AdventurEnding

The End

Well, dear readers, this is a somewhat bittersweet moment. After two years of maintaining this blog of my life, it’s time to bring it to an end. After all, why should I write a blog entitled “AlabamAdventures” if I’m no longer in Alabama? Of course, I’m sure many of you had already figured out that I wouldn’t be staying in Alabama forever. Once I was certain that I wasn’t sticking around, I didn’t come right out and say it, but I did certainly hint that the day of departure was to come sooner, rather than later.

Many months ago, I wrote a draft of this final post and let it sit for a while so that I could pull it out and use it for this momentous occasion. Unfortunately, most of the post is somewhat obsolete as I’ve updated this blog with the various activities that I’ve been involved in this year. Fortunately, this means that I can’t use the post, which had a very morose tone anyways.  And yet, it still had some things that I think still need to be said.

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been kind of a slow year in terms of adventures. I haven’t really had anything noteworthy enough to write about. This is actually somewhat of a good thing, since most of the things I write about are when things in life don’t go as planned (don’t even get me STARTED on airplanes). And yet, in order to keep this blog from getting too stale, I tried to write a post once every month. Not some of my best writing, but when you’re forcing yourself to write just to keep the readers coming back, the result can often be somewhat banal.

From the very beginning, Alabama was a culture shock for me. Having lived in Colorado for most of my life, the changes ended up conflicting with what I had come to regard as normal. Now granted, I am anything but normal, which you may read into in whichever way you would like. However, for the past two years, I’ve felt like I’ve been in a constant state of resistance against the local culture and climate. Let’s just say that I’m glad my apartment had air-conditioning. To keep this a more upbeat post, I’m not going to mention the variety of things that I resisted while in the south.

Now granted, I have made many friends down here, and I’ve been able to connect to a few of my interests, which has made the decision to leave somewhat difficult. When I left Colorado two years ago, pretty much my immediate family were the only ones that were a little sad to see me go. And yet, in two short years, I have been blessed so much with friends at work and church and Bible study that I eventually grew tired of them telling me that I could not leave.

Still, there were times that I felt a bit stifled, and I think the move will definitely help. When I finished my 7 month rotation in Maryland, I felt like I had come out of the wilderness with a greater understanding of how I tick. I was ready to take on the world. And yet, it wasn’t until the end of my two years in Alabama that I actually feel like I’m ready to emerge from the wilderness.

Part of me feels like I need a fresh start. A clean slate. A second chance. My first few years on my own definitely had many learning experiences. Many failures. Many poor decisions. Somehow, parts of Huntsville seem to embody those failures for me. But other parts of Huntsville also hold significance for my successes, so there is a balance. Still, perhaps getting away from the source of those early, formative years of my independent life will be the way I can finally emerge from my shell and let my life truly begin. After all, how often do we get second chances in life?

When it comes down to it, I am really excited for this new chapter in my life. Not only will I probably get to use some of my skills that I’ve spent years refining, be they skills for work or otherwise, but I feel that I will have access to far more opportunities here because this time I will be looking for them. Still, I will keep this blog up as a landmark and a milestone of where I’ve been. I won’t be updating this site anymore. In fact, I’m liable to stop blogging like this altogether. If there’s anything interesting in my life, I’ll probably write a facebook note about it. At the very least, I don’t like beating myself up over not writing anything in this blog just because it’s here. You can’t control your life for entertainment purposes. I appreciate those who have paid attention over the last two years, but I’ve seen the stats for this site, and I know it won’t really be missed. When it comes down to it, I did this blog for myself, and now I have lost interest (it’s more difficult to come up with titles than I had originally thought). The move from Alabama is only a convenient way to call it quits.

However, this doesn’t mean I’ll stop blogging entirely. I just won’t be blogging about my personal life. Work has already begun on a new blog about movies that will be similar to the articles that I used to write for my college newspaper. As such, I can prepare many posts ahead of time in order to provide a steady stream of posts for you, the valued reader.

So, with this new chapter in my life, I’d ask that you pray that I would have courage to step outside my comfort zone, to not be afraid to try, to accept failures gracefully and to appreciate the successes when they happen. There’s nothing much left to say but, “Once more, from the top. And this time, with feeling!”

ReversExodus

Let me just say that even if you’re experienced at moving around, it doesn’t make it any easier. This August has been no exception. Granted, for the last 7 years I’ve been moving into a new residence around August, just like clockwork. However, those last 7 years had to do with school and work. This one was no different.

However, unlike the simple moves from Fort Collins to Golden, or from one apartment to another, the cross-country move is usually difficult, not only logistically, but just in general. With my graduation from the Career Development Program at work, my time in Alabama came to an end. Now, to those who would jump to conclusions, I’m not leaving my job, I’m merely transferring to a position in another state. And as luck would have it, that state is Colorado.

So this August I packed up my things and did the reverse trip of the move I made two years ago to live in Alabama. Of course, having had two years of a steady and healthy income, my worldly possessions weren’t nearly as compact as they were when I moved down there. To make things more complicated, paperwork issues made this a tight move; tighter than was comfortable for me. Everything worked out, but that’s not to say I didn’t stress out about it.

But the stress of moving aside, I tend to stress out about things that I have no control over. I stress because I have no control over them. If I could control them, then I would be certain that everything would work out. And yet, conservative communication from those who hold vital pieces of information doesn’t make anything better. Anyways, enough of my rambling: It’s story time.

A week after I graduated from the Career Development Program, I headed to Colorado Springs to secure an apartment. This alone made the transition to Colorado easier than the one to Alabama, because I knew where I was going to stay before I packed everything up and headed out the door. There’s a lot you can do ahead of time with an address.

In order to actually find an apartment, I made a spreadsheet of about 25 different options, of which 7 I decided to pursue. God blessed me with an almost outrageously obvious choice. Of course, this time when I was looking for apartments, I knew what questions to ask and what to look for, having had to put up with far too much in the past. At any rate, with paperwork signed, I headed back to Alabama to plan the rest of my move.

And this is where it began to get complicated. It seems that the dates that I wanted to move were far too soon to adequately prepare movers to move my stuff. Fortunately, God came through again and I had to make only minor adjustments to my plan. Of course, when situations arise that are off-book, I quickly made adaptations that didn’t really matter in the end. But at least I could quickly change to the circumstances.

So, the week of the move quickly came upon me, but not without its headaches at work. On the Friday before I was to leave, I was handed an outprocessing form from the organization that I started with two years ago. Considering that they should have known months ahead of time that I was not staying with their organization, this last second form to fill out irked me something fierce. What was described as taking “a few hours” ended up taking almost two full days to get signatures. The end result: they took away my work laptop and now I was headed to my new job with a literal clean slate and a blind sense of what to do next.

Now, on top of this paperwork at work, I still hadn’t heard from the people who would physically be touching my stuff. I had no idea who was coming to pack and load my things, and I did not know when they would even show up at my apartment. Fortunately, I had help with this move. While I was at work trying to get initials on a form, I got a call from my mom who was down in Alabama to help me move back. Apparently the packers were at my apartment. I quickly hurried home and directed what needed to be packed and what did not. I told them that I would have liked some warning ahead of time, so they made sure to get my phone number so that they could tell me when they were coming to pick everything up.

The next day they called and said they would be at my apartment between 8am and 9am. That evening I got another call from another phone number saying they’d be at my apartment at 8am to pick up my stuff. I thought this was merely a re-confirmation, but it wasn’t until the next day that I found out that it wouldn’t be that simple.

So, the day of the move my mom and I wake up and begin packing our vehicles with the important things that I need to move personally. As we finish up, a big truck comes by and two guys get out. 7:30. Half an hour early. Nice. When they get in the apartment, they ask if the packers left any paperwork for them. They hadn’t. This meant that the loaders had to inventory my stuff, which took some time, not to mention that they had to unpack what was already in their truck so that my stuff could be loaded onto it.

Similarly, they seemed to be taking their time getting this stuff done, which is not what I wanted when I knew that I would be spending the entire day driving. I have a one bedroom apartment, which should not take 3 hours to load. Of course, that’s not even the worst part of it. At about 9:30, the people who packed my stuff showed up. Considering that they were half an hour late from when they said they’d arrive, I wondered if they were even supposed to load my stuff. It seems that during the “peak season” of moves, which just so happens to coincide with my move, double-booking movers is not uncommon. Doesn’t make sense to me, but whatever.

