StandingWater Creations

The other night I showed some people a picture of a poster produced at BYU further explaining a nuance of The Honor Code. The Honor Code is a code of conduct, a standard, that all BYU students agree to live by before they are even accepted. What this means is that, allegedly, the individual who decides to come to the school has read, understood, and agreed with the terms of the Honor Code.

What was said, “The Honor Code takes away your agency.”

I disagree with this statement. In general, I disagree with most people when they claim that agency is taken away when you apply rules or rules of living to a life. Agency denotes that you can choose to live your life in any way you want; on the flipside, though, agency also denotes that by your choices you have to live with the consequences of your lifestyle choices.

Therefore, going to BYU requires that you agree to a code of conduct. By choosing to attend the university, you also choose to follow that code. When you choose not to, long enough, whether you realize it or not, you also choose to no longer attend BYU. At all steps, the individual has made choices that affect their life and the lives around them. The individual has not had agency removed, they have merely agreed to specific aspects of a code of conduct that they are to live by.

The poster I was showing shows a girl wearing a mini-skirt. Under the skirt are a pair of leggings or tights. According to the Honor Code (which also gives guidelines for dress and grooming) this is against what was agreed to. A mini-skirt, regardless of what is beneath it, is still a mini-skirt and is forbidden.

When Erin and I saw the poster (and I want a copy of it) we then proceeded to count the girls wearing mini-skirts and leggings/tights around campus. The number was, actually, rather disturbing.

The point in the BYU Honor Code is not whether or not we should or should not live a specific standard, but that as students we agreed to live a specific standard.

Once you have agreed to a standard you are required to live that standard. That does not take away your agency, nor does it stop you from making choices to go in a different direction. Even as a BYU student, you have a the ability to (as a girl… heck as a boy too) wear mini-skirts. As a boy, you have the ability to make the choice to grow a beard, knowing full well in advance that you a) are not allowed to have a beard; and b) you have to have a pre-existing condition and a beard card to have one, or special dispensation as a result of a play or other project happening on campus.

This extends beyond the boundaries of BYU, though. Every school in this country has an Honor Code. Whether or not the school chooses to enforce that Honor Code is not the issue. What is the issue is whether or not you choose to follow a code of conduct you agreed to before you started attending the university, college, or community college. You actually agree to the code of conduct before attending.

In some universities the code of conduct might include not drinking while on campus in the dorms. However, without going to those campuses, I know that alcohol is prevalent on the campus in direct opposition to the code of conduct. Some schools actively enforce this rule, other schools do not actively enforce the rule.

As a member of the LDS church, I have made a choice in my life to follow The Word of Widsom. This set of guidelines for healthy living have do’s and do not’s. Most people focus on the do not’s. In this case, do not’s include: alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, etc. These are lifestyle choices. Many members of the LDS faith believe that coffee and tea denote caffeine and go out of their way to avoid caffeine in their diets. Some of the do’s include: exercise, eating grains, meat in moderation, etc.

These are guidelines for a healthy life. The longer we live, the more science shows us the negative effects of alcohol and tobacco and other substances on our bodies. Too much caffeine can cause problems with the heart. Too much alcohol will destroy your liver. Too much tobacco will cause cancer. In essence, we can avoid lifestyle choices and the negative consequences by living a simple lifestyle guide.

However, you don’t have to live it.

That’s right, like the Honor Code at BYU, you have the option, even after agreeing to the guidelines, to live them or not. You can drink. You can smoke. You can drink coffee and tea. You can do all sorts of things that are against the guidelines that the church seems to be connected to, AND you get to live with the consequences of those choices.

One consequence is addiction.

Even then, the argument that laws or rules fly in the face of agency is a fallacy as well. You still have the ability to decide whether or not you will follow certain rules. You can walk into a store and steal if you want. You can knock down an old lady and take her purse. You can drive recklessly and kill someone. You have that choice.

However, by making those choices, you also choose to take the consequences when you are caught. The consequences include jail time. Going to jail is a result of a negative choice; but, no one is able to stop you prior to your going to jail from making the negative choices in your life. What you chose, ultimately, was going to prison.

What always gets me, 100% of the time, is watching a movie where someone drags their younger sibling into a firefight and then watches as that sibling dies. They then get angry and want revenge on the person, often the protagonist of the movie, and proceed to do whatever they can to kill the protagonist and his family for taking the life of their younger sibling. As exciting and edge-of-seat-making this plot development is, the choice for the younger sibling to die existed when that individual was dragged into a firefight. Not when the protagonist of the story, in order to save a life or in some heroic fashion, pointed a gun at the person and pulled the trigger.

And yet, for some reason, we, as a society, believe that A should have no direct response on B. In the case of the example I just used, the antagonist takes no responsibility for his brothers death, instead assigning all blame on the protagonist. The antagonist’s response is revenge.

I think we, as a people, often mistake what it means to have agency. We assume that no matter what, we should always be able to choose what we want to do. We allow the noise in the world around us to convince us that our actions have no affect on the people around us and that we should be allowed to live and let live. This attitude is fallacious. It is not true. We don’t have that as an option in our lives.

When we choose to live around other people and in a civil society, we choose to follow the laws and rules that exist. Within the confines of those laws we can develop into honest, hardworking people. We can be citizens rather than anti-citizens. We can be law-abiding rather than without law.

I think people live in a fantasy world where rules and regulations get in the way of their being able to live the life they dream about. They want to be able to drink and smoke and swear and sleep around without consequence, and yet, those same consequences are what allows them to even have a conversation or thoughts about what a lawless society might be.

BYU has an Honor Code. I find it difficult to understand why adults (legal adults, not literal) come to this school and think they can flaunt the rules they agreed to in the face of other students, the faculty and staff, and the community as a whole. I also find it interesting that quite a lot of those students are going to wantonly break the rules, do what they want, and see where they can push the very guidelines they agreed to, to the breaking point.

I think either live what you agreed to, or go somewhere and give someone who wants to be at BYU a chance to be there. I think if you want to be treated as an adult, act like one. And I think too many people think that because they are able to live on their own and make choices, and because the law and world looks at them as adults, that they are actually capable of being an adult.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 7:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I got up this morning. I didn’t want to. I felt sick. I think there is a distinct possibility that I am sick. I don’t know. The Tylenol for the body aches (of the last couple of days) didn’t do a lot, the Theraflu seemed to work a bit better. As a result, I brought one of the bottles to work with me, for when the last dose wears off.

Erin came home for lunch. That was cool. I am thinking we are falling into the work, school, life pattern where we both work, both go to school, and both miss each other until late at night or early in the morning. This pattern is not the most fun. In fact, I don’t enjoy it, at all.

However, while at home for lunch she asked a simple question, “What’s your plan for the day?”

My answer, “I don’t have a plan. I don’t plan.”

She then proceeded to point out that our first date was planned. I started to rebut with other examples and then realized I was not willing to fight that battle today and, since she’s better at some things (like arguing) than me, I should just drop the subject since I had at least one mental plan that did not include going to work.

I did hit the writing today. That was nice. I am at a point in what I am writing where I am desperate to get Alicia moved on from where I currently have her, and yet feel as though I need to slog through what I have her doing.

As a result of this, I did do some writing today.

In between episodes of writing, and installing garden lights around some of the garden space, I went for a walk down to The Riverwoods did a circuit around Borders to see if I could possibly convince myself to spend money I don’t have (I didn’t, in case anyone was curious), before walking back up to the house and doing more writing.

Around 3:30 or 4:00 p.m. I put together the garden lights, more detractors for potential lookee-loos, and then grabbed a piece of wood, a hammer, and the lights, and placed them around the house in places where people might be able to hide in shadows. Of course, one of the things I do when I get home is walk around the house and peer into the shadows, and then, you know, go downstairs, see my wife, eat something, go to bed. On Saturday we are getting a couple of motion sensor lights installed in the back that will light up if someone walks through there, again, more detractors for people that don’t need to be in places they are not wanted.

Outside of all that, the door is still hung, it still works, it still locks, and I think Erin is still willing to sit at home, alone, with all of the doors shut, bolted, flip-locked, etc. until I get home.

