Out With The Old...And A Half Assed Review Of The Hobbit!

Last night's post was less than inspired...in fact, it was 100% shite.  I can't let 2012 go out like that, so I'm going to end this year with a final post to free my head of clutter...

Before we start with the random unpacking of my mental attic, let's start with a few tangible items I could stand to do with less of:

Water bottles - We have a metric crap ton of water bottles floating around the cupboards of the house.  It seems every time the girls have a soccer or gymnastics camp they receive water bottles.  We also receive water bottles as gifts from time to time...but I also do dumb things like register to receive email updates from various car manufacturers, and my reward for doing so (aside from the emails that flood my inbox) is usually a water bottle.  I'm completely over water bottles and it is time to cull the ones we have.  If interested, let me know...I have a lovely blue Mazda water bottle looking for a home.

Paperwork - I've bitched and moaned about piles of paper at our house...the kids bring home papers, The Better Half has yet to discover paperless statements so every month we are inundated with envelopes containing bank info she never looks over.  We have a filing cabinet in the garage filled with decades of paperwork.  It has to go.  'Important' papers can be saved, archived, etc...but I'd say 90% of what is being saved is outdated and useless at this point. 

Tupperware - A majority of our Tupperware no longer matches, a fact that makes me want to fall down upon my knees and claw at my face in frustration.  At one point, all of our Tupperware (or Rubbermade) containers matched and it was glorious...but some of the lids have gone missing, or we have lids with no containers...or we have containers that I don't remember buying...or we have containers that have just disappeared into thin air.  A Tupperware reckoning is upon us, the misfits must go and a new homogenous regime must move in. 

Tools - I'll admit that I am no handyman.  In fact, I'm downright dangerously incompetent when it comes to most home repairs.  Still, I have a lot of tools, most of which I'll never use.  A majority of the work around the house I've been successful at saw me using nothing more than the occasional screwdriver, vice grips, channel locks, and various types of tape.  Everything else I own is extraneous and rarely, if ever, comes into play...and when it does the results are disastrous at worst, pure amateur hour at best.  Looks like I'll be putting some tools out for the Spring garage sale...and a bunch of Russians will come by and offer no more than $1.00 on everything from Dremel tools to circular saws.

Alright, enough of that...

For 8 1/2 years my family and the fridge have coexisted peacefully.  Oh, there has been the sporadic frozen water dispenser line, but nothing serious.  That has changed in recent days, now the fridge has engaged in outright hostile behavior.  For one reason or another, the temperature inside the fridge swings wildly....once dropping from the recommended 37 degrees to 26 degrees over night.  This caused an 3/4 full bottle of sparking raspberry cider to freeze and explode, showering the fridge with a sticky slush that coated everything...plus, there was glass everywhere.  All of our produce froze as well as the milk.  The freezer has also been acting sporadically, but not to the extremes the fridge side has displayed.

It's a GE Arctic fridge, and less than in-depth online research tells me that the motherboard has gone off the rails.  An inquiry to GE has been submitted to get a quote on the repair, but I don't think it's going to be cheap.  While it may not be as expensive as a new fridge, The Better Half wants to explore the option of buying a new unit as she never really liked the one we have.  She wants to look at ding and dent stores for new models that are counter profile depth and don't flash freeze the produce in fits of fridge rage. 

This would be the second GE appliance to declare war on us, although I was able to wage a fitful peace with the oven using nothing by Hello Kitty post-it notes to keep its motherboard from shorting.  Any recommendations on a fridge would be appreciated, this would be nice, but the MSRP is a wee bit out of our budget.

I took in a viewing of The Hobbit just before Christmas, and aye caramba it is a bloated telling of a story that should not take three films to tell...even two films would be pushing it.  Peter Jackson's decision to turn a 300 page book into 3 films running close to 9 hours is baffling.  This will be the first film trilogy in history that will take longer to watch than to read the book it is based upon. 

