La, la, la, Dee, dee, dee
A quick drive by to say Im on a new contract. You know the drill—posting light as I come up to speed on the piles of work that need to be done.
Cause you all don’t want my actual writing to suffer, right? Right!
Focus
In order to gain focus, one must often lose focus.
A person at any given time is in a state defined both by who she is and who she wants to be.
This definition is everything. We can either let other people and actions or even the actions that we cause that we do not wish, define us. In order to move to where we want to be, we must let go of the things that currently define us that are negative in nature.
Losing focus is one way to do this. Growing up, the wise told us to not let others define us. The hard slog, however, is to recognize when our definition of who and what we are is the wrong one. We often focus on the wrong things. Perhaps this thing consumes us because it is painful and needs attention. Perhaps it is unavoidable. Perhaps it is a habit.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t deserve focus. It may need attention, sometimes lots of attention, but it’s not who we are.
We are not pain.
We are not heartache.
We are not loneliness.
We have felt all these things. Sometimes we can’t let them go, but we can turn from them. Adversity is either a cup to hold the raindrop or the raindrop that falls into the lake. Focus is our choice.
Choose wisely.
MLK
Violence exercised merely in self-defense, all societies, from the most primitive to the most cultured and civilized, accept as moral and legal. The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi … . When the Negro uses force in self-defense, he does not forfeit support; he may even win it, by the courage and self-respect it reflects.
— Dr. Martin Luther King
Some Men
There are men who simply never leave.
It never occurs to them. They stand in the eye of the storm for so long they become the eye. They will always be there, it is a quantum certainty, their resolve woven directly in their reality.
A friend disappears. Sometimes another. They leave on clouds of bleak or simply fade away. It does not matter, though, as a man reaches out his hand and plunges it into the maelstrom. Grab on, friend. Grab on.
Sometimes a hand claps his. It is usually a feminine hand.
The man pulls. Sometimes the hand lets go in fear of the eye, but he never will. Sometimes he pulls and draws the person into his calm existence.
“I’m sorry I went away,” her eyes will say.
The man will smile, for the wind apologizing to the rock for blowing is amusing to him.
Sometimes, her eyes are bittersweet.
The man will still smile.
Here, in the center, there is the now, never the past, only the future. Regrets are for the wind.
One of Those Self-Indulgent Posts
Ten random factoids about Anthony:
1. I have bad eyes that surgeons repaired over the course of three eye operations. I am thankful it worked, but there are some of my childhood I can’t remember, at all, because of not being able to see and being in pain. With glasses, my eyes are fine now.
2. My first kiss was at a Girl Scout dance. I was a Boy Scout. The cute girl I danced with had no intention of talking. She dragged me to a dark corner and smooched me. Ho-Boy, that was awesome. When I asked for her name, she responded with more smooches. I never saw her again.
3. I took ten years of wine classes, and then developed an allergy to about 90% if the wine on the market. That sucked.
4. I met my wife at work. She was the cutie-pie new hire playing volleyball. She introduced me to her friend saying we should go out. About six months of this everyone realized all the wrong people were going out with the wrong people. And here we are.
5. After my parents divorced when I was a teen, I was homeless for a while. That really sucked.
6. I watched Mt. St. Helens blow up from 28 miles away. We were so close, the sound wave went over our heads and I only heard it after it had circled the Earth. I got sick from the over-pressurization. That really sucked too. I still have nightmares, sometimes.
7. I have a speech problem and an associated learning disability. I spent a long time in therapy, which corrected most of the problems. In many ways, English is like a second language to me.
8. My love of books came from Victoria, my first girlfriend. I was an avid reader before then, but Victoria introduced me to so many good books, it was awesome.
9. I grew up in Battle Ground, WA, named for a battle that never took place. That still cracks me up.
10. I lived in India for six weeks. Other than the getting sick part, it was awesome.
Meet Sasha
First she shoots you. Then you bleed. Then she sucks your blood. Then you die.
Chez Sasha
This is where Sasha lives.
Sasha is rich.
Sasha is beautiful.
Sasha is powerful.
Sasha is, quite simply, a bad-ass. Below is the ground floor to her pad. Anybody (i.e., the PCs) that wants to crash her party, is going to be in for a slugfest. There will be blood. And stuff blowing up. “Stuff” being your friends.
