Winter. I seldom if ever complain about the season. I like the cold. I find it to be a refreshing change of pace from the sticky humidity of summer. Plus it seems natural to me to have the seasons change. I can not imagine living in a place where the temperature is almost a constant and there is no snow. Yes, my lips may get chapped and my fingers numbed from time to time, but overall I like the winter months. Now having said the positives, I will admit that there is a negative. Driving on snow covered roads at night is not a fun time.
Last night we had expected to see snow coming down as we left the theater. As we exited the underground parking structure that was not the case, so we decided to stop and eat something at a favorite restaurant of ours. Then as we were waiting for the check to arrive we could see the flakes filling the sky. Sigh. We had lingered too long. At first there was little to no trouble making our way home. Oh, there were the arrogant in their trucks speeding by, but we were in no hurry to reach our destination. All that waited for us at home was bed and maybe a movie. Then maybe three miles from home it happened. Rounding a curve my tire slipped off of the snow covered paved road onto the ice covered gravel. The immediate change in traction caused my car to lurch violently and soon I was swerving forward instead of driving. It was not a pleasant ride, but thankfully it did not last long as I spun around and ended up facing the other direction in the ditch.
I was fine. Yes, adrenaline was pumping through my body, but I was unharmed. If anything I was angry. In my twenty plus years of driving, this was the second time that I had ever lost control of my car on snow. The first time had occurred while I was in an altered state and cured me of ever driving that way again. Now a more mature driver in a clear state of mind, I had somehow repeated something that I did not want to repeat. Unlike that other time in the past, I did not have to run to a friends house for help. She had been behind me in her car and saw the whole thing happen. Sadly even with her help there was no way that we could free the car from its newly formed snow bank prison.
Even after returning with a shovel and trying to give the tires something to grip, the car was not going anywhere. With frozen snow firmly lodged under the front axle and a rear tire off the ground, the car wheels did nothing but spin. A tow truck was needed and called. A mere thirty seconds under the power of the winch and one hundred five dollars later, I was free to drive home. It was not how I wanted the night to end.
Before I left work this morning, my final hour was spent having a formal review with my boss. This is the first formal review that I have had in three years. During that intervening time, once a year my boss would speak with me for about five minutes, shake my hand and hand me a sheet with my new salary on it. That process of review never bothered me and I liked having it that way. Now a new company wide policy has come into effect where everyone is to be reviewed at the same time and use a certain form. I had mixed feelings about this idea, but overall the new process was painless. Basically I was told that I do my job well, but am too quiet and could do it better. Plus I need to offer more suggestions on how we could improve the department. I responded by tactfully saying that I do make suggestions, but that seem to go unheard. I was told that changes will be made very soon. We will see what happens in the coming months.
A couple weeks back, my brother sent me his list of favorite songs. It took me a while to create my list, but here is what surfaced in the wee hours of the morning. There is no set order of preference and I suspect that this grouping will change by the end of the month, but for now it exists as so.
Morrissey - Everyday is Like Sunday
The Killers - All These Things That I've Done
The Shins - New Slang
The Beatles - Mean Mr Mustard / Polythene Pam / She Came in Through the Bathroom Window
U2 - Gloria
Oasis - Champagne Supernova
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
Cowboy Junkies - Black Eyed Man
Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Lucky Man
Jack's Mannequin - Miss Delaney
Smashing Pumpkins - Drown
Led Zeppelin - Over the Hills and Far Away
I spent about an hour online reading about the evolution of the Abbey Road album by The Beatles and I am still impressed by what those four Englishmen did together even when they could not stand one another.
I had two informal goals for this year. One of them was to read more than a book every couple of months and the second was to exercise more than I usually do. Of those two goals, I seem to be about two thirds of the way on both of them. I read a book in January and immediately started another one for February, but sabotaged my momentum on the second book by leaving it at work this week. Sigh. So to compensate for this mistake I started another book from my pile at home. I chose Mark Helprin's book Winter's Tale. The title alone made it an appropriate choice in my mind. Snow can still be measured in feet instead of inches outside and above the freezing mark on the thermometer has not been a reality in a while. Now a mere forty pages into the book, I have to say that I made a good choice. I like the overall cadence of the book and it reminds me how well the English language can be used to describe people and places.
Back to the exercise front, I tend to better at keeping my routine when I am at work than at home. Having easy access to a room full of exercise equipment is better for me than doing something more basic at home. I need to work on that side of the task more than I have so far this year if I want to increase my weekly days of exercise from three to five.
