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Sun, Moon, Star, Fire
Big Life Changes - summer 2022
Marriage, new job, moving across state lines.
Yeah, it’s all going to change by the end of this
year.
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| me right before watching seniors graduate! |
Easy place to start is getting married. Been
living alone for quite a few years... I'm pretty good at it. Decorating
my apartment the way I want, eating whatever I want, the quiet... It’s nice
that there’s not constantly a TV running (I grew up with my grandparents, and
they neverEVER turned off the tube).
My current job as artistic director of a performing arts high school is all about serving everyone constantly. I’m always helping teachers, staff, always working to make students’ visions for art come to life. I love it, but it can be draining.
I guess that’s why I love the quiet so much. I barely ever listen to the radio when I’m in my car (people think I’m weird, but I just need the mental clarity time). Coming back to a quiet home has helped me. It’s like meditation.
All this to say, I’m going to have to learn how to not live alone again. My fiancĂ©e lives with like 3-4 people depending on the day. She never eats dinner alone, always spending time with family. I’m very much the opposite. It will take me some mental adjustment.
So, Cari lives in a different state than me... which is why I’m moving.
I’m moving back home to Southern Illinois, finally. Been awhile. I’m looking
forward to it. St. Louis is busy,
busy. Lots of road rage there... The very first day I
moved to STL, my Internet installer ran into my apartment and slammed the
door.... Some random guy had attacked him with a coat hanger. I called the
cops, and he had been trying to attack cars.
Southern Illinois is more my speed. It’s a mix of suburbs
and cornfields, shopping malls and cows. When I drive through Illinois, I
always forget how peaceful it is. There’s good and bad in every community, but
the spacing is bigger in the ‘burbs+rural, so you just don’t see it as often. Plus,
it’s home.
Third big change is my new job. Yes, I’m leaving
my position as artistic director. I'll be teaching high school
English. Technically, that’s always been my background, so I’m looking forward
to using my degree as I originally planned.
Starting as Technical Director and then getting
promoted to Artistic Director was a great ride. I’ve learned so much, so many
new skills, met so many interesting people. I had a lot of fun! It was the most
work I’ve ever had to do at a job, but some days were just the best.
I think it will be interesting to go from being the department chair of the
fine arts department to the new guy, low on the totem pole. I’m looking
forward to worrying about my own classroom and not everyone else’s, but there
will be many things I miss. I wrote my students a letter of farewell, and so
many of them have come up and wished me well (or tell me they are mad at me for leaving J).
It’s bittersweet.
But, starting lots of new things is pretty much my
theme in 2022.
mostly melted
I miss snow.
I tell my students, when I was their age, snow would get as deep as your knee and school could be out an entire week. All they know are the crop dustings we’ve been having.
We get less snow every year.
I remember building forts out of the towers that the city snow plows would put at the end of my street’s dead end. Back then... when I was a kid, you could buy orange trash bags with jack-‘o-lantern faces, but now leaves don’t fall by October (and nevermore in September). They stopped selling those, at least in this area.
Probably for the best. I’ve seen people burn leaves through January.
The West Coast and Australia burn uncontrollably during summers, nowadays. We’re so desensitized that seeing a half-charred koala wrapped in a blanket, hauled away by vets is perfectly acceptable. I remember when a hurricane front passed over Belleville. I sat in bed, reading a book, waiting it out.
Leave your car running in the garage, and the fumes can kill you. Highway vehicles release about 1.7 billion tons of that toxic contaminant into the air each year.
I think the human brain can’t process numbers in the billions (I definitely cannot). But 1.7 billion is a lot-alot. Saturn is 886 million miles from the sun (average). 886 x 2 = 1772. So, if 1 mile = 1 TON of toxic fumes, then our toxicity level is about to Saturn and back... each year. What are the repercussions? Well, let’s ask our friend, Common Sense:
He comes often recommended, and common sense is great for common problems. Fight or flight? Should I wear a coat when it’s snowing? Should I take a shortcut or the busy street?
For complex problems—problems that aren’t understandable by just the 5 senses, you may consider shopping around for complex sense.
You can’t look out your window and see how drinking sodas sold in plastic bottles have increased the amount of diseases in the world. Say, that particular plastic bottle is covering the bog, killing the duckweed, which starves the tadpoles, so decreases the frogs, which increases the mosquitos, which increases the spread of disease.
Our brains barely process numbers in the billion, so why should the same common sense I use to pick out which flavor jelly to put on my toast be used to process what effect 2 Sun-to-Saturns worth of car emissions will have on the population of koalas?
I guess, all this to say, I miss snow.
It snowed a little today, mostly melted after a few hours. I’ve only had to scrape my car windows like 3 times this entire winter so far.