The fortunate circumstance of having the first movers show up early was that they were actually going to move my stuff to my apartment in Colorado. Of course, this was after learning that they were told that it was going into storage in Colorado. I don’t know where they got that idea, since I’ve been telling the people in charge of my move that it was an apartment-to-apartment move. This is why it was fortunate that the packers showed up late: they were going to take my stuff and put it in storage in Alabama, which would have just made its transit even less expeditious.

At any rate, once we made it clear that they were taking far too long in moving my stuff out of my apartment, since I still needed to vacuum and turn in the keys at the front office, two more people magically appeared and the work was quickly done. I guess the lesson here is to make sure that you make it clear how pressed for time you really are.

With the brunt of things that are out of my control on a move out of the way, we hopped in the cars and drove out to Colorado. We couldn’t have asked for better driving weather or driving conditions in general. Since this post is getting a little long, I’ll merely close by saying that this decision to move back to Colorado was made many months ago, but I did not want to tell anyone about it until I had the paperwork that would get me back home in hand. I would hate to say, “I’m leaving in July,” only to leave a month later. Of course, as with any big life decision, this move has its pros and its cons. It’s just that the pros far outweighed the cons. Let’s just say, I’m glad to be back in my home state: it’s where I feel I belong.

View from the Apartment

And now that I just need to wait for my stuff to arrive, I’m enjoying the right choice in apartments. Not only is it literal walking distance from lots of shopping, but it’s so close to major roads that I can get anywhere in town quickly. And with lots of natural light, two-story vaulted ceilings, and a digital thermostat, what’s not to love? Of course, so far there have been no noise complaints on my part, and I think it may just stay that way. Besides, with a view from my porch that allows me to see almost all of Colorado Springs, how can I lose?

CreativEndeavorSequel

Now that you all know what has been filling my Saturday mornings this year, I’d like to cover two other projects I’ve been working on. Both of these were on my list of resolutions for this year, and I have to admit that I’ve only been focusing on one of them at the moment. Still, the year is still young and I will have plenty of time to fulfill what I have set out to do this year. So, let’s start with where I’m lacking: YouTube videos.

YouTube

As many of you may already be aware, in 2007 I started a YouTube channel underneath my internet moniker of RonfarZ3. This was a very successful channel that had garnered over one million combined views, with the crowning achievement of the profile being my lip-sync to Tom Lehrer’s song “New Math”. This video alone garnered my channel over 500,000 views, at least half of the combined views of my 50+ videos.

While many of the videos on the original channel were Anime Music Videos (or AMVs for short), which are still available at AnimeMusicVideos.org, the remainder were lip-syncs to a variety of songs that I enjoy and want to share with the world. Finally, this channel exhibited some of my original works, including a short film entitled “drip”, a terrible assault on the English language entitled “Psychological PUNishment”, and the final project for my Film Studies course, “Action-OVERreaction”.

After two re-boots of the channel, first as TheRonfarZ3 and finally as lipsynchORswim, I was sad to have lost the legacy of views, but glad that I could still keep some of the videos around. While the current channel has been reduced to my lip-syncs and original videos (one of which was essentially a clip show of my first 50 AMVs), I had not made a new video since 2008. Part of the reason for this hiatus was that life kind of got in the way of making videos. Another reason was that as YouTube began to grow, I felt that I needed an equipment upgrade.

One perk of staying in Maryland for 7 months on a rotation for work was that I was able to use my hotel points to purchase a HD camcorder at no cost to myself. This key equipment upgrade was the main reason for my self-induced hiatus, and now that I finally had it, I could start making videos again. Since I did not add any new videos underneath the TheRonfarZ3 reboot, I felt like I needed an introduction. My first video of the year was just that: an announcement that I had come out of my hiatus and would be making videos again.

By February I had added another video to my channel, this time as my first lip-sync to a non-musical audio clip. Then the new videos kind of just stopped. Once again, life intervened and I no longer had the free time that I once had in college to create these videos. Another reason that I stopped was that I was trying to figure out what videos to do next. A 3-year hiatus had built up a bunch of things I wanted to do, but couldn’t figure out the gimmick to present them with. One thing that I wanted to do with my lip-syncs was to have some sort of visual gimmick on the screen so that it wasn’t just me on video singing along. These gimmicks have ranged from lyrics appearing on screen, to lighting, to kind of a “dueling banjos” arrangement.

Now that I have some gimmicks worked out for the next few videos, I just need the motivation to record and edit them. Right now that will have to wait because of a very exciting opportunity that has presented itself: being a published author.

First Name Basis [BUY HERE!]

Front Cover

Regular readers of this blog will remember that last November I participated in National Novel Writing Month and was able to crank out 54,000 words of a first draft for a novel. Once I took a few extra weeks to wrap up the plot, I arrived at a complete first draft of about 66,000 words, covering 113 pages. I then sent this completed draft to some of my friends to read through and critique. My plan was to edit the novel based on the comments I received from some unbiased sources (I thought it was great, but would others?)

Now, my plan was to edit the novel in March, but due to some delays on multiple fronts (the least of which was my procrastination), I didn’t really get started on editing until mid-April. I already knew that since I had hastily written the novel in November that there would be plenty that I needed to change. Granted, after 9 months of preparation, I knew that the plot didn’t need much restructuring, which made editing an easier endeavor. And yet, there was much to be done. Plenty of details to add to the skeleton of characters and settings. Plenty of continuity errors that I needed to fix. Plenty of adjustments to the awkward beginning and rushed ending.

One would wonder why I’d go through all the trouble to fix something that most people would probably never see. Well, one of the perks of being a NaNoWriMo winner is that you can receive a free proof copy of your novel from CreateSpace. I thought that this was a great way to get my literary debut in print, if for nothing more than a conversation piece on my bookshelf. Now, having written the first draft, and not being quite pleased with it, I wanted the finished product that I sent to the printers to be something I could truly be proud of.

Taking most of the comments I received into account, along with my perspective after having not read the draft in four months, I crafted the novel through at least three revisions before I got on CreateSpace to set up my proof copy. Little did I know that I now had a few more hurdles to jump over before I could get my free copy. Luckily, the whole editing process had a deadline of the end of June, which was when my free proof deal would expire, so I was motivated to work on the final minutiae. Fortunately, these final steps proved to be the most fun.

When you read a novel, all you ever really think about is the words on the page, but there’s more that goes into it than that. Formatting was a huge part of my task ahead, and I was fortunate that CreateSpace had some handy templates that I could use. After all, you rarely see a book printed that’s 8.5” X 11”, so some adjustments obviously need to be made. Secondly, I had to create a cover for my work. Again, I was fortunate that CreateSpace has a cover creator section on their website. I used this application to make a cover that I felt conveyed the feel and ideas of the novel as a whole. However, these tasks weren’t the most exciting part that I was discovering.

Since CreateSpace is used to somewhat independently produce and distribute original material, once I received the proof copy of my novel, I could make it available for purchase. This means I’d get royalties for my work. I’d be a professional novelist. Granted, the rates that I’d get for each copy sold are not driving me to quit my day job, but a little bit extra spending cash never hurt anyone either. When I got my proof copy, I read through it and made some much needed final edits, mainly in formatting and some tragic grammatical errors that slipped through in the previous edits.

So what does this mean to you, dear reader? This means that after 17 months from the inception of the idea for First Name Basis, you can finally buy my very first novel. I won’t say much more on this, since this advertisement video explains why you should buy this book a lot better than I can in this blog.

But this isn’t even the best part. Since I spent 9 months planning out the first novel, I have plenty of material left over, not to mention a huge back-story that I can explore. With the world and its set of rules already in place, I’m well on my way toward planning the sequel, Second to None, which I will write this November for National Novel Writing Month. I know that I was initially leery of writing a novel this year, but the ideas and the structure are flowing so quickly that I need to write it this year, lest I forget all of this inspiration. As a result, I should hope to have my second novel published by this time next year.

I feel that self-publishing is definitely the way to go for me right now, since I know that I really like my story, but I’m unsure if major publishers would like it as much as I do. Besides, if the book is truly one of universal appeal, it will spread virally: friends telling their friends and so on. Right now the book is only available through this site, but when I’ve made enough in royalties to cover some of the costs, I will make the book available as an eBook as well.

So yeah, with directing Human Videos, making YouTube videos, publishing a novel, continuing to teach myself how to play the piano and continuing my culinary exploits, my creative life is certainly diverse and exciting. After all, all work and no play . . .

CreativEndeavors

I’d like to expound briefly on a few creative projects that I’ve been working on this year that some of you may be unaware of. Since we’re about half-way through the year, a few words on these projects might not be amiss. After all, a few of these projects were on my list of resolutions for this year, and an update wouldn’t hurt. So without further ado, let’s start with the one project that wasn’t on the resolution list: X-PRODUCT.