To give you an idea how decadent Sasha is, the upper floor of her manor home is her bedroom:
And to provide scale, here is a miniature. This is someone who broke into Sasha’s manor home. Right now, her name is Lunch:
The Memory of Scent
The house smells so wonderful.
My penchant for Scrooge-like feelings during the holiday season has slowly been replaced by warm memories of my children’s joy for the season. For young boys, yes, Christmas is a lot about presents. If you are a good parent, if you could overcome the bombastic rampant commercialism, there is an underlying simplicity about the season that can pull at the heart like no other time.
This morning Thing Two came in while I was getting dressed, wanting to know if we could go get Thing One’s Christmas present tonight. How cute is that? I’ll tell you how cute it is, it is a bit of the ultra-cuteness.
Yes there are the presents. But then there is the smell of the tree. The gingerbread house. The decorating. The Christmas cookies. The story of Christmas. Grandpa and Nanna. Daddy’s Christmas Day roast. Santa. The music. The warm fireplace and the happy dog.
Long after those presents are gone, the memories of our close family during this time will linger on. One day my sons will be walking in one of the great national forests around here, and after the morning rain, smell the fresh scent of grand firs. And it will smell like Christmas.
And that will be magical, always magical, even in the dead of summer, it will be Christmas magic.
(repost from 2008)
Personal Log, Commander Shepard (Entries 1 to 15)
Entry 1: Ow. No, really, ow.
OMG Cerberus WTF? Meanwhile, I’ve teamed up with Man Candy and The Princess. Let’s just put each one into the nibble category.
Entry 2: I don’t trust Cerberus as far as I can stretch my bra, but damn I’m on the new Normandy and I got a feeling, yanno, “down there.”
Entry 3: I’m flying in my rocket ship, I’m flying faster than light!
Meanwhile, Miranda, Jacob and my personal assistant, Cutie Kelly, make potential bed warmers, but I must stay faithful to Liara. The three also look at me like I am a bug ready to go nuclear, which, now that I think about it, I am.
Entry 4: The AI (Jesus Mary Joseph, people), has no files on Bane, Sure you don’t, honey, sure you don’t. Bane, I’m coming for your punk ass.
Entry 5: I wanted to complain about Cerberus’s whacky weapon allocation scheme, up to the point they handed me a gun with a bore the size of my head. Oh, and I feel a little bad about spending a small fortune on ship resources on makeup. I’m vain, but Liara likes me pretty.
Entry 6: I’ve had better days on the Citadel. I SAVE YOU FOR THIS CRAP? WE ARE DONE. It was the REAPERS, you jerkholes. You need to push this mass relay into the primary, dorks.
Entry 7: Oooooo, fish!
Entry 8: The Doctor and I are getting our drunk on. We both resist the urge to make out. So I’m either more mature after the Cerberus rebuild or crazier.
I think we all know which one it is, right?
Entry 9: Garrus wasn’t on the smartest of assignments, but hey, he spent two years shooting people in the head. HE UNDERSTANDS ME. He asked why we weren’t with Cerberus before. I told him because we were stupid.
Entry 10: OMG Ash. I tried to patiently explain that I was, yanno, dead for two years, but Ms. Pink, possibly because she hasn’t gotten laid in all that time, reams me a new one. Yes, it’s Cerberus. You know what, Ash? Cerberus is my parent now. Got that? I’m a Cerberus Baby.
I’m two years old, Ash, and I’m about to throw a Collective tantrum.
Entry 11: Well, at least Liara will love me. I bet she’s on this planet of perpetual blue PMS we’re orbiting.
Entry 12: …
Entry 13: I guess I was just an Asari Maiden chew toy. My bed is empty. My heart is broken. I’m sitting here at this overpriced desk looking at her picture, crying. Congratulations, Liara. You made the Commander cry.
Entry 14: Hello Jack. Apparently you are a psychotic killer who channels rage into a trail of death. Hold this big gun for me.
We’ll get along fine. Yes, we will.
Entry 15: Oooo, more fish!
Men of Another Time
When my grandpa died it was the end of my world. Literally, that man was the only thing keeping our family together, without his moral compass it was the clichéd downward spiral of the American fractured family. I saw it coming like a train wreck, powerless to stop it because I was just a boy.
