Weekly Tweets for 2009-05-17
- man, you gotta love those parent vs 3 yr old power struggles… I don’t think she’s had a tear free day in the last week… #
- the way I feel about Sunday nights going into Monday mornings can be summed up with one word: AAARRRGGGHHH!!!!!…. *going to bed now*… #
- g’morning twitterverse… ** waits for coffee to kick in, and growls at anyone foolish enough to get too close ** #
- I give up…. *bangs head on desk* #
- “Explosions! MORE explosions! I got to have more explosions! ” – Mekgineer Thermaplugg #
- OK, not good…. stretched wrong, felt something pop in my shoulderblade… now I feel like I’m gonna die… OOOWWWWW… #
- ok, I’m awake and better than yesterday… had bizarre dreams last night about a fantasy/steampunk inspired story regarding Batman… hmmmm #
- dear luxury car owners: owning a nice car doesn’t make you the most important person on the road, or entitle you to be a dick… #
- oooo…. I MAY have just found a D&D group…. :D #
- leaving in an hour… doodling monsters until then…. #
- on my Facebook page when I should be drawing… *sigh* #
- If there was any justice, a massive pit leading into hell would open up underneath the Oracle Headquarters and swallow them all up.. #
- dammit…. cant. stop. sneezing. I HATE allergy season… #
- writing massively complex code: 6 hrs. Successful runtime test on the first try: priceless… ’scuse me whilst I go dance the happy dance #
- after almost 4weeks without a cigarette, I’m still a.)married, b.)employed, and c.)not arrested… so far, it’s going better than expected #
- Is it me, or is there something inherently wrong with the term “That dog wont hunt” being applied to an application bug? #
- must. have. this. – http://bit.ly/A5Moe #
- g’morning twitterverse… time for another day of “High Adventure”… #
- is ready to chop off own nose if it meant some relief from allergies… #
- wow… I never knew Google being down could feel so….. debilitating… #
- RT @torbooks: RT @tordotcom I AM A GEEK!: The Video, the Backlash, and Why We Need to Take Back Geek Culture http://is.gd/zAmT #
- Lunch Hour doodling… http://twitpic.com/55wka #
- Even more lunch hour doodling… http://twitpic.com/55wm3 #
- craving cake… #
- OK, it’s official… I absolutely detest Burger King’s commercials… #
- *sigh* this happens very time I watch Serenity or Firefly… I get the most intense urge to find the FOX headquarters and burn it down… #
- g’morning twitterverse… it’s finally Friday… may the hours pass quickly today… #
- It really pisses me off when other department managers decide to get snarky with me for doing my job, just because it made them look bad… #
- Friday…. It’s a Crown and Coke kind of night… #
- RT @starwars: R2-D2 Cameo in New Star Trek movie! http://bit.ly/aqrtM #starwars #startrek This is pretty cool… #
- been painting for 6 hours straight… eyes hurt, back hurts… AND I’m about to give a lesson…. *whimper* #
- done with regular painting for the day, switching to digital painting… #
- OK, painted all day long… tis time to knock off for the day and play some WOW… #
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Painting Update – 5/11
Just a progress update (3rd week) of my current project:
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On the whole I am happy with how it is coming along. As with all projects like this, I had to make some on-the-fly decisions that conflicted with what I originally planned. If I had to guess, I think I’ve got about another two, maybe three weeks left before this is done.
The earlier stages can be viewed here…
All the good things… part 1
I don’t talk too much about my family on my blog. Part of the reason is that it’s not really a well kept secret that I have one, and I can never tell when any of them might actually decide to read it. So, as a rule I refrain from mentioning them too often, mainly out of respect for privacy and what they may not want shared with the world at large.
Except today is mother’s day, so I’m inclined to reflect on the things I “got” from my mother. So much of what we become as adults comes from our parents. It’s something I’m more conscious of now, since my soon-to-be four year old has developed the trait of imitating what her mother and I do.
First and foremost, a love of being an artist.