Pronounced “Cross Product”, this is the Junior Human Video team that I have been directing since February. For those who are unfamiliar with Human Video, it is essentially an interpretive dance that conveys the lyrics and message of a song to the audience. Don’t worry; I didn’t know what it was either until December of last year. In fact, let’s start at the beginning of this story.

Once word had gotten around my church that I had been in various theatre productions in college, I suddenly became the expert on these matters. Now, granted, I only ever performed on the stage for these productions, and had little to do with the behind-the-scenes work. And yet, I realize that most people don’t really distinguish between the two. At any rate, the music director at my church approached me about starting a human video group for some of the kids of the church to get them exposed to the world of human video. Having done various acting roles since I was in 4^th grade, I thought this was an excellent idea and agreed to help. Of course, I thought I would be helping someone who actually knew what they were doing. Who actually knew what human video was. Who had actually done human video. Ha ha ha, silly ol’ me.

It quickly became apparent that I would be running the entirety of the group. This was a little daunting to me on a few levels. First of all, my one weakness in the theatre is choreography. Every time I did a musical in college, it would take me forever to finally get the choreography for a song down, and even then I was never quite perfect. Now I was to coach a group of 9 to 12 year olds on choreography? God has got a sick sense of humor. Secondly, since I was under the impression that I would be assisting someone else, I wasn’t really comfortable running things. Like I said, I hadn’t even heard of human video until the music director approached me. Finally, I’ve had a little bit of experience in dealing with children through my work as an adult leader in the Boy Scouts, but I was more of a resource and chaperone instead of someone who actually ran anything. So, as you can see, things quickly got out of hand.

Still, I decided that since I had said that I would do it, I would stick through and finish. Our first production needed to be done on Easter Sunday, so I gave myself plenty of time to get the crew into shape, considering that I was new to human video and they were new to human video as well. Of course, you can’t start a group without a good name, so I began to think of what we would call ourselves. Most of the names I had seen for groups were clever and reminded me of the naming convention of Homer’s Barbershop Quartet from The Simpsons: It should be witty initially, but should become less funny each time you hear it. That’s when the name “Cross Product” came to me. I thought it was clever on a few levels (we’re all a product of the cross, we’re doing this production for the cross, etc. etc. etc.) and it gave me an opportunity to be an absolute nerd. With name in hand, we started rehearsals.

To be honest, by the first rehearsal, I had no idea what I was going to do. I knew that they would be performing the song “End of the Beginning”; but past that, I really had no idea what I was doing (as previously hinted to). I managed to work my way through the first rehearsal, getting a gauge of the talent of the ten children I’d be working with and introducing them to the idea of human videos. I ran this first rehearsal absolutely alone, which I wasn’t really comfortable with on a variety of levels, the least of which was trying to control ten 9 to 12 year olds who are not my direct offspring. Needless to say, I was frazzled and readily welcomed the assistance of one of the parents for the remainder of the rehearsals. As a director, I can’t keep the kids in check and teach them choreography at the same time, so the addition of a disciplinarian definitely helped.

With the introductions out of the way, I had to think of a plan if I wanted this to be a success. I had seen a few different versions on YouTube of the song we were doing, but none of them really possessed all that I wanted to show. It was at this point that I decided to make an entirely original arrangement. Now, trying to teach one kid choreography is one thing, but ten kids simultaneously and in concert with each other is something completely different. So, as I usually do, I fell back on my engineering background. Taking the lyrics a line at a time, I created a spreadsheet that detailed the entirety of the motions of each participant. All said and done, this spreadsheet took up six 8.5” X 11” sheets of paper. Intimidating when you look at it, but it definitely helped me to visualize where everyone was at every part of the song, like little chess pieces that I could move around and control at my will. Part of the reason I made what was dubbed “The Epic Spreadsheet” was so that I could coordinate all the moving pieces, but the more important reason was so that the children would have a script of what they would be doing.

If I learned anything from doing theatre in college, it’s that rehearsals are only productive when everyone is present and everyone knows what to say and do. Juggling the schedules of ten different kids is challenge enough without also having to make sure that my rehearsals didn’t conflict with something else at the church. As such, I figured that if some of the kids missed a rehearsal or two, then they could use the spreadsheet to practice at home. Ideally, this is how it should work even when they do come to rehearsals. As we neared the end of the eight weeks that I had given myself to teach these kids this particular human video, I was nervous because some of the kids had been missing for the majority of the rehearsals. A clock can only work if all its pieces are present and know what to do, if you know what I mean.

The Saturday before Easter Sunday was our dress rehearsal and at that point each of the ten kids had been to at least two rehearsals. I was justifiably nervous. Now, another aspect that I haven’t made clear here was that I would not be out in the audience directing the kids with hand motions. I would be in the choir singing the song that they would be performing. As such, I needed to make sure that the kids could do the choreography without me coaching from the shadows. My perfectionist nature definitely pushed them to execute flawlessly, which I had not seen up to that point. I kept telling myself that it was “passable, but not perfect.”

The next day it was out of my hands. I had done all that I could to teach these kids this human video. From tips about stage presence, the fourth wall of the audience, keeping in character and the “quarter rule” to the actual motions themselves, I had spent the equivalent of two full working days with these kids preparing them for this one-time performance. And, of course, as is the case with every performance, they pulled it off flawlessly. I really wish I had been able to see it like that before they got up there and did it for the whole congregation, but that is the nature of the beast that we call theatre.

Now, during the eight weeks, I learned that there were some in the congregation who had actually had training in human video. Reasonably, I am still questioning why they were not used to direct this group, instead of the choice of a complete neophyte. And yet, after bonding with these kids for eight weeks, I wasn’t going to let this group fade away. We put in too much work to just end it. Now the initial learning curve was out of the way and we could quickly pull together another human video. After a few weeks of a well deserved break, we got back to work on our next production. This time I have an assistant director, a choice that should become apparent to a lot of people in the near future.

Even though the project wasn’t quite what I had anticipated, I stuck to it and have definitely reaped some immediate rewards, along with those that will be waiting in heaven. Sure, there are some things that I would like to change (more parental involvement/commitment would be nice as a start), but I’ll just keep plugging along doing what I can.

Well, this post got kind of long, so I’ll save the next two creative endeavors for next time. See you then!

PowerlesSituation

“We’re sorry for the inconvenience”

–          God’s last message to His creation

Let’s just say: be careful what you wish for. Those familiar with this blog know that it’s been kind of boring around here. Not many adventures. Not much drive to create adventures. In order to keep my modicum of at least 1 post a month, I was going to write about something else, which I will probably do later. As it stands, I have missed a month. Here’s why.

Wednesday is as good a day as any to start. Woke up to tornado sirens, like I have done occasionally for the past few months. I never really give them much sway, since I generally never encounter anything “tornado worthy” when they go off. They had kind of become the “boy who cried wolf” to me. Of course, Wednesday would be different. Wednesday they just wouldn’t shut up. Wednesday proved that they were correct.

I had training on Wednesday, so I merely went along with the normal day’s activities. Still no obvious weather anomalies. Not until lunch did I see what the sirens were talking about. It got very dark outside. Very windy. Very rainy. It was around this time that I took a trip to the bathroom, where the lights were starting to flicker from power fluctuations. Mind you, I didn’t go there to seek shelter, I just went to use the bathroom. I guess what’s interesting about this phenomenon was that the first thing that I thought of was those slasher/horror/zombie movies where the lights are flickering in the bathroom. We did actually lose power for one second before going back to class. After class, we all went home.

The sirens were still pretty much non-stop out there, but I managed to keep comfortable in my apartment. I made a facebook status update which was the following: “Make sure to stay away from PCs in this severe weather. Mac users should be fine, but you don’t want to be near Windows during a tornado.” The irony of which was that while I was in front of my PC, the power went completely out. Amidst the whirring down of the various appliances and electronics, intermixed with the sound of sirens outside, I could hear something that I hadn’t heard in a while: silence.

Last time I lost power in my apartment, it came back up about mid-way through the night. Last time my building was eventually the only one without power, so it was a bit of an anomaly. This time it didn’t come back on. As was the case last time, I found my headlamp flashlight and used it for the rest of the evening. Similarly, I set my cell phone and iPod alarms to go off in case power didn’t come back on before I went to work the next day. Which brings us to . . .

