Create Every Day

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks.

Two weekends ago, I went up to Mammoth Ski Area with a couple of friends from work.  I had two great days of snowboarding.  After being totally worn out on the first day by the two skiers I was with, I decided to take a couple of runs through the terrain park to work a few different muscles.  I had a couple of pretty good runs – some good jumps, a few spills, but nothing major.  I hit a couple of the boxes and other metal features, and was doing pretty well overall.  On the third (and last) run through the park I decided to do something different on the very last box.  I decided to ride across diagonally from the toe side and drop off the side of the box.  (I usually go heal-side if I’m riding across a box.)  Everything was set and ready to go coming into the jump.  That is, until I forgot to actually hop up onto the box.

Having failed to clear the initial hurdle, my front edge slammed into the side of the box, and I pitched forward over the plastic.  With my toes caught on one side, I my shins smacked into the opposing rail on the way down, leaving a matched pair of cuts right above my boot tops.  Blech.  Finishing the move with a shoulder-first body slam into the ground didn’t help, either.  Luckily, the fall didn’t hurt all that bad, and the cuts are healing well.  I’m going to have some nice scars, but I wasn’t winning no beauty contests to start with.

The work week following was relatively quiet, but on Thursday Dore and I flew to Utah to meet up with my family to go skiing.  (Eric is working at Snowbird Ski Area as one of the tram operators.)  I managed to get through the first day relatively unscathed.  The second day, however, I managed to pull my tricep slightly on one of the few powder runs of the day.  Maybe I shouldn’t try tree runs though heavy tracked powder without being warmed up first.  Maybe.  Fortunately the pull wasn’t bad, and my arm was functional, if very sore, the next day.

On the third day I wasn’t quite so lucky, however.  It was a heavy powder day, and I should have known better than to try a 360 off of a road jump on skis.  (Note to self: seriously, stop trying that…)  I made it around, but the deep, choppy powder grabbed my skis, ripping one off.  I did a three-quarter forward bouncing somersault over the front of my remaining ski and landed flat on on my bum in a soft, poofy pile of powder.  All was well, until I tried to move and realized that my quad was burning.  (My right quad, oddly, just like my tricep.)  Good news: Skiing didn’t seem to affect my leg.  Bad news: Walking does hurt quite a bit.  Guess which one I do more often?  Bummer…

Oh well, it should heal in a couple of weeks, provided I stop running on it (I’m looking at you, kickball).

And speaking of kickball…

Our game this last week didn’t go so well at all.  I did manage to score one run in the first inning, but the other team was good, and got us out fairly quickly.  When they got to kick it was obvious that they were not just good, but really good.  We finally got two outs, and I was just waiting to get the third out to finish out the inning.  I finally got my chance on a short fly ball right up the middle of the field.  I ran as hard as I could, and all I could think about was getting that out.  As I dove for the ball, it crossed my mind that it was odd that the pitcher wasn’t turning away from his attempt to catch the ball.  And then came the stars.

In the grand scheme of things, there are some great truths.  E = mc^2.  Paper covers rock.  Knee is harder than face.  In the name of science, I took on the task of reverifying the latter.  And I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it is 100% true. I have the thirteen stitches to prove it.  And a pair of broken glasses.

As I rode to the emergency room with an impromptu friend, I couldn’t help but wonder: Who would have guessed that after seven days of hard skiing and snowboarding that kickball would have been the thing that did me in?  But there you have it.

So yeah… it’s been a rough two weeks.  I’m quite ready to take a break from my vacations and get back to some nice, solid, dependable tedium.

This last weekend was very busy for Dore and I.  On Friday night we had some friends over for a grand Belgian Beer Fest!  We made fresh giant pretzels, potato and sausage stew, and tried out a ton of different Belgian beers.  All in all it was awesome.  I have to brag: I make a mean pretzel (well, Dore made the dough and I cooked the pretzels).

On Saturday we slept in nice and late.  We finally got up and went out to breakfast/lunch at IHOP.  Later in the afternoon we met up with our friend Lauren, who took us to a park out on Ellwood Mesa to see the monarch butterflies.  It is pretty late in the season, but there were still a ton of butterflies in the eucalyptus trees.  The park goes all the way out to the bluffs, so we walked out there and found a path down to the beach.  We arrived on the beach right as the sunlight was getting low and orange.  It was really beautiful.  There was an old weathered wooden breakwater fence on the beach that stretched for hundreds of yards.  The light was hitting it at a low angle, which made the texture of the wood stand out fantastically.  I was really having a good time taking photos.  I posted some of my photos on my Picasa page.