The issues with The Hobbit can all be laid at the feet of Jackson.  His reverence for the source material and, well, love of the sound cash registers make, kneecaps this effort.  Jackson is attempting to lay the framework for the Fellowship Of The Ring trilogy, which is pure folly.  George Lucas had a whack at this with his ill-fated and poorly conceived Star Wars prequel trilogy.  The big difference is that Lucas literally had no effing idea how to wedge his 'Vader Redemption' narrative of the prequels into the Original Trilogy, giving the solid impression that he made it all up as he went along.  Jackson has the opposite issue, he wishes to cram every bit of exposition and detail into his Hobbit prequel trilogy, even if the film suffers for it.

Peter Jackson's decision to pad the telling of The Hobbit with events that Tolkien glossed over in the book is absurd.  Certain scenes drag out so long that it feels they were filmed in real time, and the big set pieces reminded me of One Eyed Willie's lair in The Goonies crossbred with Donkey Kong Country and the Temple Of Doom mine car scene. 

The film really only crackles to life during the scene with Bilbo and Gollum, as Gollum is the only character with personality outside of an overarching motive that drives the rest of the characters. 

I just finished a rereading of The Hobbit, and to be honest, I'm kind of dreading the next two film installments.  My fear is that Jackson is going to over tell even more of the story, especially the time the dwarfs are incarcerated by the wood elves....

So That Was Christmas

All of the interior lights are down inside somewhat stately Taylor Manor.  The Dept 56 (and various knockoff) village has been disassembled and placed carefully back within protective styrofoam and cardboard boxes.  The tree is still standing, but stripped of lights and adornments.  It comes down New Year's Day, along with all of the exterior lighting.

In year's past I have always dreaded the way the house looks after all of the festive Christmas decorations are down, but not this year.  I'm not entirely sure why.  Perhaps it was due to the pall cast on the entire holiday when a madman made headlines in Newtown, CT.  I'll be honest, that tragedy took the wind out of my holiday sails and threw me (and The Better Half) for a loop.  Christmas just wasn't Christmas this year...

However, I still enjoyed spending time with my family, having neighbors over for Christmas Eve dinner (even though I was a bit of a wreck the next morning), and watching my kids open presents.  Maddy is clinging to her belief in Santa and we did everything we could to keep that fire burning in her...to the point where she'll be receiving a thank you letter from him sometime this week as she laid out quite the spread for Saint Nick.  Jossy and Katelyn are still true believers, but I'll be shocked if either of them is still believing in Santa at age 9.  We'll see, I'll play it up even when they stop believing, if only for myself. 

So, now there is New Year's to look forward to...and a couple of weeks after that my birthday.  Not that my birthday is a national holiday (yet!), but it is kind of important...at least to me.  Unlike year's past, I don't really plan on making any resolutions because I really, really suck at sticking to them.  In fact, I'm really bad at goals altogether.  I despise making plans or lists to the point that I feel I subconsciously derail them out of spite.  Therefore, no resolutions or goals this year...but themes.  That's right, I'm moving forward with an overarching theme for this next year.  That theme will be 'less is more'. 

Last year I set some very aggressive writing goals for myself and choked harder than Tony Romo in a big game.  Not one goal I set was met with anything remotely within the same zip code as success.  In fact, I regressed as a writer, my vocabulary dwindling to the point I made Hemingway seem verbose.  A 100 word vocab may work for a two year old (or Hemingway), but let's be honest, I've been downright boring lately.  Rather than set out to write the great American novel this year, I just want to be create something each day that I feel good about...be it a blog post, tweet, or something on Facebook (although quitting FB might be in the cards as well, it angers up the blood and muddies the water).  We'll see if this sparks something...

Luckily, I've already adopted the 'less is more' when it comes to working out and diet.  I lost a good deal of weight before our Disney trip over the summer, but it all came back with a vengeance in a hurry.  Over the last 8 weeks or so I stopped with the crazy dieting and over the top workouts, scaling both of them back.  Being closer to 50 than 30 has forced me to listen to my body more, especially my joints.  Having to accept certain limitations due to arthritic knees wasn't easy, but had to be done.  Since doing so I've actually been able to exercise more effectively, I've dropped a few more pounds and about an inch from the waist...even better, I'm off my blood pressure medication. 

