General Thoughts

Turkeys on the Bed

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I do have my room now, so I can stop lugging around my unmentionables to conference sessions. I took a few pictures of the room, including one of the pillows as they are stacked on the bed. Now, I understand that fancy stuff is nice, but my bed(s) look like they have a pile of junk on them. It reminds me of turkeys to be quite honest. You be the judge:
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It’s a very nice room, don’t get me wrong — I just think the pillows are funny. The room also has a kitchenette, with a sink and refrigerator, but nothing inside. (Well, one pudding cup that I brought with me)

Hope your day is going well. I’m looking VERY forward to dinner, because I’m incredibly hungry. I have a bit of a headache too, but hopefully that will go away with food.
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Carry On Is My Only Choice…

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I’m currently at a 3 day conference in Boyne Falls, MI. (At Boyne Mountain resort for my stalkers, mind you though, it’s a big place) I arrived around 9:30AM, and I’ve already had some great opportunities to speak with people smarter than I am. The problem is that my room won’t be available until 6PM. That, um, sucks.

Thankfully, I packed like a homeless man, and all my clothes and books are in a briefcase. (heh, briefs in a briefcase. And yes, I realize homeless folks don’t usually have briefcases.) The downside is that I need to lug that and my laptop case around to all the conference sessions today. If I’m lucky, I can get into my room long enough to throw my stuff on the bed and RUN back to the dinner buffet. Since all I’ve eaten today is granola bars and fruit roll-ups, I’m really looking forward to dinner!

Wish me luck!

Fed Up?

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Ever been fed up? I am. It’s not my family or marriage or anything, but work & church are really getting me down. I’m pretty fed up.

I’m grumpy too. I’m actually not very fun to be around, and I’m wearing the “look that kills” pretty much all the time. It sucks.

But don’t worry. I’ll get over it. Eventually. Until then, you’ll have to put up with my overly-cynical view on life. You can get grumpy if you want too. It works for me.

How Do You Keep Blogging?

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A fellow over on a forum I was visiting posed the question, “How Do You Keep At It?” He was referring to steadily blogging. Here was my response:

I’ve had some lapses, like recently work has been really rough. I think that 4 things have kept me pretty regular for a while now:

1) Paying for my site. Now that I’ve invested some dough into the thing, it helps me prioritize it a bit. Plus, it’s a lot cooler to say, “Go to https://www.brainofshawn.com” than it is to give out a blogspot address. (Not that there’s anything wrong with blogspot — I’m just saying.)

2) ANY sort of readership. I only have like 15 people that regularly read my blog, but the fact that they do regularly visit my blog, and give a rip what I have to say, makes it more exciting. Looking at stats can be depressing and exciting both. 🙂

3) Personally, I let myself write ANYTHING I please. I know that limits the traffic I generate, but it helps me in that I’m not worried about being “on topic”, etc. Again, this is a tactic I use to keep blogging, not to generate traffic.

4) As small as it is now, I plan to use my blog as a marketing tool when I begin to publish some books. I figure everyone starts somewhere, so I might as well do it now. John Scalzi’s Whatever started small, and it’s helping him sell books now. I like that thought. 🙂

My Favorite Instrument Has A Tongue

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I really enjoy music, but I have to admit, my favorite musical “tool” is the human voice. I love the sound of a good singer. In fact, I think all too often, musical instruments get it the way of a good sing. This makes for some unfortunate truths:

1) I enjoy watching American Idol. Not the drama, not the auditions, but the actual talented singers.
2) I tend to like “girly” music.
3) While I’m very flexible in what I consider good singing, I am very critical of bad singing. (I’m not mean about it, I just notice and it’s like nails on a chalkboard)

So what’s your favorite instrument?