Thursday. My cell phone alarm woke me up, so I got up and got ready. I figured I would go in to work a little early and see if I could utilize the power there, since I still thought that only my area had been affected. As I drove, I realized that this was bigger than I had thought. All the traffic lights were off, the electronic billboards were black, buildings were dark inside. I began to realize that even though I didn’t see any immediate damage, those sirens on Wednesday might have been on to something. When I pulled into the parking lot at work and found that no one was there, I ejected the CD from the CD player and began searching the radio stations for any news. The first words out of my radio informed me that work was closed for the day. The next day I listened to the radio, but didn’t hear anything about work being closed until I got off the interstate. Then it was merely a turn-around and I was back home again for an unexpected 4+ day weekend.

I suppose that despite everything, there are some fortunate factors to this whole situation. First of all, the weather was nice, if not a bit cool, so that even without power, it was comfortable. I would not have wanted to have no power during the snowstorms earlier this year. That is certainly true. The second fortunate factor (at least to my situation) was that I had plenty to do that didn’t involve electricity. Granted, this wasn’t quite how I wanted to catch up on my reading goal for this year, but I certainly took advantage of it. In the 100 hours of no power, I ended up reading 10 books at a grand total of approximately 2100 pages. I figured, “what else is there to do?” At the very least, I didn’t want to get in the way out there, so staying home reading was the best solution.

Of course, I didn’t realize that it would end up being 100 hours. With no electricity, and limited information resources, I had no idea how long it would be until power returned. I figured a day at most. In fact, I was a little surprised that I managed to get two hot showers out of my water before I had to man up and do it cold. However, when the hours kept ticking on by, I started to worry about a few things. The foremost of which was food. I knew that since I was relatively sedentary I wouldn’t need much in terms of nourishment, and yet I didn’t want to be uncomfortably hungry. I pulled out what dried and non-refrigerated goods I had and snacked on them for meals. I know it may sound a little bit sacrilegious (especially when you say it quickly), but Cheeze-its was my savior. I just didn’t know how much longer I could make it last.

Food wasn’t my main problem anyways. The main issue I had was with communication. As Murphy clearly points out, “If it might go wrong, it will.” A few things stacked up that prevented me from contacting anyone until about the 90^th hour of being without power. First was my cell phone battery. When I realized that I might be in this for the long haul, I turned my cell phone off, because it was very low on battery power. This was probably due to the fact that it was searching for a signal that wasn’t being sent out by the cell towers. No power to those, so it figures. I occasionally turned the cell phone back on to see if I could get any reception. When I finally did, I was informed that I had no more minutes. Great.

It comes to light that you don’t realize how unprepared you are for an emergency until it actually happens. There are a few things that I know I might want to get (or at least have at home) for if this happens again. First of all would be a battery powered radio. I have a Sansa mp3 player that has a radio capability, but that was not at home. Secondly, a land-line. I know it’s a little weird, since cell phones are usually what’s used in emergencies, but it seemed like the land-lines were working, and that way I could have told my parents (and work) that I was OK. Even though the flashlight and the decorative LED ice cube (see picture) were good for lighting at night, some candles (or at least more LED lights) would definitely be useful. I should have figured that one out the first time I lost power, but whatever. And, of course, a car charger for my cell phone would probably not be amiss.

Now that’s not to say that I wasn’t resourceful. After about two days of eating nothing but snack food (which I hadn’t done since a few years back when I was climbing 14ers), I was really craving some proteins. Fortunately, I was able to rescue some leftovers from my refrigerator, so I knew I had some pre-made meals to eat for a few days. The question was how to cook them. That’s when I realized that my car made a perfect solar oven. Around noon, I’d go down to the parking lot, toss in a Tupperware container of leftovers and wait 5 hours for it to warm. In fact, my car probably did a better job than my microwave would have done.

And yet, I found that with no power I noticed a few things that are sometimes drowned out by the hum of every-day life. First was the darkness. When the sun set, it got DARK. Now, I had known this fact from years of camping, but experiencing it in my apartment was something a little different. I’d stare up at the ceiling and I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or not. I was definitely glad that my watch had glow-in-the-dark hands. Of course, I did take advantage of the darkness on two of the evenings. I hadn’t spent any time looking at the stars in a long while, so I figured that now was as good a time as any. With most of the light pollution gone, including most of the moon, I saw more stars than I ever had while down in Alabama. Granted, due to the increased atmosphere it wasn’t nearly as many stars as I would see at say, Cameron Pass, but it was still an awe-inspiring vista. One of the evenings I went out and lay on the hood of my car to keep my neck from getting sore while I stared up at the heavens. I don’t know why people would ever do this. It’s uncomfortable and probably not good for the car.

Secondly, there is the silence. Or the lack there of. At night it was quiet, with the exception of all the crickets and tree frogs. During the day, it’s the constant stream of cars playing rap music way too vulgar and loud and people walking by speaking way too vulgar and loud. I have come to the conclusion that these two things are probably highly interconnected. At the very least, in the respites of noise, I did manage to focus a lot on my reading, as I have mentioned before.

Lastly: old habits die hard. I don’t know how many times I would go into a room and flip a switch, only to have nothing happen. This kind of goes with the realization when there’s no power; you tend to notice how many power lines there are. None of them were down, but they do become a lot more conspicuous when you realize what they’re there for.

Now even though I was not harmed, and my property was not damaged, and I had a very calm attitude about everything (after all, “Don’t Panic” is excellent advice), I do not want it to seem like I am glib to this whole situation. Merely ignorant. This was a very serious natural disaster and I was lucky to be unscathed in more ways than one. My heart goes out to those that lost everything, and I know that the countless volunteers that are donating their time and effort will have their reward in heaven.

As I lay on my bed trying to get to sleep on Sunday night, I reflected on all that’s happened in my life up until now and how I have truly been blessed. But that’s a post for another time. Around 11:30, the power came on, and I went to check and see if everything was working. After turning off my closet light, which I had inadvertently turned on while the power was off, I logged on, plugged in and resumed my consumption. Having had 100 hours of a forced unplugging, I know to appreciate the little things in life, to pull away from the pace of the world once in a while and truly relax. Maybe that’s all it takes sometimes. Go back to the closet. Find the breaker box. Flip the switch.

Click.

PlaylisTinkering

When I bought my first car about two years ago, I was excited to finally have a car to myself. I really have no complaints about it, with the exception of one thing: the CD player. If I had gotten a car that was older or newer, I would have gotten a tape deck or an additional auxiliary input, respectively. As it is, I cannot just plug my mp3 player into the car stereo and listen to my music. I’m too cheap and lazy to upgrade the CD player, and I’ve found the local radio stations to be banal at best. As a result, I’ve burned a bunch of CDs to play in my car. In doing so, I’ve come across something interesting.

Of course, when burning CD-Rs, I am one of those people who will get as close to that 80 minute cut-off mark as they can. I feel that anything short of that is just wasted space. When I started burning discs for my car, I would find artists that either had an album and an EP, or two shorter albums and I would put one right after the other on one disc. I was surprised at how many discs ended up being the entire discography of a band on one 80 minute CD-R. This worked for quite a few of my favorite bands and I was able to quickly fill my car with music from a variety of musicians.

As I continued, there were a few artists that didn’t quite fit into the 80 minute limit. This is where some judgment came into play. I’d try and keep as much of the albums as I could on the CD, only omitting one or two songs that pushed the total time over the edge. These were usually songs that I didn’t particularly care for anyways, so there was no real loss.

Then came the challenge of artists that I enjoy, but have far too much material to easily filter down to a set that would fit within the boundaries. At first, I would do the same filtering process as before, but this time I would be looking for the songs that I really enjoyed, instead of merely removing the songs that I didn’t care for. I burned a few of these, but I was not very creative in the ordering of the songs. I chose an alphabetical order, mainly for convenience, but also because I figured I would listen to these discs on a shuffling, or random, mode.

