Feb/100
Food poisoning just doesn’t sum it up
I just spent the last day and a half crumpled up in a ball, barely able to move, eat or function because something evil snuck it’s way into my food at some point.
I’ve never been that out of commission in my life. And while I’m still recovering, I realized something during my mandatory bed rest.
I need some priorities.
Here’s the deal. Even though on Thursday morning, I began realizing I was becoming increasingly ill, I was so worried about getting the work I had due that day done that I tried to push through it. About around noon that day, I began getting “really sick” (sparing you the obvious details of what really sick means when food poisoning is involved). Instead of going home, I tried desperately to once again, deliver on what I had promised a client earlier that morning.
It wasn’t until 5pm, after being “really sick” 4 times already, that I weakly limped out of the office, barely able to walk straight as I the last time I had ate was that morning which had already been “returned”.
Long story short, I spent the next painful day and a half feeling guilty inbetween episodes of wretching, passing out and fever. Guilty about how I had things due that were now late, guilty I called in sick and fretful about how awful Monday would be now that I’m a day behind.
I’ve deducted that something about that is just not healthy.
I need to take a look inward. It’s sad to me that I spent most of my time inbetween agonizing sickness worrying about things that when measured, are insignificant at best.
I need to disconnect and take inventory. Odd how a batch of Oatmeal from Corner Bakery had to make me realize that.
Aug/092
Childhood memories
Whether it’s the fact I’m turning 32 in just under two months which means it’s that time of the year again or perhaps I’m just in the mood for nostalgia, I’ve been having little memory flashes of my childhood a lot lately. In fact, everytime I have one, there’s this awesome sound effect, akin to a great fwwooossh that precedes it. Thank you, oh precious LOST.
No, the thing of it is, I keep having little scattered memories of what I enjoyed as a kid. Oddly enough, none of these memories include the following items:
- Spreadsheets
- Math
- Checking my voicemail
- Financial planning
- Watching calories
- Eating items found in a V8
- Pushups
- Guilt
Point is, I think it’s either my subconscious telling me that my life is out of whack or, radioactive super intelligent ants have crawled inside my brain and are messing with my wiring. Either way, message recieved super inteligent insects. Sort of miss spending my days with what I imagine consisted of any number of the following tasks:
- Avoiding all things to watch the Disney Afternoon, more specifically Darkwing Duck and Tale Spin
- Riding my GT Performer everywhere, one of the main contributors to the Museum of Scars visible on both my arms/legs.
- Playing with my Transformers/GI Joes in tactical battles against my sister’s League of Dolls
- R/C Cars and Micro Machines
- Captain Power VHS game
- M.A.S.K.
- Writing and reading all things fiction
- Everything Nintendo
Just the same, needed a reminder for myself of all the fun things that adulthood likes to grind into a tasteless gray paste at times.
I leave you, with this:
Aug/091
Getting to know you
Well, a certain Stephen Roth made me think that maybe I need to figure out a clever way to get to know my friends better as I think it’s too often you only get so far in what makes people tick.
Take for instance the fact my friend Andy is a crazy cool guy and, until a trip to Arizona, I had no idea the two of us dug drawing so we started a little comic side-project that proved to be a good time.
Or, my friend Sarah (Andy’s wife) is one hell of a photographer and took the professional photos of our wedding (to be shown once ready for public consumption).
My friend Dan wants to be an Actor/Director which I didn’t know until we accidentally got onto the subject of making a short film.
The list goes on I’m sure, which is the point really. So, if you’re reading this, which I know at least 2 of you are, if there’s something cool you’re into that I’ve been too lame to inquire about, fill me in.
Also, I’m pretty sure I’m going to sign up for a Parkour/Freerunning class after hearing about it on Twitter today. 6′8″ guy scaling walls like Jackie Chan.
Exactly. So awesome.
Aug/091
Photography skills
Surprising how you can work with someone and have no idea they’re talented outside of the 9-5 set of talents you associate them with.
Good example is one of they guys who had worked in our Marketing Department a while back, Matt Santomarco. I knew him as our Marketing Intern at the time but until recently, both due to a rather crowded Twitter feed (of which I mercilessly cleaned by destroying the following of a dozen rather “spammy” individuals) and my lameness of not getting to know who I work with better, that he’s a pretty freaking talented aspiring photographer.