2022222222222222222222
New Year post. Here's what I did in 2021...
I proposed to my girlfriend the other day. So, I’m engaged now. That’s probably
the coolest thing on this list. The rest is mostly in chronological order.
In January of 2021, I became the Artistic Director
of a school.
The US Capitol building was breached.
I played a lot of Stardew with Cari.
Marvel had awesome TV shows on Disney+.
I played a lot of D&D with two groups.
I got summoned for jury duty.
Did a lot of hiking with Cari (highlights:
Mastodon, Pere Marquette, and Castlewood State Park)
Watched a ton of Impractical Jokers.
Went to an art gallery for a friend.
Helped Cari through a major car accident and
shopping for a new one.
Went on a fantastical Disney vacation with a road
trip.
Dealt with some hard times...people I care about
in the hospital for extended stay. They are OK now.
Started a very serious diet and lost weight.
Worked on some seriously awesome writing projects
that I can’t talk about yet.
Lots of art fairs.
Felt sad when Scruffy, cute little doggo, died.
Went to the STL Renaissance Festival.
Went to MO Games Con with Reed and Ryker.
Created a new show called PerformLAB.
Brought back live performance to my art school.
Did a ghost tour at the Fox.
Celebrated 4 years with Cari.
I put on a CommUNITY Fun Day.
Got back into Animal Crossing.
Cooked a turkey for the first time.
Got my mom a birthday lunch.
Put on a Dance concert, a play, and a Winter music
concert (7 total performances) in one month.
I enjoyed Spiderman: No Way Home
Hosted a Christmas party.
The 2021 Road Trip Vacation of Cari and David
That time we raced a hurricane and won....
Since they started building it, I’ve dreamed of
going to Harry Potter World. We had planned to go do Orlando theme parks in the
summer of 2020, but... you know. Originally, we were going to drive down
through Atlanta and back, but Cari had a great idea to make a loop around the
Carolinas and visit more places along the way. My friend from work (thanks Ms.
Rovira!) gave me some good tips on locations, so we used that to plot out a
course up the coast.
With everything booked, tickets bought, etc. etc....
We’re about to set off... Reports come in about Hurricane Elsa to make landfall
in Florida the day after we’re supposed to arrive... By the way, what butthead
decided to name a hurricane “Elsa” that is set to brush by Disney?
July 4 – St. Louis, Missouri to Nashville, Tennessee
Cari and I set out from St. Louis early in the
morning. We saw a Superman statue and made a stop to take some selfies. We also
stopped by of the Grand Ole Opry for sight seeing.
July 5 – Nashville, Tennessee to Atlanta, Georgia
We drove pretty hard all day, waking up late. We
were tired after the fireworks, also driving in Atlanta was stressful. We had
planned on doing some historical exploration, but we were beat. We instead
opted for swimming and eating dinner at the hotel (most of our hotels were
Drury, so we always had a pool and they do a “free” dinner/drinks each night).
July 6 – Atlanta, Georgia to Orlando, Florida
July 7 – Orlando, Florida
I opened the curtains early and it looked stormy
and windy... but that passed quick. The hurricane completely missed us,
basically. Far north of us. Anyway, that was that, and it was Harry Potter
World/Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure day! It only really rained in the
morning, and the lines were pretty short (probably due to locals cancelling
plans for Elsa).
Overall, we really lucked out, missing the
hurricane. Whew!
July 8 – Orlando, Florida
Our original plan was to hit up the beach and rent
a goft cart, rest up before more parks tomorrow... but David got the bright
idea to switch it up and do Disney’s Animal Kingdom instead.
About mid-day, we had lunch under this sheltered
area, and it proceeded to DOWNPOUR rain pretty hard... but honestly, it felt
WONDERFUL and cooled the park off for the rest of the day. Also, as soon as we
were done eating, the rain stopped and didn’t return (we timed it well!). We
rode Dinosaur the Ride, Bug’s Life Show, Na’vi River Journey. The Flight of
Passage’s lines were 2 hours, so we skipped and rode River Rapids again. Overall,
just a fantastic day at a park we hadn’t originally planned on going to.
July 9 – Orlando, Florida
Magic Kingdom – a hot day, but we got it all done!
Cari surprised me by pulling out a Minnie Mouse skirt and shirt that matched my
Mickey shirt. She had me do her hair in Minnie Mouse ear-buns. I did my best! I
called her Cutie Mouse all day and she blushed (not deleting that, sorry, Cari!).