Walking down to Borders was an interesting walk. Not necessarily long, just a walk because I am feeling pudgy, and probably looking a bit pudgy. What is interesting about it is, in part, the car parked in a field that is covered and, truth told, I don’t see a reason for it to be there. What was interesting was see where grass was sprayed (as opposed to sod laid down) and how often the person doing the spraying missed his mark and hit everything but dirt. What was interesting was the number of grey hairs driving down the road and hitting the rumble strips making their cars sound like they were falling apart (and one time, it sounded like the engine had a serious problem) before I realized that the individuals were just really bad drivers.

When I got back home, I locked myself in the house.

I don’t always lock myself in the house. It was nice to be able to do that.

I guess, the other interesting thing, for me, about the day was putting together the solar garden lights. I don’t know why I would’ve cared (or not) but they all had rechargeable AA batteries. I thought that was very cool; though, at the same time, I am not (at all) sure how they turn on and off. Maybe (this is me postulating here people) they don’t turn off and a good, sunny, day runs both the battery AND the light (small LED job) while the lights hang out in the garden.

Erin recently (today) told me she wasn’t feeling well and then started an online chant about how she couldn’t be sick. Which was interesting in the sense that had she been right there I doubt she would’ve gone through the chant in my presence. I, however, would’ve done the chant in her presence. On the flipside, she can growl at me, but I am not allowed to growl at her since (apparently) my growling is scary. She told me (on the someday scale) that we would probably have daughters that were like her and that when I made faces (like she does) it will probably scare her.

The future… (no, no one we know (intimately) is pregnant) prospects of parenthood are so wonderful to think about.

Anyway, that’s about it for the day.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 10:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, another day, and Erin and I slept in. I slept in because my body hurt… bad. I don’t know what I did yesterday… well, I know exactly what I did last yesterday and that consisted of deconstructing and reconstructing the main entrance to our place. What I hoped would take me a couple of hours finally wound down sometime around 8 p.m. I started working on the door around 1 p.m.

By the time I was done, I was tired, I was hungry, I was sore, I was dirty, and I was cold. Good thing I didn’t really expect to spend a lot of time writing yesterday as the most I did was the blog entry… and that was a struggle.

I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been beaten with a bat. I have to admit, the soreness I experienced this morning is the kind of soreness you want to have, but, at the same time, it is also the kind of soreness that frustrates the living tar out of me. Especially since I couldn’t move, Erin got out of bed, did her thing, and eventually offered to let me continue lie there rather than shower, dress, yadda, and go to class.

Apparently, she tried to get me to play back and I slept hard.

When we did get up, I stumbled into the show and just let the hot water cascade over my sore body. Not really sure what I did to cause the soreness, or the extreme soreness as I am not a lazy person, I just know that it was an interesting experience to go through. My body still hurts, I probably should’ve brought, to work, with some Tylenol, but I will suffer through the aches and take some before bed tonight. Hopefully by tomorrow, I will be ready to tackle things… like writing.

Anyway, after getting out bed I realized something important. I didn’t read, nor prepare, for the dreaded science class today. Nope, not even slightly. We were meant to go home and research evidence that refutes Global Warming. I was the only one who disagreed with global warming, when asked, and then maintained my stance as he delved deeper into what he meant by global warming. Is it man made? Do we need to change our actions/attitudes toward the environment?

This is the deal with AlGore’s Global Warming, the earth warms up and then cools off, it is a cycle thing. No matter what we do, the earth is going to get hotter, and then, very quickly, it is going to get a lot colder. I understood that in advance of the questions being asked. I do not believe that the chlorofluorocarbons from aerosol cans are a significant cause of the alleged warming in the air, nor do I think that AlGore, who has not changed, in 17 years, his argument, is the right person to champion an extremist point of view. And yet, with G.W. showing that he really is an idiot, and AlGore trying hard not to run for President (he would win in a landslide this election), we have him championing the environment.

The outcome to that is we believe, as a people (or children, teenagers, new college students, and the insanely gullible believe) that we are screwing up the earth and making it inhospitable.

AlGore, by the way, invented the internet back in the 1960’s… oh wait, in the 90’s… sorry, I keep forgetting how old he is and when the internet was actually invented and by whom and for what.

Global Warming is a natural phenomenon.

Think about this: In the 1980’s we discovered a hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. That hole, according to scientists, was (most likely) caused by our constant and persistent use of aerosol sprays. The outcome, we were sending chemicals in the air that was destroying our atmosphere and, as a result, destroying the protective atmospheric layer ultimately causing more instances of cancers caused by exposure to sunlight. We were, literally, dooming coming generations as a result of our stupidity.

In the 1990’s, scientists, upon further looking and researching and Antarctic polar cap drilling, discovered that the hole in the ozone layer had always existed and, over time, grew and shrank. In the 2000’s, scientists track the size of the hole which can, in some years, cover large parts of South America, but, in other years, gets relatively small.

By this time, according the scientists in the 80’s, we should be suffering from specific sun related cancer issues. However, outside of improvements to SPF and sunblock, the changes in the quality of sunlight and the likelihood of you getting melanoma are relatively minimal. Though, spending a ton of time in the sun is a bad thing… but that was true before the 80’s.

What this doesn’t explain, though, is how we get knee-jerk reactions from bad science. Get an extremist scientist yelling their gobbledygook at people and the outcome is, quite literally, people freaking out. They get worried, Hollywood jumps on the bandwagon, and the outcome is about the equivalent of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911. You sure have a lot of people’s opinions about a bad president, but little of it rotates in the realm of fact and Moore, admittedly, spent a lot of time trying to get soundbites that were negative rather than searching for a convenient truth.

Incidentally, AlGore’s latest attempt to incide people, titled: An Inconvenient Truth.

What we know is that the earth both warms, drastically, and cools drastically. The Army War College ran a scenario where they tested this hypothesis and then published it. The outcome, in Hollywood, the movie, The Day After Tomorrow, where massive storms turned into another ice age.

Guess what happens after you get extreme warming? Oh, wait! Let me guess…. Is the answer, rapid extreme cooling?

I win.

Here’s the kicker, as long as any form of beast has lived on the earth, they have produced greenhouse gasses. Methane is a greenhouse gas. Methane is produced by carbon based life forms. Cows and people are carbon based life forms.

I don’t doubt that the earth is warming up. I don’t doubt that crazy weather is a part of the warming trends. I don’t doubt that this isn’t scare. And I don’t doubt that we shouldn’t pay attention to it and do what we can.

I do doubt that science, today, has enough data or experience or heads out of bottoms to make the educated decisions or suggestions that will make sense in the long run. Rather, I think that AlGore and much of the vocal scientists don’t know the first thing of what they are talking about. They are creating knee-jerk theories that are not supportable. And they choose to spout those theories in any way that will give them money and support by the public-at-large. Scare enough people and you get what you want. Isn’t that what G.W. has effectively done since 9-11-01?

My last thought: Gasoline was a byproduct of the distillation process for kerosene. Back in the day, before people knew what it was good for, they dumped gas in a pit and lit a match. Big fire. The outcome, a lot of years of destruction for a waste product (in copper mining gold and silver are byproducts)… and then someone found a use and lots of people have become millionaires, billionaires, and whole dynasties exist as a result.

CO2 is a byproduct of fuel consumption. We will find a use for it, sooner or later. Our money, our time, and our discussion is better spent on finding a use for a waste product than it is in finding a way to eliminate something that isn’t even the dominate reason for global warming, and doesn’t equate to a large enough portion of what is in the air to substantiate the argument.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 10:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Normally, today would have consisted of my doing everything and anything I could think of around the house to avoid actually writing and then, toward 2 or 3 in the afternoon, I would've started writing and felt good about it, before closing the documents down and heading to work. Today, none of that happened.

It all, actually, started last Friday. If you've been reading you will know that I chased someone off of the property. Yesterday Erin and I went and spoke to the police about who our neighbors think it is. And finally, today, I went to Home Depot and purchased a new door slab to hang in the place of the screen door we already had there.

Last night, after work, I met Erin and her brother at the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, in the Emergency Room. Erin's brother has had this cough for about four weeks and it has only gotten worse. According to a sign on the wall in the examination room we all hung out in, the average time it takes to get through an ER visit is 2.5 hours. Erin and her brother were there for about 5, I was there for 4 and a half with them. The outcome, one crazy doctor who got on every computer we could see in a matter of minutes, raced into the room, raced out of the room, and then disappeared sending in another doctor who, I am not even sure, is out of medical school let alone in his residency, let alone really knowledgeable enough to be practicing medicine, let alone anything else.