When she still picked up pencil and pad, she was awesome. Unfortunately, it’s something she left behind for more practical pursuits (presumably, to include raising me). Unfortunately no amount of persuasion from me has managed to get her to return to it. However, as I was growing up, it was something she always encouraged me to do.
I remember one year I asked for an eighty dollar set of colored pencils for my birthday. I was expecting some pushback; I mean 80 bucks for a set of colored pencils? At the time, the concept of Artist grade colored pencils was pretty foreign, and that was a considerable price tag for something you could get pretty cheap at Wal-Mart.
Instead, she took it in stride, and I did indeed get that set (after 15 or so years, I still have most of them). It was this reason, and many others like it, that I still pursue being an artist and try to encourage it in my own children.
A love of cooking
I won’t speculate on whether she enjoys it as much as I do. However, I can remember always being in the kitchen with her when she cooked, even back to my furthest, haziest memories. As I got older, she decided that I was not going to grow up to be a helpless bachelor living on fast food. She taught me how to cook, and how to enjoy doing it. As a result, I do most of the cooking in my house, and will likely continue to do so.
An occasional inclination to be goofy.
Whoever said growing up means always acting like a grownup didn’t live in my house. It’s a way of not taking life too seriously, and it’s a trait I am glad I share with her.
Patience
It takes a tremendous amount of patience do deal with an unreasonable child (as I’m learning daily). While neither hers nor my patience level is inexhaustible, it’s always been enough to keep me from doing or saying something I’d regret later. When I compare the ability to be patient between my mother and my father, it’s easy to say that I got most of mine from her.
A strong work ethic.
When I first entered the workforce as a newly minted Airman in the Air Force, I modeled my approach after what I saw in both of my parents. Like many from their generation, they take having a job seriously, and work pretty damn hard at it. It still confounds me when I see people my own age (and even older) who approach their roles as workers with the barest effort, doing as little as they can get away with and not get fired.
I could probably write a post three times longer than this, citing all kinds of examples. However, I think my point has come across. Today is an important day. Think about the things that make you what you are, and think about how many of those things probably come from your mother.
Go give her a call…
Weekly Tweets for 2009-05-10
- sigh… weekends go by WAY too fast… but, had a productive two days of painting, and a good teaching session with my niece today… #
- In archeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy you cover the known. – Thomas Pickering #
- RT @wilw: Talk to your kids about the Star Wars prequels, because if you don’t, someone else will. #
- RT @r2d2: *doo deet doot doot deet deet beep boop!* #starwarsday #
- browsing Apple.com… I want to order my new Mac.book Pro.. *sniff sniff*… #
- good grief… the latest Superman film is like a bad train wreck, and I cant seem to STOP WATCHING IT… #
- about to head off to bed, and strangely feels as though even if just for a fleeting moment, all is right with the world… #
- is wondering whether today should be canceled due to lack of interest…. #
- I’m having to exercise an inordinate amount of calm and self control… Otherwise I’d suddenly be unemployed and smoking like a chimney… #
- *yawn*… stayed up WAY to late last night painting… I know better than to do that on a “school night”. need copious amounts of coffee.. #
- coffee isn’t living up to it’s end of the bargain… *zzzzzzzzzzzzz* #
- it’s late, and I SHOULD go to bed, but I don’t wanna… so there…. #
- Is it me, or should “Van Helsing” go down as one of the worst movies, EVER? #
- insanity can be defined as some repeated act that defies common sense… kinda like going to work every morning… #
- so , what do you do when the person who ticked you off in traffic this morning turns out to be a friend of yours? #
- Seriously folks; devoting the first 15 minutes of a development meeting to talk about last nights “American Idol” results? Not cool… #
- just looked down and realized that it’s only 9 AM, when it feels like it should be 10:30 or so… this is gonna be a LONG day… #
- wow… what’s that big orange ball in the sky? surely that cannot be the sun, for it hath forsaken us long ago… #