Above that, Grandpa was my father figure. He loved me fiercely. You’re not supposed to have favorites, but I was his favorite. Maybe it was because I was the first grand-baby. And I think it pissed him off to no end that my natural father abandoned my mother, and me, before I was even born. He was also fascinated by my personality. One time he told me, “I like you, Tony. You think before you talk. I don’t even do that, so I guess that means the Good Lord does smile on our family sometimes!”
Then he gave me a taste of his tobacco pipe and I ran to the bathroom and threw up.
Ha.
When he died from one stroke too many, I was so devastated I crossed that “need to cry” boundary into “numb.” I literally could not cry, and I couldn’t even see beyond my grief to feel guilty about it.
When my first child was born, they handed me the baby because The Wife Unit was so out of it. The birth did not go well and they had to deliver the baby by Cesarean. Then it was just me and the baby.
When a baby is born after the initial “waa waa waa!” they become alert and quiet because their little baby bodies are flush with the hormones that run around during birth. My first-born son would not stop staring at my face. In that one perfect moment, that one little baby-faced moment, I wished Grandpa was there to see his little, beautiful face. Looky here Grandpa. He looks just like us. You and me. Look what we did. Look.
That’s when I cried.
Flame in the Void
Rarely one sees it in a couple, two people sitting together, maybe at dinner, maybe at a coffee shop. They are holding hands across the table, fingers intertwined as if letting go one would spin away forever and be lost unto the endless void.
There is a certain fierceness in the type of love this couple shares, one not experienced by lessor mortals. Look into their eyes and behind those windows to the soul lies an honesty both terrible and beautiful to behold. These two people have experienced pain and lost and heartache. Grief seeps from their pores like sweat and their shadows’ name is loneliness.
Sometimes a soul is so dark it can only be seen by another of its like. For those, it is a beacon like no other, a pulsar that flashes to the heartbeat of life. This brightness attracts others who understand. When they meet it is beyond a kindred spirit. Each knows what the other is feeling, always. They swim in the same current, wondering why the churning waters never quite pull them completely under.
They will always hold hands. Always. He traded his stick-shift sports car for an automatic so he could clasp her hand when he drives. In the bedroom, when they make love, always with at least one sweaty hand clasped with another.
Never let me go is unsaid, because those words are akin to a desire to breathe. Like a heartbeat, it happens no matter what, and when it fails, they die.
November Confessions of Liberty
When you have seen what no man should see
Through the lens of a child’s mortal eye
Heartache takes on a strange twist
Loneliness is something terribly different
And all the poems about love and lost
Are now bittersweet lies with neither
The bitter nor the sweet.
There is certain cadence to
Recognizing wickedness
A ever-present beat
Giving life to unusual things.
It’s more than a heartbeat
It’s the pulse of the earth
Singing that
To
Make
Things
Better
Change
One
Person
At
A
Time
Make
The
Choice
Grab
It
Own
It
It’s
Yours
Alone
Because I Had 3 iStockPhoto Credits Left
I use iStockPhoto to populate this blog with graphics. I had three credits left that were expiring. So, have a Boston!
BOSTON!
Me and me, and… me!
Me, me, meeeeeee.
One of those posts.
Just a short note to my 37.4 blog readers that I have picked up a new contract. As a consultant, it’s important for me to make sure I engage the client properly and the project is off to a good start.
This means I feel tired when I come home. The poor blog suffers as a consequence.
Now, behold! I ramble!
The general rule with consultants in any given field where businesses hires one to make improvements or fix problems, is that you make money when the economy is good, and you make money when the economy goes bad.
Right now, the economy is bad. When I engage clients, it is important for me that the end result is the client is not only happy, but they can get a breather because things are better.
When things don’t get better, bad things happen.
Someone loses their job. Sometimes it’s more than one person.
Let’s say that person used to buy coffee every day at the coffee shop down stairs.
He’s not the first to go, and the coffee shop feels the pinch.
They let a barista go. It was her only source of income while going to school. She loved that new job, and now it’s gone.
She goes home. She’s never been “laid off.” To her, the boss fired her. It sinks in that she’s going to have to go and live with her parents.
She sits on her loveseat and cries.