The outcome, a pronouncement of some bacterial infection that caused Erin to ask if something else might be the problem and a couple of different trips to get x-rays because her brother has had a history of collapsed lungs, and like a newly married woman going to see the doctor and him checking for pregnancy, they have to rule out the possibility of another collapsed lung.

I don't know what I expected this morning. Erin slept longer than she'd originally intended and then got up and went to work. Our landlord called her to let her know they were looking to see if they had a door we could install. Erin called me to let me know the landlord might be coming by, and then to tell me she was coming home for a bit from work to check on her brother and run interference between me and the landlord. I am not, really, anti-social, I just prefer to be left alone.

My idea of a great landlord is one I, pretty much always, never have to see, speak to, interact with, etc. In this instance, I am glad to associate with people at church and socially when it is necessary; however, on a day-to-day basis, I would prefer to just do my own thing.

Since we didn't get into bed until 3 a.m., thereabouts, I don't know when I expected to wake up today... I did wake up around 11 a.m. when Erin texted me and then called me.

I got up. Climbed around the various storage sheds that the landlords have looking for a compatible door. Checked the locks that we were brought. And then, after all that, went and purchased a door. When I got home, I thought we could just mount the door on the inside, but realized, when I went to physically stick in place, that a door on the inside wasn't practical. In my way of thinking, this was a bust of an idea. I called Erin, she told me her vision of the door (the one I should be pursuing) was that it was literally on the outside. That meant, along with everything else, that I had to take the screen door and jamb off as well as extra bits and pieces of woods someone had tacked up there.

I think it took me about an hour to get everything out of the way before I could begin putting the new door on. Because I needed to balance the door, I grabbed some of the pieces of wood and then began to hang hinges. It was a process and since the weather has turned cold, I got to work in the cold.

This reminds me, Superman's fortress of Solitude is in the Arctic, the cold, and as a result, I think, given the title, that Erin's Fortress of Solitude is fitting since the door (steel by the way) was built in the cold.

Anyway, my day was turned over to installing a new door. Installing new catch plates on the old doors, installing a new flip lock on the bedroom door (required a bit more effort than one might expect) and then taking Erin back to the store so we could be strips of wood that I could cut and then nail into place. Basically, when I took out the screen door, there was nothing to stop the new door from swinging too far in. This required that I build a stop on the inside, three strips of wood cut to fit, and then glued and nailed into place.

Once we got back from the store I measured and cut the strips before gluing and nailing them into place. This was a trickier that I thought it would be. Start at the top, establish a distance, and maintain it as you tack the strip into place, then check to make sure the door opens and closes and locks properly as we made our way down the strip to the bottom. Finally, do the same thing on the hinge side of the door.

The final step, make sure that Erin is happy with the outcome. She seemed to be. She was impressed with the fact that I could hang a door. I guess, you know, whether you realize it or not, the outcome to being raised by the man I was raised by qualifies me to be able to hang a door like this. I am just glad it didn't require me to have to install the jamb, since I am not sure I want to level it. Well, I would've. I am just glad I didn't have to.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Cassandra West | Clockwork Princess

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wonder, I guess, whether or not anonymity is a good thing. This past weekend, I think, Erin and I lost a little of our anonymity. Or, more specifically, we realize we may not have had a lot going for us in the realm of anonymity as someone has been lurking around the house for weeks, possibly months, and had to be run off.

As expected, when we started talking to people about it, the members of the community banded together and, many independent of each other, began sharing information about a man that grew up in the area, married a woman, settled down, and then divorced (leaving her in the house they’d lived in). He is, simply, not a good man. Not bad enough that he has spent any significant time in jail, but bad enough that he is familiar with the county jail, being booked, and trying to find loopholes around which he can try and hide within the law.

According to the people we live around, this man has been a perpetual peeping tom from the time he was little until now. He finds someone he can watch and then pushes all boundaries until he has broken through them. He demands things from people. He is the neighbor who everyone thinks is the one stealing from them when things begin to disappear. And, according to one of the people we spoke with, he believes that this man has been coming around, tripping circuits on lights, and stealing things he’s got around his acreage at night.

This is the kind of person who poaches and feels that he has a right to hunt where he wants, what he wants, when he wants and then not have to suffer any consequences for his actions.

This is the kind of person who believes that the world owes him something, even though he has used and taken and never given back. His family (his family, not brothers and sisters, parents, etc., his children and ex-wife) have been on welfare for years. They demand that people loan them cars, give them things and money, provide them with jobs, and take and take and take.

We were told that this man got so involved with a woman he was watching and stalking that he’d imagined himself her husband and then attacked her real husband for being with her.

He’s had restraining orders out against him by his wife and children.

What makes this very frustrating to me is that one side effect of all this is fear. Extreme, nearly uncontrollable, fear. I wish there were a way to remove the fear and anxiety about strangers in the neighborhood, people that everyone knows, from my wife, our neighbors upstairs, but, you know, its there. My being home doesn’t, necessarily, resolve things.

We did go to the police today and spoke to an officer about what our neighbors told us. We do have on record that it is this man. We did a Google search for the man and found arrest records (Utah County) going back years. And, as everyone (including the officer who immediately knew who the man was) has said, he looks very distinct. We’ve seen pictures. Neither of us care to actually ever meet the guy.

We were told to immediately call 9-1-1 and the officers on that shift would know if they get a call in the area they are looking for this man.

Erin has asked me to hang a new door complete with new lock on the top of our stairs. We are pricing a motion sensor light for the backyard. We blocked viewable access to our house by covering all of the windows.

You know, I wrote about anonymity online and I maintain that the stand I’ve taken, being visible, letting people know me online, is still the right course. Some people would have to go seriously out of their way to find me, the cost (in money) is most likely not worth it. However, when you move the idea of some pervert off of the internet where they can follow their depravities online and out of the view of the public and into the realm of someone in our yard, looking through our windows, listening to us, watching, then privacy and anonymity becomes even more important.

The thing that gets me, the thing that is true, is something Erin said the other night, if it weren’t for her, if it was just me, I wouldn’t have to worry about things like this and I wouldn’t think twice about it. My life, by the simple act of getting married, has changed drastically and now I wake up periodically at night wondering if I woke up because Erin made a noise, because I wake up often, or because I heard something somewhere and need to check it out, or if I just need to go to the bathroom.

I know that all of this will, eventually, pass by. That this man will move on when he can’t get whatever show he was trying to watch anymore, when we make it impossible to be anonymous in the yard, but until then… and until Erin starts to feel comfortable enough to walk alone outside at night, and probably beyond all of that, I get to worry about her, about freaks who don’t even live in our neighborhood anymore, and about a whole host of other things that need worrying about.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 7:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I realize I don't often write on the weekends. That is intentional and had things not changed over the past twenty-four hours, I doubt that I would be posting anything. I certainly missed my writing goal for the week, though I won't determine by how much until Monday sometime. I think I may be close to half the goal, which means I get to work this next week to catch up and to complete some assignments that are in need of completion between now and then.

However, the object of this post is what changed in Erin and my life last night.

I work weeknights until 11 p.m. During that time I am in pretty constant contact with Erin and we discuss what is going on, revel in things going well at work, and she commiserates with me when things are less than stellar.

At a little after 11 p.m. I got in my car and drove home. I live about five or ten minutes from work, so I get home relatively quickly. Except, when I got home last night and walked down the driveway to our entrance, I paused at the door leading down to our apartment and heard something large, someone large, making noise on the other side of the alcove to our door. There is a large pine tree and I refuse to scare or back down, which meant that the more the noise existed, and the louder it became, the more I am likely to hold my ground.

I said, "Who's there? Show yourself."

The noise got louder.

I said, "I am not joking. If you don't show yourself, I will be back with a gun."

Still more noise.

I walked down the stairs and proceeded to get my gun and a flashlight and immediately walked back out of the house with both, in hand, as I made a circuit around the house and yard, checking bushes for any sign of what (who) was out there. I didn't see anyone. The next step was to call the police and let them know there was some suspicious activity around the house. Followed by sitting wit Erin as, at this point, we both needed a little time to calm down after I raced out of the house with a gun.

