New Year

Hey, look at this. A whole new year and I'm writing a blog entry. The first one of the year and certainly not the last. Many things are happening, and most of them are good.

First off, two of my friends have gotten engaged. Becky and Doyle, two people who are as perfect for each other as any other couple I know, are engaged to be married and I'm totally jazzed for them. Very exciting stuff.

Second, I've started reading a series of nautical adventure novels by Dewey Lambdin. They are awesome. My friend Neil suggested them and lent me the first one and I absolutely loved it. I can't wait to get to the rest of them. I wouldn't have thought I'd be into that sort of thing, but I'm finding it all very entertaining and fascinating. I'll be reading many more of these books, I can tell. I've got 17 more books in this series and then another dozen or more each in the Master and Commander series and the Horatio Hornblower series, but I'm actually excited to read all of them. It is also making me want to make myself an appropriate costume, and maybe learn how to navigate with a sextant. Yes, I'm a geek.

I've been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 a lot. By a lot I mean a LOT. Very much. More then just an average amount. Potentially more than the daily recommended dosage. It's incredibly fun, I am doing fairly well at it and all my friends play too. It's a recipe for a lot of wasted hours in from of the XBOX, for sure.

I'm working on a few smaller projects, mostly based around mold-making. Check the craft blog for details.

Run Right

Newton Running - Run Right

So a friend of mine showed me this video a few weeks back and it sounded pretty cool. It makes a lot of sense to me to run with shoes like you would run without shoes, since that's how your body is best able to handle the stress. A week and a half ago, Jenna and I went to the gym and ran for just a couple of minutes to warm up for lifting. I did the mid-foot/forefoot thing and didn't have any issues at all with shin splints. This is pretty incredible. Still, I'd been resting pretty much forever and we didn't run long so I didn't want to get too crazy with it. I went again this morning and did a mile in about 12 minutes with a little bit of elevation at the beginning to help me get into the right stride. Even after the whole mile, still no shin splints! So now I'm thinking I may be able to run on a semi-regular basis. I'm planning on going again in a few days and running another mile to see if this will really work for me long term.

What? Another month already?

Criminy. It's tough to keep up with this thing these days. Okay, here's what's been going on. We started another RPG with some friends. It's only once a month, but I'm GMing. I've never really run a game before so I'm a little worried about being terrible. I'll keep you posted on that as it develops. We're still doing our trivia thing every week, and that's a blast. I've been slacking off and barely making it to jiu-jitsu at all, unfortunately. So many things keep coming up, it seems. We've got our book club night tonight and our Zombie PAYDAY game tomorrow. Ugh. Everything we're doing is great and fun and all, there's just so much of it. If it weren't all so fun it would be easy to start saying no to things, but it's not. We'll figure it out, I guess.

Let's see...we've made some new friends from Zombie Squad and we're seeing them at least a few times a month now. That has been really great. We have so many similar interests and we all get along so well. It's all very cool.

Did my shotgun class a few weeks back. Learned a freakin' ton. A lot of it is sort of common sense, but a lot of it is stuff I hadn't really considered before. Definitely worth the money and the time I got to spend with my dad was awesome. We road-tripped out to Vegas and back, so we had a ton of time to just hang out and talk on the drive and all. If you're going to go to Vegas, October/November is a great time for it. The weather was so much nicer than we thought it would be. It was a little chilly during the evening, but mostly everything was great.

I've been playing a ton of Call of Duty 4, as well. I'm actually trying to make time for video games. It's nice because I can just squeeze half an hour or so of game time in various places. I'm actually getting pretty decent, though. Not amazing, mind you, but tolerable. I'm pretty consistently one of the top few people in the game. This depends greatly on the weapons I'm using and whether or not I'm working on a particular challenge. I had a few games where I ran around with RPGs trying to shoot two people at once and ended up dying a billion times. Still, I manage sort of okay. I'll have most of the challenges done pretty soon. Hopefully in time to get the sequel for Christmas or Birthday or something.

Okay, that'll do for now. Catch you all later!

Halloween: Complete

Whew! That was a ton of fun, a ton of work and I'm really glad to be done with it. The costumes got done enough for Halloween, at least. There are a few adjustments to be made but nothing for a while.

So now we get to do some other exciting things. We get to keep looking for houses, keep looking for a job for Jenna, keep playing our established games, and keep doing our trivia. We also get to start some new games, hang out with new friends and start doing a lot more prep/self-sufficiency work. I'm really excited about it. We got to hang out with some new friends on Halloween and had a great time. We're definitely going to try to see them on a regular basis. It seems like we have so much to learn from them and we have so much fun just hanging out and talking.