As I’m sure my brother already knows, with the two compilations of music from Colorado musicians he’s already made, creating the perfect mix-tape is more of an art than merely choosing what music you want to listen to. I now have an appreciation for this art as well. For example’s sake, let’s take a hypothetical CD I would burn for a CD player alarm clock (of which I do not actually own):

1. “Morgenstimmung (Morning Mood)” by Edvard Grieg from Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, Op. 46
2.  “Here Comes the Sun” by The Beatles from Abbey Road
3. “Good Morning Good Morning” by The Beatles from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
4.  “Good Day Sunshine” by The Beatles from Revolver
5.  “Good Morning Starshine” by Strawberry Alarm Clock from Incense and Peppermints
6.  “Blue Morning, Blue Day” by Foreigner from Complete Greatest Hits
7.  “Alarm Clock” by The W’s from Fourth From the Last
8.  “Woke Up This Morning” by A3 from The Sopranos
9.  “Pachuca Sunrise” by Minus the Bear from Menos el Oso
10. “Sunday Sun” by The Cinematics from A Strange Education
11. “A Day in the Life” by The Beatles from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely hearts Club Band

For this example, I followed the concept of free association. That is, expanding a subject by including the first words and phrases that pop into your head. In doing so, I have expanded my initial idea of “alarm clock” to include “morning/good morning”, “sun/sunshine/sunrise”, and “day”. Strangely enough, a lot of these tracks are songs by The Beatles, of which I have absolutely no qualms. Still, this is only one aspect of creating a mix. This isn’t really any different than what I was doing with the musicians that I had too much material from. This next example goes into the flow of a mix:

1.    Theme from New York, New York
2.    My Kind of Town
3.    South of the Border
4.    Fly Me to the Moon
5.    All or Nothing at All
6.    Nice ‘N’ Easy
7.    The Best is Yet to Come
8.    I’ve Got the World on a String
9.    You Make Me Feel so Young
10.  I Get a Kick Out of You
11.  I’ve Got You Under My Skin
12.  Luck Be a Lady
13.  The Lady is a Tramp
14.  Love and Marriage
15.  (Love Is) The Tender Trap
16.  Witchcraft
17.  Learnin’ the Blues
18.  Night and Day
19.  The Way You Look Tonight
20.  Strangers in the Night
21.  In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning
22.  It Was a Very Good Year
23.  The Last Dance
24.  My Way

This example was created by selecting the songs by Frank Sinatra that I liked. Once I had the total time underneath the 80 minute threshold, I started moving tracks around. Most songs on this list fall into pretty clear-cut categories, so I tried to group the songs together based on their subject matter. Once that was accomplished, I would move whole chunks of songs around to get the desired flow. Right off the bat, I wanted the songs revolving around the night to finish off the mix, so I set those at the end. From there, I wanted to start the mix with the songs about various locales, thus cementing the start of the mix. In between there were the “women songs”, which were further split up to sub-categories. The main point with this mix was to get a good flow from one song to another based not only on lyrical content, but on tempo as well. Of course, with a lot of the songs having the “big band” sound, it was fairly easy to have a natural progression between them. Finally, this last example uses the ideas from the Sinatra mix and applies them to a variety of artists like the Morning mix did:

1.   “White Lines and Lipstick” by A Change of Pace from Prepare the Masses
2.   “Squeaking Wheels and White Lights” by This Providence from Who Are You Now?
3.   “Armistice” by MUTEMATH from Armistice
4.   “Is This Tomorrow?” by As Tall as Lions from You Can’t Take it With You
5.   “Little Kids” by Kings of Convenience from Quiet is the New Loud
6.   “Eleanor Put Your Boots On” by Franz Ferdinand from You Could Have it So Much Better
7.   “Words & Music” by Sondre Lerche from Heartbeat Radio
8.   “Boring Fountain” by Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin from Pershing
9.   “Saturday Night” by Blitzen Trapper from Furr
10. “Junkie Weight” by Gooding from Tiny Heart Attacks
11. “Devil” by Cat-a-Tac from Cat-a-Tac
12. “Calling on You” by Paulson from All at Once
13. “Pachuca Sunrise” by Minus the Bear from Menos el Oso
14. “Keep Forgetting” by The Cinematics from A Strange Education
15. “This is Not the End” by The Bravery from The Sun and the Moon
16. “The Name of the Train is the Hurricane” by Men, Women & Children from Men, Women & Children
17. “Too Too Too Fast” by Ra Ra Riot from The Rhumb Line
18. “M79” by Vampire Weekend from Vampire Weekend
19. “Itch U Can’t Skratch” by Junior Senior from Hey Hey My My Yo Yo
20. “Sublime” by Supreme Beings of Leisure from Supreme Beings of Leisure
21. “The Rot” by Ian Cooke from The Fall I Fell
22. “Wake” by Annuals from Such Fun

The idea behind this last mix was to introduce someone to the variety of bands that I like. Even though I might be labeled a hipster for the lack of mainstream music on this mix, I do feel that it is a gateway for people to discover some pretty great musicians that they might not have known about otherwise. As such, I spent a very large amount of time picking out the tracks for this mix. There was a lot of back and forth to try and get it just right, and now I believe I have arrived at something that I will enjoy listening to.

One aspect that I found helps with mixes like this is the way that songs begin and end. Getting a good flow of tempos is good, and even progressing through different musical styles lends itself well to a good mix, but what really gets songs stuck together is if one starts in the same way that the previous one ended. For instance, if there is a fade out on the last song, then if the next song started with a fade in, it just naturally fits together.

What I’ve found through making these mixes, is that the truly good mixes make it so that when you listen to the songs away from the compilation, the next song from the mix automatically will come to mind when the song is done playing. I am by no means an expert on this subject, but these have been my thoughts on creating a good mix. Consider this post to be tips from a music enthusiast, and nothing more than that.

AstronauTraining

Reading up before the big mission

Many children have ambitious dreams for the careers that they would eventually like to have. Some examples of said professions are doctor, fireman, and athlete. Of course, there is inevitably one other profession that most kids want to be when they grow up. Astronaut. Unfortunately, not only do the astronauts of this world come in short supply, but their job is a difficult test of endurance, both physically and mentally.

And yet, many still persist in these lofty dreams. That’s where space camp comes in. Space camp is a good way to give kids a chance to experience a small part of what being an astronaut is like. I never got the chance to go when I was a child, and I’m completely fine with that. However, when opportunity knocks, I’m certainly going to answer the door.

In the final days of January, I participated in (what essentially boiled down to) space camp for adults. As part of a teambuilding and leadership training, I was able to use my position at the Missile Defense Agency as a part of its Career Development Program to go to space camp. This broke down into two days. Day 1 was a ropes course and day 2 was the astronaut training.

Over the years, I’ve had the chance to participate in many ropes courses. As such, I’ve been able to figure out some of the “tricks” of the teambuilding that takes place. Let’s just say experience breeds confidence. Of course, the first task was to break the large group into smaller groups. Standard icebreaker involving pictures taped to backs. All said and done, I ended up in team Charlie. Even though the other teams were Alpha and Bravo, I couldn’t help talking about going to Candy Mountain, the Leopluradon, and the fact that we were on a bridge.

The first activity of the day was the climbing wall. Again: standard stuff. And yet, there was a twist that I hadn’t encountered before. While you were climbing the wall, two others were climbing with you. Not only that, but all three climbers were loosely tethered to each other. The goal was to get to the top of the wall while keeping the tethers intact. Of the sets of three that attempted the wall, mine was the only one of our small group to make it to the top as a complete team. High fives and other congratulatory actions were well due indeed. Oh, did I mention that it was 40° outside? Yeah, it was cold. Yet another factor that made the day an adventure.

Next up was what I would call “Lumberjack Ninja”. The goal was to use metal pegs to climb to the top of a 40 foot pole and jump off. Easy enough, except heights can sometimes be an issue for me. Fortunately, the prior experience with ropes courses had ingrained in my brain the safety of the rope system, which definitely helped on the last few steps to the top of the pole. Once on top, I made a ninja pose, which really felt appropriate, considering where I was standing. Turning around (which is a difficult task when the pole sways with your movement), I leapt off the pole and fist-bumped the rope I was supposed to hit. I think the “rope hitting” part of the challenge was to make sure that you were far enough away from the pole so that you could be lowered safely. Of course, I took advantage of the situation to practice my best “Peter Pan” poses while I was lowered back down to the safety of the ground.

The last event of the day was the low ropes course. Nothing particularly special here, but it did enforce communication skills. With day 1 in the bag, I was looking forward to day 2. The end of day 1 consisted of a guided tour of the rest of the Space and Rocket Center, which was nice considering the last time I had been there, the guiding was left to the individual. Part of the reason I really liked this training, apart from the astronaut simulations, was the fact that we had many different teams that we had to work with. There’s no better way to become acquainted with your coworkers, than with a harmless assignment like a shuttle mission.

To start the second day off, our teams had to design our mission patches. I was a part of the space shuttle Atlantis, so of course I had the perfect slogan up my sleeve. “Let’s Get Kraken!” was proudly emblazoned at the top of our patch, which is only appropriate, considering the name of our shuttle. Once again, I found that my improvisational skills came in handy when we had to present our patch design in a clever manner. We decided upon the “evening news” method, and I was the head anchor to provide the explanation.