The laid off man has technical skills, and he probably can find a job even in this economy.
At a 20% pay cut.
When he is all alone, the wife playing Bunko, the kids are asleep upstairs, he feels like crying, too.
Where am I going with this? Other than being a major downer, that is.
I’m tired when I come home from putting the brain in overdrive. The blog falls off to the side.
And that, my 37.4 blog readers, is a good thing.
Man Cold, Part IV
MAN COLD. I haz it.
You Are the First Responder
On this day in the Year 2001, a group of Americans, when faced with the horror of the morning unfold, sought to do what Americans were born to do. They fought back, by themselves, against evil and tyranny of the worse sort, and they sacrificed their lives to do the right thing, even when it was the hard thing.
In this age of double-talk and other tomfoolery, in which the very language we hold dear is used to debase the individual and the righteous, there comes a time when Goodly Men and Women must take a stand against those who would use labels to define us.
Those who fought back shook off more than the enemy. At their moment of truth, these brave Americans were first responders.
You are a first responder.
If you think otherwise—your very thoughts besmirch the honor of those brave people and for you, they died in vain.
For the rest of us, we remember them as we should remember them—they made the attempt and succeeded, they set a standard for which we judge all like men and women.
There comes a time where, in the midst of blood and death, we can take action and prevail.
You are a first responder. If another labels you as something different, this is where you take your first stand.
Stand with Her or Not at All
Center of the Sun
Conjure One
***
Young girl in the market
Music to the men
When the men leave
Her eyes are red
When her eyes are closed again she sees the dark market of above
And she sings
‘They say the most horrible things
But I hear violins, when I close my eyes
I am at the center of the sun
And I cannot be hurt
By anything this wicked world has done’
Young boy in the market
Follows all the men
When the men leave
He’s out of his head
When his eyes are closed again he sees the dark market of above
And he sings
‘They break the most beautiful things
But I hear violins, when I close my eyes
I am at the center of the sun
And I cannot be hurt
By anything this wicked world has done
I look into your eyes
And I am at the center of the sun
And I cannot be hurt
By anything this wicked world has done’
Center of the sun
Young boy in the market
Sees the girl alone
And asks her
‘Have you lost your way home?’
She sings
‘You say the most beautiful things, just like my violins’
I look into your eyes
I am at the center of the sun
And I cannot be hurt
By anything this wicked world has done
When I close my eyes
I am at the center of the sun
And I cannot be hurt
By anything this wicked world has done
‘Cause
I hear violins
I hear violins
I hear violins
I hear violins
Center of the sun
I hear …violins
Wife Unit Birthday Dinner
Serves either 4 (couple and two growing boys) or 6 adults. Yes, I really am this awesome.
Surf
Wild Alaskan King Salmon (1.75 to 2 pound)
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
Lemon Juice
Cook in 400 F oven until done. Use no other seasonings. If you do, turn in your PNW Native card and move back east with the rest of the unwashed heathens.
Turf
Baked Garlic Chicken
Chicken (with skin) thighs and drumsticks
Season Salt
Old Bay spice
Garlic Powder
Spice the chicken. Cook uncovered in 425 oven for 33 minutes, then set oven 400 F and put salmon in. Salmon and chicken will be done at the same time.
Comfort Food
Pan fried oysters
Medium or large oysters (2 jars or shucked)
½ cup Italian herb breadcrumbs
½ cup flour
Pat dry the oysters with paper towels. Mix the flour and breadcrumbs. Coat the oysters. Do not seasons unless using plain breadcrumbs. Fry in pan in canola oil at medium-high heat.
Salad
Seasonal Spinach Salad
Fresh apricots
Fresh raspberries
Fresh strawberries
2 avocados
Spinach
Candied walnuts
Crumbled blue cheese
Blue cheese dressing
Fresh ground pepper
Theoretically, this can be an entire meal. Mix ingredients in large salad bowl, except the avocado and blue cheese dressing, which is served on the side (most people decline to put dressing on this salad)
Bread
Rosemary round loaf
Sourdough round loaf
Serve with soft, unsalted butter
Wine
Serve with a very chided Louis Jadot Chardonnay or slightly chilled Pinot Noir
Cake!
Chocolate
Cream cheese chocolate frosting (various recipes)
