Life

Well since I posted a blog titled "Death" I figured I should at least make one titled "Life."  It's probably because death, as depressing as it is, has been on my mind quite a bit lately.  I've reached a point in my life where everything is coming together.  I like my job... most days.  I'm making enough money to support all my needs and even a few bucks left over for radom things like action figures and easy bake ovens.  So life's going well.

Life's funny that way.  One moment of life everything is going horribly, horribly wrong and you think there's no point to life at all and then the next moment everything is great.  Of course, getting to the great part after the bad part can take some work but eventually you get there.  I think it's important to focus on that part of life other than the all good things must come to an end part.  And when you're in a rut it's very important to focus on the fact that things will get better instead of thinking that, yeah, things will get better but then they'll only get bad again.  That will just mess you up.  Believe me.

So here's my bit of wisdom for you all.  And I'll admit it kinda sounds like something out of a Lifetime Christmas special, but here it is.  Life sucks.  That's all there is to it.  But there are little moments in life where it doesn't suck so bad where one might even be happy.  So my thoughts are that life is all about the little moments, and yes I realize so many people have said that before.  And every therapist out there will tell you to focus on the positive.  But it is so true.  Negaitivety and anger are two of the worst things out there.  I mean, they can eat you alive, especially if the one person you're truely angry at is yourself and your just directing it everywhere else.

Forgiving and forgetting is a touchy thing too.  Because you can't forget, and more importantly you shouldn't forget.  But then what exactly does forgiving mean?  I guess just to put yourself in the other person's shoes and try to understand.  Maybe what I'm trying to say is not to hold things against people and learn from the past and from your mistakes.

Lastly, just because you think something over, doesn't mean it really is.  Anger can be blinding.  But if it is truely over, don't dwell.  Move on as best you can and still try to live life to its fullest.  Even though there isn't one point to life that everyone can agree to, it's still precious.  I mean, love others and more importantly love youself.  And as cliche as this whole blog is, you've only got one life to live so go out there and cherish each moment of it.  After all, life is about the random little moments stuck in there between all the suck.

My Very Own Little Cone Head

Penny got spayed a few days ago.  I thought about breeding her, but really what am I going to do with a bunch of Corgi puppies?  And besides that I don't really want to deal with the mess of her being in heat and everything.  So I decided it was just better all around to get her fixed.

I felt bad after I dropped her off.  It was like I was abandoning her.  I'm sure after they drugged her up and everything though she didn't even know I was gone.  Everything went as planned and I guess Penny recovered fine and all that.  When she came home though she was so sad and out of it.  I would be too after surgery.  Anyway, the poor thing has to where one of those Elizabethan collars because she keeps licking her stitches.

She's used to the thing now, but when she first got the thing on she kept running into everything.  When the collar would hit the wall or something she'd stop moving too with her head dropped.  And she'd just stand there like then until you'd come get her.  Now she has the hang of it and is running all over the house.  I'm afraid she's going to bust something open, but I've been checking it every day to make sure she hasn't.

Sometimes she's kinda cute with the collar on.   She'll push her toys around the floor with it.  She also pushes snow out of the way with the thing, kinda like a snow plow.  Then she'll flick it up in the air.  At night it's a pain because she likes to sleep with me and night and a platic cone digging into you is not very comfortable.  I can't wait for the two weeks to be up so she can get it off.

We Wish You a Merry Tuba Christmas

Now, I was going to write about this last week, but it slipped my mind.  I haven't actually done as much writting as I'd like to have these past couple months.  I mean what you read in my blog is pretty much it.  There is a story I've been working on, but I haven't written too much for it.  I'm not sure if it's writter's block or just simply not writting.  Anyway... Saturday was Tuba Christmas.

For those of you who don't know, Tuba Christmas is a festival where a bunch of tubas get together and play Christmas songs.  This year was it's thirty-seventh year in existance and it was started by a man named Harvey Phillips.  I'm sad to say that he died recently.  He was one of my heros, even though I didn't know too much about him.  I had a couple of his CDs though and he's one of two famous tuba players that I can actually name.  The other one being Oystein Baadsvik.