I Love Dead Trees

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I have digital books, and a few different eBook readers. I enjoy eBooks, but I have to admit, if I had my druthers, I’d grab a hunk of dead tree any day.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Not only do I like actual books, but I really like old books. Like this beauty here. I found this at the used bookstore for $1.95, and I can’t wait to open it and start reading. The yellow pages and faded text almost transport me to another world. I’m not sure if it’s the age, or the nostalgia — but something about old books just tickles my fancy.

Also, I haven’t read Stranger in a Strange Land since my accident, so it’s a special treat I get to relive! Yay for horrible, life changing, amnesia causing accidents!

My Pretty Peculiar Popsicle Problem

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I love Pop-Ice. You know, those plastic tubes filled with flavored goodness, which are frozen, and eaten right out of the tube? My favorite flavors are pink and blue. I know, those are colors, not flavors, but really I don’t think they contain any natural flavors at all. I could say my favorite flavor is bimethylhexaflorimine, but really, isn’t it better to say I like pink and blue? I thought so.

The problem is that I LOVE Pop-Ice. I eat them all summer. I eat many of them at a sitting, and I go back for more. I ate 13 in one sitting today. Yeah, I know, that’s sad.

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I think my love for Pop-Ice stems from my youth. When I was little, we lived in the inner city of Detroit. It was the ghetto. The ice cream truck didn’t come to our neighborhood, both because it was scary where I lived, and because none of us could afford anything anyway! So we would scour the alleys for pop bottles. See, in Michigan, we have a 10¢ deposit on our pop cans. (Or soda cans, or coke cans, depending on where you hail from) Not coincidently, Pop-Ice at the corner store cost exactly 10¢. They were the BIG ones too. It was the highlight of the summer, really. The only thing better is when the teenagers would wrench the fire hydrants open and we’d play in the flooded streets — but that’s another story altogether!

What are your favorite summer memories from childhood? Do you like Pop-Ice? If not, can I have yours? 🙂

8 Things I do that annoy people.

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clock.pngSometimes I do things for no other reason than being different. Maybe it’s because I like to do things that annoy people. Here’s a short list of 8 things I do off the top of my head.

1) I like to set my alarm clock to PM when it’s AM, and then set my alarm to go off in the PM. There’s no advantage to doing something silly like that, but I like it because it’s wrong and still works. For some reason, I like that.

2) Every time I’m outside at night, I point out stars or planets to whomever I’m with. Every member of my family can find Venus, and my kids race each other to locate the big dipper. My wife mockingly says, “look there’s Venus” whenever we get out of the van. 🙂 I love her.

3) I generally reformat our home computer a couple times a year. I think it’s because I like things to be “clean” when it comes to the operating system. My wife really doesn’t like this. Really really. I tend to be a backup Nazi, so I generally don’t lose any files, but I’m lucky my wife is awesome, or I’d likely be single. 🙂

4) I don’t like to shave. This wouldn’t be a big problem, except that I also can’t grow a beard to save my soul. I look like a bum. In fact, if my wife didn’t refuse to kiss me after a week or so, I’d most likely look like a homeless man with a laptop.

5)

(I also leave things half finished.)
[audio:https://www.brainofshawn.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/8thingsidothatannoypeople.mp3]
Click to download the audio file.

Look, it’s Me, the S.O.B!

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I have a stressful job. So do most others I know, but believe it or not, my stressful job affects me more than it effects others. Funny how that works. When I’m stressed, I tend to turn into an S.O.B. (Silly Old Bear — c’mon folks, this is a family blog!) Really, though, I get irritable and cranky.

I’m going to try to choose JOY. No, I’m not going on some existential journey to creating my own reality and purpose — but I’m going to try to avoid being a jerk. I choose to be happy.

So that begs the question, can a person choose to be happy, even in miserable situations? Well, ask my family in a week or so, and we’ll see how I’ve done. I’m pretty confident a person can change their mood if they try. Sometimes we act cranky because we want other people to be as miserable as we are. See, it’s not just me that’s a jerk — lots of folks do it. I’m going to try to stop though. We’ll see how it goes.

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