Experiments in Woolgathering

And yes, I do plan to start blogging more frequently than monthly, for now though I that you just be happy it hasn’t been 8 months again.

Most significantly Leanne is now living here in Columbus – technically Dublin. (As an aside, I think just about ever major European city has some village at least in Ohio named after it.) Anyhow, she’s settling in pretty well and things are good.

We spent much of the first few days here running around to various stores so she could get her apartment stocked up. She’s also waiting on some stuff to be mailed from Alabama (where she lived, as opposed to Utah where she was working). I’ve managed not to stay over at her place /too/ much, I’m trying to not make an annoyance of myself with her roommate if nothing else.

Of course there are some very nice things about spending the night.

Mmm, other that, there was a brief period of time at work where a number of us were concerned about being layed off. When your managers start telling you to polish up your resume and schmooze other folks around the bank in the hopes of getting a job with them, that tends to make us nervous.

But, at least for the next year or so it looks like we’re reasonable safe. My group, at least most of it is being transferred en masse to another line of business. So, I get to keep half my job (the other job I did is being left within my old LOB) and my manager, not something I can really complain about.

Other than that little hiccup, work has been mainly crazy-busy. I think I put in nearly 70 hours last week and over the weekend. That should be the last of that level of crazy business for a while – it’s uncertain what will happen exactly once we’re in our new LOB, but that doesn’t happen until the new year.

Getting back to Leanne, and more specifically where she lives, we discovered a very nice Greek restaurant right near her place. It looked like a little hole in the wall gyro places, but turning out to be good-size authentic Greek restaurant. We feasted, remarked upon our luck and drank ouzo. It was VERY good.

What else?

Ah, went and saw my cousin’s new baby – her mother’s first grandchild. He’s small, cute and farted on me a lot. I suppose karmically I had it coming. Alas. My mom and sister were along too, we went out to dinner at a quasi-Greek place for dinner. When it rains it pours, or something like that. They asked about Leanne a little, I showed them some pictures of her I have on my phone. I think she won points for being so pretty. Heh.

Hurm, I let this post sit unfinished for about a week and I’ve totally lost my feel for it, so I’m just going to publish it. Enjoy.

The Internet is a funny place. Perhaps funny isn’t the right word, but it will do for now. With the exception of people I’m met through Aikido and work (directly or via them), pretty much everyone else I know I met online. Technically, the net covers those too: I was contacted about my current job via e-mail and the person who told me about the dojo I go to was someone I learned about online.

I suppose some people might say this is sad. I would argue against that of course.

Because of my job and my little moonlightling work I spend a lot of time at a computer. I would not argue with anyone who said it’s too much time and that I do need strike a better balance, but this is the situation I’m currently in, so I think it’s rather nice that I have met these people online, and become friends, lovers, learned, collaborated, and so on.

What’s ‘funny’ about all this is in a way that is much magnified from meeting people offline you really never know who you will meet – or who is reading your blog.

Case in point, the last comment as of this writing in my previous entry is from someone from Norway. I’m pretty sure I don’t know this person (massive apologies if I do!). I am curious how he found me, though as he practices Budo I am guessing it was the ol’ martial arts connection.

This in and of itself isn’t very remarkable, I was far more touched by Kris’ comment itself than the circumstances of its author. But a connection exists now, however tenuous; who knows where it might lead, and it did give me something to ramble about in this post.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a blog entry of any substance. A lot has been going on, some of it stuff I simply didn’t want to discuss just because… well, I didn’t want to have the follow on conversation. Anyhow, here goes. (more…)

Nothing too exciting here for my first blog entry in seven months. Let’s just call it easing back into things. (And in theory this should cross post to my LJ where the last entry is years old. Curious to see what sort of reaction that elicits, if any.)

Anyhow, my recipe for Carne Adovada.

• One pork tenderloin, cut into 1 inch cubes (you can use other cuts, but this will make it REALLY good)


• A couple cups of red chile sauce. Perfect would be if you can get Hatch bran, but I don’t think you can outside of the southwest. Junked up picante sauce is bad. If you can find a place with a decent hispanic food selection they should have something close.


• A few garlic cloves. Fewer if they’re big, but I dunno how much you like garlic.


• Season with any/all of: oregano, sage, cumin, black pepper, chili powder

Cook in a crock pot for at least 12 hours before eating. 24 is better. Meat should really just fall apart.

Roll in a tortilla with hashbrowns, cheese and scrambled eggs for a breakfast burrito.

