of people behind me to help convert my painting hobby into a painting career.  If you work in the customer service industry, be nice to everyone.  Because you just might come in contact with someone who is deeply plugged into the art community in your metroplex, and if you are upbeat and helpful, they just might spread word of your paintings to some of their friends who happen to own galleries all around the city who are looking for new talent.

So that's exciting.

This Saturday, I say my farewells to all 12 of my guitar students after teaching them their last lessons.  The closer the day comes, the more I'm bombarded with thoughts about all the things I won't get to teach them.  I'm nearing completion of my book into which I've tried my best to stuff every tidbit of guitar-oriented musical knowledge I managed to absorb during my time in music theory classes, classical guitar ensembles, garage bands, jazz quartets and praise and worship teams.  I plan on getting all of my students' addresses and mailing them copies when it's edited and published.  I also want to put it in stores, so we'll see how that goes.  I've already sent a rough draft to a fellow author/guitarist whose years and talent in both areas far surpasses my own.  He wrote back saying he had learned a few things and really liked the tone of voice I used throughout.

So that's encouraging.

I'm also leaving my current place of work at the end of the month.  I'm transfering to the Fort Worth branch, where they've already made preparations to give me a promotion and a raise.  It will be a great opportunity for me to finally gain some managerial experience.  They already have a few projects with my name on it simply because they heard through the rumor mill that my brother and I were shakin' things up at the Dallas center.  He's leaving too, but he's leaving the company altogether, so the task of carrying on the 'Bayron Brothers' legacy rests on my shoulders.

So that's intimidating.

We got a new laptop.  What we do with big purchases is save a little each month, then when our savings matches the price of something that's available, we just go buy it.  It's our first Windows 7 PC, so we're still in the shock-and-awe stage of new-userism.  This will be the year that Glennda and I completely upgrade our tech lives.  We've already gotten a great deal on a 500GB media hub with a slot for an additional 500GB drive.  We're inheriting a 68" HDTV from my dad when we move in a couple weeks.  We got the new laptop, and we'll be getting new OS's for our iPhones this summer.  We also plan to buy a PS3 sometime this year, and ever since Gizmodo leaked all that stuff about the new iPhone 4, I've had my fingers crossed for a winter 2010 release.  All things considered, by this time next year, we will be set with everything we've been patiently waiting for, and we're doing it all through saving up and spending cash.

So that's freaking awesome.

When people ask me "How are you?" or "What's on your mind?" or "Hey, why are you ignoring me?" everything in this article is what I want to say.  But I can't, because no one really means it when they ask how you're doing, so I usually just respond by saying something like "You don't care" or "Why is your head so fat?" and then I do something really charming so they don't think I'm being serious, although I actually am.  Then I stare off like JD from Scrubs while I mentally write this entire article because they made me think about it.

So that's my life right now.

-R.

Back in the Saddle

Whoa!  It's been forever since I've written in this plog.  Or like two weeks.  I guess I've just had a lot going on.


We've been caught up in the hustle and bustle of hustling and bustling to get everything in order for the Big Move to Arlington.  Apparently my cat thinks this keyboard is a bed, by the way.  Anyway, we found an apartment with almost the exact same floor plan as our last one, so that's really awesome...and kind of strange in a Twilight Zoney kinda way.  I wrote a goodbye e-mail to all of my Dallas co-workers, which most of them found quite entertaining.

I'm currently about 40 pages into a book on how to speak the language of music.  I imagine the finished work will be around 60 or so pages, so once I add illustrations and reformat it to like a 6x8, it could be in the range of 100 or more, not including the appendices.  Once I get it edited and published, I'm going to send a copy to each of my guitar students.  I only have six weeks with each of them before my time as their teacher comes to an end.

My parents got me a $100 Visa gift card for my birthday.  I'm usually of the mindset that gift cards are effortless cop-out gifts given by those who lack creativity.  But I'm also at a point in my life where I appreciate the ability to go spend money on un-budgeted-for things.  Like graphic novels.