- ok dammit, drawing a Dwarf should NOT be this hard… #
- RT @JINX: Duke Nukem Never? http://is.gd/xtjf but I’ve been waiting for so long… #
- Lunch: A Spicy bowl of Chili and Pepper Jack Cheez-its…. yeah, baby…. #
- whatever happened to Homey D. Clown? That’s the guy you need to make American Idol interesting… #
- RT @starwars: First Look: “The Art of Star Wars: The Clone Wars” book! http://bit.ly/VBrsH #starwars me want…. #
- you know it’s getting bad when you hear the term “you got a couple of minutes?” and your first thought is “this isn’t going to end well”… #
- sometimes I wish it wasn’t illegal to use duct tape on a 3 yr old…. #
- I follow: @larryelmore – fantasy art master & friend #followfriday #
- I follow: @SavingEveryday – If saving money is your thing, this is the lady to know #followfriday #
- I follow: @Jchawes – 1/2 of the GhostHunters Team #followfriday #
- I follow: @grantwilson – 1/2 of the GhostHunters Team #followfriday #
- I follow: @ananthymous – Writer for Applegeeks #followfriday #
- I follow: @hawkster – Artist for Applegeeks #followfriday #
- I follow: @NataniaBarron – Writer and fellow geek
@pauljessup – Writer and Game Designer
#followfriday # - I follow: @wilw (who DOESNT follow him?), @levarburton, @BrentSpiner (who often defies description) #followfriday #
- ok, shutting up for a while… #
- I’m in a World Building mood today… Time to crack open my long running old project and flesh out a few more things… #
- ROTFL!!!!! RT @starwars: The Death Star Destroys the Starship Enterprise! http://bit.ly/2agcTh #startrek #starwars #
- lovely… tornado watches in effect… sometimes I hate Nashville weather…. #
- Setting a good example for children takes all the fun out of middle age. – William Feather #
- can’t decide what to do: 1. paint, 2. romp ‘n stomp in Azeroth, 3. dive into a book, or 4. do what I am doing right now: veg in my chair #
- gah… sitting in chair doing nothing == strong urge to smoke cigarette… need to get up and do something… #
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Literary Misclassification
I have a boilerplate paragraph or two that I typically use when I find myself presented with an “about me” box. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I detested having to describe myself when I was a kid, thanks to having “one of those” teachers every damn year.
As I look at that text, I’m beginning to wonder whether it should be updated or not. See, one of the interests or traits that I use to describe myself is being a writer. However, I haven’t done any substantive writing for nearly 5 years now. Surely there’s a cutoff point where I have to start questioning the accuracy of my own claims.
I ponder this because a few months ago, I located a set of files to an old writing project. It’s just over 50k words in its current form, and the rest of the storyline is charted out in a corresponding outline. All that really remains to be done is to actually do the writing part. However, I’ve found a few obstacles to that seemingly simple task:
1. I’m pretty rusty, writing-wise. I was never in danger of toppling Stephen King as a writer in the first place, and this just feels like starting over not from the starting line, but the locker room.
2. I’ve lost all feeling and affinity for the characters. In order to finish out the story, I have to get to know them again, which means re-reading what I have already written.
…which leads into…
3. What has already been written is just bad. I’m not talking rough-around-the-edges bad, I’m talking use-it-to-fertilize-your-garden bad. After re-reading a couple dozen pages, I had to seriously wonder whether the book was even worth finishing in the first place.
And yet, considering how much work that has already been put into it, I cant help but feel that scrapping the entire thing would just be wasteful. This particular story evolved from a writing exercise, something I worked on when I needed a fresh perspective from the other story I was writing (that one is lost to time, thank heaven). It’s not terribly complicated (by design), and it’s comprised of the typical fantasy fare.
Many years ago I put the question to my own mind, “what do I want to do?” As a creative person, my OCD tends to lead me off on tangents (ooo! shiney!). I had to decide if I wanted to be a master of one discipline, or a complete hack in all of them. I answered that question with what I’m hoping are obvious results; I decided to go with being a visual artist. Since then, my writing pursuits have collected dust.
I’m at a point now where I am re-examining the validity of the question in the first place, or whether I should just give up the ghost…