After all of that, late at night, Erin started chatting with the kids upstairs and found out that they've actually noticed this as a problem, with the girl upstairs having called her father-in-law (also the owner of the house) to come and walk around the house. Her husband (son of the owner) ran off someone who was lurking outside of the house. The person ran off across the street and into the field.

We believe that whoever it is lives around here, is aware that the house is occupied by newlywed couple's, who also have their husbands working in the evenings. We believe that it is probably someone who knows the house, the neighborhood, and the house as well as who is living here.

However, once all was said and done, and we waited to see if the police officer that was sent to patrol the neighborhood was going to stop in and speak to Erin and me. He shined a light around the house, hopefully drove around the neighborhood to be seen, and then reported that nothing was the matter. The key, here, was that a record of events is being recorded.

We also informed the kids upstairs that, in the future, they should make a call to report suspicious activity.

My next step, after all of that, was to look up the sexual offenders that were in the area and made sure Erin saw them. Saw their faces. Then I had to go through the process of showing her how to operate a gun, with the intent, after months of promising, that we would go out and have her get used to shooting the thing.

Today, we followed the preplanned activity of Erin getting her hair cut. I wrote some, not enough, and then stopped to chat with Kelly, a friend from the play I was in two summers ago, and then Erin and I came home where I went to help James and then Erin and I went to look at more solid doors, window coverings, etc. (to include purchasing pepper spray) so that she is a bit more secure as she walks to and from the car. We then came home and hung things.

One of the side-effects of visiting James was that he gave me a Louisville Slugger baseball bat that I wanted to acquire so that we had something we could use that didn't include slug, gunpowder, firing cap, or Erin and her brother reciting, "I'd pop a cap in his ***."

The point, I think, in all of this is that we've felt that our privacy has been invaded and yes, this is not a house burning down or something completely drastic, but, you know, I own a gun more because it reminds me of a past that I did like (well, parts of it), and because I cannot fathom someone else having it and potentially using it. Last night was an interesting wake-up call for me. It was a call to realize that I am husband to wife, that I have a personal obligation to make sure that my wife is safe and taken care of, and, ultimately, we often don't know what will happen when we come home late at night or in a semi-rural neighborhood.

Needful to say, last night was a rude wake-up call. I don't like feeling unsafe and I don't like conversations about gun safety or what would happen if I was to walk around the house with gun in hand and see someone.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Cassandra West | Clockwork Princess

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Twas the day after Thanksgiving,
When all through the house,
Erin was smiling,
While cinnamon wafted throughout

Yes, today is the day after Thanksgiving. Erin and co. are happy holiday revelers, so, we had the whole shebang, turkey, stuffing (well, for Erin and her brother) yams, mashed potatoes, and etc. It was, truly, a fun day. It was so fun, and nice (being married and having someone to do this with) I will refrain from my normal holiday banter.

As a result of our sleeping habits of late, we slept in again this morning, though, in my (our) defense, we did not go to bed until closer to 2 a.m. When we finally got up Erin told me it was a pancake morning and I said, “Nope,” and then got up, set up my computer at my desk, and only then did I make her pancakes. On an interesting note, she actually ate more, in the realm of pancake type food (gluten-free of course) than me. I made them for her and not because I was hungry or wanted food.

After the pancakes I showered. And then after the shower (shave, dress) I started working on Alicia Grey. You know, I find it interesting that I make these goals for myself (to see goal visit In Order to Write) and then, like most things in my life, procrastinate. The procrastination this week was, in parts, school and then going shopping with Erin for turkey day. Yesterday I didn’t write (anything of consequence, though I did start a story called The Great Turkey Massacre) because I was in and out of the kitchen, where Erin was more in the kitchen than out until the food was done.

We did watch Live Free or Die Hard the fourth installment of the Die Hard movie franchise. I think that time and distance has allowed Bruce Willis to distance himself just enough from those first three movies that you get a good experience with this third one. Essentially, the movie is about a hacker/terrorist who starts a fire sale to get at the nations bank account information so that he can siphon off billions of dollars and, effectively, destroy the U.S. economy.

The audience follows Bruce Willis’s character as he, first, begins dealing with problems he has with his daughter, second, picks up a hacker to take to Washington D.C., and finally, falls headfirst into the problems terrorists cause when they are trying to erase their trail. Pretty much this equals lots of gunfire and explosions.

What I thought was very interesting about this movie was the distinct lack of swearing. That is not to say that there is no swearing, but, really, this is not a typical movie for Bruce Willis. I semi-expect him to swear up a storm, kill everyone (he does do this), and eventually save the world, or the United States, from the bad guy. I was half expecting them to bring back one of the bad guys from the first three movies, kind of a twist, especially since Bruce Willis’s character is specifically asked to take the hacker from New York City to Washington D.C., but that little plot twist never came to pass, which, really, I am fine with as well.

After all of that fun was finished, I read to Erin some out of a couple of collections of fairy tales I have, especially since I started looking for specific stories, like the one(s) dealing with Snow White, and discovered that my collection of Arabian Nights tales does not include one of the stories I was looking for. This was sad, I will have to find a more comprehensive collection of stories, but I moved on to other things.

The one item, last night, that seemed to really stick out for me, was the Oedipal Complex that we seem to want to read into everything in the world. I said to Erin, “Freud did this world a major disservice by creating this theory,” and the fact that we hinge so many other things off of it makes me really wonder about our society, as a whole. This, to me, is akin to the Flat Earth Society believing that the Earth is flat in the face of seriously overwhelming data to the contrary.

I read, somewhere, that most people who become therapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists, do so because they are trying to fix their own problems. Extend this to Uncle Freud and realize that most of his interpretations for dreams and what they mean came from his own, personal, unique psychosis and you might begin to realize that believing Freud is like believing the Earth is flat or if you sail far enough out into the Atlantic, you will, unavoidably, fall over the edge of the world.

Freud is at world’s end.

What makes all of this pertinent is that an exploration of fairy tales delves into parent/child relationships. Often, a relationship where one individual is too closely attached to another and refuses to give up that object of attachment (e.g. parent not wanting child to get married), in fairy tale culture, in mythology, this relationship and in death.

Of course, this whole course of theory really begins with the Greeks. A Greek tale, traditionally, is one that ends in tragedy. The main players all die. Shakespeare, in Hamlet, and other plays, writes a Greek tragedy. His protagonist and main characters all die in the end because of, often, hubris.

Hubris, for those who don’t know, is pride.

This all comes together, in a sense, when you consider that many fairy tales, not in the oral tradition, are written down to spread moral tales and to help children grow up to be good, upstanding adults. The Grimms edited their stories to make them moralistic and when translated into English, the editing went further to better support the puratinistic elements of the people at the time.

Compare the written fairy tale to the oral tradition, and suddenly, many of these tales take on a more base element to them without the moralistic meaning we like to apply to things. They are, I don’t know, better in the sense that they don’t have implied moral character to them and compete on the basis of enjoyment. This would be like taking Die Hard and converting it into a moral tale; not sure how you would go about doing it, but that’s the relationship. Some tales were told to, literally, bring the genteel down to the level of the peasant… at least verbally.

I can go into an explanation of how this is applicable to my life and what I am trying to accomplish with things, but, you know, I will refrain from a conversation on my writing and fairy tales and how the two fit together so nicely.

Needful to say, Thanksgiving was a very nice day. I got to spend it with my wife, which is always good, and though no serious writing got done, I was able to begin considering aspects to my writing I’d only begun hinting at.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've done some updates on In Order to Write over the last few days. Did a book review (or two) over there, and finally created a progress bar (that I am thinking of still working on) to show a graphical representation of the progress I am making on the book.

My goal, this week, for those who care: 8000 words. That should put me above 32,000 words on Saturday by bedtime. For further updates and information, I will be creating a projects pages over yonder and keep them up-to-date with information on what is happening. You will also note, under the projects page, that I have six different project sites that exist (to include URL's) that are now redirecting into subfolders of In Order to Write.

Outside of all that, I think things are progressing nicely, and, while you're at it, take a look at the example paragraphs I posted on my review of The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. Interesting reading, though, maybe, not necessarily good reading.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 8:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some years ago I was living in Dallas, TX. The reason I’d moved to Dallas was to live closer to my parents for a time. I was recruited and took a job in a call center for a large computer company that had their main support center around where I lived. I would spend about six months living in Dallas, TX.

