Somewhat Daily Words

I get these update e-mails every week from some Reunion site I signed up for right before my 10 year high school reunion three years ago. Most of them are vague or innocuous, but the latest two or three have been sort of....creepy. Who is this strange 32 year old dude looking at my profile? I'm pretty easy to Google. Seeing stuff like this makes me feel kind of icky.

It's been a long day. I can't talk about it much here, but without explaining, it's just been a long day. And it's going to be even longer, since I laid the baby down to sleep just about fifteen minutes ago, and I still have a few more things to tighten up on a project for class. But anyway, here's a picture I just had to take - the "You Should Be in Bed Kid" Picture... Now, back to work...

I've been married for Ten Years. TEN YEARS. Now, I'm not so much surprised by this fact, when I said "I Do", I knew it was forever, but I'm shocked that it's been that long. A decade. I haven't done anything voluntarily for a span of ten years - except stay married. I'd love to say something shmaltzy or lovey dovey here, but I think Terry S. Taylor summed up my marriage pretty good. Built Her A Cloud (by Terry S. Taylor) I've got a princess who wears a second hand dress She tells me "Baby, I know you've done your best" Though I've found comfort In the love we vowed I can't help thinkin' that I've let her down Well, I'd do anything to make her proud Deserves a castle I've only built her a cloud Each day I work hard, But time, it is no friend One day you look up and find you're near the end There are some words too dark to say aloud like how you're thinkin' that there's no way out Though she

So I'm in my third week at my new job, and today was the last day for the guy I'm replacing. He's been at this position for about four years, is pretty good at it, and if he didn't have to leave for a good reason he wouldn't. So to say that I'm a bit overwhelmed at filling the shoes of a legend, would be an understatement. I imagine it's a bit like how George "Twinkletoes" Selkirk felt in 1935, when he stepped in to replace Babe Ruth in the Yankee right field. How do you live up to the legacy of a legend? How could you possibly be as good, or better than him? I imagine these questions echoed in ol' Twinkletoes' head as he walked onto the field in Yankee Stadium for the first time. Apparently, he didn't let it get to him too much. He ended up playing for six Yankee Pennant winners, and batted better than .300 in five of his first six seasons. Not too shabby. Sure, he wasn't the Babe, but he did pretty good. Here's hoping

So I mentioned recently that I did a bit of nostalgia/impulse buying on iTunes, but I didn't really elaborate on the purchases themselves. In the ninth grade, I loved heavy metal music. To put a finer point on it, I loved Christian Metal. I didn't have a lot of access to secular metal, since all of my friends were of the same faith as me, so instead of cutting my teeth on Megadeth or Metallica, like my peers, I banged my head and pounded my fist in the air to bands like Tourniquet, or Deliverance. And yes, there was the occasional Stryper or White Cross album too. But mostly, I dug thrash, and progressive metal, and Tourniquet and Deliverance fit that bill pretty good. I grew out of it, it was a phase, or at least I thought it was. By my senior year my tastes were more along the lines of Daniel Amos, Jacob's Trouble or the 77's - all great bands, but mellower. I'm sure my grandfather appreciated that too, since the volume of my cassettes was significantly lowe

With school being out, and my return to the workforce, one thing I didn't realize I missed was reading. For fun. Okay, I'll admit, I didn't do a LOT of the required reading for school, but I never really had the time to do recreational reading, with the exception of a few magazines or graphic novels, since I was a full time student. But now I'm working full time, with a one hour lunch to fill, and what better way to fill it with, than by reading a book? Well, I decided to go back, read some stuff I've read before, to get back in the swing of things. I've restarted Stephen King's Dark Tower , which I'm reading during lunch, and The Stand , which I started to read last summer, got about a quarter of the way in and never finished. I've read The Stand before, at least twice, and it's such a rich story, I enjoy every page. It's really nice to get back to books - I've blinded myself too much by the technicolor screen of my computer. I

I have another video I hope to post in the coming day or so, but I got to thinking that I haven't really written a blog since Indy 4, and there's so much I want to talk about but haven't gotten to. I've been pretty deep into the job search thing, so other things like blogging have fallen by the wayside. But, I landed what looks to be a pretty decent job on Friday, so I can try to organize myself a bit more, determine to blog more often at least. I've started to compile a list in my mind of topics to write about that I'll hit soon. But for now, a few things I've been wanting to hit before they're really old news.... The Incredible Hulk Was Awesome Okay, it's not the best summer comic movie - but it's number two so far, and it was a great way to wash away memories of the Ang Lee film, from five years ago. Ed Norton's performance as Banner was pitch perfect – you could tell in every nuance of his portrayal that he was seething with the gree

So school is going to be out in a little over a week, and I'll be graduating in a little over three. It's weird, thinking that after all these years, I'll actually go from being a college dropout to officially being a college graduate. When I first started this latest chapter it looked as though I would be here forever, even if it was for only a year and a half. And now, here I am, closing out that chapter, unsure about what the next one will be, and I'm even starting to question who I really am as an artist. I know I'm a graphic designer. That's not in doubt. I don't mind selling out my talents to feed my family, even if it does mean putting my other pursuits on the back burner for a while. But is that worth it all the time? Before college I'd been dabbling in a bit of comic book writing. I'd done other writing before, screenwriting, prose, etc, but I'd sort of found my niche writing comics, since I'd make some great friends in the

So I only have a little over a month left of school, and since being a student gives me the benefit of a student discount I figured I would take advantage of what little time I had to get the few things I would need after graduation. One of the things I’ve wanted was to upgrade from Mac’s Tiger OS to the new OS, Leopard, which I missed by about three months when I bought my beloved MacBook Pro last summer. So I got the OS disc delivered via FedEx just yesterday, and decided to take the time to run the upgrade in the afternoon so I could do some homework tomorrow night, after everyone was in bed, the standard operating procedure since I’ve been in school. Before I go on, let me add that in the past month or two my MacBook has been starting up slow, and despite following the advice I got from my friend (and fellow MacBook owner) Dave to check my permissions, it still ran slow. I had gotten used to the inconvenience -- heck, I’ve been a PC user for a few years now and was used to minor

The ironic thing? Michelle told me that it was imminent last night around 2 am. Mom's really DO know best.

Rants are fun, quizzes are a good distraction, videos are a blast, podcasting is semi-fulfilling despite the work invovled, but there was a time, not too long ago, when I loved just plain ol' blogging. I know I haven't done it much since I went to school, but I sort of missed it. Right now, I'm really buzzed - I decided to stay up late to do some work, so I scraped together some coin and bought a bottle of Sugar Free Rock Star , (instead of my favorite, Sugar Free Mountain Dew Amp , which sadly, isn't sold at the local convenience store...) which has led to me being up at 3:09 in the morning when I really should be sound asleep. I used to have a pretty good tolerance built up to caffeine, but since it's been a few days since I've had any, it looks like that tolerance is pretty broken down at this point. This is me partying like a rock star: Yeah, that's right - I'm throwin' up the horns in a rock & roll salute! Am I relevant or what?? Anyway, I&