So next on my plate I'm going to refinish the mask I made for my friend (see other blog), I'm going to get back to work with my bow-making stuff and I think I'm going to be running a tabletop game once a month. Pretty exciting stuff! We're also eating at home a lot more to save money, so I'm getting to cook quite a bit again. Sweet!

The little lost blog

I've been neglecting you, blog. I've moved on, in some ways. I have been spending all of my time with a new blog,. A different blog. Dare I say...a better blog? No, that isn't fair. Blogs are built for different purposes and it just so happens that I haven't had as much to say here as I have there. It's not you, it's me.

Suffice it to say, I haven't completely stopped doing anything interesting, I've just been focusing my blogging time almost exclusively on crafty things. We've spent a lot of time with friends, met new people, tried new things, cooked new foods at home and visited new restaurants. Really, we've been staying very busy indeed.

I can't say I'll be better about keeping this updated, but I'll certainly try. Here's something we've recently gotten into: Zombie Squad

The folks there are great and into a lot of the same stuff we are. Iron sharpens iron, as they say. I'm hoping being around folks who take survival and self-sufficiency seriously will help us to close the holes in our own plans and preparation.

Other than that, we're really just gearing up for Halloween. It's big holiday for us, obviously, and we're doing a fair bit of work. If you want to see what all is going on, check the other blog. I've been working to put up pictures and diagrams and all the rest.

That's it! I'll check back in sometime soon, hopefully.

Trippingly on the tongue

Well not really on the tongue. Or even involving the tongue. Mostly, I'm taking a trip and wanted a clever blog title. And now this blog title has given me a good start on a blog entry. Look at that!

So we're going to CA to visit our family out there (I say our family because even though they're really Jenna's family, they're totally mine too now) for a few days. Should be super awesome times, I'm thinking. We'll get to hang out, pick some apples, play games, eat food, maybe see some friends and stuff. Wicked.

Also, I got and started playing Call of Duty 4. It's a really great game and I'm especially terrible at it. I enjoy it a lot though, so I may be inspired to play it enough to get only regularly terrible, which would be fun. I'm also playing Psychonauts (on loan from my bro-in-law) and really enjoying that as well. When do I find the time to play video games, you ask? When I should be sleeping!

I keep working on my Halloween projects and I'm trying to keep my crafting blog updated. Right now I just have an abundance of sanding to do. It's dull and dusty and generally not as much fun as the rest of the work, but it needs to be done. I did get a cool little helping hand tool that makes soldering a billion easier so now I don't fear it quite so much.

We keep doing our trivia thing and are consistently in the top 3 and get first more often than not. So that's cool.

We actually got to do our roleplaying game again. One of them, anyway. It's the first time we've played in like 2 months and we don't get to play for another month, most likely. I'd love to be more consistent with it, but we just have so much going on, it seems.

Jenna ordered a really awesome new bike so I think we're probably going to be riding bikes sometime soon. Just in time for autumn, which is my favorite time to ride bikes. Sweet!

Our new kitten is getting along very nicely in the house now. He and Levi are buddies and now nobody is lonely, so that's very nice. Smitty is getting bigger but he still only has a tiny squeak for a meow. It's super cute.

We've got an offer in on a house but haven't heard anything on it yet. We're just the backup so it isn't too likely we'll get it, but we're still definitely hoping. We just have to keep looking and offering. Sometimes it seems like that part is now the whole experience and that actually getting a house is no longer even associated with looking and offering. It's weird. I won't even know what to do once we have a house. Probably still go out and try to find one just out of habit, I guess.

I'm still loving my jiu-jitsu classes but I've been slacking on them. I've been making it like once or twice a week at best, and that's not nearly enough. I'm really hoping that all the visits and travel will be done soon (as much as I enjoy them) so I can settle into a regular schedule.

I did quite well at IDPA again this month. I'm really feeling good about it. I have improved so much since I started just a few months ago. The shooting is so different from what you normally do and being able to practice that type of shooting experience is amazing. There's really no parallel at a normal range. You simply can't do that type of training and so your training is lacking. Moving while shooting, shooting while on the clock, shooting at moving targets or targets obscured by no-shoots (civilians) or having specific areas of a bad guy you can't shoot (behind hard cover or he has a bomb strapped to him that will explode if you hit it, etc.) are all things that are impractical for a regular range. They're also the most fun and the most useful sorts of things for real-life situations.

