I'm starting a new blog

This blog is ending now. I'm starting up a new one today. Link here.

I wanted to wipe the slate clean and start completely fresh, for a lot of reasons. The new blog is probably going to be a lot more personal and less geeky, so follow me over there if you'd like more of that.

Thanks for reading this far, guys.

I Name All My Cats After...

 This morning I was at Barnes & Noble, browsing their collection of anime merch. They've really expanded their collectibles department; it's slowly taking over the store. I approve. I came across a little plush figure of Luna, Sailor Moon's mentor/pet cat.

Can't seem to find a very good picture of the specific plush I found, but it's basically perfect.

It stands on its own four legs, is well-detailed, etc. I saw it and immediately thought of Rachel, the biggest Sailor Moon fan I know. I mentally bookmarked the plush and decided to buy it for her sometime in the future.

Later in the evening at the regular Saturday night families get-together dealie, Rachel gave me a couple of neat Zelda phone straps that she'd randomly ended up with. They're pretty cool, especially this one:

It's from The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, where Link shrinks down and meets the tiny Minish people.

So basically, the little figure is a life-size Minish. I am pleased. Also, he matches my Club Nintendo exclusive Zelda 3DS bag.

So after randomly getting a geek gift from Rachel, I thought, "...hmm. I think I need to go back to Barnes & Noble and get that Luna."

So I drove to Barnes & Noble and bought the Luna. While I was checking out, my cashier said, "what is that cat's name? Luna?"
I was surprised. This lady was in her mid-50s, very bookish-type, with a reasonably thick country accent.
"Yeah," I said, "it's Luna."
She nodded. "I have a cat named Luna."
"Really," I said, "did you name her because of Sailor Moon?"
"No," she shook her head. "I name all my cats after astronomical bodies."
I had to fight the urge to actually laugh. "Wow," I said.
"Yeah, I have Comet, and Jupiter, and I ran out of planets with all the other cats, so she had to be the moon."

So that happened and it was awesome. Rachel liked her plushie cat.

Home Alone: Wandering Lost

I've had the house all to myself for the last week while my mom's on vacation in the Colorado Rockies. It's been kind of a weird experience.

On one hand, it's been nice, having complete control over my own home life. Since my mom is a light sleeper and her room is right next to the living room, the kitchen, the laundry room, and the garage—the front door is also in earshot. To keep from waking her up, I pretty much have to keep to my own side of the house after she goes to bed (between 9 and 10pm on weekdays). No cooking, no watching TV in the living room, no doing laundry, and generally no leaving the house through the front door or garage. Also, when she's home on weekends, she basically parks on the couch or in the kitchen, meaning that I can't be in the main area of the house unless I want to watch QVC, the Bachelor, or NCIS with her—which, surprise surprise, I never want to do. Another thing: my mattress is horrendous. Seriously, it gives me back problems and ensures that I pretty much never sleep well. My mom's mattress, on the other hand, is pretty great. So yeah, having the house to myself is nice: I can watch Netflix in the living room whenever I want, do laundry at 10pm, cook a pizza at midnight, sleep in a bed that actually lets me sleep, et cetera.

On the flipside, though not exactly a negative, is the fact that I'm in charge of taking care of the house. I'm the one who has to feed and watch the cats (we have two cats now), I'm the one who does all the household chores, and I'm the one who decides what to spend grocery money on. It's responsibility, and it's not a bad thing. It's just different. I do wish I didn't have to take care of the cats—they're still rambunctious kittens but big enough to cause problems—because juggling them can be a hassle. But whatever. At least I'm not technically 100% alone in here.

That's the other thing. Being alone in the house is weird. I don't actually feel any more lonely than I usually do—though I sort of always feel lonely so maybe I've already hit terminal loneliness velocity—but it is weird to actually be the only one around. Normally if I'm at home and feel lonely, I feel like a victim of my circumstances. But when the house is empty and I'm the one in charge, so to speak, it feels like the responsibility for my loneliness rests with me. That it's my job to make social interaction happen rather than sitting alone at home.

So I see if any friends want to hang out. I don't ask that many people, because honestly I don't know that many people anymore that I can just call up and ask. Daniel is/was my only real go-to friend, though he's gonna be leaving for college in a month or so. I wonder what I'm gonna do then? Andrew is out of state at the moment, and we don't get to hang out much anyway. Sarah and Zach are gonna be leaving soon, but even they are kind of absent/busy a lot now anyway. Elisabeth and I aren't really friends anymore. I don't really know what to do, but I figure that I need to be making new friends by getting "out" into the world. On that note...