Serve over rice, or spanish rice for dinner. Or do… whatever floats your boat.

But most of all: Enjoy!

It’s been a while since I posted one of these. This one’s a bit on the dirty side, but still quite funny. (more…)

Although I haven’t been blogging much about Aikido, I have actually been going reasonably regularly since the beginning of October – minus a week plus around an almost week long trip to New York City. Since we were in town for the holiday weekend I when to all three weekend classes. (more…)

Surprise, surprise, I’m in NYC again! Four days of meetings and training. On the upside, a number of coworkers from overseas are here, and it’s aways fun to hang out with them. (more…)

This was a very disjointed dream. Lots of scene jumps – for me at least. Overall it was very bright and colorful, though not very emotionally charged. I have a sense that it’s set in Chicago, IL (where I was born) along Lake Michigan. I found it interesting that this seemed to be set in my birthtown – a place we left when I was about 2 and a half years old. (more…)

Last night we got a call from R’s mother. One of her cousins, Bryce, was in a bad car accident yesterday morning. Apparently an oncoming car swerved to avoid something and ran head on into him. He’s alive, but not breathing on his own and in a medically induced coma while the swelling in his brain goes down. There were two people in the other car, one of whom is dead and the other apparently not expected to make it. Bryce was alone in his car. (more…)

Okay, actually I can. Since it’s such a bogus holiday. The vikings where here 500 years before Christopher “I misplaced the East Indies by Ten Thousand Miles” Columbus, why the hell aren’t we celebrating ::Lief Ericson:: Day?

It is sad that I forgot today was a holiday, though at least I figured it out before heading into the office!

Another in a string of work trips starts tomorrow. Normally I wouldn’t bother with a post just about one. This trip is a bit different though – I’m going to the UK.

Aside from a trip to Hawaii when I was in grad school this is my first trip outside of North America. It’s also my first international trip I needed a passport for – one isn’t needed to get into Canada or Mexico, both of which I’ve visited.

More exciting than the trip to the UK is my side trip to Iceland, with which, as most who know me know, I’m mildly obsessed. Plus, while there I’ll get to visit my friend Ester who seems to have the whole weekend planned out as near as I can tell. ;)

I leave tomorrow evening for Newark, NJ. From there I catch a British Airways flight to London Heathrow. I take a shuttle to Standwick Airport, hang out for a couple hours and then take an Iceland Express flight to Reykjavík, well, Keflavík technically. Then I pass out for a while, wake up, spend the weekend in Iceland, and then head back to London Monday morning.

A week in London, not sure what I’ll do the weekend I’m there, but I’m sure I’ll think of something. :)

I’m sitting here watching The Princess Blade on the anime channel. Commercial break, I dash upstairs to grab something and come back down in the middle of what I thought was a advertisement for another show.

It’s anime. A woman sort of glides in (flying under her own power) and a man is saying something about them needed to be accepted for the world to be at peace.

She replies: “Peace. It’s amazing how beautiful this world can be when it is at peace.” Pan over a green field with snow-capped mountains in the background.

To which he responds: “And how ugly it can be when it’s at war” (more or less). Pan right to a bombed out city, with a sky full of smoke, etc.

Then cut to.. the UN logo.. it was a commercial for the United Nations.

Cool, but VERY surreal too!

Categories: United Nations, Anime, Commercials

Wednesday I flew to NYC for a meeting. Yes, just for the day; my employer paid $500 for a ticket a week ahead of time to give me a 17 hour day two-thirds of which was spent in cars, airports and planes.

Of course, as one might guess from the title, that’s not the subject of this post.

On the flight back, we were right up in the midst of some huge cummulus clouds. It was nearly impossible to judge their size, but at one point I saw another plane which was tiny against the cloud we were flying around and it seemed clear they were thousands of feet across. They seemed to have very sharply defined edges and texture. It looked like you could have stepped out of the plane and taken a nice spongy walk on them. They created a fantastic landscape of soaring mountains and deep valleys. Occasionally we would pass over a flat, cottony plain as well that would end on an sea that looked down upon the ground.

I’d been reading The Light Ages by Ian MacLeod which has a definite magical, dream-like quality to it at times and drifting in and out of sleep. My mind could not help but imagine a world up here in the cloudscape.

Deeps mines in the mountains, towns along the rushing rivers and streams of the valleys, farms in the fertile plains, and fishing villages along the deep, dark seas. What myths might they have about the ground-dwellers – about the people who lived under their seas and mountains?