I have yet to be disappointed by Lost this season. Unlike other people who like the program, I do not search the web looking for clues. Nor do I seek out any rumors and or discussions on as to what might happen next. I am content to let the story unfold from week to week. Instant gratification is not a vice of mine.
Having watched about four episodes of the anime series Eureka 7, I have come to the conclusion that season four might not be the best place to start with a program. I like what I have seen, but I have many questions. Plus the frenetic action of Eureka 7 seems almost silly in comparison to the internal monologues of Ergo Proxy, where an entire episode took place inside the mind of one character. I find Re-L to be of the best characters anime characters ever and am very curious as to how her story will come to an end.
My monthly shipment from Mile High Comics arrived in the mail yesterday and inside said package was the final issue of Y The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. Now having read it, I have to say that I was satisfied with the ending. Various threads from the story were tied up and final farewells were said to key characters. Said issue contained a few more deaths, but they were offstage and that was fine with me. Personally, I do not think that there was any way the book could have hit me harder than when 355 died. Reading the issue where she was shot and killed almost made me cry. It was that emotional of a moment and I truly felt for Yorick.
For years the story of the last man on Earth and his adventures around the world was one of the first titles that I read each month. I will miss his humor and pop culture references. I will miss his interaction with women from around the globe, some of who hate him, some of who fear him and a few who love him. The book could not have been better written and drawn. Brian and Pia gave so much of themselves in the book and I thank them for their efforts.
Yesterday I wrote out a large check to cover the cost of the bridge loan that I took out last fall to act as down payment on my current residence. I knew that it was coming, but still does not eliminate the fact that paying two mortgages at the same time is not an ideal situation. Besides writing the check, I also stopped by at my former dwelling place to make sure that all looked well after the most recent showing on Saturday. It did. It also looked sad being cold and empty. One might even say neglected, but not too severely. It was just empty not abused in any way. I enjoyed the six years that I lived there and hope that the next person who buys it will appreciate the place as much as I did.
Having completed three of the six discs in the series, I am seriously considering purchasing the set of the anime series Ergo Proxy. I love the characters of Vincent, Re-L and Pino. The three of them together are a very interesting group of personalties and I would enjoy seeing the series multiple times to see what clues I missed on earlier viewings. Now my only concern is that the ending will disappoint me somehow.
Another quiet night at work has come to an end and I could not be happier about it. Now my concern is the return trip back into work tonight. At the moment a steady rain is coming down and flooding the streets. With the ground frozen and snow blocking sewer drains there is little place for it to go. Then later this evening the rain is supposed to shift over to snow. So I suspect that there will be ice covered roads with snow to obscure my vision as I make my way. I would prefer to stay home.
Even though I have two discs of the anime series Ergo Proxy to watch I enjoyed two episodes of Full Metal Panic at work. I enjoyed every minute of Panic and want to see more as soon as I can. Streaming video is a wonderful thing.
I can not remember when I first came into contact with the world of Flash Gordon, but something about it appealed to me. Maybe it was the odd spaceships that flew the skies of Mongo that caught my attention. Maybe it was the look of Ming himself that made me watch these grainy black and white serials that aired on a local channel here years ago. What I do know is that the Sci-Fi Channel has tweaked the story just enough to make it live again in the twenty first century.
The people behind this new incarnation did away with the bottle shaped spaceships that buzzed at they flew and created rifts instead to connect the Earth to a foreign planet. That change was easy enough to accept. Next they gave Flash a different reason for going to Mongo. He was searching for his father. Once again this change was fine with me. Plus I liked the addition of a female warrior named Baylin into the core group of characters.
So with all of these positives going for the program, it was sad to watch the season finale yesterday. It ended better than most television programs end. Many plot threads were ended giving it a satisfying conclusion in case there is no second season and also left more than enough room for a second season.
After being disappointed by the goofy Coyote Ragtime Show, I have to say that I am very impressed with the anime series Ergo Proxy. A mere four episodes into the story, the title has quickly shot to the top of my favorites list. There are so many strengths to the series that I am not sure where to begin. First of all, instead of a whiny adolescent male protagonist, we are given a sarcastic female lead who is quite likable. Then there is the overall look of the animation itself that I love. There are shades of blue and grey everywhere, yet I can still see what is happening. Finally, the influence of the movie Blade Runner can be seen with human looking androids caught up in a mystery.
Rather than going to bed immediately after work yesterday morning, I spent some time on the couch watching some anime. On my DVR list of recorded programs, I had three episodes of Bleach and two episodes of Eureka 7 as viewing options. I decided to start with Bleach and move on to Eureka afterwards if I did not get too tired.