During that time, I helped get the office I was working for recruit someone I thought of as a friend into our office. They moved him from Utah to Dallas, gave him a salary complete with benefits, and paid for a lot of things I never asked for, or would’ve thought about asking for. When I decided it was time to move, to me it didn’t matter how, I just knew that I needed to go. Nothing else mattered and having a job was what mattered to me. Everything else was icing on the cake.

Dallas meant a lot of things to me. I liked living there. It felt good. I was, virtually, on my own even though, in hindsight, I could see a lot of people who helped me out in ways that, at the time, I thought was all about me.

I rented an apartment, a studio, which was about the size of my front room now. The entire apartment was about the same size as the front room in the house Erin and I share now. The place was small but it was mine. I had my television, VCR, movies, books (not as many as I now possess, or even close) my computer, a bed, and my belongings. Most of my belongings ended up in the closet that was, in my memory, almost as large as my bedroom.

Because I felt like I was grown up, I also had a phone line installed complete with DSL. While I was in Dallas I purchased a cell phone so I could talk to people and because I traveled between Dallas and Temple somewhat frequently on the weekends… and because I thought it was cool.

After I had this friend move down, he called me to tell me he was on his way from Utah. I gave him my numbers and told him he should call if there were problems. One of the things I did, at the time, was encourage him to not dally in his coming and to make sure he gave himself plenty of time to get to Dallas. Company policy was that a person who did not show up on their first day of work did not have a job. My fear was that if he left too late, he would not get to Dallas in time and would drive all that way for no reason.

As I am remembering the events, he was supposed to have left on a Thursday and arrive a day or so later. He didn’t leave. Nor did he leave Friday or Saturday, both days he was supposed to have left to move his life to a new city. By Sunday morning I was uncertain he was actually heading in my direction and concerned that I had engineered him being hired for no reason. In short, I was pretty convinced he was making me look bad.

However, sometime on that Sunday he left Utah and started driving toward Dallas.

While he was driving I did my own thing. I got up, went to church, spent time doing whatever it was I found interesting and worthwhile (at the time) and then coming home and making myself something to eat – something, I am certain, that might’ve consisted of large amounts of wheat-gluten. This was before I discovered my problems.

I was twenty-five at the time. Think about that for a moment. Eight, going on nine, years has passed since I found myself in a situation where, probably for the first time, I felt like I was an adult and able to handle things on my own. This was before I’d gone through layoffs, before I’d started writing technical manuals, before I realized that writing might, someday, be a viable option.

Needless to say, a lot has changed in eight or nine years.

However, sometime on that Sunday this individual calls me from somewhere in the Texas panhandle and tells me that his car has broken down. I don’t know how much I believed him, though I told Erin the other night that I probably didn’t as he’d just purchased a relatively, if not new, Saturn. Regardless, he claimed his car was broken down and because I knew he either had to get to town or was without a job, I agreed to drive to where he was, make sure his car was okay (I have a tendency to carry tools in the back of most cars – must be a family trait). I knew that, so long as he didn’t blow up his engine, I was going to be able to assist him in getting to Dallas.

I spent the night driving up and down the state highway for 100 miles in each direction, stopping at every exit, pulling in to every gas station, convenience store, shopping center, motel, everywhere. I had an idea of what his car looked like and, for hours that night I couldn’t find him anywhere. Eventually, I called his phone, turned around, and drove back to Dallas. As I got into the Fort Worth area, it was late enough in the morning that I called my manager, informed her of the situation, and then went home and slept off the night of no sleep.

Eventually, this guy calls me up to find out where my apartment was and how to get there, to tell me he’d stopped by the office and spoken to the people there and they were “cool” with him starting a day late, and to spin yet another yarn about how he’d broken down.

According to him, his car broke down, he pulled over and called me, then he started to wait. The next thing he knew, he was being woken up by a police officer who insisted he go to a motel and sleep. The next morning, first thing, he got his car, miraculously, fixed and he drove the rest of the way into Dallas.

I am sure that just about all of this, except sleeping in a motel, was a complete lie; however, I will never have a way of confirming or refuting his story.

He showed up at my house. I let him in. Then I went back to bed.

This guy was supposed to stay with me only as long as it took him to find an apartment. He is the kind of person who liked living with people, I am the kind where, if you’re not married to me, or my situation isn’t dire, I would prefer to live completely alone. I didn’t share rooms B.E. Yet, there I was, being Mr. Altruistic, sharing a small studio apartment with a dude I wasn’t even sure I liked.

The outcome was that I started going and socializing to church singles activities. I went anyway, but it was more out of a personal sense of responsibility than because I wanted to be there. One outcome from this was that he drove to a dance one night, noticed that I was attracted to a girl, and then threatened to leave me at the church if I didn’t ask her out. I asked her out – not because of his threat, but because I did find her attractive and needed a reason to ask her out.

We, me and the girl, would start to date after that. Pretty quickly, she looked at me and said, “I think you are going to hurt me,” and then continued to date me. This was the first girl I would kiss; and I would not date again, after her, for another three almost four years. Yes, I went on dates, but there was no one else I wanted to associate with. No, it was not a matter of my “getting over” her, but the extension of my own personality and loaner nature.

I just didn’t date. During that time, writing became more important.

And yet, for a few months, I found myself, whenever I had time, spending it with her. In another mode, I might even reflect on some of what we did. I won’t. Not here, not now.

Pretty quickly, the guy living with me had to go away for a wedding of someone he didn’t know. He’d arranged for that, somehow, when they’d hired him. Where I was an amazing tech, they thought, in hiring this guy, that they were getting another me. Yes, that sounds conceited, but I know what was happening at the time and why they took him on.

He left and, in leaving, left his car with the girl (at this point) I was dating so she could practice driving a stick shift. A week later he comes back and takes possession of his car.

Time passes and I introduce this guy to some friends who all talk about moving into an apartment together. And yet, as the days, weeks, and what felt like an eternity passed, nothing ever seemed to come of the experience. And he kept trying to convince me to change my lease so that I moved into a two bedroom apartment and we could live together.

The entire time he worked with me for this company, he would recite a mantra, “They are going to fire me. They are going to fire me,” and every day I would assure him that he needed to give the job, the company, and himself some time. And yet, at least once a day he would start into his mantra until it was almost painful to listen to.

Then one night the relationship kind of changed. Instead of being an interlocutor in my apartment, he started suffering from migraine headaches. This had been something he’d been going through in Utah, or claiming to, and I figured it was his way of dealing with something he didn’t want to be a part of. At different times, these headaches would get in the way of work. He missed a lot. Didn’t call in. Had me tell the office what was going on. And finally, he had me take him to an emergency room because they were too painful and too much for him to handle.

I sat in an emergency room all night long for him. Eventually, the doctor came out, spoke to me, and told me he was fine and that they were prescribing a very light pain killer figuring that the placebo effect would probably do more than real medication. It seemed to work, he missed more time on the job, and I had to make excuses because he was living with me, he was working with me, and I had put myself out there to get him this job.

Anyway, time passes, more crap is fed to me, I am told he is moving out, at one point I was told he was signing a lease on an apartment, and I think it was at this point that he started to loose control and things went downhill.

Which leads to the next to last time I saw the guy…

I woke up one morning as I had a later shift at work than he did. I believe, at this time, I was intentionally working 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. He was gone. I got up, showered, dressed, and drove over to work. When I parked my car and walked to the front door, his car pulled up blocking my path. He said, “My mom has been stung by a bee. She is dying. I am going to drive to Florida. Will you go up and tell them I have to go home for a couple of weeks?”

I was done making excuses, I was done with this guy, I said, “No. I won’t. If you want to go home like that, you have to walk up there and take care of it yourself.” I then walked around his car and went to work.

He parked, came upstairs, and spoke to the manager who was covering for our manager, who, incidentally, was not there. The manager told him to do whatever he needed to do and then came and spoke to me. He asked, “What do you think we should do?”

I asked him to give me about fifteen minutes, during this time I tracked down his parents phone number and made a call where I spoke to his mother who was not dying as a result of a bee sting. I then spoke to the manager, told him what I had learned, and he asked, “What do you think we should do?”