On Sunday, we met up with our friends Maria and Matt and went for a hike on the Jesusita Trail, which goes up into the foothills above Santa Barbara.  We made a couple of wrong turns along the way.  At one point we ended up at a fence with a sign that read, “You are already way too far from the trail.  Please respect private property.” (In case you coudn’t gather, California trails tend to have tons of offshoots with no markings.)  Sadly the sign did not actually tell us how to find the real trail. Finally, after much searching and reproachful looks from Dore we found the right trail and continued on our way.

We stopped after a while and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  Oddly, it turned out that Maria and Matt and Dore and I had independently brought the same snack.  Apparently peanut butter and jelly is the perfect trail snack.  Hunger satisfied, we decided that we had had enough hiking for the day, and headed back down to the car.

When we got back to town we decided to reward ourselves with a meal at Dargain’s, an awesome Irish Pub downtown.  It was really nice walking down State street in the sun, and we all had a very nice time.

When Dore and I finally made it home, we were both exhausted, and dropped down for a nap almost immediately.  We got up after a while and lazed around the house for the rest of the evening.

Dore and I spent the weekend up at her mom’s house in Los Osos.  On Saturday we went shopping in San Luis Obispo.  I needed some new pants, so we hit up Gottschalks first.  I found a nice comfortable pair of jeans that were on decent sale and a really nice shirt that was 70% off.  (Of course, retail on the shirt was ridiculous, so in the end it was just a decent price.  But it does look really nice, so I’m happy.)

After Gottschalks we headed over to BevMo to check it out.  We had never been in one, and were interested.  For those not in the know, BevMo is a beverage outlet store.  And by beverage I mean booze.  And root beer.  We weren’t meaning to buy anything, but they had some great selections.  We found:

• Moose Drool (from Missoula, Montana!)
• Franziskaner Dunkel Weissbier (my absolute favorite beer during the time Eric and I spent in Europe)
• A host of Belgian selections

We ended up getting about seven different bottles of Belgian ale.  But we are planning on having a Belgian beer fest at our place next weekend, so technically we were just getting party supplies. 🙂

After BevMo we went next door to Costco to pick up some samples to tide us over until we could find some real food.  We didn’t really see anything there that interested us (although we had a lovely tomato soup that I’ll look for next time) so we headed out.  We decided that we really did want some Belgian beers, so we went downtown and hit up our new favorite restaurant: Bel Frites.  They serve two things: Belgian beer and Belgian-style fries (with dipping sauces).  They are both excellent.

Our hunger and thirst satisfied, Dore and I walk around downtown to settle everthing.  We headed over to Ross, where I managed to find another pair of jeans and a couple of pairs of nice dressy shoes.  I desparately needed something nicer than my dirty old tennis shoes to wear to work, so I was glad to find these ones.

We finally hit our shopping limit and headed back to Dore’s mom’s house to make spaghetti for dinner and wind down.

Sunday we went downtown again and walked around, but we didn’t really do too much.  We headed home in the afternoon and made an awesome chinese food dinner from Trader Joes — home of the best frozen food aisle on the planet.

I saw a great commercial this evening about clean coal.  Just watch it… it’s hilarious.  And no wonder: it’s directed by the Coen brothers.

This past week I started playing with Google’s Sketchup program.  In a nutshell, it lets you draw 3d models in a quick, simple, and extremely intuitive manner.  I found the program to be immediately accessible, and within an hour or so of playing with it I had managed to sketch up a reasonable representation of our kitchen bar area.  (It’s not a simple thing, either — lots of ins and outs and a few odd angles.)  The next day I took on a bit more challenging project: drafting up a digital copy of my Holga.  It actually actually came out pretty well.  I’ll try to upload shots later when I feel better.  For now… on to another post.

Steven King should write an autobiography that ends with him mysteriously going missing, and then actually go missing.  Sort of a self-fulfilling prophesy thing.  I figure he’s got the creativity and money to pull that off pretty well, and it would be one heck of an autobiography.  I might even buy a copy.

Dore and I were down for the count at the end of this week with a couple of nasty colds.  Congestion, coughs, fever, chills… pretty much the whole works.  We alternated between napping, watching TV, and trying to find things that we could eat around the house.

We’re just starting to feel a bit better, but this weekend is going to be mostly about recovering.