I went to Barnes and Noble earlier tonight to read some comics. I planned on reading some Batman, but ended up discovering this indie graphic novel called The Sculptor.

It's a super-thick (500 pages) one-off along the lines of Blankets. It's about a 26-year-old artist named David whose life is a terrible trainwreck: his family members have all died tragically, his few friendships are complicated, and his huge artistic potential is buried under layers upon layers of depression. I found it a little uncomfortable how much I felt like I could relate. David ends up meeting Death himself, and makes a deal: David will only live for another 200 days, but he can sculpt literally any material however he wants, making his sculptures essentially only limited by his imagination. Over those 200 days he learns about life and has an epic ton of drama. The sculpting superpower angle is actually one of the least important aspects of the story; it's really just about a man trying to figure out his life and what he wants out of it in the remaining 200 days he has left.

While I was reading, there were some 18-year-olds sitting next to me having fun, mostly trading opinions on books, movies based on books, each others' original writing, etc. I talked with them a little. I think they were the kind of people I might've been friends with if I'd been in their social circle (and maybe a little younger). It made me miss having friends like that to hang out with. But on the flipside, I caught one little exchange between them that I found interesting. Toward the end of the night, one of them said, "we have to promise each other that after I go to UNT, we'll get together someday and have lunch or something." The other two nodded and agreed. But the implication was that this group wouldn't be together for much longer. I'd spent a good portion of the night sitting next to them wishing that I still had friends like these three had each other—and yet even this group was soon going to break apart.

And I don't really know what lesson I should take from that. That nothing lasts forever? That it's always best to keep moving forward instead of holding onto people from the past?

If I had to guess, I'd say that I haven't been looking for friends lately so much as a family—the kind of people who won't go away, no matter what. Of course, then again, half of my family died in my teens anyway, so maybe even family isn't that permanent. But it should be, right? I don't want to be demanding, or to expect the impossible. Just as long as I don't have to sit inside the house by myself anymore.


BONUS ROUND:

As I decided on a title for this blog post ("Home Alone"—look at me, everybody, I'm clever...), I fell across the words "lost" and "wandering" (no doubt because of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York), and the Tolkien part of my brain remembered the line "not all who wander are lost." I googled it to remember the full context, and realized that it's actually part of a larger poem that refers to Aragorn and his destiny:

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king

Well. Isn't that nice.

Christmas Vacation 2014

So my mom and I drove out to Green Bay to visit family for Christmas again. To be technical, it was the week after Christmas, so more like New Years with a side of late Christmas.

Leaving Haslet.

Mom didn't know I took this, but if she did she'd be very upset.

Just inside Oklahoma.

Oklahoma has these cool rock walls from where the roads were cut into the hills.

Eventually it started snowing. We didn't know it at the time, but despite the fact that we were headed to Green Bay, this was the most snow we'd see the whole trip.

This is the 2nd-story back porch view from my Aunt/Uncle/cousins' house. You can kind of tell in the below photo that the bay is frozen over.

The basement is pretty cool.

And these are my cousins. Left-to-right: Rhiannon (Rio) (15), Sierra (19), Colin (17), and Celine (20).

They got a new kitten. He apparently liked my leg.

Celine also got a chameleon recently. I persuaded her to name him Pascal after the chameleon from Tangled.

Rio watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.

Even super nice/fancy restaurants in Green Bay have Packers logos on their cups.

My uncle Mike and Sierra completely dead asleep.

I played a bunch of X-Wing Miniatures with Uncle Mike. As you might imagine, it's a strategy game using miniatures. Uncle Mike really really likes strategy games, so he got really intense with it.

Celine with the cat.

Celine and Sierra after a long day.

Everybody watching Oculus. Which I did not finish because stressful.

I guess in hindsight Celine was on her phone a lot.

There actually wasn't a whole lot that went on during this trip. Most everyone was busy doing their own thing, so I spent most of my time alone playing video games at the house. Not that I'm complaining, exactly. I wasn't sad/angry/disappointed. It just kinda turned out to be a "pretty decent" trip rather than the usual "that was awesome" trip it usually is. Maybe if we'd actually been there on Christmas day it would have been better. I dunno.

