Life

Joy, love, happiness, bliss...mmmm coffee when I've had enough sleep. And a full belly, but not too stuffed. Slept 10 hours straight last night, no sleeping pill, no kava. Woke up and wondered if it was soon enough to start Holosync. Wow, I thought I'd been asleep about 4 hours. Wondering if this improved sleep is (I hope, I hope) gonna be a permanent side effect of not drinking alcohol. It's been one week and I'm more determined than ever to stick with it. Party tonight, though, so we'll see. Should be interesting to interact with strangers at a party when I have full use of my faculties. I'm still convinced I'm not an alcoholic, in the sense that some people seem genetically inclined that way. I don't crave it like I crave, say, chips and salsa when I see them on a buffet table. Friends were drinking wine last night and I had almost no urge to join them. My big struggle last night was not buying ice cream. And I didn't! What a tower of will power I've become. Of course, I did eat cookies (evil, evil little hobbits) and my usual overload of almonds while watching my late night video. I rented Samurai:Musashi Miyamoto starring Mifuni. Very good, complex, more realistic than most of the more recent martial arts movies. It's the first of a 3-part series. Maybe I'll get the second one tomorrow night.

Changes

Feels like everything is coming to a head (where does that expression come from?). In the world and in my personal life. Of couse, everything's always coming to a head in the world, so maybe it's my personal life changes casting everything in that light. Moving out of the old office today. Vacation tomorrow. When I return in Jan, our offices will be with the company that bought us in another town. I've been working at the old company in this building since 1988.

Not feeling too tired despite only about 4 1/2 hrs. sleep after last night's Lord of the Rings marathon. For the panegyrical review I typed in at 2:00 am, see below. I was feeling really enthused and had to share it somewhere, since Susan won't be interested. At least I didn't drink (one week tomorrow). My habit had been to smuggle 3 or 4 beers into the theatre (no pimply faced usher dares question strange bulges under the jacket of a distinguished middle-aged man :) That made even bad movies fairly enjoyable. But those days are gone. Besides, this movie didn't need beer. Feeling pretty good, actually.

Two Towers

Ahhh. Even better than the first. The late night three hours went by smooth and sweet as whip cream on Sunday. Golum is incredible. Helm's Deep is perfect. War, orcs, fire, and thundering water. Like having a dream and then seeing a movie of that same dream. Lord of the Ringswas a sort of revelation for me when I was about 19 or so. I read the Hobbit plus the entire Trilogy in one junkfood filled weekend my freshman year at college. Couldn't put 'em down. I never expected it would even be possible to make a satisfying film about it. The cartoon version a number of years back was a travesty. But this is something else. Let's see...my only quible with the (mostly necessary) changes from the original plot concerns how the movie treats the gathering of the Ents. What was with having them first decide not to go to war? Trying to make their decision to war on Isengard more dramatic, I guess, "Oh, look they killed our trees. Let's get 'em." And it also unecessarily gives the Hobbits more of a role in the decision. The book version worked better. There, I've registered my token complaint. Ignore it. The movie was great.

Netscape

Sucks. I just looked at my site in Netscape and discovered it looks like crap. I'm not changing it. If you want to see all the wonders of my blog, get IE. Microsoft probably sucks too (except to those it made rich), but their web browser works.

A "Poet"

Since, by definition, most people have an average-range intelligence, my theory is that someone who is just slightly above average will have that quality sought by the gods of mass marketing: mass appeal. Their work will be mediocre, and, thus, understandable by the average Heather, but it will contain enough cant-ish originality to seem brilliant to a room full of C students. That would explain Maya Angelou.

Japanese

Maybe they look different from me because they really are from another planet. Can you tell me what this is all about?

Lott's Problem

Hidden agendas. Sure the guy made a stupid comment that revealed hidden bigotry, but that's not the real reason he's getting stoned in the public square. The Democrats are up to their usual lying, demagogy. They don't give a crap what Lott's attitude towards blacks is. They pounced like rats on a dead cat because they saw a chance to maybe weasel back into power.(How's that for mixed metaphors :) And the Republicans won't be tiping him out of the chair because he's a bigot, but for a bunch of other reasons, not the least of which is that he's a smiling, spineless jellyfish of a pol, who makes a very weak leader. And all these phoney appologies. Barpho.

The Obvious

Sometimes it has to be stated. In a National Review article Jonah Goldberg states, "...women and men are, simply, different — and will be for the foreseeable future." And he says it in a way that shows you why it needed to be said.

Women are Tops

Interesting. Feminism as a communist conspiracy, etc. I even agree with some of these ideas. But you'll have to guess which ones, for now (just don't hit me).

The Dope on Fat

Hmmmm... an antimunchies drug. I'll bet these researchers are from my generation (boomers).

Kids

My three kids are like the beat of my heart. I love them, adore them, but some day they'll go away. When I was young I took my parents for granted. Parents are like the ground you walk on or the sky overhead. When you are little, they are just there. You love them like the air you breathe in the sense that you panic if you feel you may lose them, but otherwise you don't much think about them. I remember being terrified that my parents would divorce. "Any home is better than a broken home." I heard that somewhere when I was five or six and said it to myself like a prayer when they had one of their screaming arguments. But I couldn't wait to get away from them when I was a teen. I grew older, my life got more complex, my desires more private, and my parents more irrelevant. I would take school jobs cleaning dorm rooms so I wouldn't have to go home from college over breaks. I moved across the country without a thought of how they might feel. I think it's some kind of evolutionary survival of the species thing. Parents are wired to love their kids desperately. Otherwise, no way parents would wipe the crap off the baby's butts and take the crap they dish out after puberty. The kids have to survive so they can reproduce too, even if it means Dad gets mauled by the saber tooth while Mom gets away carrying the kids through the icy river. But kids are wired to break free, find a mate of their own. And clinging to the Folks too much, loving the parents too much, would inhibit that.

So I left my parents, and my kids leave me. But in the mean time, I get to taste one of the sweetest things I can imagine. Not to wax too poetic, but it's hard to put into words. Parenthood is like the flowering of my life, and my kids, the fruit. Though to them, I'm like the house they live in, the family car, the ground they walk on, or the sky above.

They were tiny and incredibly young, and now they grow older.

Amazing.

Foolin

Fooling around with the template. So, if the page seems to have a strange format, either you are viewing it in the middle of my experimentation or you just don't like what I have ended up with.

Divine de Vere

Shakespeare's plays weren't written by William Shakespeare.

Lord in the Details

I rented the Fellowship of the Rings Special Edition DVD and watched it over the weekend as a sort of preparation for the upcoming release of The Two Towers. Geez. The Special Edition was about 30 minutes longer and 2 times better than the theatrical release. The added details tied things together, made Hobbiton more believable, made Moria awesome, Lothlorien magical, and the whole thing come alive. A fantasticaly good movie. The Sp Ed shows the theatrical release to be a chopped up synopsis. What a shame that's the one most people will see. Now I'm tempted to just wait until a Special Edition of The Two Towers comes out. Alas, if only I had that kind of willpower.

Engage or escape.

I just decided to quit drinking, so this a good time to start a new passtime. So here we go.