The Stuff Reduction goal of the past several years has been nothing short of a tragedy as well.  I seem to sabotage myself quite a bit on that one.  However, we all become slaves to our stuff...car payments, mortgages, cable bills, phones...it all has become too much and taking a step back and downsizing is a theme as well...

I hope you all had a great Christmas, share anything you would like in the comments about changes you hope to make in the new year....

What's The Answer?

The news of the school shooting today became more horrific as the day went on.  I'm not going to rehash it here.  I cannot imagine what the parents of the victims are experiencing, but I hope that they grieve and heal the best that they can.

What happened in Connecticut was nothing short of evil, it was planned out and executed with chilling efficiency.  After every one of these maddening and senseless acts, perpetrated by cowards that usually kill themselves rather than face the consequences of their actions, a raging debate about gun control ensues...and both sides of that argument need to take a step back and ask themselves some questions that I doubt they have answers to.

For those of you that advocate for the right of private citizens to own firearms, where do you draw the line?  Does the Constitution guarantee the right for citizens to own fully automatic or semi-automatic weapons?  Should we arm every teacher in America or post armed guards within every school?  Is an armed society truly a 'polite' society?  Give me one good reason as to why purchasing a handgun is easier than say, buying a leather couch from a big box furniture store...and by that I mean I've had to wait up to 8 weeks in the past to receive a couch I've purchased, but I can go to Walmart or Big 5 right now and walk out with a shotgun or wait a few days for my background check to clear before receiving a pistol.  Does the Constitution grant me the right to own a bazooka, or RPGs?  Do you honestly believe that if more citizens were packing a Glock or six-shooter that mass murders like the one that took place today would be less common?   

For those of you that would like to see firearms removed from the hands of private citizens...how do you propose we do that?  Should the government go door to door and search every home in America and remove these guns?  All can agree that the mentally ill or unstable should not have access to firearms, how do you propose we keep this from happening?  Should the mentally ill be required to register once diagnosed, and does that not open another can of worms?  How difficult should it be to purchase a firearm, impossible?  Should there be a 30 day wait from moment of purchase to ownership...45 days...?  Do you also wish to outlaw hunters from owning rifles, and if so, how do we manage the population of wild game?  What, in your mind, constitutes an 'assault rifle'?  If I strike you with a shoe horn, is that now an assault shoe horn?  Connecticut has some of the toughest gun laws in the United States and politically leans left, but today's shooter walked right through those laws and into a gun-free zoned school...what could the local and state government done differently?  Should schools be on lock down mode at all times now?   

Full-disclosure:  I'm an NRA member as The Better Half's father purchased me a lifetime membership a few years back.  With that said, I never would have purchased myself a membership as I find NRA leadership and some of their positions on firearms idiotic at times.  However, I find the views of the anti-gun lobby just as inane and idiotic.  Neither side has cornered the market on common sense.

I asked the questions above because I feel they need to be answered honestly by both sides of the argument. While we are at it I feel we need to drag the medical and mental health providers to the carpet as well.  What did the Columbine shooters, the Norway killer, and the Aurora theater psychopath all have in common besides access to firearms?  All three were at one time or another on psychotropic medications to treat various mental disorders.  That's another discussion altogether, but one we need to have as a nation.  We are quick to ask for meds for everything from anxiety to depression to hyperactivity for kids, yet never wonder what happens when these kids grow up and become adults...and stop taking their meds.  What side-effects do these medications unleash on those taking them?

This is a nation of 300 million plus human beings, meaning today may have just have been an unthinkable six-sigma event.  Societies that have outlawed and banned the ownership of firearms by private citizens still deal with deranged individuals that find ways to inflict harm and pain.  Since 2010 there have been numerous attacks by knife wielding lunatics in and around schools in China, 27 people have died and over 80 injured...and that's not counting the attack yesterday at a kindergarten. Evil finds a way, terrible things happen, and as the population increases and people live longer certain individuals are out there that shouldn't be.  Unfortunately, we don't know who those people are until something incredibly sad, tragic, and senseless occurs.

I hope our prayers bring comfort to those grieving tonight, but we also owe those same families some sensible solutions to the questions that arise after these kinds of tragedies.        