I'm also super excited for Tim and J-Long to be here. Tim's just visiting but J-Long will be back for good and that'll be awesome. My bro-in-law is visiting too, so that's going to be a ton of fun. We've got so much happening, but it's all good stuff.

Is that it? Maybe that's it.

Mostly Crafty

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted here. I've been posting primarily at my other blog (Geek Kraft) because that's really the most interesting thing I've been up to. We've been busy this month with people coming into town, but mostly we're just hanging out and catching up, playing games, eating food, etc. The trips are great, but much more fun to experience than to read about, I'm sure.

So, here's what has been taking up my time: Feline medical care. Caring for Antonia was a lot of work and a lot of emotional stress. Then we had to put her down and there was a sort of respite from the stress of trying to get her healthy again. We decided to get a kitten to keep Levi company. The day we brought home the kitten (his name is Admiral Smithington, Smitty for short) Levi was really sick. We took him to the vet the next morning and found out that he had a really bad urinary tract infection. They gave us some meds to give to him and an IV bag to get fluids into his system via subcutaneous needle-poking. We did that for a few days and took him back to the regular vet. He told us to stop with the meds and just gave him a long-acting penicillin shot which worked much much better. We finished off the fluids and a week later, Levi is doing much better. he's out and about, playing with the new kitten, jumping up onto the bed and couch (so it's safe to assume there's little pain) and starting to get back to his old self. He still isn't eating or drinking as much as he should be, but he's eating a little bit and seems to be drinking a bit. If he isn't drinking more by this evening, we're going to get more fluids into him. So anyway, that has been our situation. When it rains it pours, I guess. At least Levi is recovering.

So now we have a new kitten and he is incredibly adorable. See for yourself:



He's really fitting into the family very well. He's super tiny and feisty and cuddly. He likes to alternate between playing very hard and snuggling very hard. It's super cute. We're really enjoying having him around the house, to the point where we're actually thinking about getting another kitten in a few weeks, after we're sure Levi is fully recovered. The thinking is that then these two cats will be roughly the same age, so when it finally is Levi's time to go, they'll still have each other. We'll see how that idea progresses, but we're at least considering it.

*Update* I didn't mention this before, but we're pretty sure he's a Russian blue. If not completely, at least a very large part. he has the double coat, the silvery sheen (right now, particularly around his paws) and the green eyes. His eyes aren't the perfect color they like, and he has a few white spots on his chest so he certainly wouldn't be show quality. Still, he meets almost all of the other criteria (even having maroon footpads) and looks quite a bit like most of the photos we saw of other Russian Blues. So that's cool.

I'm still going to jiu-jitsu classes, albeit far less regularly than I was. I would like to go to more, but it seems things always come up that require my attention. bah. I'm going to try to work much harder at making it to class at least 3 times a week, if not 4. I've also completely stopped doing my morning workouts. I really do need to get back to them, though. I stopped originally because we had to force-feed Antonia every morning and that always took quite a while. Recently I haven't been doing it because we've been staying up super late and it's tough to get up any earlier than I absolutely have to. Really, any reasons or excuses aren't going to do anything for my health or my stamina or anything, so they aren't worth much. I just need to buckle down and make it happen. I'll keep you guys informed.

I'm doing a lot of work in the garage recently, too. If you read my other blog you'll get the specifics, but basically I got a wild hair to try to make bows, and then got another wild hair to do some cool projects for halloween. Mostly these involve very simple little things that I could do pretty much in no time, but I'm trying to make them a bit cooler. I'm working on joinery, specifically finger joints, because i think they're awesome and they're easy to do with a jig. If I can perfect my jig and my technique, I should be able to get tons of these things done in pretty much no time, leaving me with a great-looking traditional joint and not a ton of effort. To me, that opens up a lot of cool small projects.

I've also started playing some video games again. Nothing too crazy, just grabbing a few hours here and there. I'm still working on Fallout 3 because that game is absurdly enormous, and I recently backtracked to Assassin's Creed. I want to get all the achievements for it, and that's no easy task. It's a great game and I'm wondering now about making a costume based on it. The aesthetic is very original and cool, and I'm thinking I could make an excellent representation of it with a little work. We'll see how that goes.

Aside from that, we're doing our normal gaming, trivia, hanging out, eating, visiting friends and family, playing with tiny furry babies and so on. I'm also reading a lot of non-fiction, primarily about making bows and violins (another project I'm sort of curious about).