•  300 isn't Frank Miller's best work.  But it is something that every Frank Miller fan should have in his collection.  It is drawn with his signature Sin City style, yet the presence of consistent color is just enough to set it apart from the rest of his standalone works.
•  Batman: Year One.  As a diehard Batman fan, I just freaking needed to own this book.  The fact that it is written by Frank Miller just adds to the fact that I freaking needed to own this book.  Regardless of visual artistic style, when I become a graphic novel artist, I imagine my writing style will be very closely akin to that of Miller.  I only wish he had drawn it as well.  I still need The Dark Knight Returns, though...
•  Final Crisis.  You could fill up an entire bookshelf with all the crises that the DC universe has suffered.  In fact, I'm pretty sure my dad actually has a bookshelf in his house labeled DC Crises, with every single one lined up in chronological order.  I got this one mainly because I opened up to the middle and saw what looked like Ultraman being squashed in the hand of an 8-storey Mr. Manhattan.  I know, right??
•  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.  I can explain.  First of all, you don't get married to a woman named Glennda and expect to live the rest of your life without hearing about this book constantly.  It wasn't the story that interested me, but rather the fact that it was penciled by one of my all-time favorite comic book artists: Skottie Young.  I became a follower of him about a decade ago when I stumbled upon his website (http://www.leadheavy.com/), which no longer exists.  He's right up there with Frank Miller and Jim Lee in my book.
•  Mystery Novel...ok so I didn't go out and buy a novel called 'mystery novel,' but my wife did order something for me from bn.com and refuses to let me know what it is.  I could go look at the digital receipt sitting in my inbox because she used my own account to buy the thing, but where's the fun in that?

We're house-sitting for some friends this week.  They have these awesome door knobs that open from the inside but not from the outside, so when a house-sitter goes outside to take out the trash and doesn't think to take the house key with him, he ends up spending 15 minutes looking like a burglar trying to break in until he finally finds a half-unlocked window and uses a pooper scooper and a hose to MacGuyver his way back in.  I'm just saying.

I'm going to go pay attention to my cat.  In a fit of attention-craving, he actually climbed up my jeans just now.  It was cute until he kept going and began to climb up my T-shirt.  That was significantly less cute.

And now, you're in the loop.

-R.

Stuff you probably already knew

I solved a problem today.

I was in the office of a sales executive at the local branch of our credit union, discussing the coverages on a new insurance policy.  She had a wooden puzzle on her desk, just begging me to take it apart and figure out how to put it back together again.  So I did.

We talked about comp and collision and liability and premiums and deductibles and  all kinds of other grown-up words, but all the while, I fought and finagled that stupid wooden puzzle.

I joked about how that set of seemingly rectangular pieces of carefully whittled wood were going to keep me up at night if I wasn't able to solve them by the time she'd drawn up the papers.  Once she had them all printed, she began to say "I win" as she slid them across the desk for me to sign, but she never completed the phrase because at the same time, I set the puzzle on her desk, completely assembled.

"Well I'll be.  Do you know how many people walk through these doors every day?"  She asked.  "You're the third person whose ever been able to solve that puzzle in all the sixteen years I've worked here."

Whoadude.  That comment got me thinking about the experience of solving that puzzle, and I came upon three elements that came into play:

Determination.
I was going to include patience in the list, but then I realized that a person's patience is always directly proportionate to their determination to meet an end.  If you really want those donuts, you'll wait in line for as long as you have to wait.  If you really want to finish restoring that classic car, you'll wait as long as you have to for the parts to ship.  Within the context of problem-solving, patience is a symptom of determination, and determination is what you get when you mix desire with willpower.

Time.
If you could solve it in 10 seconds, it wasn't really a problem to begin with.  It was an exercise.  It was practice.  If it's actually a problem worth solving, it will take time.  You'll have to come up with a few wrong answers.  You will have to be puzzled, tricked, and baffled speechless.  This all takes time, and at the end of all of this, if you have determination and this next element, you will end up solving the problem.

Paradigm Shifts.
It's the best way I can think to put it.  First, I envisioned all the pieces mentally, thought about how they would go together, then tried to put them together that way.  Naturally, they didn't fit.  Then I tried to get them into the same position, only using a different method.  That didn't work either.  I tried to force it by shoving and squeezing.  I knew it wouldn't work, but it was worth a shot.  I eventually had to erase my original concept of how it was supposed to fit together, and completely start from scratch with a new understanding of how all the pieces worked (and didn't work) together.  It wasn't until I rearranged my thinking that I got it.  And you must first arrange your thoughts before you can re-arrange them.

All this to say, I had a somewhat revelatory moment today as I sat silently across a room from a complete stranger, effectively cheating on my current insurance provider.  And the lesson is this:

The answers to the big questions can be found in the small things,

if one has the presence of mind to apply his heart to what he observes.

-R.

The Sweet Taste of Solidity

I've finally got myself on some semblance of a daily routine.  I've got 3 alarms that get me up in the morning, and each has its own intention:

6:45 - "Turn me off immediately and go back to sleep.  I'm just here to let you know you're about to have to start waking up soon."

7:00 - "Stay awake long enough to check and make sure I am in fact the 7:00 alarm and not the 7:15 alarm.  Once you find that it's really and truly 7:00, go back to sleep."

7:15 - "You may have to actually get up now.  Wake up your wife and ask if she needs 5 more minutes of sleep.  If so, set the alarm for 7:20 and check your facebook on your phone.  If not, start making her coffee."