Now having seen some more of Bleach, I have to admit that it is starting to grow on me. Then again I probably should not have jumped to a conclusion about a series that has over a hundred episodes after seeing merely two of them. Yes, there are long fight sequences in Bleach, but there does seem to more story and characterization than what I saw in the other two episodes.
Lately I have been contemplating canceling my Netflix subscription. I like the service and the new unlimited streaming option is nice, but at the same time, I have to realize that I can watch a large quantity of anime online for free. Anime makes up a third of my viewing queue. The other two thirds are foreign films and documentaries. So with that in mind, I start to ask myself are foreign films and documentaries enough to keep the subscription? Maybe I am coming at it from the wrong angle.
February has gotten off to a great start on the exercise front and I want that trend to continue for the remainder of the month.
The Killers are still in heavy rotation for me and I think to myself why I always seem to be a few years behind the wave of what is good when it comes to music. I guess that that is another sign of me getting old. Plus I no longer feel the need to buy as music as I did when I was in my twenties. What I also find interesting is that when I look at the music portion of my Amazon wish list, half of what is there is classical music. With a mere two years of piano lessons twenty years ago, I can not say that I fully understand music, but I find the lure of classical music to be more than soothing.
Lately all that I seem to do is complain about time or my lack of it. Weekends rush by and I never seem to get done what I want to get done. Then I try to find time to relax when I am not stressing out over trying to get things done. The phrase vicious cycle might apply.
Since Tuesday I managed to do the following:
During an hour of quiet time, I made some more progress on the novel The Amber Spyglass. After for what for me seemed like too long of an absence, Iorek king of the bears has surfaced again in the story. He was missed by me and I am eager to see him take a larger role as he joins Will in the search for Lyra. Some more interaction with the icy Miss Coulter would also be nice and with four hundred pages left in the book, I have no doubt that that will happen at some time.
I watched eight episodes of the anime series Coyote Ragtime Show only to discover that Netflix does not have the third disc that has episodes nine through twelve on it. Sigh. Maybe I should have done more preliminary reading before I rented the series and was left hanging. It was not the best series that I have ever seen, but not being able to see the end did anger me slightly. I can see why there were some comparisons to Cowboy Bebop, but at the same time, I liked the characters in Cowboy Bebop more than any of the cast of Coyote Ragtime.
Well over a month since Christmas ended, I finally took the tree down this Wednesday. The tree itself was very dry, but didn’t create that big of a mess as I lowered it over the deck to the ground below. Then in the midst of a winter whiteout, I walked the tree across the street into the woods in the hope that no one saw me do said act. As far as I know where I left the tree is property where no one lives so an abandoned tree should not cause any problems. Plus I am hoping that it stays buried until spring and then as everything around it starts to turn green it will slowly decay and rot back into the ground. My primary reason for disposing of the tree in such a way is that from what I understand there is no tree pickup service where I live and I was not about to stuff a tree with loose needles into the trunk of my car to be carried elsewhere.
The five part series How Art Made the World filled my head with a variety of theories that almost overwhelmed me. It was the most information that has been sent my way in a long time. Where else would I encounter Gilgamesh, Trajan’s Column and Aboriginal paintings in the same conversation? Yes, there was a theme tying those three elements together, but it was connection that I never would have made on my own. All three of those things are forms of storytelling to an illiterate audience and in a way a true precursor to modern film making.
I agree with other reviews that said that the three episodes on disc one were more compelling than the two on the second disc, but overall I really liked the series and was amazed at all of ways that art shapes society. Episode one started with paintings found inside the caves at Altamira and ended with hilltop sanctuary in Turkey called Göbekli Tepe. The cave paintings were known to me, but the site in Turkey was a Middle Eastern version of Stonehenge so to speak, but without any astronomical connection as far as I understand. I could be wrong on that last point though.
Having almost reached the end of the mutant crossover event The Messiah Complex, I am ready to abandon every title involved. I like Mike Carey and adore the art of Chris Bachalo, but the two of them can not keep me reading X-Men. Plus from what I have seen online, Bachalo is leaving soon. Besides if I need some Carey writing in my life, I can always dive into his Vertigo book Crossing Midnight. Then over in X-Factor, Peter David has made me care about his cast of characters, but they are getting lost in the bigger picture that Marvel is shoving down the throats of their audience. I find it to be very off-putting, which is not their intention I suspect.
I sampled the first two albums by The Killers and am amazed that such good music came from an American band. Yes, I like The Shins, but their sound is so mild compared to the force and impact of The Killers. The songs Smile Like You Mean It and Read My Mind are both in heavy rotation for me.