So we all gathered together for a quick rehersal- donuts were served before hand during registration- and played through all the music once or twice.  Then we went to the mall and played for an audiece.  I swear, the audience keeps getting bigger each year.  So does the amount of tuba players so I guess that makes sense.  I dressed up all festive like- green and red with a matching elf hat.  Some guy put lights around is baritone, which I was going to do but then I couldn't figure out a way to get them to stay without leaving tape residue.  We all played our merry little tuba hearts out.  It was so much fun.  As you all know, I love playing the tuba.  To be truthful I miss it... a lot.  I can't wait to start playing again next semester.  I guess we're doing a stage show, so that will be great.  I'm excited.

Puppy's First Christmas 2010

I'm sitting here writting my blog with a ridiculous looking, green and red, elf hat that has a bell on the end.  That can only mean one thing.  Christmas is here!  Now, I'll tell you time and time again that my favorite holiday is either April Fool's Day (For me it's a holiday) and Halloween.  But I absolutely love Christmas!  I love all the traditions- decorating the tree while listening to Christmas music, making cookies at papas, finding the angels...

Tonight my mom and I decorated the tree and I got most of my mom's presents wrapped.  There's still one more gift I want to get for under the tree, but I still have plenty of time.  Poor Penny is a little confused.  She was sniffing at the wrapped presents completely unsure of what they are.  There's no way they're going under the tree this year.  They'll just get ripped open and torn into peices.  I guess one year my grandma wrapped some dog treats up and put them under the tree.  When they came home the dog had wripped open everything looking for the treats.  Penny's also eating tinsel.  I'm not sure if she managed to swallow any of it, but I really hope she doesn't get sick or anything.

Penny seems to like winter well enough.  She's so cute in the snow- sniffing it and pushing it around with her nose.  Then she bounces in and out of the snow drifts as her short little legs sink into the snow pile.  I think I'll get her feet some little booties so she can play out in the snow longer.  She seems like she's having so much fun.  I think it would be fun to get all three of them out in the snow together.  I wonder how my Papa would feel about the three of them tearing through his back yard.  It's not like there's a lawn to mess up at this point.

I'm really looking foreward to this holiday season.  I mean, I practically have all my shopping done and now I just have to enjoy all the traditions and the family get togethers.  I'm hoping Penny does fine with the rest of it.  She and Charlee are having fun tearing apart an empty wrapping paper tube at the moment.  As long as it keeps her from opening tinsel.  And as long as she doesn't get into the presents or anything everything should be fine.  Maybe I should go get her picture taken with Santa.

Some Books I Wish I Owned

Here's a list of books I want to own at some point in my life.  The title for this blog was originally "101 Books I Wished I Owned," but I couldn't come up with enough of them.  I suppose if I were to walk through a book store of library I could come up with pletenty though.  I dream of having a room dedicated soely to books sometime in the future, maybe even a couple I've written.  Anyway, some of these books I've owned at one time but lost.  Others have been eaten by dogs, but most I've never owned.  Some I haven't even read.


1. One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest
2. Tom Saywer
3. Huck Fynn
4. The Complete Works of Emily Dikenson
5. Boy Meets Boy
6. Marley and Me
7. Mocking Jay
8. The Uncanny X-men #266
9. Blueberries for Sal
10. Peter Pan
11. Wizard of Oz
12. Patchwork Girl of Oz
13. Idiot: Beating the Curse and Enjoying the Game of Life
14. Letter from Beatrice
15. Mein Kampf
16. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
17. The Outsiders
18. Where the Red Fern Grows
19. Q & A
20. Gone with the Wind
21. Wurthering Heights
22. Eats, Shoots, and Leaves
23. Assholes Finish First
24. The Hounds of Baskerville
25. The Count of Monte Cristo
26. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
27. Falling Up
28. A Light in the Attick
29. The Picture of Dorian Gray
30. Les Miserables
31. Gandhi An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth
32. The Lovely Bones
33. My Sister's Keeper
34. Let it Snow: Three Holiday Romances
35. Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd
36. A Christmas Carol
37. Diary of Anne Frank