Probably not, actually, because most of my cousins are getting older now. Celine and Sierra are both adults, with their own lives. College, working, driving places, seeing friends, et cetera. It's not that they didn't want to spend time with us while we were there, it's just that they have lives now. I kinda always figured it would happen, and I sort of figured I'd be more sad about it when it did. But I think it almost feels normal, really.

On the way back down to Texas, my mom asked me if there was anything I still wanted to do or anywhere I wanted to go. I said the only place I really wanted to go to was Metropolis, Illinois, a tiny town that's famous as "the home of Superman." Stephanie went there on a road trip earlier in 2014, so it was sort of fresh on my mind. But it was way out of our way, so it wasn't really an option.

When I got home, I found a Christmas present package from Stephanie. Inside was a deck of playing cards and some green rock candy... from Metropolis, Illinois.

I can't even explain how awesome that was. It was like finding a piece of a dream in reality. Also, the timing was just too perfect.

So yeah. That was my trip. Pretty uneventful, but nice. Sorry it took me a week to post this, but I've been out of the blogging habit. Oh well. Hopefully that will change.

For the Win

Everybody knows the cliché. A down-on-his-luck loser finds a golden ticket. A farmboy who dreams of adventure finds it and blows up a Death Star. The superhero is beaten down by the villain but finds enough strength at the last moment to save the day. The quarterback throws a winning touchdown pass and the team lifts him up on their shoulders as the crowd goes wild.

A funny thing about me: I've been that loser farmboy wannabe-hero for pretty much my entire life thus far. But I've never won anything. Never won a contest, never got a medal or a trophy. Now, I don't feel like I need to "win" most of the time. I often times actually prefer losing to winning in some board games because I really just like having fun with friends and not having to be the guy who makes everyone else at the table lose. However, occasionally I get super-competitive—completely obsessed with fighting as hard as humanly possible to win whatever it is I'm involved in. I think it comes down to whether or not it actually matters to me. A random game of Apples to Apples? I can stand to lose there; no problem. A swordfighting duel? Screw losing; I WILL ANNIHILATE.

To some extent, I think it's a matter of self-respect, or the lack thereof. Someone asked me recently when the last time was that I felt really, truly "special." I legitimately had to think about it for a while. The only solid answer I have is maybe my high school graduation in 2007. If I had to pick something more recent it might be when I got a letter in the mail from a friend on my birthday last year. But really, when I was asked that question, my first mental reaction was "well, I'm not special, so that doesn't apply."

I've lost a lot. Family, friends, my college career (somewhat). I've pretty much been gut-punched repeatedly by life. Every time I've been in a love triangle (a total of two times; I don't recommend it), I've been the guy not chosen. So much for the old "save the world, get the girl" routine.

People tell me I'm smart all the time. Female friends say they're confused as to why I'm single (but keep me at arm's length). Parents ask me what I'm up to as if they expect me to say I've published three books and solved the energy crisis by inventing a new form of math. By everyone else's indication, I should be a pretty special guy. But I haven't felt that way about myself in a very long time.

I really just want to win for once. To not be third best, left out, ignored, unwanted. I want that moment of triumph. I don't want to be better than anyone else; I don't want to be held up on a pedestal for all time. I just want to not entirely suck at everything.

One thing I actually am good at—not pro level, but still really good at—it's playing video games. Lots of my friends growing up were involved in sports, and some of them actually ended up doing really well with that. If video games were a sport, I could be the quarterback. I'd have been the guy winning all the games and getting cheered on by hundreds.

As it happens, my favorite show is a web series called Video Game High School. It's set in a version of our world where video games dominate modern culture. The so-named Video Game High School is, essentially, Hogwarts for video games: where kids go to learn to be better gamers. Instead of basketball and football, students join teams for First-Person Shooters, Drift Racing, Fighting Games, et cetera. Instead of sports championships, students have gaming championships. In short, it's a place where gamers aren't looked down upon as losers, but are recognized the same way everyone else is. It's a bizarre kind of fantasy world, but it's really fun. It's also got this fun 80s/90s teen movie/TV vibe (think Back to the Future and Saved by the Bell).
Go watch it on Netflix or search for it on Youtube. It's awesome.

