Click images for desktop size: "Lisa Boyle" Where I work there are a group of nice but overly enthusiastic people who twice a week to feed the homeless. Like I said their nice. I talk to nice people pretty freely.
One of them is a woman. She came to see me at work. She wanted to show me something. Her dog's collar.
She'd just gotten her Masters degree and was now a minister in the Methodist Church.
I told her this surprised me because I didn't know that Methodists were into street missionary work. She told me that they're not and that she's in real conflict with them over her and her husband's work.
We talked some about fund raising. I used to be good at that, not for a church or anything religious. I figured having that behind you would make it easier. So I gave her some ideas that I figured were long term but sure pay offs and some short term ideas that might work.
It was a pleasant talk.
I didn't ask her why she wanted to show me her priests collar. I didn't ask her why she wanted to be a priest.
I don't know why she told me.
I never know why people tell me anything.

A lot going on at work. A lot going on with where I'll be living when the lease expires. It properly concerns me but nothing in the slightest to fret over.

I have decided to buy a moped . . . I figure its a semi-hip mobility scooter. Just something for running errands that is cheap and cheap to run. I had considered an electric scooter! Super cheap but the range and a bad review stopped me. 21 mph top end!
So I've decided to investigate and look for a 300 buck gas powered one. I can save up 300 bucks and have some movement and avoid some of the drudgery of buses and walking.

I'm back to being sick. Any food is making me ill.
It will pass.
My puppy has valiantly volunteered to eat all my food till I get better . . . so it won't go to waste . . .
That what she claims.

Posted by David at 9:23 PM | Permalink

Click images for desktop size: "Joe" by Joe & Unknown I stopped taking one of the pills they gave me.
It was a right thing to do. It stopped a lot of the sickness. I feel better for it and now feel like a cross country marathoner after a second place finish. That's better than what I was feeling.

Today was good. I accomplished something with my puppy today that will please a lot of her “fans”. I'm not giving it away. It was tricky but my puppy and I both felt elated and tired after we accomplished our mission.
You might have to be ten years old to appreciate it. I'm glad there's enough ten year old inside of me to feel good about the effort expended.
My puppy only knows I'm happy.
That's plenty enough for her.
I updated the Film Library link up above. Its sitting around 750 films. I didn't make any mad purchases, just found a spindle of disc's I hadn't cataloged. 99.5% of the oddball comments are from Amazon and not yet from me.

I feel good but tired.

My housemate left for a vacation today. I have to take a 90 minute bus ride to work for now. I have an iPod and super.fi's so it won't be totally unpleasant. I'll miss my puppy at work. I hope she doesn't get too upset or lonely. This will be the longest time we've been apart since we met. Probably means its a good thing for both of us to spend some time apart. I got some special treats for her but she'll be anxious and then stoic and probably beat me up when I get home.

Technorati Tags: puppy

Posted by David at 9:14 PM | Permalink

Click images for desktop size: "CWaves" by I I haven't been faithful in updating here. That disturbs me as it means I haven't been paying attention to myself, to what I'm feeling.
Usually that means I'm not feeling anything, that I'm just surviving, just coping.
That's pretty accurate.
My puppy was 1 year old on Monday. She received scads of presents. That pleases me. I was also given, by my dearest friend, a set of earbuds I'd been thinking about for months. They were a birthday present for my puppy, so that I wouldn't hear her getting into trouble. I liked that too.
Work stays tepid. I've been offered a sort of lateral promotion. This means my wages would stay the same but I would have to reside at a site, so I could save money by not paying rent and utilities.

This appeals to me in some ways, like my lease expires in 3 months, but I can't get past my reaction - feeling that I don't want to be at my job 24/7!
Other than that I've been coping, doing pain management and trying not to snap at people. Next week I'm going to do some speed classes with the team member (my high school football team) who want to get better.
I like the kids. They have dreams and they have the drive to fight for them. They look to me as someone who has tread the path and knows what it takes to take the next step.
Only a couple of them understand the physical value of the work we're doing. Those few also gasp the mental discipline that this work involves as I train not only their muscles and nerves but their hearts (figuratively as well as literally).
I'm going to try and keep up with this here. I had to pay for another year of hosting so there's nothing but good reasons to continue - even in the face of the spam attacks. (Words blacklisted in comments is getting impressive - erectile, viagra etc)

Technorati Tags: education, puppy, puppy

Posted by David at 1:43 AM | Permalink

Click images for desktop size: "One" by dimage After near collapsing yesterday I awoke at 3 and watched the silent film “Passion Of Joan Of Arc” by Theodor Dyer.
It's a great film that stretched the tech of the times past its limits - huge beautiful closeups filled with silver nitrate swirling grain. And the saddest, proudest actress (at least in closeup and silence) that ever lived in the lead, Maria Falconetti (even her name is cool).
Antoine Artaud has a role in it, for anyone obsessed with the Theatre Of Cruelty and Baudelaire.
I've always liked that the only existing print of this film was discovered in the 1980's when they cleaned out a basement of a Danish Insane Asylum.
Watching the film reminded me of younger times, going to the Cinematheque in Paris then sitting at a cafe with new found friends who were binded together only through a love of movies (a term which too many of them refused to use). We didn't realize that our dreams were dreams.
We saw them as inevitability.
A few of that crowd distinguished themselves and made movies back at home. Some, like me, worked in movies. A bunch of expatriate kids who were two steps onto the path of making dreams real by the sheer insanity of being teenagers who had gone to Europe seeking beauty and validation of the answers we already knew. And for me to check out some of the waves in Portugal.
I can still remember the softer focus of the Parisian light as we sat with the smell of the city and the people around us, arguing over what we'd just seen and then cutting the argument short as we had to scurry back to the Cinematheque to see the next film we'd all pencilled into our schedules.
Memories of the past must always lead to planning for the future and extolling the present.
And then the other memories - the kind man with a pocket full of cookies for the dogs he might encounter - the beautiful woman who looks you full in the eye and says, “I didn't mean to, but I've fallen in love with you,” then she looks down in a moment of fear after daring such a brave thing - a pretty girl who comes over and tells you that you are the prettiest thing she's ever seen, and then dances away - the woman who hands you a rich burrito because she has an extra and sees that you are hungry - the Chinese man who offers you his last cigarette and asks you if the world is really different in America. So many memories that flood in and take over your waking moments and lead you to avoid thinking of what led you to this.