At any rate, some really cool photography if you’re looking for a Denver area photographer, some bad ass photos of Denver or someone to lavish your jealousy-driven artistic praise upon.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/santomarco/
Jul/090
Quick blog update
I decided that it was time to update my blog in more ways than one. The design never really got me feeling giddy and also, I had been neglecting the poor site for so long as so many of you have let me know, that I was behind several versions of wordpress.
I also added a little slideshow love to the pages above and as well, a little sample on this post. While these photos are a bit old, figure I need them here, comforting me.
Warning, awesomeness may exceed expectations:
Photos from the Cactus Bike to Work Tricycle Race
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.May/091
I’ve been…busy?
I’m a little ashamed of how long it’s been since I updated my blog. Ok, I’m really ashamed. As much as I enjoy writing, it’s always astonishing to me how hard it is for me to regularly update a blog as I seem to be come easily distracted about all of the external things in my life that managed quite proficiently to distract me from it.
So, what have I been up to since December? Perhaps a quick inventory:
- We moved into a new apartment. Correction, we moved into a new, cheaper, much improved, apartment with a huge patio that both lacks the incessant clamor of drunken idiots and the smell of rotted hell-spawn emerging from the vents every time the elements required heat or air conditioning. Suffice to say, we’re in a much better place now. Only advice though is never attempt to move a mere month before your wedding. It’s completely jarring and makes an already stressful event almost behemoth in its shadow over all other things.
- We’re getting married in just over a week from now. I will tell you this. Event planning is an awful business, full of some of the most insane decisions the two of us have ever had to contemplate. Add to it that we’re paying for the wedding out of our pocket along with trying to make it much more “us” than the traditional out of the box style wedding and you’ve got a recipe for interesting heated conversations between two people that in the past, have been relaxed with one another over the most serious of topics. Thankfully the two of us are incredibly laid back and level headed so when we find ourselves boiling over with rage that the other would dare question the other’s musical tastes when it comes to whether or not 80’s Hip Hop is better than Ska, we quickly realize it’s a product of the beast. It’s as though we’re both carrying a duplicate of the One Ring and every now and then, find ourselves caught up in the will of Sauron. You know, that kind of metaphor. On the plus side, despite my best attempts to help, Nicole has took the brunt of most of the heavy decisions and while I feel increasingly guilty that she’s had that burden, I think it’s in far better hands than if it was entrusted to me. Not everyone loves a wedding with the theme of the A-Team and Lazer Tag.
- In just over a week, we’ll be entertaining a large sum of people we’ve all come to care about over the years. While lack of money and availability hasn’t allowed us to have every single person we consider vital to our existence attend our wedding, the thought of having so many good people in one place, here to celebrate a good thing is at times overwhelming. I just hope I manage not to totally botch things.
- I’ve been inspired multiple times over the last few months, spreading my ADD over multiple personal projects. Two of them in particular have me extremely excited but at the same time, extroidanarily sad as the last few months have taxed my ambition both due to an upcoming wedding, an increasingly demanding job and just the general life curveballs coupled with my genetic disposition to be infinitely multi-tasking. I have the outline of the novel I’ve always wanted to write clearly laid out in my head. As well as that, the makings of a very smart and witty Machinima series that my friend Chris and I coined. Soon people, soon.
- My parents now live in Colorado. After what was an exhausting avalanche of misfortune and odd-timing, my parent’s lives in Minnesota came to a sudden halt, forcing quite thankfully their move to Colorado, the location they’ve desired to live within since I was born. While I’m not one for things like The Secret or heavy-handed destiny, it’s amazing to me that out of all of the despair and tradgedy leveled at my parent’s over the last few years, that out of it they’ve been able to check off a rather large dream of theirs which was living in Colorado.
- My good friend Andy is coming to town for the wedding as is required since he’s married to our good friend Sarah as well. Good fortune on both accounts, plus the fact we’ll be seeing their new addition to the family. Also, the last time Andy and I saw one another, we spawned a very creative idea for a comic and I’m hoping that this time around, we’ll spawn the idea of how to actually successfully create the comic as the idea is so good, that if said aloud, it’s said to cause the immediate appearance of ice-cream and donuts.
- Katie and her very cool fiance are getting married and may have already as I write this as I’m not completely up to speed on their plans. Either way, it’s very cool news as both of them are a ton of fun to be around and I can’t think of a better match for the two of them.
- I’m going to ComicCon this year for the first time and while I don’t have a hotel yet, I’m trying to just focus on the fact that even if I’m sleeping on a bench, the Elven cloak and free Con swag I’ll be sporting will keep me warm as I bathe in all that is geekery and nerdiness.