So yeah, I didn't really have a point here. It was pretty much just "I want to win something / VGHS is awesome and you should go watch it."

Also this track by Two Steps From Hell has the same title as this blog post.

Things I Love

I've decided to do a series of blog posts detailing my favorite movies/TV shows/games/books/universes/etc and why they're amazing. As I post new things in the series, I'll tag them "Things I Love." You'll be able to find all the posts via the tag link here.

This is just the list of stuff I've thought of thus far; more is almost certain to be added:

Star Wars
Star Trek
Doctor Who
The Lord of the Rings
DC Comics
Marvel Comics
The Last Airbender / The Legend of Korra
Indiana Jones
Scott Pilgrim
Power Rangers
80s Sci-Fi movies
Halo
Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda
Kingdom Hearts

Honorable Mentions:
Firefly
Harry Potter
Battlestar Galactica
Final Fantasy

Sword of the Spirit

Earlier tonight, I, by random chance, happened upon some old Christian videos I used to love as a kid. They were a series of productions my old church did back in the 90s. They had a pretty huge impact on me (seriously, they're the reason my favorite color is blue), but I'll get to all that later. What I wanted to mention tonight is a Bible passage that I remembered from way back then.

Hebrews 4:12:
"For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart."

The Amplified translation says it even better:
"For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart."

Christmas Trip 2012

This Christmas, my mom and I took a road trip to Green Bay, Wisconsin to visit my Aunt (mom's sister), Uncle (mom's sister's husband), and four cousins. Also, my Grandma Jane was flying in to meet us there as well. You know what, here.

A photo from around a year ago. They all look a bit older.

-Celine (18, center-left) is the oldest cousin. Little bit dorky; likes geeky things (sort of); going to college in Madison, WI.

-Sierra (17, far right) second-oldest. Used to be my little sidekick when she was little. She's pretty cool.

-Colin (15, center-right) second-youngest. Kind of a weird kid, though he's actually really smart. Tends to spend entire days at a time playing video games.

-Rhiannon (11, far left) youngest. Everyone calls her "Rio." She's kind of adorable, but also really smart. I think she might secretly be a super-genius or something.

So there. You know my cousins now.

This is the long, picture-filled tale of my vacation.

Three days before we left, my mom mentioned that Wal-Mart was having a sale on new iPhones ($127 for an iPhone 5 with a 2-year contract), and we might be able to go in and upgrade our phones before our trip. This sounded pretty amazing to me, since our then-current iPhones were nearly five years old, literally barely working. It'd be both really fun and extremely useful to have a brand-new phone on a road trip, what with the GPS and everything. The next day, we went to Best Buy (where they'd price-match Wal-Mart and also let us keep our current plan). They were all out of 16GB iPhones and couldn't access AT&T's servers to sign up any new customers anyway, so we went home. That left only one day before our trip, and only a few hours of that day in which to pick up the phones. In those few hours, we quickly found new phones at Best Buy and walked out with them 30 minutes later.

Suffice it to say that my new iPhone is awesome. More on that in a future blog post.

I woke up on the morning of our trip fully expecting to be on the road by 9AM, as I had been told I would be. As it turned out, my mom didn't actually have a route planned out, nor had she packed, showered, or in any way prepared at 9AM. We didn't end up leaving until 12:30.

I-35 North, most of the way to Oklahoma City

To say that spending two days stuck in a car with my mother was difficult is an understatement. For one thing, she did 95% of the driving, yet she wanted to know, in perfect clarity, each and every turn we were making the entire way, far in advance. I couldn't simply explain it to her either; she needed to SEE it in front of her.

Another thing: our rental car had a GPS system (which was nice because it meant we didn't have to use up all our phones' data in two days), but my mom had immense trouble following it. It wasn't that she didn't understand what the GPS voice (who I later named "Jenny" after Jen Taylor) was telling her, it was that she didn't trust it. To be fair, sometimes Jenny would take us down a different route than we'd pre-planned, but what was odd was how badly my mother would take obviously-correct instruction. When either I or Jenny would tell her "take the next right on State Parkway," she'd look ahead, see the sign that said "EXIT -> State Pkwy," and say "do you mean that one?" If I didn't respond in the next two seconds, she'd slightly panic and say "THAT ONE, AARON?!?" then give me a lecture about how I needed to "be there," "do my job" (as the navigator), or "help her." Once or twice I got a "you totally don't care."