I said, “Fire him.”

He was summarily fired.

I then asked to leave work for a few minutes where I went home, had the locks changed, moved all of his belongings out of my apartment, and then left a note (I waited around as long as I thought I could spare for him to come home to speak to him face-to-face) telling him that if he planned to move back to Dallas he needed to put his things in a storage unit, I, however, was not willing to store his crap for him. I told him that anything I found left I would walk to the dumpster and throw away.

During this time, he’d used my phone to call a girl he’d met online. He owed me several hundred dollars. I mentioned this in the note and then went back to work. When I got home late that night, most of his things were gone, I walked the rest to the dumpster, and then opened the door. Of the four hundred dollars he owed me, I got fifty with a promise that he would send me the rest. I never saw another dime of that money.

Some years passed and I was given a job working for Novell. Pretty quickly, I discovered this guy also worked for the same division in this company. He would hang out in my office, sometimes, and, still, never get past feeling like he was always going to be fired even though he’d learned enough to get a job where he was installing and maintaining Linux machines for this department. Eventually, and for the second time in five months, I would be laid off again, so was he. I guess he moved with his wife (he’d gotten married between Dallas and Novell) back to Florida.

I learned, some days ago, after having a conversation with someone I’d not seen in about nine or ten years, and who was a mutual acquaintance of this guy, and after I’d shared my dislike for him, I was told he died.

That caused me to pause for a moment and wonder whether or not I cared that this guy died. I decided to follow-up on what caused his death. I was told he suffered from migraines, which I knew, and that he’d been given a lethal combination of medication for the migraine headaches. I started thinking about this, and realized that this guy was the kind of person who would see two or three different doctors for the same problem, go to the emergency room, and get prescriptions from all of them for the same problem. And yet, he died of a lethal combination of drugs in his system. I was there to watch him go to different doctors and not tell one that he was taking medicines from another.

My outcome was that I don’t care whether or not he is dead. I do feel bad for his widow and their children. She woke up to find him dead after he’d taken the drugs. That is sad. I’ve met the woman, I can feel for her; however, I find it difficult to build even sympathy for the individual that passed on. This reaction makes me wonder about myself, a bit, and what kind of a person I am. I’ve watched people die, I’ve been to enough funerals to know that some people are just old and are ready to pass on, while others were taken before their time; I know that some people literally kill themselves with drugs looking for attention, and then, eventually, when they no longer need that kind of attention, are now physically injured because of the drugs that they have to continue taking them.

I find a situation like this to be hard and deplorable; but I also find my lack of emotion, realizing that I have a lack of emotion, a little disturbing. Should I care whether someone like this lives or dies?

I don’t think anyone else should die unnecessarily. My faith tells me that some people die early because they need to die early. It also tells me that some people die needlessly because they make choices in their lives.

How am I supposed to feel?

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 6:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier today Erin decided to open a conversation with me on the nature of God. This is a subject that was presented (as well as some hypothesis) and she wanted, from a philosophical viewpoint, to discuss this with me and come to some kind of consensus. The outcome: I am a very poor conversationalist in some areas, and that I change the topic of conversation almost without knowing it (and today totally unintentionally and at least three times over two different topics). We did, finally, agree on what we thought the nature of God is, I will not be sharing that here.

Of course, along with this, we discovered that I have a tendency to build a thesis of elements into topics of conversations I present. Specifically, when talking about a writing project, I present all sorts of data about the project and how I got to where I am about to start speaking and then I introduce the nature of the conversation. To the uninitiated, this could prove to be rather disconcerting, especially when you take into consideration:

a. I don’t talk about writing projects for personal reasons
b. I don’t share with just anyone the lead-up to the stories I do choose to write
c. If you’ve never dealt with that process you can get lost.

The outcome, from that topic (writing) and this one was an understanding and a consensus as to what we were talking about (even if we may continue to reside in different mental spheres of understanding, etc.), but neither situation was come to without additional discussion, concerted effort, and eventual verbal compromise. The outcome comes in the form of understanding that when entering into a topic that the other person may not, inherently, be interested in or capable of an ad hoc discussion about, a thesis of conversation is necessary to include where the conversation should be going.

Not sure that I’ve come to any real break-through on the nature of communication, though I know I can get my point across; however, conversation is, to be true conversation, two way and does require and has to allow for a drifting of the conversation once the thesis exists and ideas begin to be presented. You have to listen and speak, speak appropriately when it is your turn, and think about what is being said and then respond in a way that advances the conversation rather than detracts or alters its course – though I reserve that there are instances where this may be appropriate.

The outcome was a mutual understanding of how we might approach our communications with each other; and an understanding that sometimes non-sequitur comments are meant to be left either a) unspoken or b) un-responded to within the nature of the current thesis.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 3:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was writing up a blog entry, then the power to my computer went out; which hasn’t been a problem for a while, resulting in Microsoft Word NOT auto-saving my documents and as a result of that there being no auto-recovery of my stuff. As a result, I have to rewrite a kickin’ entry.

To start, I did the 8000+ words on the secretly titled Alicia Grey book. If you don’t know what the title is, you can’t find the documents – though, I suspect Erin may have looked over my shoulder enough to see what the working title is. If not, I am not sharing. To me, the working title gives way too much away about the book and I know, in advance, that this will not be the finished title.

As a result of hitting the goal for last week, 8000 words, I have now eclipsed the 24,000 word limit which places the percentage complete at about 26% or 27%. Truth told, it is in between the two and from those lessons we all suffered through in elementary school you round up when the number is five or greater. I will give you the range, instead.

I haven’t come up with a word count goal for this week. In my mind I am leaning toward 7500. Not because I don’t think there will be plenty of time for writing, but because I am feeling like I’ve had a few too many nights of little sleep and that catches up to me after a while. I’m not entirely sure why I was up when I was this morning, other than Erin waking me up; but we had a man come through the house (both upstairs and downstairs) to spray for bugs and put out poison for rodents.

Apparently, even though I can’t hear the mice anymore, they’ve moved out from between the floors (where I put poison) and into the upstairs apartment. One of them came out and licked the girl’s foot that lives up there. She was standing still for a while. I think, given the name she goes by, that a mouse licking her foot is a little ironic. When she and one of the landlords (not coincidentally her mother-in-law) were talking about the incident with me this morning, she was indignant; which I think is very funny.

I will update with my word count goal tomorrow evening after I’ve had a night and a day to sleep on it – though, there is a possibility of my going to school for a bit tomorrow to speak with a professor about professional writing… time will tell, on that one.

Outside of all that, I don’t have a lot of recollection over the weekend. Wish I knew more of what was/is meant to be going on. This next Saturday the University of Utah will be in Provo playing BYU in football. One of the detractors from our house is that it becomes a major artery for traffic flowing to and from the game. What that means is that at different times, NORMALLY, in a Saturday when BYU plays in-town, it is a pain to go places; and this is not a normal game, but a very awkward day as the UofU is the closest thing to a rival that BYU has. High emotions, on top of which, next week, they will put plastic wrap around all of the statuary on campus which, also, will make campus look a little silly – though a necessary precaution against over-zealous co-eds at UofU deciding to decorate our campus in red.

The one thing I would love to see is UofU students turning the “Y” on the mountain into a “U”, but that is unlikely as the ROTC cadets actually guard the “Y” the week preceding the game. A dangerous assignment, I am sure – sitting on the side of a mountain.

Writing about that actually makes me want to hike the “Y” at night between NOW and the game on Saturday. How crazy is that? I wonder if, on Thursday (or Wednesday) night, Erin might be crazy enough (JUST) to go with me??? Hrm. Since she is a reader of my blog and likes me and gives feedback I am sure I will know the answer before I start to get crazy about the planning.

That reminds me, the infamous booger boy announced in class that there was a 30% chance of precipitation tomorrow of the snow variety. That would be an interesting shift in the season. I was hoping for more snow for the resorts to open for skiing, and they may open having produced their own snow; but I won’t know (most likely) because I have no real reason to drive up to one of them.