After an initial run-through of the mission on both flight control and shuttle sides, we made our way to what I would call the “simulation room”. This was a hangar-like building that housed a lot of equipment to simulate different conditions that astronauts might encounter. The first simulation I did was the “moon walk”, where springs reduced your “weight” to give the sensation of walking on the moon. A lot more difficult than it looks, mainly because a lot of the force that goes into walking isn’t put into going forward, but (apparently) into going up. The next simulation was meant to simulate microgravity, and it was pretty neat, considering I was essentially sitting in a mini-hovercraft. Newton’s laws definitely become apparent when there’s no friction to hold you back. Lastly, I went on the gyroscopic tumble simulator. This is the one that spins you around in every direction. Afterwards, I was reminded that I do actually get seasick, and that I probably wouldn’t make a good astronaut if this was part of the standard training. Well, that and the fact that I’m 6’1”.

By far the best part of the last day was the actual mission. Not only did we have blue flight suits (which I ended up buying), but we had tasks that were performed in a simulated shuttle environment. I was fortunate enough to be one of the Mission Specialists for the mission, which meant that I would be doing a spacewalk to assemble a structure for a satellite. This mission was replete with all the gear that would give the full experience. This included headsets, the bubble helmet, and various other accoutrement needed for a simulated spacewalk.

My only issue with the spacewalk has to do with the microgravity simulator. In order to give the feeling that you’re not being pulled down by gravity, you have to counter that force with a counterweight. Unfortunately, the compensation is perhaps a little more than the gravity pulling me to earth. Sitting in the chair for the spacewalk felt like being continually kicked in the crotch, because it kept pulling me up, when I wanted to just stay put. Of course, I can understand that there are certain limitations of trying to simulate a minimal gravity environment, but I kept fighting it instead of the alternative, which was to lose control. Add on top of everything trying to build a structure out of nodes and rods that were a little bit too big to really fit together properly, I definitely had my workout for the day.

Another observation I made about the mission in general was the critical thinking experience that many of us had. We were all college graduates, and many of us had engineering backgrounds, so the mission certainly did seem to go smoothly. There are a lot of checklists to work through, anomalies to solve, and switches to flip, and it was interesting to see how we were so well adept to these tasks already. Plus, I think most of us were old enough to really enjoy it.

The training concluded with a speech by retired astronaut Robert C. Springer. All said and done, it was an excellent 2 days and I wouldn’t trade them for anything else. Heck, I’d do it again. So in conclusion: yes. I have been to space camp. I just had to wait until I was 25.

ResolutionarYeaRedux

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”

– Jeremiah 29:11

A new year full of golden opportunities

Once again, the new year is upon us and it’s time to assess how we did on our resolutions for 2010 and to develop our goals for 2011. Let’s see how I did last year:

–          Staying in one place: Partial – I spent a lot of time in Maryland, and I ended up moving out of my apartment into another one. At least it was an apartment in the same complex.
–          Bad habits: Failed – only lasted about a month.
–          Dentist and Doctor: Failed – still pending on actually visiting the dentist, and haven’t really looked for a doctor either.
–          Working out & constant weight: Accomplished – only had a 1% gain, but considering the circumstances, that’s pretty good. Plus, it’s probably muscle weight anyways . . . from working out.
–          Cooking: Success – plus many other social benefits.
–          Reading: Accomplished – a book a week is pretty good, but there’s still some left to read.
–          Movies: Accomplished – still have a few more to watch from my collection, but I did manage to finish watching all the Best Pictures.
–          NaNoWriMo: Success – not only did I complete the challenge, I took a little extra effort to complete the novel.
–          Prayer: Accomplished – although not as much in my personal life as I would have liked, I have found myself in more opportunities in which to participate in prayer than in years past.

So, on average, a successful year. Despite some emotional turmoil at the beginning of last year, I managed to work through it and pull myself up to a new high. 2010 was really about finding myself. It was trying to figure out who I was, what I believed, and what I could do. The time up in Maryland was kind of like going into the wilderness for a vision quest (or some similar activity). I spent a lot of time alone, thinking and diving deep into my inner self.

But that was last year. Last year was laying a foundation for this year. Now that I’ve figured out what I’m about, it’s time to take this year and really reinforce the new life. It’s time to develop roots, but also to still take time to grow. I think that one of the best results of the resolutions I had last year was that they gave me goals to strive for. I’m a very goal-oriented person, so once I set my mind to something, I’ll usually finish what I start. The resolutions for 2010 were a good balance of tasks to develop many aspects of my life; to remain well rounded. Also, the resolutions were attainable and realistic. It always feels better when you can accomplish a goal, but also know that there was a challenge to it.

Now, on to 2011. I turn 26 this year, and I think that 26 is a good number to use for many of the following goals. It’s a week in, but here are the 11 resolutions I’ve come up with to work on for this year:

1.       Bad habits – same deal as last year. They’ll continue to make the list until I stop. A lot of them are ingrained on my subconscious, so it’ll be a challenge to break them. However, I have heard that it usually takes about 28 days to break (or gain) habits, so February may be the month I really sit down and work at breaking them.
2.       Health – Now that I’m not travelling so much, I will probably take some time to finally visit a dentist and to find a doctor. As usual, I will continue to work out at least twice a week, in the hopes that I might be able to lose the 1% of my weight that I gained last year. I think that my 2010 baseline was a good spot to be (even if it is a little heavy), so I’m going to aim for that baseline.
3.       Softball – Once again, my lack of extended travel means that I can get involved in activities like recreational softball. I really enjoyed playing in the one game that I had the chance to participate in last summer, so I hope that the team starts up again this year so that I can join its ranks and really get in shape.
4.       ‘Splorin’ – There’s a few places in Alabama that I just haven’t gotten around to visiting yet, and this year I’d like to do so. One of the places I’d like to visit is Cathedral Caverns state park. I passed by the sign for this so many times that my interest has been piqued. I’d also like to visit the high-point of Alabama (such as it is) so that I can claim another state’s highest altitude. I might even make it down to the Gulf of Mexico if I can put forth enough planning.
5.       Cooking – Now that I am well versed in the culinary world, it’s time to expand the repertoire. I’m not going to go quite as crazy as I did last year and demand 52 different recipes, but I am still going to hold myself to something. I figure that I can cook 26 new recipes this year. Now these will be recipes that I have not had before, so that’s where the challenge will come in. I already know that I can cook what I’m familiar with, so it’s time to branch out. Also, I’ll probably still have the dinner parties from time to time, as they were excellent ways to socialize on my turf.
6.       Reading – Once again, I don’t think I’m going to read 52 books this year, but 26 is still a good place to start. Now that I’ve stopped buying new books, this goal will definitely get me close to having read every book I own.
7.       Movies – I definitely know I can finish watching the DVDs (and Blu-Rays) from my collection that I have not seen yet, so that will be my goal. Right now, that’s about 26 movies. Depending on what wins Best Picture this year, I may or may not have to watch that film as well. However, I do not have any particular list that I am looking to complete this year.
8.       Videos – I no longer have an excuse. Now that I own a HD camcorder, and now that I have an upgraded computer, it’s time to get back into making videos. I’ve been on about a two to three year hiatus, and I’m really looking forward to getting back into this. Expect new videos to start appearing by the end of January.
9.       Writing – As it stands right now, I will not participate in National Novel Writing Month this year. However, the novel that I wrote last year will go through the editing and revising process starting in March. I’ve already got some of my friends working on notes for the first draft, and I have many areas that I know need work. At the very least, I want it passable by the middle of the summer, so that I can get my free proof copy published through CreateSpace (an Amazon subsidiary).
10.   Music – I started teaching myself how to play the piano last year, and so far it’s gone pretty well. I now can read sheet music, albeit somewhat slow. By the end of the year, I would like to know how to play 26 more songs on top of the 20 or so that I already know. I still enjoy the learning process, so I hope that trend continues. Also, having participated in the choir at my church for a full year now, I feel that it is time to step up into a role of more responsibility and leadership. Starting this year, I will be singing on the front line, and I look forward to developing my ministry.
11.   Relationships – Partly due to my constant travel last year, I did not actively pursue the search for a girlfriend. I was somewhat passively looking, but I didn’t go out of my way to try and find new venues for opportunities to meet single women. Also, from the soul searching of last year, I now have a better understanding of myself, and what I am looking for in a potential wife. This year I will provide myself with these opportunities. One of the best words of advice that I was given last year was, “Draw nearer to God, so that when she’s looking for you, she’ll have to look to Him first in order to find you.” I know this resolution is a little vague, but the point here is that now I’ll actually put some effort forth. And yet, such as it is,  I am definitely open to any local suggestions.