Much more has happened I’m sure but in the interest of just making a damned update to my blog, I think I’ll stop there.
In other news, if you want to get an idea of what I do for a living, perhaps watching this will suffice:
Dec/082
Kodanut
There’s a reason why I love my dog Koda. He does things like this, endlessly.
Koda with his new toy, trying out for Sesame Street.
Nov/081
It happens in 3’s
What a last couple of days. Currently, I’m running a fever, going through a kleenex box an hour, making sure to not continuously bump a self-inflicted stab wound that’s got my left hand all wrapped up and trying to keep sane in a house with a new puppy, a jealous old one and two people just trying to relax for a minute.
Not that I’m one to complain usually but I must have said something about Fate’s momma that got me in his crosshairs.
It is pretty comical in a way though. I started feeling a little off Saturday and then we brought home a new dog which had made me forget about the aching head and runny nose for at least a day. Out of pure guilt, I decided Sunday to run to Petsmart to get a nice little cage to give Zoe a place to her own and brought Koda with as a “Hey, sorry about the shock to the system” trip. That amount of guilt right there talked me into buying him a new toy and when we got to the car, he was incessant on getting whatever tennisball like toy out of the plastic bag without delay. Grabbing my barely used swiss army knife, I went to cut off the thick plastic strap holding on the paper backing and underestimated the give, putting a long blade straight into my palm underneath my left-index finger.
So, yeah. Imagine me, 6′8″ running out of my car bleeding everywhere and basically diving into the back of my Jeep to grab a white sheet I had laid down to keep the back area clean. This wasn’t some 1 foot wide sheet, it was a full double-sized bed sheet with a 40lb cage stacked on it that I had just bought. There’s me, in front of a parking lot full of PetSmart patrons, with blood all over my shorts, shirt and hands wrapping a 10 foot long sheet around my left hand swearing quietly to myself.
I’d imagine there’s a few people that said under their breath “This is why I hate the city”.
Keeping in mind I’m about 15 miles from home, with my dog in the car giving me a what the hell just happened look, I knew I had to go to ER but that would take an ungodly long wait based on my vast experience with waiting in ER lines. So, I had to drive Koda back home, drop him off so he wasn’t forced to wait in some crappy parking garage for 4 hours after just watching his master bleed all over the damn place. I haven’t asked yet what answering the phone must have been like for Nicole as I’m driving home, a bed sheet on one hand, explaining to her what I had done.
To make a long story short, a half an hour drive trying to find exactly where the entrance to the ER is at St. Joseph and a one hour ER wait got me in the care of a very witty doctor. Thankfully, he and the rest of the ER staff had a good sense of humor over the large man that had come in, the victim of PetSmart packaging and an overly sharp Swiss Army knife. One large stich, some decent exploratory on the spot handy work by the doctor and his scaple got me a pretty sore left hand that made this one of the hardest blog posts to write.
My poor delete button.
Not to mention I have the worst head cold I’ve had since I was a kid that isn’t showing any sign of letting up and a new puppy with the bladder the size of a dime, I’d like to think I’m holding my own pretty well given the situation. I’m sure Nicole would have something to say in relation to that statement though.
I just hope I feel better in the morning. There’s very little resting that gets done when you’re staying home with a new dog and her jealous older brother. Hopefully some more sleep will knock out this fever and my cough/disgusting nose problem.
Nov/082
Insert Name Here
Yesterday we went and brought home a new addition to the apartment. So far, she’s a stark difference from Koda in terms of behavior. Koda was, and is still, a furry Evil Knievel with the personality to back it up. Our new little girl though is incredibly patient and maybe a tad bit mellow. That’s not to say she’s not giving us a new appreciation for hard wood floors however. I mean, she’s like a walking sprinkler system.
We picked her up yesterday at an adoption drive put on by the Colorado FurBabies. She was, along with her 4 siblings, literally dumped in an overnight bin at a high-kill shelter in New Mexico. Thankfully, the program we adopted her from makes trips monthly to bring back dogs that are Death Row there, which included our newest little girl. The great thing is, they’re put in foster homes until adopted so while despite my burning desire to adopt all of the ones there yesterday, it was nice to know the ones that didn’t get adopted went back to Foster homes instead of a cage and a waiting list.