TODO: Write a book about a character in some situation. Modern day society fiction about some guy just trying to get by. He more or less succeeds in whatever it is that he’s up to, but slightly odd things happen to him from time to time. These start to bother him more and more, until he finally can’t think of anything but what is going on. He starts to notice that even things he wasn’t previously bothered by seem to have a sinister undertone. The man at the grocery store checkout glares at him as he is leaving.  The cashier smirks and bobs his head in a condescending way.  The room spins.  And then suddenly he steps outside and everything seems back to normal.  The sun is shining, a bird flies by.  Cars start driving as the stop light turns green.  For the moment, he’s just a guy standing in a store parking lot.  Chest pounding, he takes a deep shaky breath.  And chuckles to himself.  All in my head, he thinks.  I need to get some rest — I’ve been working too hard.  He begins to walk home with his groceries.  The crosswalk changes to walk.  As he steps down into the street a truck’s tires screech as it swerves into the other lane, running the red light and nearly hitting him.  As the truck roars down the road, the passenger lazily reaches out their arm, middle finger extended.  He quickly collects his groceries from where they have dropped with shaking hands.  He waits until the next light turns and scurries across the street, darting glances in both directions. He nervously hurries home, avoiding the eyes of anyone around.  The keys are fumbly and hard to hold, and it takes a minute to open the door.  He steps inside and the door slams shut with a thin, reedy sound.  It’s hollow. He locks the door, but it’s no comfort.  Setting the battered groceries carefully on the counter, he collapses over the sink and takes a long drink of water.  It’s not cold, and tastes of metal and chlorine, but it’s better than the reality outside.  He splashes some on his face and fumbles for the kitchen towel, finding it easily within arm’s reach.  Everything is within arm’s reach in the kitchen.  He wipes the last of the water from his face, but it still feels wet and cool.  The groceries are sitting on the counter waiting, but he ignores them.  He walks to the small table where the remnants of breakfast lie next to the beat up laptop — a hand-me-down from his uncle.  It is his prized possession.  It whines pathetically as he turns it on.  He turns around and goes to get himself a glass of water.  It’s going to be a few minutes.  Finally a beep sounds; it’s ready.

He sits down and begins to write, “My name is Khalib, and this is my story…”

I did a few more drawings this weekend.  I spent a bit more time on these ones, and I think the results are much better (fortunately…).  I’m not going to go into a long boring discussion about these because it’s late.  Enjoy:

Well, so the results of my fifteen minute drawings are in.  I have to say I’m not as happy with them as I had hoped, but it was a somewhat ambitious goal: I’m still learning the GIMP image editing program, and I’m still working on my composition skills.  I think that next time I might want to spend more time working on making good compositions and less time fighting with the GIMP.

Anyway, here are the results (click on the image to see the large version):

So what do I like and dislike about each one?  Here goes:

Composition 1

This ended up being my least favorite of the bunch.  It’s hard to find things I like about this.  It’s cluttered, the colors are all over the place, and there’s no consistent theme.  There’s also no focal point.  The orange cut-out on the middle green square is interesting, but the color is poorly chosen.

How could I improve this image?  Well, for starters I would try to come up with some consistent theme to tie everything together, and create a focal point for the image.  Throwing things off balance would help to break up the monotony a bit.  Next, I would look at creating a consistent color pallet.  Finally, the picture needs something to create depth.  Either a background or a foreground layer might be nice.

Composition 2

This one’s a little better.  There’s at least a reasonable color scheme going on (it’s still not my favorite, but I do like the two blue tones).  I like the way that the doodles on the left fall out of the space created by the background block.  The two contrasting sides of the picture don’t really do it for me, though.  They are fighting for my attention.  The left is clearly dominant, but the other doesn’t add anything, so it is just pulling my attention away.

I think I could improve this drawing by:

• Varying the brush strokes for the doodles.  Different thicknesses, pens, and colors would go a long way.
• Working on the color pallet a bit.  It’s got potential, but is a bit off.
• Get rid of the right side entirely and focus on the left.  I think it’s got decent potential.

Composition 3

I’m not going to say a lot about this one.  I was getting a bit bored and distracted by “Grey’s Anatomy” (what… it’s Dore’s show…).  I’m always a sucker for blue and orange, what can I say.  The squiggles are becoming a bit boring, aren’t they?  I need a new gimmick.  I liked using the speed-influences-color setting to add some flair to the stroke.  That adds some dynamics.  But it doesn’t save compositions, though.

I like the big background because it pulls you in, but otherwise this is pretty boring.

Composition 4

This is the only one of the bunch that I would actually call a composition.  I really liked the background placement, even if it’s not the prettiest color.  I liked the text as a compositional element.  (Notice that it’s ABC’s.  I actually have no idea where “abrogated” came from; I can’t recall ever seeing it before it just popped into my head.  It turns out that it means, “to abolish, do away with, or annul, especially by authority.” [source] Who knew?)  Once I got to “carnation” I just started doodling what looks almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a carnation.  Oh well, I’ve never been much of a doodler.

If I were to make this better, I’d look at fixing up the colors and adding a few more elements to shore up the empty space.  I’d also try to do something with the sorry excuse for a carnation. 🙂