All said and done, a lot of the same resolutions, but also some new ones to start branching out my skill set. I hope to do a better job of updating this blog this year, and hopefully these resolutions and adventures will help me to post something more than just once a month.

Lastly, for the Christmas musical last year, Jeremiah 29:11 was the only solo line that I had. I don’t know if the director purposely gave me that verse, or if it was merely by chance, but it’s definitely a word that has gotten me through 2010. Now that 2011 has started, I’m going to declare the LORD’s plan over my life. I know that He wants me to prosper and I know that He knows my future, so I’m just going to have to put my trust in Him to make it happen.

AeronautiChagrin

“Flying is a privilege, not a right.”

After my trip home for the Christmas break, I really question this privilege. If it were a privilege, you’d think the service would be better. Not only did I encounter problems flying out to Colorado, I encountered even more problems flying back. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This tragic tale starts, as many do, in the early morning hours of a Friday. I was racing to the airport after realizing that I did not accurately plan the time in which I was to wake up, and was therefore running a little late. I was fortunate that I did not have a bag to check and that I had printed out my tickets ahead of time. I also figured that I was flying out at an odd time, so the TSA line would be short. Unfortunately, I was wrong on that last part.

I got in line and nervously waited for it to slowly move along. Apparently there were about 4 other flights that were departing the same time mine was, which would explain the large amount of people in line. What I can’t figure out is why they only had two lanes open, when there was obviously equipment for at least one more x-ray / metal detector line. After having one or two panic attacks, I finally made it through security and ran to my gate. I got to the plane, found my seat and finally began to relax.

Of course, my relaxation would only be temporary. The minutes ticked away and we still hadn’t left the gate. It turns out that there was a serious mechanical failure on the plane, which meant that everyone had to get off and start planning for alternate flights. Now I’m not an expert in airport affairs, but I would think that the first flight out for the day would be checked well in advance, instead of right before departure. I mean, the plane has been there all night, at which point someone could have checked to see if it was working so that if anything was broken, it could be fixed in time for a timely flight. Right?

Needless to say, I automatically missed my connecting flight. As I was at the gate with the airline representative, I motioned across the terminal to a flight that was going directly to Denver, and leaving in about 15 minutes. I inquired whether there were any spare seats on it. There weren’t. Figures. At any rate, I managed to get booked on the next direct flight to Denver so that I wouldn’t have to deal with any connections or layovers. Unfortunately, that flight left 7 hours later.

After informing my family of the delay, I set in for the long haul. I was fortunate to have some cookies I had baked a few days before, as well as my iPod, free Wi-fi, and a charging cable for said iPod. For compensation, I received two $6 vouchers for the meals that I would be eating in the airport (breakfast and lunch). These vouchers seemed terribly inadequate, considering the inflated prices in the terminal. I ended up using both (that’s $12) on 2 slices of pizza and a drink. Outrageous.

So, after panicking that I would miss my flight, I ended up spending my morning in the terminal of an airport. Just goes to show you that panic and stress sometimes do little to change the outcome of a situation. And yet, this was not the end of my airport problems. Not by a long shot. On top of the 7 hours that I had stolen from me while flying to Colorado, I would eventually add at least 13 more on the flight back.

One of the aspects I do not like about flying is the ticket prices. In order to get tickets at a reasonable price, you’ve got to buy them well in advance. I ended up buying my tickets for Christmas a little before Thanksgiving. As such, one can not anticipate what the weather will do when it is actually time to fly. If I had known, I would have flown back to Huntsville a day earlier. Or even a day later. Instead I flew on a day marked by the only snowfall I would see during my two weeks in Colorado.

Having learned my lesson, I gave myself plenty of time to get to the airport and get through security. This was a much more relaxed procedure than I had experienced on my trip out to Colorado. I ended up sitting in front of the gate for about an hour before I was to depart. Unfortunately, I would sit for another hour while in the airplane, sitting on the tarmac, waiting to be de-iced. Of course, this was after the plane finally arrived at the gate around the time that we were supposed to depart. I understand that the delay was weather based, but that’s not where my frustration sets in.

When I finally landed, my connecting flight had already been gone by 10 minutes. The next flight to Huntsville was at 9:30 in the morning. Fan-freakin’-tastic. Considering that the connecting flight was probably the last one for the night, I really wished they had delayed it by 15 minutes so that I could have gotten back that night. I mean, Huntsville is not a connection airport. There were probably no connections after that flight anyways, so why not delay it a little bit to make sure that everyone can be happy? Do these people not communicate with each other?

So now I was stuck in a closed airport at 8pm with a ticket for a morning flight and a discount for a hotel room. Not a free hotel room. A discount. Considering that the extra day I would be gone added to the fee I’d have to pay to get my car out of the parking lot, I couldn’t justify the expense. Plus, I had checked a bag with the stuff I would need for an overnight stay (all that Christmas swag justified the checked bag). I really wished they had given me one of those $6 vouchers for breakfast, for all the trouble I had suffered at their hands. This would be the second year in a row that I would be spending the early morning hours in an airport on my way back to Huntsville. At least last year was due to a red-eye flight and not a delay.

In order to avoid having to go through security again, I hunkered down for the night. I was fortunate on a few aspects of my non-ideal circumstances. Firstly, I found a blanket and pillow that I used to make myself comfortable underneath one of the benches of chairs. Also, the lights were controlled by motion sensors, so if I kept still, it would become slightly darker. I ended up getting about 30 minutes of on-and-off sleep by the time that the bicycle security guard caught me.

Apparently the terminal closed down at night and everyone had to congregate outside the security screening area. I’m just amazed that I went undetected as long as I did, considering how many times I heard them pass by. This must have been a procedure that this airport had adopted, because I have been in a few other airports essentially overnight (both before and after 9/11) where this was not the case. Oh, the troubles I go through to avoid going through security again. So now I was out in the main concourse, failing at trying to sleep once again.

I am amazed that anyone can get any sleep in an airport at all. Not with that PA system constantly blaring announcements at regular intervals. It’s almost like an annoying grandfather clock, but instead of chiming every 15 minutes, it seemed to occur every 10. As a result, I didn’t sleep, but I did get a lot of reading done (no free Wi-fi in this airport). I knew I wanted to get some reading done during the break, but not like that. Finally, the security checkpoint opened up again and I was able to get back into the terminal.

And yet, now I know why they wanted me to not sleep in the terminal. On my return trip through security, I was passed through one of the body scanners. First time that’s happened to me, so I guess the real reason for not allowing anyone to sleep in the terminals is so that privacy can be invaded (or something). After a quick gate change, I was finally able to get some sleep. Once again, the lights were motion activated, but this time some of the seats did not have arm-rests, which made for a very comfortable place to lie down and sleep. I think I may have gotten an hour’s worth of sleep before other people started arriving at the gate. Hours later, I was finally on the plane for the last leg of my journey back to Huntsville. All said and done, from the time that I boarded the shuttle to the airport to the time I walked in my apartment, 23 hours had elapsed. A whole day wasted on travel.

Now the real irony of both of these situations, and the combined 20 hours of wasted time I was forced to endure, was that when I travel for business (and not pleasure, as was the case for this trip), I never have these kinds of issues. It’s only when it’s my own free time that’s at stake that I get put in these trying situations. This frustrates me to no end, considering how much more often I travel for work than I do for pleasure.

Of course, I’m sure that there were many alternatives that I could have taken in both the trip out and the trip back. For instance, I could have taken my car, drove it to the connecting airport and flew out to Colorado so that when I was stuck at the connecting airport on the flight back, I could have taken my car and drove back to Huntsville. That’s how ridiculously close it was. I ended up waiting 13 hours for a 30 minute flight. Ridiculous. However, since my checked baggage was essentially being held hostage, I would have had to make my way to the airport to pick it up once I had gotten back to Huntsville. I could have even rented a car and drove back to Huntsville, if it weren’t for the extra expense. Once again, that cheapskate in me comes to the surface in these types of situations, even if it would have saved me 10 hours of waiting.

However, I wonder sometimes if I choose the more stressing and difficult options so that afterwards I can have a great story to tell. Do I purposely put myself through tortures so that I can tell my story to others? Do I seek out the “adventure”, even when simpler options exist? Perhaps. And yet, I felt that the time that I was just sitting in an airport was time that was in essence stolen from me. On the flight out, it was time that I had planned to spend with my family, which is why I chose the early flight out. On the flight back, it was the time that I wanted to spend getting back into my routine and relaxing before heading back to work on Monday. Either way, I’d like that time back, but I don’t think the stingy airlines have a voucher for that.