It got me thinking about how much I care about dogs. Not in the, wear a sweater with a knitted dog face on it sort of way but in the way that I find so much fulfillment in the fact we helped save a dog from being euthanized by freeing up a spot with a foster to bring back another one. While I didn’t get much sleep, Nicole getting much less, and the fact I got myself a rather nasty head-cold yesterday and have a new appreciation for how well trained Koda is, it’s a pretty happy occassion.
Now, it’s just the task of figuring out a name for her. She’s a mix of border collie, shephard, lab and ninja I’ve come to conclude so she’s got a lot of clever in her eyes. Nicole’s adament about not making her name too girlie (Princess Cupcake) or crazy (Malibu Barbie).
I’m pretty sold on Artemis, Greek Goddess of the Hunt.
Of course, Koda is still figuring out what the deal is. I’m sure he was thinking life was perfect without a new addition. So far, he’s been playing the big brother, doesn’t really think she’s cool, takes her toys just to let her know he can role. Figuring by mid-week he’ll accept her and not view this as a coming apocalypse in relation to attention.
Wonder if she’s peed while I wrote this…
Nov/082
National Attempting Novel Writing Month (NaAtNoWriMo)
There’s a misconception, even with myself, that I have mild ADD. I can see why that conclusion comes up so often when people, myself included, evaluate my behavior. The list I’m sure at this point would be huge in terms of the evidence that could be presented in support of that deduction but there are crystal clear moments that occur now and then when I realize there’s a deeper truth to who I am. That truth really seems to center around the way my inner-self operates.
What might be alleviating or terrifying to most people is that I’m constantly playing out little storylines in my head. Now, it’s not to say I’ve been reciting War and Peace from beginning to end over and over again. More accurately, I dream up different scenarios, characters, stories and the like on a constant basis whenever my mind has a moment to stretch. The issue there is that it’s usually a new story every single time. Perhaps over the course of a certain duration, the character, plot and setting intermixes but for the most part, it’s like an improv show constantly restarting in my head.
Thing is, I never thought that was unusual, and perhaps it isn’t. It doesn’t distract me in anyway I like to think or infer that I have some neurotic issue, I hope. It’s merely that, when applied to how people perceive the external me, it might be misunderstood. It’s what I’ve determined provides me a well of improvisation that I feel I’m talented at and as well, the reason I feel I’m well versed at creating ideas on the fly, if not randomly. Thing is, while the fact I have a sort of library inside my mind of random little ideas I’ve sewn together over the course of a lifetime that allows me to use them at will, it also means things become a little hard to focus for me when I’m tasked to put that creative energy to a complete task.
Writing a novel would be a fine example of that. As I’ve said in the past, one of my longest dreams has always been to be a writer. Not for the fortune and fame that 1% of all writers accomplish but simply to allow myself to make a story real in such a way that others could share in it by simply reading it from start to finish. Knowing this, for the last years, every time the month of November has rolled around, there’s been a burning desire to put myself to task and finally start, and perhaps finish, one of the stories I’ve had in between my ears for so long. This year was no different and I decided on October 31st that it was time I stopped putting it off.
Hard part is, while I have several stories already dreamed up, the process in simply picking one to put to paper has almost become paralyzing. I’ve been so curious about my issue at hand that I’ve done some research to see if that’s a common problem. While I definitely feel that there’s a sort of Writer’s Block happening, it’s not in mind the standard definition of it. I have material, full material organized in my own way throughout my inner-notebook but for some reason, simply attempting to write the first paragraph becomes crippling for me. There’s almost this fear that I’m not leaving well-enough alone; that if I put a story to paper that I may risk discovering I have no talent for it, or that even odder still, that I’ll ruin the story in some fashion.
There’s a sense of ridiculousness then with all of that in mind that I spend words explaining my inability to forge words. Even moreso, it’s nearly 6 days into November and I’ve but wrote a sentence yet which starts to pull heavily at that same “ADD” I entertain as it tells me to make better use of my time rather than wasting it trying this current interest. That there perhaps is what truly makes me define myself as having the affliction is that I have a very demanding will at times that constantly encourages me to entertain it in some fashion be it through watching a movie or building a house.
Trick is, I desperately want to create stories that can be shared with others. There’s a passion there I’ve known for a long time and as I grow further into my thirties, I worry life itself will start to dictate what my dreams should be rather than what they really are.
At any rate, I just needed to relay it to my blog so that I at least put that anxiety somewhere for now in the hopes that releasing that frustration may allow me to finally just move past it and begin without fear of failure or success in this.
In other news, I do think Nicole and I may be bringing back a second dog this weekend. It’s just a matter of finding one.