Words

I want to write about my blog title for a bit- words.  I believe in the power words, and I think they're more powerful than some realize.  I mean, words can do so much more than simply communicate.  They can hurt, move, pursuad, confuse, inform, inspire, and comfort.  They can create an angry mob.  They can rip deeply into a person's heart if said with anger.  A poet who finds the right words can bring a reader to tears.  I can't possibly count the ammount of times I've cried at a sad moment in a good book.  Sometimes we can't seem to find the right words.  Like when one has to explain to their boss why they were late for three days in a row or even telling the guy who sits next to you in Spainish class that you'd like to go to a movie or something later.

I often think about the marvel of language and how lost the human species would be without it.  It's so easy to share our thoughts and feelings because of language.  How else would we do it though?  There was a time before language existed, and I can't even imagine.  I mean, I think in words.  My brain thinks out complete setences like, Today I need to go to the store, or Why the heck did I do that?  That was stupid.  What do people who've never known language think in?  Pictures?  I'd assume but I guess there's no real way to know for sure.

I did a project for art class one time.  It was a bunch of words written on a piece of paper.  Most of them were random words that popped in my head.  And then on top them with black paint I wrote the words, "JUST WORDS."  I was trying to say that words don't matter out of context.  That a radom word on a piece of paper, taken out of a sentence, is just a bunch of random symbols from the alphabet put together to form syllables.  But I don't believe in that anymore.  A single word can inspire so much.  What comes to mind when you see the word "rose"?  Do you just hear the sounds the letters make?  More than likely not.  I for one picture a rose in my head and then my brain goes to valentine's day and romance.  It's all about the connotation.

I love words.  I love putting them together to tell stories, to poetically describe a sunset or wilting flowers.  To quote George Carlin, "They're my work. They're my play.  They're my passion."  And maybe they're not my work, not yet at least.  But they definitely are my play and my passion.  I keep myself entertained with word- talking with others, laughing at actors in a movie creatively spewing out words, creating.  I keep myself sane with words- journal out the thoughts in my head that keep bumping into each other and clouding my thoughts.  And I think they are my passion, as close I've got to true passion anyway.

The Wonders of Technology Bringing a Family Together

I have what most would consider an untraditional family.  As you probably already know, it was just my mom and I living together throughout most of my childhood.  My dad's lives in New York with his wife, Kathy, and my two younger brothers, Eric and Jon.  I also have a brother named Steaven and a sister named Sarah.  I've never met Sarah, but I'd like to some day.  This year for Christmas I'm making all my siblings something so I'd definitely like to get in touch with her to include her in that.  All of my siblings are my dad's kids so I get to be both an only child and the second oldest of five at the same time.


I don't know too much about my dad's side of the family.  I don't think I've ever even met most of them, at least not in recent memory like after I was two or something.  I'm pretty sure I've met both my dad's parents, and one of his grandparents.  I have one aunt and three uncles on his side, but I've never met any of them to my knowledge.  I could have been around them when I was a baby or something.


Anyway, I love technology.  With the use of facebook, video chat, and cell phones I am getting to know my siblings a lot better.  Turns out we're a whole family of geeks.  They're more of the computer, video game nerdy type though.  I'm more of a comic book band geek sorta person.  But yeah... I love technology.  I'm able to chat with my brothers who live half way across the country.  I got to see my sister-in-law and nephew over a video chat the other day too.  Steaven Jr.'s getting pretty big.  He's so cute and chubby!  I love babies.  It's so nice to catch up with people that I feel so disconnected from.  I hope to get together and see all of them soon.