...Then I pretty much keep repeating that last step until 7:30, which is the latest we can possibly wake up and still get her off to work on time.

After she leaves for work at 7:45, I eat breakfast and do an hour of mental workout, then an hour of physical workout.

- Mental workouts consist of logic games, memorization techniques, creative outlets and learning new skills.
 - Physical workouts consist of 15 minutes of yoga, 30 minutes of weights, and 15 minutes of tai chi.

I usually finish all that around 10.  Then bible study and quiet meditation usually takes me to 11.  I spend the next hour doing various household tasks like laundry, emptying the litter box, etc.  Lately I've been spending this time packing boxes for Arlington.

I start making Glennda lunch at noon, because her lunch break is at 12:30.  We eat lunch together, and then she leaves around 1:15.  If I have anything to finish up, I'll do it here.  Otherwise, I start into all my unfinished semi-recreational tasks.

(Right now I'm tailoring a bunch of misfit and hand-me-down clothes to make them more awesome.  I'm taking in a pair of Glennda's pants so I can wear them.  Other times I'll take Bear for a walk, work on one of the stories I'm writing or just paint.  Or record myself painting and make a YouTube video out of it.)

I'll leave for work at 3:45 and when I come home at 9:45 Glennda and I will relax while watching our recorded shows.  Then she falls asleep and I read whatever book I'm going through until about 10:30 or 11.

So that's what my weekday looks like.  All this to say, I've finally been following this pattern long enough to call it a certifiable habit.  And it feels great.  I read somewhere that if you write down your routine and read it back to yourself, it helps to solidify it in your brain as fact.  So this journal entry is kind of just the last brick in the road to the routine-led day for which I've been striving for a couple years.

Ecclesiastes 10:18

-R.

Calvin and Hobbes rocks your face*

So if you haven't discovered the greatness that is Regina Spektor, you need to pick up her album far and listen to it until your ears bleed.

----

I've always been fascinated with the secret arts of the far east...Tai Chi, QiGong, Fajin, Kundalini Hatha-Yoga, Feng Shui, that kind of thing.  Not only am I intrigued by the medicinal possibilities, but it's always a fun exercise in apologetics to compare things like Taoism and Buddhism to the ultimate source of Truth.  I was having a conversation with my dad about how much I admire the level of discipline found among Buddhists.  He responded by saying that the problem with the Buddhists is that they are too perfectly balanced.  Whaaat?  Is there such a thing as too perfectly balanced?  Then he said that things like love and passion require an imbalance.  An imbalance of priority, of importance, of desire.  And it makes total sense.  After all, the Buddhists are the ones who first realized that in order to do away with the negatives in life, one must abandon pursuit of the positives.

----

I watch my wife's shows because I like spending time with her doing what she likes doing.  She watches Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice.  In one of these shows (it's still hard for me to tell them apart at times), one of the characters says that she's probably going to hell for trying to force her pregnant teenage daughter to have an abortion.  It got me thinking - there are really people out there who assume that the Christian doctrine teaches that committing sins condemn people to hell.  If you murder someone, you're going to hell for it.  We tell people that no amount of good works can get you into heaven, so why would we make people believe bad works will get you any closer to hell?  When thinking in terms of salvation, you must think of 'sin' not as a set of actions, but rather as a state of being.  Namely, being dirty.  We're all born dirty, and we stay dirty until we let God clean us off.  The bible calls this process sanctification.  If we die dirty, we go to hell.  If we die sanctified, we go to heaven.  It's as simple as that.*  In my humble opinion, there are just as many Christians who need to learn this as non-believers.

----

They say you learn something new every day.  They're freaking liars, whoever they are.  However, I would say that most people probably learn something new every week.  This past week, I learned how to turn a standard household laser pointer into a candle-lighting, paper-burning, pocket-sized sci-fi torture weapon.  That's all I'm gonna say about that before I get myself in trouble.  Glennda, if you read this, the cat was already missing some fur from his tail before I learned this, and no lasers* were involved in the removal of said fur.

----

So a guy I used to work with at the Y is taking an LSAT course where I work.  He once made a disrespectful joke about another one of our female co-workers (who is now my wife), and my first instinct was to break his nose.  The only reason I didn't was because I didn't want to lose my job (the fact that about 30 kids would've been witnesses didn't even factor into my equation until much later in a moment of guided retrospection).  Still, after all these years, the second he walked in our doors this afternoon, the first thing I thought to say was "Hey I remember you - I almost punched your face in.  How've you been?"  I'm not really the type of guy you'd normally find smacking people around,* but there are just some people you don't disrespect - and my wife is one of them.

----

That's really all that's going on in my head at the moment.

Pieces,
-R.

















* (insert long, fine print disclosure here)