CooKing

Week 39 - Monkey Brains

For those of you who have been keeping up with the Cooking Goal I set for myself this year, last week marked the end of the journey. I set out at the beginning of this year to wean myself off of the convenience of frozen, pre-packaged and “just add boiling water” foods. College was behind me, and it was time to grow into a mature culinary expert. I figured that with 52 weeks in a year, I could find time each week to make a new recipe and add to my repertoire. After adjusting the goal to make 52 recipes this year, I pushed onward to the finish line.

When I started cooking, I quickly realized that I was under-equipped for the task. And yet, it was a little bit fun trying to “MacGuyver” together solutions in the middle of preparing a recipe. Needless to say, the bi-weekly “20% off one item” coupon from Bed, Bath & Beyond that arrived in the mail was used almost immediately each time it arrived. But as I progressed, I found that I reached a point where I was anticipating what I would need. Or, in the case of the KitchenAid standing mixer, something that I thought would be really cool to have.

An unintended benefit of cooking ended up being the dinner parties. When I found that most recipes made 8 servings, and I really didn’t want to eat something for 8 straight days, the solution became obvious. I’ve always felt that food is the great uniting medium. There’s nothing better than gathering around the kitchen table with some home cooked meal and just talking. Talking without our mouths full of food, that is. Through inviting people over to my apartment for dinner, I really got a chance to know them better than I already did. I’m OK at large social functions, but I find that the intimate, small group get-togethers are far more meaningful when everyone isn’t trying to socialize with everyone else.

Week 13 - New York Cheesecake

Then it happened. I started getting really ambitious. About 13 weeks in, I found a spring-form pan at a local thrift store. I thought to myself, “Hey, a spring-form pan! I know what I can make with that!” And that’s when the New York Cheesecake appeared. By that time, I had figured out that cooking wasn’t anything more difficult than civil engineering. I mean, you start with your raw building materials; process them through cutting, heating and mixing; form the materials together; and bake for 30 minutes at 350°. Voila! Instant building . . . I mean dinner. I figured that with some of the recipes, I wouldn’t know how difficult they were until I tried making them for myself. Surprisingly enough, I think every complicated recipe I made ended up turning out. The irony is that some of the simplest recipes (like cookies and Jell-O) were complete failures. Now that I have found myself capable of these complex culinary creations, they’ve lost some of their mysticism. I always thought, “Oh, that’s such a difficult recipe, I could never make something like that.” And then I did. Of course, one wonders if the difficult recipes are worth it, but when you take the first bite and your only reaction is to sigh in ecstasy, you know it was all worth it.

Of the 52 things that I made this year (well . . . 53, but those chocolate chip cookies were after I made the final recipe), I found that they fell into two distinct categories: main dishes and desserts. There were a few that didn’t fit in those categories, but they were in the minority. I think the reason for this dichotomy of recipes was due to the fact that I usually had small groups of people eating the finished product. If I was cooking for a bigger crowd, or making more elaborate, multi-course meals, I probably would have delved into the side dishes and vegetables, but as it was, I stuck to the important stuff. I also found that I ended up making more recipes from the family cookbook, than from the America’s Test Kitchen cookbook. I figured that if I had eaten it before, I knew how it should turn out, and thus would be able to tell if I succeeded or failed with a recipe. And yet, the America’s Test Kitchen cookbook was useful to learn some of the tricks and techniques to make recipes better.

Week 33 - Baked Italian

Probably my proudest moments of the year, with the exceptions of successfully pulling off recipes like New York Cheesecake, Harvest Pie, and Chicken Cordon Bleu, was the fact that I started making my own recipes. Well, more accurately, my own variations on recipes. About 2/3 of my way through the goal, I realized something. Some of the recipes I made ended up being very similar to each other. These ended up contributing to the two “fusion recipes” which were recipes that I had combined from two similar recipes. The greatest success of the fusion recipes was my Baked Italian. It took the greatest attributes of both recipes and fused them together in one ultimate dish. Now, Pork Chops and Texas Potatoes still needs a little work, but I think that I have a good baseline to develop from.

OK, now it’s time for the mushy, gooey part. No, not the undercooked chocolate cake. With as much time as I spent in the kitchen this year, and the chances I had to create social gatherings, as well as participate in them with my food, I began to do some thinking. What makes a meal “home cooked”? Is it merely a meal that isn’t store-bought? Is it a meal that could be classified as “comfort food”? Is it a warm meal? I felt that none of those questions gave a good sense of what “home cooked” really meant. I think this is one of those transitions that silently take place as we grow older.

When you’re growing up, you’ve always got mom’s cooking, and it’s that cooking that you would classify as “home cooking”. And yet, when does your own cooking become “home cooking”? Does it reach that stage when you’re married? When you have kids of your own? When they deem your cooking as “home cooking?” After much thought on the subject, I think I may have arrived at an answer: “home cooking” is food that is lovingly prepared that you share with those whom you love. With the rushed society that we live in today, wouldn’t an occasional home cooked meal help relieve the stress of our lives? How often do we go about the process of living, without letting those who we really care about know how we feel about them? The dinner may be burnt, or the dessert a sloppy mess, but with love, the true meaning of the meal gets across.

Week 52 - Chicken Cordon Bleu

All right, that’s enough philosophizing for now. Below is a list of the recipes that I made this year. After the name of each recipe, there are two markings. Within the brackets [], is which cookbook I made the recipe from: W = The Weilert Family Cookbook, 2^nd Edition / A = The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook / F= Fusion recipe / X = No cookbook was used. In parentheses () is the type of the recipe that I cooked: M = Main Dish / D = Dessert / B= Breakfast / O = Other (these are the side dishes, and other recipes I couldn’t easily categorize).

1.       Quick Tomato Sauce [A] (M)
2.       Bavarian Potato Chowder [W] (M)
3.       Zucchini Garden Chowder [W] (M)
4.       Creamy Stovetop Mac ‘n’ Cheese [A] (M)
5.       Cheese Omelet [A] (B)
6.       Italian Sausage Soup [W] (M)
7.       Chicken Pizzaiola [A] (M)
8.       Banana Bread [A] (O)
9.       Scrambled Eggs [A] (B)
10.   Chocolate Dream Dessert [W] (D)
11.   Sugar Cookies [A] (D)
12.   Casserole Italian [W] (M)
13.   New York Cheesecake [A] (D)
14.   Crispy Chicken Parmesan [A] (M)
15.   Bavarian Apple Torte [W] (D)
16.   Pork Chops & Potatoes [W] (M)
17.   Kuchen [W] (B)
18.   Chicken Enchiladas [W] (M)
19.   Potluck Pan Rolls [W] (O)
20.   Lasagna Casserole [W] (M)
21.   Texas Potatoes [W] (O)
22.   Hungarian Goulash [W] (M)
23.   Emergency Chocolate Cake [A] (D)
24.   Lemonade Drop Cookies [W] (D)
25.   Fiesta Casserole [A] (M)
26.   Fried Eggs [A] (B)
27.   Baked Ziti with Tomatoes and Mozzarella [A] (M)
28.   Cherry Cheese Packet [W] (B)
29.   Deviled Steak Cubes [X] (M)
30.   Country Apple Cranberry Dessert [W] (D)
31.   Chocolate Sheet Cake [W] (D)
32.   Strawberry and Cream Squares [W] (D)
33.   Baked Italian [F] (M)
34.   Baked Macaroni and Cheese [A] (M)
35.   French Toast Casserole [W] (B)
36.   Lemon Bars [W] (D)
37.   Beef Tortilla Casserole [A] (M)
38.   Chicken and Rice Casserole [X] (M)
39.   Monkey Brains [W] (D)
40.   All American Meatloaf [A] (M)
41.   One Dish Breakfast [W] (B)
42.   Pork Chops & Texas Potatoes [F] (M)
43.   Rhubarb Cobbler [W] (D)
44.   Chili [X] (M)
45.   Tenderloin Parmigana [W] (M)
46.   Easy Day Casserole [X] (M)
47.   Taco Soup [X] (M)
48.   Cranberry Cake [W] (D)
49.   Harvest Pie [W] (D)
50.   “Great Pumpkin” Cookies [W] (D)
51.   Cinnamon Apple Salad [W] (O)
52.   Chicken Cordon Bleu [A] (M)

So, after a year’s worth of cooking, I’ve met my goal. A reasonable goal with a reasonable challenge. I’ve learned a lot, not only about cooking and baking, but about myself as well. I’ve found a few recipes that I’ve already come to love and have made multiple times (Fiesta Casserole, Taco Soup, Easy Day Casserole, etc.). There’s nothing more to say at this point but, Bon Apetit!