CaptainOrange

I turned 48 in early January. Usually, I am not capable of being reflective during the winter, but perhaps owing to the SSRI's and my  subsequent ability to think more clearly, or maybe because Wendy suggested it and then initiated conversations on our daily walks three days in a row, I have for your perusal... 6 octals of Mikeness. 8 (10) — 1980 In my "Etch A Sketch" phase 1980 was a big year. I turned 8, after all. Also, I was in grades 2 and  3 (come September) at Prince Charles Community School in Prince Albert, SK. My teacher in Grade 2 was Mrs. White. I recall her as having grey hair and so, had the legitimate possibility of being old—as opposed to just seeming old (which everyone did). Mrs. White came off as quite stern to me. I can remember little other than that she was not a fan of me driving Matchbox cars under the tables during class time. I lived in fear of seeing her shiny, black high heels turn on the tile floor and click towards where...

Once I heard my heart beat in the crinkly-muffled silence of your long snow tunnel the damp fog of my exhalation barely visible in the blue black of your depths You pressed on my shoulders and I imagined the cloud of sobs condense and freeze imperceptibly shrinking the space I had left to breathe I'm still here...

19-yr-old Mike, clinging to the Tyrell building "Do something." "We're not computers, Sebastian. We're physical." "I think, therefore I am." "Very good, Pris. Now, show him why." I've been thinking about Blade Runner quite a bit during the past couple of days weeks months (really need to publish this blog more often). If you haven't seen this movie, you really should. In the quoted scene, Pris goes on to demonstrate a few of the physical things that she can do as a replicant. Phenomenal strength, quickness and durability. Physical acumen that Sebastian will never know. I've always empathized with the replicants rather than the humans in this movie. I'm not an olympic athlete by any stretch, but in general, I am stronger, faster and more durable than most of the people I meet. From the sound of it, moving to Canmore would probably help with that. BTW, don't worry, I've been called arrogant before ;...

There aren't a lot of melt days during February in Saskatchewan. When it does happen, given my proclivity for being down in the dumps this time of year, I usually sprint for the door. In this case it ended with supper not being ready on time for the hungry hordes. But, it also ended with some awesome pictures of icicles. They are edible too, you know. Well... some of them are. On the left is the modest fellow that was clinging to my eavestrough. At 18 inches, not much to get excited about, but the sun was hitting it just right. It was enough to make me grab my camera. As I was driving Wendy to her office, she suggested that I stop by our old rental home. On the right, 518 Albert Avenue. Despite it's several rounds of renovations, it continues to have fabulous ice "problems" (if that's what you call it) in the winter. Unfortunately, the sun was too low on the horizon to give me the look I was going for. Downtown, the store fronts were clear of ice, but there...

Pretty grand title for a post. I guess I'm feeling pretty grand. speaking of thousands... I ran into Mathemagic yesterday on G+ (which still not enough of you are using) via Keentalks . It's an hour long, so most of you are not likely to have time to enjoy it right away, if ever. The first 20 minutes are a math "magic" act. The last 40 minutes is a Q&A session (and very limited sales pitch) about how he does his thing. I found it really inspiring. Spent the last half of my day being sighed at by my family as I ran through the house pointing at people and shouting "Give me a two digit number," and then wrinkled up my forehead, muttering to myself. This was followed with an answer and some kind and a disclaimer. "3364! I don't know if that's right, but I want applause... right now." If you want to learn how, here is a description of the easy way to square any 2 digit number  starting at 25:46 in the video. Trust me. It's fun...

Alert! Feelings laden paragraphs ahead. If you are hear to read about me being a mad scientist or climbing something, turn around and go back to the site with the fluffy kittens doing what fluffy kittens do. I've been thinking about The Quest for a long time -- something like 21 years now. I've found that as time passes, it has become increasingly hard to hold to some of my own ideals. How do I continue to strive, to seek, to find year after year? One thing that has really bothered me lately is that activities that I once enjoyed have stopped filling me up. I feel bored. I don't care. This doesn't matter. It started out being a seasonal depressive thing (which I do believe contributes to the severity), but this last year, there were elements that stayed with me all summer. I thought it was a failing in my person -- that somehow I had changed for the worse and couldn't make myself feel the way I felt when I was twenty. This kind of thinking has never seemed like ...