Click images for desktop size: "Girl" by GRC Which lead me to why I keep this blog that is turning into a “death watch” kind of thing. A death watch is sure not what I intended . . . sure not what I intended.
It started out as a way to “mass communicate”. Several of you have noticed that I talk to a lot of people everyday and that it means my details get shorter and shorter as I get bored in the retelling. It was/is a good thing to spend an hour or so meditating on the days events. With the puppy it seems I seldom have that spare hour!

Technorati Tags: art, music, girls

Posted by David at 9:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Smooth" by Pixelslinger Been knocked low by a change in medication. They explained it to me but whenever they start in with the long technical treatise and use phrases like Isle Of langhorn, I tend to go south and start remembering the greatest waves of my life.
You know its that moment when you start to make the drop and the adrenaline freezes in your blood, you make a swooping bottom turn and start carving back up the face of the wave to get that sweet plosh of a lip smack, then you race back down the face and curl into a tiny bit of green room and for those moments you don't hear much and all you feel is a rush and all you know is that you are invincible and you wish this could last like one titanic orgasm that exists forever.
Some skaters on the cutting edge know the feeling and a few sky divers who've cut it to the minimum understand it too.
Usually by the time I've come out of my reverie the docs have finished flapping their gums and I'm no better informed then I was before.
The gist of it that I could absorb was that diabetes is a pretty standard side effect to chemo.
The drug I'm on for diabetes works by increasing the efficiency of the insulin my pancreas still can produce. Its worked well for me for a few years now.
The new oral chemo has hampered but not shut down the production of insulin.
The new drug attempts to get the pancreas to produce more insulin.
It has a lot of side effects.
The annoying ones are the constant bad taste in my mouth, drowsiness as the days wear on, almost to the point of torpidity.
Its my body reforming itself and trying to be something new.
The pain killer is odd. It works. One of its main uses is for depression! That bothered me because I'm not depressed. They say thats one of it uses but it is used as a muscle relaxant in cases of diabetic muscle pain and chemo related stress pains. On my dosage it wouldn't have much effect in mood elevation.
So it seems the main culprit this time around is diabetes. Not pleasing.
I don't want to go on insulin but the side effects aren't abating rapidly enough. It maybe my only alternative. Work is a drag. I'm still searching for something more appropriate.
I like taking my puppy with me everyday. We're good together. Sadly that is the only thing, other than a paycheck that the job offers me. Its a drudge that wears thin.
My puppy doesn't wear thin, She's large now, a year old in a week! But still a puppy for all that. She makes me smile all the time. She's smart and sometimes her intelligence makes her fret, and sometimes it leads her to be angry.
We get along fine for all that.

Technorati Tags: pets, surf

Posted by David at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Memory Of Morning Past" by Ealeanor There's a new link up at the top, in my version of the side bar. Its the film library thing.
This is broken down into media. Its most of the films I have.
The cast list and the sparse comments are mainly from Amazon or IMBD. The credits are almost totally from IMDB.
The little pix of the posters and things are from all over the place.
Ostensibly when you throw up a list of over 600 movies its to try and get a trade thing happening.
I'm not adverse to that. I'm not selling anything, wouldn't, couldn't, don't care to.
Trading is a mild sort of fun for me and depending on what I'm being asked for the more reasonable I am - meaning if you want one of the films I adore I'm more will to “give away the farm” then if you want something I dislike but still ended up owning.
Right now I've listed the films via media - DivX, Xvid, DVD etc. When I get to about 700 films I'll update the list and sort it via Genre.
I can't quite figure out how to set up an SQL database on all these fields so that you can sort them yourself into any way you feel. Its something I'd like to see so I'll keep working on it.
Presently these are just static HTML pages that are not too pretty to look at.
The main reason for putting it up is that, well, I like to look at other peoples collections of books, movies, music.
Examining a collection always brings you a bit closer, or pushes you a bit further away, to some one.
It gives that glimpse into a person that conversation never fully reveals. Like the collections that are made up of nothing but light pop best sellers, and the collections that focus on Sci-Fi or horror or even classics reveals the interest of the owner and understanding that leads to something.
More than a few times I've been stunned to look through a collection of books and being bored and confounded with the collection then suddenly chancing across a single out of place book that I happened to think was one of the most important ever written.
That lead to conversation and that led to understanding someone else and that is always a good thing. Sadly, I think that my collection only gives the impression that will read, watch and listen to just about anything . . . which is pretty much true.

Technorati Tags: film, fun, movies, archive

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