That's it for now!

New Kitten

So, since we are now down to one cat and he is acting like the loneliest cat ever, we've decided to get a new baby kitten for him to play with. Levi is one of the most affectionate animals I've ever encountered, and he really needs a cuddle buddy. he hasn't been happy since Antonia got sick and stopped wanting to hang out with him. he's been crying a lot and following us around even more than usual. So, to help with that (and at least partially because I love cats and feel that I can never have enough of them) we're going to get a kitten.

Here's where you're all going to be shocked: We're going to the dumb friends league. I know that I have said that shelter dogs are lame and that I would never have one. That remains true. First off, I think that since darn near every cat you will ever find is classified as "Domestic Shorthair" (unless you go out of your way to find a specific breed) their breed really doesn't matter much. Whether you get them from a pet store or a Craigslist ad or anything else, they're going to be a pretty standard cat. Also, I am a firm believer in spaying and neutering pets, which the Dumb Friends League does as part of your adoption fee. They charge $115 for kittens and that fee includes spaying or neutering, vaccinations, microchipping and a first vet visit to any vet who participates in the program (and almost all of them do). You also get "new owner counseling" or some such, which is helpful if you get the pet home and find that he's got some issues. So, I think that's an incredibly good deal, financially speaking. Most Craigslist or newspaper ads want a $25-$50 rehoming fee (partly because they can make money and party because they want to be sure people aren't taking the cats and feeding them to snakes or something). Add the vet's fee for microchipping ($50, I believe) and spaying/neutering (something over $50) and the Dumb Friends League really is the only way to go. You also know that the cats are socialized and treated well. The DFL has folks who just go and play in the kitten cages. The cages are clean, bright, and full of toys and friends for the babies to play with.

Really, the whole DFL building was very impressive. You could tell it had been designed from the ground up just to make it easy for people and animals to interact. There were also a ton of people working there. I was pretty amazed. The dog enclosures were all very clean and well-maintained, and most dogs had a buddy with them (the space is easily big enough for two) so they wouldn't just be alone all the time. Everything was freshly painted, well-organized, clean, and bright. It wasn't at all like I expected an animal shelter to be. I was expecting chain link, small cages, just a few people walking around in poopy clothes, etc. Not at all. So anyway, getting a kitten from them just seems like the natural thing to do.

We're looking to get a male, probably a brown or orange tabby. His name is going to be Captain Doctor Smithington-Reece, Esquire and we will call him "Smitty" for short. We'll be taking and posting tons of pictures of him in his baby stages so we always have them even when he's a grown-up.

Antonia

We had to have Antonia put down today. She's been having some pretty serious health problems and the things we'd been hoping would help her get better just weren't working. The doc said today that her lungs were full of fluid and she was having a really hard time breathing. There's no way she was going to improve from that, so we made the tough (but hopefully right) decision to just let her go. We tried everything we could to get her better, and didn't let her suffer any longer than we needed to, so I'm really hoping we did right by her. She was my first real pet (aside from various small, caged pets and family-owned animals) and I loved her very much. She always had such a unique personality, and she always loved her daddy. I'm sorry it had to end this way, but it wouldn't be fair to her to keep her alive, struggling for air while we try to force food down her throat every few hours. I have to believe she's better off now.

Anyhow, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has already expressed condolences. I really appreciate having so many great friends and such a great family. Thanks, everyone.

Something everyone needs to know about

Academic Earth

This site is the coolest thing I've seen in a very long time. It's a collection of lectures and even full courses from some of the best schools in the country. Everything from Psychology to Computer Science and Astronomy to Religion is available. It's amazing. I really can't adequately express my joy with this site. I'm going to do it up right, I think, and watch an entire course in order, and even attempt to do the projects along with the class. I'm starting with this one: CS 50 from Harvard

I think I'll continue on to math, physics, astronomy, and anything else I can think of. This is precisely how I learn best, and it's offering me a chance to see what a course is like and to gain the knowledge without needing to spend a lot of money on tuition and everything. Frankly, I have a degree already and the knowledge is what I need more than a piece of paper saying I know what I know.

Anyhow, this was worthy of me dusting off my blog and making a post. Everything else proceeds apace, really. Jiu-jitsu continues to go well, Antonia seems to be getting better, projects are progressing, I'm desperately in love with my wife, we continue to have ag reat time at trivia, visiting family and friends are keeping us thoroughly buys this whole month, etc. I may get a bit more specific if I have time, but we'll see. Thanks for reading!