So, Sunday was an early day without a lot of sleep the night before. We watched Spanglish on TBS. Spanglish stars Adam Sandler as am award winning chef who is declared the best chef in America. His wife is psycho. His kids are weird. They hire a Mexican national to be their housekeeper. She doesn’t speak English. The narrative of the story is told through her pre-teen daughter’s reflection on the events. As the movie neared its end (we’re talking 2 a.m. here folks) I turned to Erin and said, “As a rule I don’t like Adam Sandler movies. I liked Happy Gilmore and don’t own it. That is the only movie of his I have liked. I want to own this movie.” Tea Leoni plays the neurotic wife. The movie was absolutely agreeable and, probably because it was on TV, no nudity: a first in about two weeks.

Anyway, Sunday consisted of my sitting in front of our desktop computer where I proceeded to create a template in Fireworks of what I thought my website should be complete with buttons. That lasted for a while, and then I started messing with WordPress themes in Dreamweaver, requiring me to beat my head against the problem for a few hours (e.g. getting the template to look right in the program). I gave up. Changed the template on In Order to Write and started using Dreamweaver as a referencing tool rather than a programming tool.

Somewhere in this process, I discovered that the WordPress PHP files essentially took the elements of a single HTML page apart and scattered them to the five winds (and I bet you thought there were only four winds, foolish mortals). Those five winds consist of Header, Main body, Sidebar, Footer, and a CSS (cascading style sheet). All of this to build a page with PHP code that references a MySQL database. Knowing all of this, the difference is putting the code into an HTML file where the pieces fit together in the correct order.

Once I determined the correct order, what I discovered was a need to remove (or mark out temporarily) the PHP calls to the database so that the CSS file will show the page as it is meant to be shown. When this is true, you can change put-near anything about your website.

This is all, actually, very exciting because it means that Erin can begin doing what she has stated she wants to do with her website. And I can make more dynamic changes to the sites I am currently playing with. The world is a beautiful place.

Speaking of Erin, she told me this evening that she was accepted into the BlogHer network or online community. That is exciting. She has been wanting to be a part of that for a while, and honestly, I thought she’d gotten in, for some strange reason, before now. However, apparently not. She was accepted, will get to run adverts through that group, and, ultimately, based off of her good look… err, writing skills, may get a good little following.

She reminded me that I encouraged her to start the process, but she’s carried it on her own since the early days of blogspot and then moving everything over to Natural Sceptre. I am legitimately excited about this because it means she is getting what she has been working toward. Personal goals with personal rewards for what she has been doing. In this case, the reward may simply be the bragging rights about having her site on a network like this, and rightfully so, but regardless, I love the fact that she found something she likes and found goals for it and then pursued those goals.

With all of that said, I did make some changes to In Order to Write this weekend. The most obvious one is that I changed the look of the site. Second, I created sub-folders for all of my writing projects and created blogs that will, essentially, follow the same design structure as the main domain. Finally, I created forwarders from those domains to point to their respective subfolder in In Order to Write. It’s been a good day.

Interestingly enough, even the dreaded science class didn’t suck and was quite nice to attend. Not often the case.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 10:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We got up to go to class. Erin’s was cancelled. I took her home so she could hook up with her brother to get his car licensed in the great state of Utah. After dropping her off, I went back to school and made a bunch of copies of some papers I borrowed from another student so I could return them to him today (I was meant to do it Wednesday, last, and slept in) only to find out that he was not in class today. We started learning Adobe Flash, which made me happy I went to class. It’s not often I get to learn new things, and this new thing was pretty exciting for me to start playing with. Essentially, my current dream for In Order to Write is a flash animation that will launch people into the main page. I started it today. It was cool.

After class I wandered over to the bookstore and purchased a shorter network cable for the office so I could take the ten mile long cable (a little hyperbole here, folks) and plug it into the Linux box I am running and have not bothered to figure out how to configure the wireless card in the machine to work in Linux. Doesn’t really matter, though, as I want to use that machine pretty exclusively in the office and have no real reason to take it out. When I got home, Erin was on the sofa and I ran the cables to their new locations before we sat down, I started my computer, and we figured out what the rest of our day was going to be like (you know, before the whole work thing interfered).

One bright spot (a corona, if you will) was that the dreaded science class was cancelled for the day. The professor, in the email, told us all to bring our DNA to class on Monday. I admit, that may seem a bit confusing; however, I think he just means we should bring ourselves and we will go through the throat swabbing for cells for (possible) testing on DNA. Should prove to be fun.

I did, last night, get through the pages of the Cassandra West story where she meets Darwin. Got to a stopping point where she and her horse are riding into town and didn’t (really) know what was meant to happen at that point – not that it matters. Chances are, the professor will never see the entire story and I will have Erin go over it, offer suggestions, and then probably convert cassandrawest.com into a WordPress blog so I can post the story over there. At the same time Cassandra West and the Mage of El Paso took some intereting leaps forward. I knew who the antagonist was, I just never really figured out how to introduce the dude. He got, sort of, introduced last night. I figure, barring my spending all weekend working on Alicia Grey and In Order to Write, I will probably write another 1000 to 2000 words on it and call it good. I will make one more pass over it, make some changes in the beginning that were suggested by the professor it is being written for and Erin, and then turn it in and pray I got it right… not that you can’t get it right, its fiction, just that the voice and tone remain true to the character and what I am trying to accomplish.

And to think I said I wouldn’t, really, be writing about writing here anymore. I am such a liar.

Anyway, I noted from my websurfing, earlier, that my mom updated her site. Granted, it is not a daily reader, but if you are not currently checking out the Adventures of Jack and Alaine at ranchosierravista.net you should. They are serving as senior missionaries on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. They do this for six months (think cold, winter, non-growing months) and spend their springs and summers back in Dolores, Colorado where my father professes to be a farmer. However, the experiences with the Navajo Native American’s prove to be somewhat interesting and Erin has told me my mom, in a very short time, has a narrative style on her blog that is all her (my mom’s) own - I tend to agree with her.

Erin and I did watch Love Actually instead of going to class. The movie was good, though there were some interesting scenes where a couple of the characters spend a bit of time naked. They are stand ins for actors so that the cameramen and lighting people can set lighting and camera angles. Outside of the nudity and some swearing it was an interesting movie to watch. I sat there and kept routing for one of the characters to be a decent human being and actually want to do the right thing, and the whole time, disappointedly, I knew he wasn’t going to. At other times, I kept wondering how all of these people are connected and not until the end when brothers and sisters are together, sort of, do you realize that this widower and step-son, the wife, the Prime Minister, and others are all connected because they really are all related or are friends with these family members. The intertwining of the movie was absolutely enjoyable. Unfortunately, there was nudity; though the nudity, really, was just a part of the story. Yes, I am justifying it, but when it comes to telling story, sometimes setting and scene require something like this.

The real outcome to this movie is I would like to see (or maybe write) a feel good movie where a man is tempted, appears to be succumbing, but ends up with his wife in the end. Not too many stories told like that these days... it seems.

At least it wasn’t like Room with a View that I watched with Erin last weekend. That movie is set in the early 20th century and follows a protagonist who lies to herself and everyone and agrees to marry a man she doesn’t love, let alone like; except, she’s told herself that she does like him and will marry him only to have the man she does like and love show up. She breaks his heart, breaks her fiancés heart, breaks her families hearts, all before realizing that she should tell the truth, go after the man, and do the right thing. That movie had a very extended scene with three men, one a Vicar, running around naked and unlike American movies, you see everything over and over and over and over again. I was a bit disturbed by that sequence in the movie. Disturbed enough that I have no desire to ever see it again.

Compare those two movies (all of these come out of Europe, the previous two England) with Amelie where the movie starts with a lot of imagery (and dialogue) that moves exceptionally fast. You see a baby being born, but by the time you’ve seen it and realize what you’ve seen you learn that Amelie’s father doesn’t like this and her mother hates that. There is a scene in the movie where Amalie is wondering how many people are going through orgasm at that moment, and then you jump from bedroom to bedroom to bedroom until you get back to a shot of Amelie who says, simple, “Fifteen.” The imagery and pace of the movie is hectic, the shots are beautiful, the outcome is amazing, and yet, there are aspects of the movie that you just have to look at and wonder, “Did I really just watch that?” The movie was fun, the twists were even more fun.