Top 5 Non-Christmas Songs That Remind Me Of Christmas

A couple of years ago I posted my Top 5 Christmas Songs, with number one being 'The Little Drummer Boy'.  You can read that borderline emotionally manipulative post here if you so desire.  This year's Top 5 Christmas Song list is a little different, mainly because none of the songs are actually Christmas songs...but they remind me of Christmas seasons from my past...

1.  (Just Like) Starting Over - John Lennon:  This one is kind of a no-brainer.  John Lennon was murdered Dec 8, 1980, not too long after this song was released as the 'comeback' single off his first new album in five years.  This song was ubiquitous that holiday season as the world mourned the loss of a rock & roll icon.  Christmas 1980 was the first Christmas we spent in Washington, having moved to Bremerton from El Paso, TX via Jacksonville, FL via Montclair, CA.  I was attending my 10th different school in 5 years and became a very angst ridden and introspective 10 year old.  Being the new kid all the time takes a toll, but that's a different post for a different day.  Anyhoo, that Christmas was when I really began seriously listening to music.  FM radio was inundated with Lennon tributes, Solid Gold took as somber a tone as a show featuring Solid Gold Dancers in gold lame leotards could pull off when '(Just Like)Starting Over' was played during their weekly countdown, and I dug into my dad's awesome reel-to-reel collection of Beatles, Stones, Moody Blues, Hendrix, and Zeppelin albums...I never did understand his affinity for Jethro Tull, however.  This song, though, always reminds me of that Christmas as my mom and dad did their best to help us adjust to a new house/school, I saw snow in our yard for the first time ever, and we would all huddle around the fireplace listening to music as a family.

2.  Major Tom - Peter Schilling:  I still love this song, it's so antiseptic and cold and clinical...it's 80's music boiled down to its synthesized essence.  Oh, yeah...but Christmas.    This song was released October, 1983 but really didn't take off on radio until late November and into December.  Whatever station 101.5 and 93.3 were called back then had this song in heavy, heavy rotation.  By December of 1983 we had moved from Bremerton to Port Orchard, WA and I was attending Marcus Whitman Junior High, my 13th school in 8 years (my bouncing around schools and school districts came to an end in 1983 year, South Kitsap HS was the 14th school I attended by the time I hit 10th grade).  As stated earlier, all of that moving kind of effed with me and I managed to become even more introverted and had no personality whatsoever.  I wasn't so much shy as I was completely unsure of myself and how I fit in.  Money for the family was also a little tight that Christmas so I spent lots of nights worrying about stuff a soon to be 13 year old shouldn't be worrying about.  I listened to the radio in my room a lot, and this song would come on at least twice before I'd finally get to sleep.  Christmas that year turned out fine, but this tune and that keyboard riff always takes me back to my small room in that small house back in Port Orchard.

3.  We Didn't Start The Fire - Billy Joel:  I actually liked this song when it first came out, buying the cassingle before the full album was released.  However, I grew to despise it because I couldn't get away from this song leading up to Christmas 1989...it was everywhere.  Unfortunately, I was not everywhere.  I was still recovering from major reconstructive knee surgery, holed up in my dorm room at Edwards, AFB California.  My actual surgery was in July of that year, but remember that this was 22 years ago.  I tore my ACL, MCL, and medial meniscus playing basketball in Biloxi, MS that Spring and went a few months before an Air Force orthopedic surgeon was found that could handle my injury.  While the doctor that put my knee back together didn't use a hack saw or give me a shot of bourbon and a stick to bite down as he flayed my leg open, it was close.  My recovery and rehab was slow going and I developed a certain fondness for Vicodin and rum as I didn't have a whole lot to do.  One night I took one too many Vicodin or washed it down with too much Bacardi and got all kinds of itchy and rashy.  Not good times.  As Christmas rolled around I didn't have the money to fly home, but I really didn't want to spend it in the California high desert doing my best Gram Parsons impression.  So, I asked for some time off, hopped in my ridiculous 1988 Subaru Justy (basically a go-cart with a windscreen and roof), and made the drive back home.  On the way out of town I stopped and picked up Billy Joel's 'Storm Front' and listened to it over and over again while hopped up on Vivarin and Mountain Dew and trying like hell to keep my Subaru between the ditches as I drove over the snowy Siskiyou Mountains in Northern California...