Eventually we passed though the clouds and shortly after began our descent into Columbus. As we did the spell faded above and behind us, and the mundane world brushed its remains aside. I didn’t think about this at the time, but I wonder now how many other people’s minds took off on even vaguely similar imaginings. It feels to me like I’m the only one, but I suppose that’s just a natural side-effect of building a world in one’s mind. So, I can’t help but wonder who else was creating cloud-worlds that day and what those worlds were like.

This year’s Origins started last night and of course we were there, and will be through Sunday (hence the part 1 on this post).

We were preregistered and had one game scheduled for the evening, so we picked up our badges and game tickets and then found a place to sit down and get organized. Then we down to the food court to grab some food and went back up to wait for our game which started at 7.

There was some confusion about whether the room was going to be available and where the game might be moved to, but that cleared up when someone opened the room for us.

So, we sat down to play “Eight Bars More” which was fantasy-set game using the Savage Worlds rules. The entire game was set in a bar at the end of a pub crawl. Characters were pregenerated and I, feeling perverse, chose the ‘Clueless Psychic Hottie’ for whom I chose a gender of female and the name Ashley.

I had great fun with the character and R admitted that I played her so well she was about ready to kill me. R is not a fan of bimbos.

We’ve got 4 games scheduled today, lasting until 2 am. Which a couple hours in there to cruise the vendor floor and spend lots of money on games. Now I must go pack up some food for the day and shower and so on.

More on Origins fun later!

Of people who have died in my lifetime, I would have to list Joseph Campbell as one of the ones I wish I could have met – although I’d want to be the age I am now, I think, because of where my thinking about mythology, religion and personal development is. On the other hand, maybe meeting Campbell when I was 20 would have helped get me heading to where I am now more quickly – which is certainly a better spiritually than I was then. (more…)

This week I started working on a project with some of the people in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa), which is cool, they’re great people so far. The downside however is that I’ve been getting into work at 6am in order to give us more time together.

Now, I’m generally a morning person. I rarely sleep past 7am. Often wake up before my alarm. You get the idea.

However, this is not the same thing as getting into work at 6 am. Furthermore, I can’t quite seem to get in the habit of going to bed an hour or two early either.

So, I’m running on about 4 hours of sleep a night. Though this past weekend I took a couple 3 hour naps which helped.

Anyhow, I’ll be glad a week and a couple days from now when this minor craziness is over.

Okay, this isn’t really aikido, it’s a self-defense video for women. It was made in Britain (as is obvious), though I’m not sure when, but certainly several decades ago.

Anyhow, it’s pretty funny. This somewhat prim and proper English lady tosses this guy around, with some exposition and explanation, and then fixes her make-up at the end of it all.

The clip.

So, something I ate Thursday set my Crohn’s Disease off. I didn’t eat anything I don’t normally tolerate just fine, so something must have been bad (one of the things was chicken, so that’s probably the culprit).

Anyhow, went home early, writhed around on the couch, tossed my cookies a couple times and after a few hours the abdominal cramps stopped. Of course, it then takes a few days for my guts to get back to normal while I drink lots of soy milk and eat pretty blandly.

This little episode meant I bailed on aikido Friday and Saturday. But I went this morning, since Sunday’s class is shorter and usually not too strenuous, though it still was pretty tiring. It was good to go though, nice small class of 6.

On the upside, since I was laying around a lot I got Cowl (by Neal Asher) finished and got some quality time in with the PS2. ;) The review for Cowl is underway and I’ve also started Men and Cartoons, a collection of Jonanthan Lethem’s short stories. Lastly, I went through the large back log of music I’ve downloaded and tossed what didn’t float my boat and moved the rest to the server. So, go me.

We were going to catch a movie this weekend, but never quite made it. Just means we’ll have to watch more next weekend. ;)

So, I took a nerdity test, which I haven’t done in a while. Scored rather high too, which I was a bit surprised at, but then it was a fairly ‘easy’ test as these things too. Anyhow, the results:

The test was all tech and science questions, which is a bit stereotypical if you ask me. It’s not like those two are necessarily related, nor are they the only things about which one can be nerdy.

Yes, I want a multi-subject nerd test that ranks you in several nerd subject categories!

I’m home from New York/New Jersey – even though we met in Manhattan, they had us stay in Newport, NJ because the hotels are about $100 cheaper a night, and it’s only takes 15 minutes by train and foot to get to the offices which are just across the river. (more…)