Trying to think if there is anything else going on…. As I am spending way too much time thinking about stuff like that, I am guessing that my life is pretty boring and the things I am working on cannot be shared more than I have already shared them. I do intend to update In Order to Write with a review of AVI’s book The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, as I read that and don’t believe I’ve done much with it. Beyond that, I started an old pulp mystery novel the other day and haven’t made it any further than the first dozen pages. The one thing school definitely does to me is keeps me away from the kind of reading I want to be doing.

Beyond that, all is good.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 8:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I did about 1200 words today. Well, I did about 1200 words four or five different times as I kept taking Alicia and moving her from one location, during the same day, to another. You know, she now has enemies, and people she doesn’t know are enemies, she has allies, and people she doesn’t know are allies; and today, she found something that, I think, will prove to be an interesting element to the story in future iterations. Finding that just took writing, deleting, writing again, and deleting one more time before I discovered what needed to happen.

The day started with Erin getting up and not waking me up, showering, doing her thing, and then coming in and saying goodbye. I was a little startled that showers, hair dryers, makeup, and opening and closing doors didn’t wake me up until she said goodbye. As I kissed her and then watched her get up to leave, knew I was going right back to sleep. Some days, this makes me a little sad as I like spending time with Erin, and I don’t really get joy in the fact that I am going to sleep for another couple of hours. Today, I think, was one of those days.

As an aside here, Erin tells me we had a conversation about her only having four more minutes to sleep this morning that I have no recollection of. I think this is interesting (to me) though it doesn't, really, compare to the whole pillow catastrophe of a few nights ago or my screaming in my sleep episode a morning or two ago.

Eventually, I looked at the clock, rolled out of bed, messaged Jordan, and then set up my computer in the office on my desk so I could do some writing. At about that point, Jordan showed up. We went over Linux, DNS, FTP, email, and a bunch of other things and I got to take my Linux box for a ride today, updating the software and kernel, while showing Jordan how to navigate around in the command line, setup email accounts, FTP things, edit things, what the administrative functions of my job looks like, and then (on the white boards) how various things work. After all of that, we went to see the man doing the hiring, sat around for a bit waiting for him to get done with a meeting, and then Jordan got the job.

Congratulations Jordan!!!

He starts on November 26th and will spend two weeks in training. I think he is pretty exciting; at least, that seemed to come out as we talked about books and movies, TV and story ideas. Okay, maybe we didn’t talk about TV so much, except for iTunes downloading.

With that said, I’ve now written a large chunk of the Charles Darwin story that I am using for the dreaded science class. This is a Cassandra West story and, I would imagine, may find its way to her site in its full form when I am done with it. Erin did some critiquing the other night, I am still proceeding along the path I want to follow, though I understand her critiques and have to adapt after I email this to the professor and when the final paper is due. We are already late on getting the draft in to him… so, as it stands I am happy with the current course of the story.

Beyond that, not a lot to report.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 8:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Erin and I slept in today. Then we got up.

Outside of that, Erin pointed out after one of my posts, yesterday, that I had actually mentioned her parents in the blog. Sorry. I lied, a little. She pointed out that I’d probably mentioned other people and so we did some Google searches with the following string: site:www.sw-c.com [name], where [name] was replaced with the individual being searched for. I have not mentioned her brother, by name, I did mention her parents, there were thirteen pages of responses for her, 18 for the word books and then it got boring. I’d suggested, in that conversation, that I’d probably mentioned other little girls in my life and then searched for them to discover that I had not.

The blog entry had a desired effect, though, which was to properly educate and elucidate on the dangers of sharing on the interweb. We got into an interesting, though short, conversation this afternoon after I checked my email and then approved a comment from one of the websites I referenced (briefly) in my blog post. The individual indicated a bandage is better than nothing. It was a thoughtful reply. Anyway, the conversation was, really, on our different views of what is and is not appropriate with children, when we have them.

At what point would a conversation, like that, be appropriate?

Well, I think now is a good time, even though Erin and I have had conversations like that since we realized we were getting married, nigh onto (about) a year ago. This surprised (or delighted or scared or whatever’d) her family. However, I find it difficult and naïve to start a relationship that is (or was, in our case) heading toward marriage and not be, at the very least, in the same ballpark as to where we both stand.

For example:

We believe that children should not wear make-up. The caveat to this was lip gloss, which is not something that I feel is make-up.

We don’t want to put our children’s pictures online. This is partially true, we will probably post, in a protected way, a site where our families can get at the pictures; but there will be no mention of our children outside of having them.

The point in all of that was, in part, to comment on something I thought was interesting in the sense that people jump onto ideas pretty readily. I remember, on occasion, my mom coming home from work or the mall or wherever and telling us about the lates scary thing going around the people she associated with. She would share it with us and then tell us to be extra careful.

Come to think of it, some of these urban legends (that are still being passed about) seems kind of weird that they were passed along as proliferately as they were back in the day, you know, before the internet.

Stories have a tendency to be shared across the phone, through newspapers, in letters, from person to person, on down the line. A good one will spread a lot faster than a bad one. One that shares scandal will spread even faster. The outcome is that, no matter the internet or not, people are going to tell others about negative experiences.

With the internet, the outcome is a much faster spread of information from coast to coast and around the world.

So, people share stories and with the internet those stories are shared a lot faster and have a tendency to proliferate through communities than they did BEFORE the internet.

The outcome to all of this is that someone is exploited and the world knows about it. We also know that the latest in a string of pop-tarts has had a nervous breakdown and is going into rehab for drug and alcohol abuse; presidential candidates are ahead and the behind in the poles; a pregnant mother miscarried; and Dan Rather is old. Before the internet, all of these tidbits of information were available; they just required a lot more effort to find them.

I think I am done with this topic… at least, I am done with it for now. You won’t change people and different individuals are always going to react to new bits of information. Forewarned is forearmed. You have been warned.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Posted by smokingpen at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My goal for this week, when it comes to Alicia Grey, is 8000 words.

However, when I got up this morning, ripped and rearing to go, I started taking a test for the dreaded science class and then spent an hour and eighteen minutes to take the test. I got 8 wrong out of 53 questions with, it seems, about five or six essay type questions. One of the questions was worth 5 points. The test was interesting, though I have determined that biology is not a logical science and does not follow any kind of logic when it comes to presenting material.

My reasons?

Good question: If you know what something is, you should be able to infer what it means or how it is used; however, in biology this is not always the case.

I could be a little jaded. Not really into the whole science thing.

Anyway, I then discovered the topic for the preceding blog entry and decided to spend some time working on that. It was, really, about an hour or so. As I got to a stopping point with that entry, I remembered that I needed to go and see if my car would start. It has been having problems of late. For example, the radiator fan, after turning the car off, would continue to run. This isn’t, exactly, a problem as radiator fans are designed to keep running (on newer cars) to help cool down the fluid in the radiator.

This is why I didn’t catch it when it started happening… well, that and the relay made a lot of noise for about as long as I’ve owned the car so… never really worried about it. However, it started killing my battery. I get done, at work, at 11 p.m. and had to get Erin drive over to jump me, once, late at night, which isn’t exactly the most comfortable of situations to find oneself in.

I thought, “Replace the relay, fix the problem.” I also thought, “The relay can’t cost more than $20.00,” and, “Of course Autozone or Checker will have it.”

Guess what? I was wrong.

How wrong?

Oh, what a delightful question asker you are today.

Completely, totally, and unequivocally wrong.

I pulled the old relay, went to Autozone and Checker and neither of them carried the part. We Erin was with me) went to the Honda dealer and they had the part, but had ordered it for a shop. The guy behind the counter said, “I have one, but I ordered it for someone else.” He then said, “I can make more money off of it from you than them,” then he went and got the part.

The part cost about $55.00. I gladly paid the price. Went home. Opened the lid (hood) on my car (A Honda Accord EX, for those who want to know) and put the new relay in. Erin kindly jumped my car and then we drove up the canyon and back down the canyon and I let it sit and idle for about an hour. When I went to get into the car yesterday it started, but really hard. I thought, “It will be fine.” You can see where my thoughts have been getting me.

When I got home, last night, after getting a coworker to jump me one more time I figured I would go and unplug the battery from the car to make sure the problem was not the alternator. Have to be honest, if it had been the alternator ($130.00 +) I would’ve been VERY upset because I’d replaced that about the same time I got the car, and really, those parts aren’t supposed to wear out that often. <