4.  Helpless - Sugar:  In December of 1993 I was living in a house with 3 other guys in Wedgwood.  We spent a lot of nights at the Wedgwood Ale House drinking Snow Cap, eating $2.00 baskets of fries, and then going home, blazing up, and listening to music or playing guitar.  Good times.  Husker Du was not a band I was terribly fond of, and although I owned Candy Apple Grey it was more out of a sense of obligation to bone up my indie rock cred, but I loved Sugar.  Bob Mould decided that burying the melody behind a wall of distortion wasn't such a great idea (portions of the Sugar 'Beaster' EP do delve into astounding moments of sonic what the f*ckery from time to time though) and recorded tunes that had actual hooks.  'Helpless' was one of those songs.  When it pops up on my playlist I always fondly remember those crazy Wedgwood house days and nights...

5.  Under Smithsville - For Squirrels:  I doubt too many people remember the band For Squirrels.  I think I may have been one of their bigger fans outside of the Gainesville, FL area.  I used to listen to this song quite a bit during the winter months of 1995.  At the time, I was living just south of Everett.  A huge windstorm ripped through the area in early December and I was without power for a couple of days.  All I had was a Discman and a bunch of batteries I took from work.  One of the albums I listened to at night as I fell asleep was Example, especially the song 'Under Smithsville'.  Looking back, it's not a particularly great song as it tries really hard to sound like Life's Rich Pageant era REM, but there is a real feeling of genuineness to it...the writer definitely had someone in mind when he wrote it.  I had someone in mind as I listened to it.  Now, it just reminds me of shopping for gifts while being surrounded by a throng of people at Alderwood Mall, that windstorm, and dark nights spent listening to a band that would fade into obscurity...

So, there you have it...my Top 5 Non-Christmas Songs That Remind Me Of Christmas.  Someday I will expand on each of these songs as there are definitely more stories to tell...especially around 'Helpless'.  That song indirectly set off a chain of events that saw me enter an emotional maelstrom in October of 1994 and come out an emotional cripple by that Christmas...

Mamba, out!       

Under Pressure

I've been living with high blood pressure for the last four years.  At one point it rang up something absurd like 192/110, which freaked the piss out of my doctor and put a real scare into me...especially when he said that if I didn't make some changes a catastrophic stroke was imminent.  He put me on lisinopril and I almost immediately developed the dreaded lisinopril cough.  While the medication worked great and kept my BP from redlining, I was hacking like Doc Holliday minus the six-shooters and pithy one-liners.  So, he tried a couple of others and we finally settled in on metoprolol which worked just fine.  He also recommended that I stop being so sedentary (actually he said I needed to 'get my ass to the track', my doc is kind of blunt).

I didn't get serious about working out and watching my diet until spring of this year.  That's when I began running at least three times a week, using the goofy eliptical trainer when my knees acted up.  By the end of this summer I was stringing four 10 minute miles together, once even knocking out three miles in 26:45...and I say once because my knees were screaming at me for a few days after that one.  Lately, I've been incorporating some crossfit into my workouts just to kind of mix things up.  The results?  I'm down about 12 lbs from my all time high (which we aren't going to talk about).  But wait, there's more...

In August, I ran out of metoprolol and never went back to get my prescription renewed.  That was kind of a dumb thing to do because you aren't supposed to just quit blood pressure meds cold turkey like it was smack or meth or model airplane glue...your advised to cut back on the dosage to give your body a chance to gradually adapt to not having the medication around to regulate whatever it is supposed to regulate.  This past Friday I finally made the time to go in to get my prescription renewed...and a funny thing happened.  My blood pressure reading, completely off of medication for almost 90 days, came in at 128/80, well within normal range.  To call me pleasantly surprised would be an understatement, especially after my doctor said I had essentially cured my hypertension...

Now, I'm not completely out of the woods yet.  I still have to get my BP checked regularly and I can't go buying salt licks to dip in my coffee, but I'm feeling pretty good about things.  Now I just have to keep up on the working out and avoiding the sodium bomb lunches at Uwajimaya....and losing about another 30 pounds.