Something bizarre occurred to me during this trip: my mother is seriously getting older. She's over 50 now, and she's losing a bit of her mental grip. I didn't even realize until pretty late into the trip that she didn't understand how to read the digital map on the GPS system. An incredibly obvious map, it should be said. I wasn't sure whether to be mad or feel bad for her.

The first night, we stayed in St. Louis. We met up with my grandmother, who'd had to divert to St. Louis due to the crazy storm that grounded all flights going through Chicago (and therefore connecting flights to Green Bay).

The hotel we stayed at was really really nice (four stars). Due to some random room-jumping, somehow my mom and grandmother ended up in the same room and I ended up in a room by myself. :D

The view from my room the next morning. It's nicer than it looks.

The next day, we resumed our journey, my grandmother having taken up residence in my former navigation seat. That helped to take a lot of tension out of my "job," though I was still responsible for finding local Starbucks and whatnot along our path (my mother NEEDS her coffee or she... well, complains about needing her coffee). Of course, that got difficult, since if any of my directions took us any further than one block away from the freeway, I got an earful about it.

Grandma Jane

Mom

Around 8:30-ish, we finally arrived in Green Bay.

A funny thing: I basically lived in my cousins' house for nearly a month in the Summer of 2006, so walking inside felt less like visiting someone else's house and a little more like coming home.

The O'Tooles got a new dog and she's very playful. My grandma likes her.

If these people were facing the camera I'd tell you who they all are. Eh, what the heck. Left>right: Uncle Michael, Mom, Aunt Christie, Colin, Rio (Rhiannon).

My uncle really really likes the Packers.

The view from the back porch. That's the Green Bay out there. You can't tell but it's frozen.

Facing the front of the house

Sierra is wearing a funny owl hat.

Odin is a very large dog. He likes me.

View from under the back porch

My grandmother got us a 750-piece puzzle to finish over the vacation. It never got finished, for reasons I will explain in a bit. Anyhow, the above picture was actually supposed to be about the fact that my mom and my aunt are trying to explain how to use ebooks on an iPad to my grandmother. It's not working well.

Looking down from the 2nd story toward the tree (and Uncle Mike)

This is why the puzzle never got finished. It's a nightmare of near-identical reindeer. We got maybe 70% through it before we left for home.

Sierra and Celine at the mall doing Christmas shopping.

Sierra wrapping stuff

Check that out. You can't even see the water because it's covered with snow. Can't see where the ground ends, the water starts, or the sky begins. Just a giant sheet of white.

Chilling at home with Sierra and Rio, eating macaroni and cheese with diet Sprite while watching a marathon of Christmas cartoons. Pretty epic.

Celine and Rio messing with their phones/iPods

Sierra watching Supernatural via Netflix

Christmas Day came and went. It was pretty nice. I got some neat stuff.

The complete Superman: The Animated Series DVD set. YES.

The Ultimate Matrix Collection on Blu-Ray. :D

Watching Spongebob with Rio.

So a funny thing happened during this trip. Uncle Mike's sister, Maggie, came by with her baby daughter, Camilla. My initial reaction was "oh hey, someone I don't know... great." Then it occurred to me that even though I'm not related to Camilla, she's still technically my cousin. I have a new cousin! :D

Grandma is regretting buying such a ridiculous puzzle.

On the 26th, the whole family bundled up and headed to Denny's for a Hobbit-themed breakfast. Then we went out to see The Hobbit (about half of us hadn't seen it yet).

Odin and Camilla ended up being good friends.

The last night before I left, I ended up hanging out with Rio for a bit. She showed me her paintings, and we traded ideas on which iPhone apps to use to keep in contact after I left. She said she'd miss me when I was gone.

The road home

The St. Louis Arch at night

You can't tell from the photo, but someone on the Western side of St. Louis actually rigged up an entire forest with Christmas lights. It was pretty epic.

When I got home, I immediately ran back out to Best Buy to spend a bunch of the gift certificate money I got. I bought a TV. :D

It's actually way bigger than it looks in that picture (39 inches), and it looks amazing. Seriously, it's so vibrant and detailed, it makes Tangled look like an actual window into a real place that exists. I WANT TO GO TO THERE.

Whew. Actual thoughts on more of the trip to come tomorrow.