We've already discussed how February is a terrible month . We need not get into the details again. I do want to add that, as you might expect, it's not entirely February's fault. I guess it's been a case of shooting the messenger. Things start building up all through the winter. I distract myself and deny, but by February, I can't maintain the illusion that I'm happy and it all goes down-hill from there. So the shortest month gets the short stick, or short shrift, or something amounting to "up yours." I know--I can be cruel that way. I'm really my own enemy. And, I've been improving how I handle things during the winter, but I'm still not able to manage it with any real grace. I can't shake the feeling like I'm faking it. Volleyball was one of the activities that I typically engage in to get some exercise (which helps a lot). Unfortunately, I felt compelled to withdraw from the team that I have been on for the last 3-4 years. Anoth...

Facebook causes you to come into contact with people you haven't seen for a long time. The consequence is you are often confronted with 'friending' a person that, for all intents and purposes, is a total stranger. Old-school as I am, I do not just click "confirm" without any sort of confirming process to go along with it. Last week required one such confirmation where (as I often do) I turned to my stack of yearbooks. I have them all from 7-12. They have sat on various bookshelves gathering dust for more than 20 years now. As I flipped along, looking to see if I even knew the person who wanted to be my friend, something grabbed my attention. Writing in the margins and over some of the pictures. Sarah, my serious high-school girlfriend, had written some things by photos of herself (mostly self deprecating) or me (glowing praise). There was another hand at work on those pages. It wrote "nice hair," on some outrageously tall dos, made fun of a kid who pla...

I can't say much for the weather lately. Or, maybe I will. At least it stopped raining long enough on Saturday for us to get a chance to burn our Christmas tree. While the endless cloud cover may make Vin happy as a... er... sun-hating clam, it doesn't do much to improve my mood. Oh, I get out in the weather and enjoy myself. Just last night I went for a 10km in my 5-fingers out in the pouring rain. Even there I was thwarted (by asbestos, no less). But, the twinkle in my eye lasts exactly as long as the physical activity. One thing I can  say is that with just a few breaks in the endless grey, I can get to see a lot of my favorite colour -- at the right time of day. Leora was away at a friend's birthday/sleepover (the second in two weeks) so Wen and I decided to go to a movie with Anwyn to help alleviate the sting of boredom. The clouds had been flirting back-and-forth with blue sky all day and I knew there was going to be a great sunset. We saw How to Train Your Dr...

Winter's Icy Grip Crushes Goose Vanguard I've been struggling a bit with this weather. It's a bit of an understatement (we may talk of that another time). Cold and lack of sunlight have me a bit down. I've been grouching at the girls, sighing a lot, and projecting gloom around the house in the evenings. Wendy gave me a kick in the pants last night and told me to take today off. I didn't have any work with the library scheduled, but I would have spent the morning making and canning chutney out of the beautifully ripe mangoes that I got on monday. Instead I went to Don's Photo and found an awesome deal. A used Sigma 70-210mm f/4-5.6 auto-focus lense for $40! It's twin was sitting next to it for $100 (they were both on consignment and the price on one had just been dropped). OK, so Sigma is a bargain brand, but it's my first telephoto--I'm excited. Naturally, I had to go take some pictures. 1st set, 0-0 I went to campus and fooled around a bi...

I watched " I am Legend (imdb)" again last night, so the above quote comes from Bob Marley, through Will Smith, me, and onto you... With Christmas guests all but a memory and my famous post-birthday-blues (2006 post) setting in, I've embarked on a number of projects to keep myself busy. Todays tidbit is on my grow-table. In the fall of 2008 a theatre friend gave us a grow-table that her father had made for her 30 or more years ago. It had been sitting unused for more than a decade and she was trying to find a good home for it. Mission accomplished. We used it to start our garden seedlings last spring, but I thought I would try a few things earlier this year. I grabbed some soil, perlite, and plant food and got busy. In November, garlic was really cheap. It made sense at the time to buy one of those big bags with a dozen bulbs of garlic in it. By making a lot of pizza I managed to get through most of it, but some of the bulbs began sprouting towards Christmas. ...