July 10 – Orlando, Florida
Our final Theme Park day was at Disney’s Hollywood
Studios. Yes, I got my 7am queue for Rise of the Resistance. I really think
this was the best ride/ride experience I’ve ever had! I LOVED it! We did Star
Tours, Smuggler’s Run (top three best rides EVER), and explored the Galaxy’s
Edge. Muppets were broken down, sadly, but we ate lunch at Rizzo’s Pizza (Pizza
Rat) which was awesome! During lunch, we heard everyone in the restaurant gasp,
yell, or shout... turns out it was the second and last shot to get in queue for
Rise of the Resistance, and everyone was either really happy or sad. The
virtual queue experiment is frustrating to me. There’s got to be a better way.
July 11 – Orlando, Florida to Savannah, Georgia
We didn’t get
to spend as much time downtown
Savannah as we wanted, because we were sleepy after so much walking. But the
hotel was nice!
July 12 – Savannah, Georgia to Greenville, South Carolina
Got to Greenville, ate, and swam at the hotel. Relaxed!
July 13 – Greenville, South Carolina to Asheville, North Carolina, then to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
After, we drove to our next hotel in Pigeon Forge,
staying at a place with three swimming pools, two hot tubs, a splash pad, and
an entire lazy river. We stopped on the road and got Bojangles, which is a food
place that one of our favorite Youtubers talks about. It was a big box, so we took
the rest with us.
The rest of the drive was beautiful, as we headed
through the Smokey Mountains. Stopped several times at some viewing spots and
took in the majesty.
July 14 – Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
July 15 – Pigeon Forge, Tennessee
We went back and swam in our hotel pool, and then we headed to Dolly’s Stampede Dinner and Show. It had nearly the same food at the Pirate’s dinner, so that was annoying. The show was fantastic, but not nearly as good as the pirate one (plus, it smelled bad). Kinda felt awkward to be in a North vs. South show, especially since it’s 2021. It all ended with a “We’re ALL united in the USA!” type song, which is weird considering the premise, but OK. We sat with the North and the North won. So, history, it seems, has not changed.
July 16 – Pigeon Forge, Tennessee to Louisville, Kentucky
July 17 – Louisville, Kentucky to St. Louis, Missouri
We drove home and enjoyed a night in a soft bed!
I’m editing a big video from the vacation, so I’ll
be posting that soon!
Relativity
I think Albert Einstein's theory of relativity is one of the most mind-boggling concepts. It has really pushed by brain for the fiction concepts I've been working on.
I'll start this out by saying, I'm no scientist (or mathematician or physicist...), so I might get some things wrong (feel free to point errors out to me). I also have a simplistic concept of relativity stored in my brain, which is warped by the artistic abstractions and imaginative modifications I come up with.... so... This writing isn't about balancing any equations or being spot on. Most of my research comes from a read of A Brief History Of Time and also Google searches.
Concepts I found on the Internet: 1. The basic idea is that instead of being an invisible force that attracts objects to one another, gravity is a curving of space. The more massive an object, the more it warps the space around it.
2. Gravity has an infinite range, although its effects become weaker as objects are set farther away from each other.
The classic example used to break your brain into understanding relativity is playing a game of ping pong on a moving train.
So, if you're watching the game of ping pong from on the moving train, it will look like it's going the normal speed... but in reality, it's going the normal speed plus the speed that the train is moving.
If the train were transparent, and you viewed the game from on the ground, you'd see the ping pong ball going 100 mph and not 10 mph.
I think that's mind boggling in itself.
But then, to think of gravity as not just an attraction of an object to the ground, but a curving of spacetime itself... That gets my mind going. Also, gravity has unlimited range, but weakens as the objects get farther away.
Imagine the sci fi of that. What if a machine could trick the laws of physics into making two objects that are far apart be considered by universal law to be close together? What if you could curve space so that two distance spaces touched? I know a million shows have used wormholes and portals, but the concept is really much deeper if you really think about relativity.
Imagine the sci fi of that. What if a machine could trick the laws of physics into making two objects that are far apart be considered by universal law to be close together? What if you could curve space so that two distance spaces touched? I know a million shows have used wormholes and portals, but the concept is really much deeper if you really think about relativity.
Even the word relativity inspires me creatively. Like, isn't so much of art about relating this and that? Isn't so much of why a character can enchant a reader about the relativity of that character to the universe she/he occupies?
Break relativity down into an artistic abstract for a minute. Think about the relativity of creating a fictional world, but putting something of significance into it, something that affects the gravity of your world/story.
Create a home, in your brain. Create a family. Create where the adults work, where the kids sleep and play nearby. Now, create a dangerous object, hidden somewhere. That danger really curves the space, warps the universe of the story. Who will find the dangerous object? Who will use it? Where did it come from?
Think about the relativity of yourself in your real life. How do you bend/shape/warp/curve the family/friends/coworkers/places/gravity around you?
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