I was 24 years old . The previous year had seen me secure both my degree in English from the U of S and my wife. It would still be 2 1/2 years until Leora was born. In the most cliché sense, I had the whole world ahead of me. Of course I had just spent the last 4 months of 1995 living apart from Wen (as she tested out her first teaching job in Rosetown (wikipedia)). Shortly, I moved out of 518 Albert Ave. and into our first apartment. Small town life didn't agree really agree with me. Being an unconventional egg-head/vegetarian/freak from the big city, I felt watched and overtly judged wherever I went (but only because people were watching me). View Larger Map A perfect example is the cooking job that I got there at the Blue Baron -- a restaurant attached to a road-side motor inn. I was ´let go´ there after my 3 month probation. I challenged the owner (who was almost never in the kitchen) to tell me why I was being fired, and I was told that it was because the quality of the food ...

A couple of days ago I went out searching for something to brighten my spirits. QWednesday it was trying to melt and I was excited by the prospect of early spring. I failed to make the outdoors a priority and promised to do it the next day. Thursday, I took a few pictures but it was already back to bitter winds and cold. This was all the run-off I could find. My fingers numbed and people stared at me wondering how someone's ears get this red. It doesn't look too bad, here, but I'd already been in for about 5 minutes at this point. Whining? Maybe. Today I had to shovel huge drifts from my driveway. Uphill, too. I've consoled myself with this great orange flower. I try to look at it several times a day. It might be helping... I really need it to be helping.

Fall is usually a questy time for me. Looking back however, I haven't been able to catalogue anything I've accomplished as being particularly quest-worthy. It is typically the winter that leads me to become dispondant (quite looking forward to that). Not that I am particularyly dispondant of late, more... uncommunicative. Communication follows. Anwyn has wanted to play basketball for 2 years now, but she is finally old enough (at 8) to participate in the 'Spuds' league through the neighborhood community associations. The UofS student, who was to act as our coach, didn't show up for the first practice so I got to help out. I think I shocked the kids (not to mention the parents) when I was seen repeatedly climbing up onto the back of the basketball nets in order to adjust them to the right height for our kids. Nobody else was even aware that the nets could be lowered to 8 feet much less capable of climbing up to do it. So, when our student coach was elected to the U...

That's right. It is once again Quest New Year. For any requiring some historical info... here are my last 3 years posts: QE 15 QE 16 QE 17 But these posts are hardly Questing in themselves. They do, however, represent to a degree what my mental space is like during this spring-time of change, challenge and renewal. Last night I was up with a serious case of angst-induced insomnia. I have been concerned all this week that my old nemesis, Rust, was up to his deleterious ways. I'm finding it hard to push myself. To drive boldly ahead. Or rather, I'm not sure what those things are anymore. Winter is certainly playing a part, as it always does. But there may be more here... I've been Questing since my first year in university. QE 1, for me, was March 17 th , 1991. I draw a large part of my Quest ' mojo ' from those formative years. The problem is that those years were about becoming an adult, not just nominally, but literally. Transitioning to adulthood without losin...

In an attempt to allay my previously mentioned blues, we had a little get-together at our place to burn our Christmas tree. It has been sitting out in the back-yard since I turfed it out the french doors just before New-Years. It had been a nice enough day out, but was beginning to cool quickly with the sun down several hours. Leora and Anwyn had a fantastic time (which translated into adult lingo is something like "really loud and irritating") as they tossed hand fulls of loose snow crystals onto the myriad sparks which erupted from the (no longer) evergreen boughs. It was a smokey, aromatic and uplifting event. And what can I say? It was very orange. The previous weekend, we went with Wendy to Regina for a technology meeting, of which she was part. While there, we naturally visited the Saskatchewan Science Center. The bubbles are always the most enduringly popular item (for me and them). Once again, I am greatful for my digital camera. I took about 50 shots in the bub...