Obligatory Update

Well, first blog of the new year I suppose. It's been about 6 months since my last blog. My doctor tells me anymore posts than two a year is hazardous to my health, so I have to take it nice and slow. Or I'm lazy.

Well lets see, life's been a veritable plethora of the weird, the boring, the painful, and the moderately amusing. I'm still working at my old job at Milano Music. It has its ups and downs and drama just like any place but I love my job. I work with some awesome people, I get to go to work in a t-shirt and shorts every day, rock out on the ukulele when it's slow, meet the occasional moderately famous person (Steve Gadd, Cindy Blackman, I sort of met the guy and girl from the movie "Once" but I didn't see the movie till after the fact so I didn't get a chance to "ooh and ahh" about them. In fact the girl from the movie asked my little brother to help him with a guitar and he totally blew her off and told her to go ask some other guy. Oh the shame.) I get to deal with a lot of interesting people, I occasionally get yelled at and threatened with lawsuits, but I take it all in stride.

When I first worked at the store back in '04 and a customer would get upset with me I'd be all apologetic and try to work around the rules for them and go get my manager to deal with the problem. Nowadays I actually get a kick out of upset customers. During the rental season I was the supervisor for all the temp help we hired. When a customer would start complaining/yelling at one of the temps they'd pass the customer off on me. If there was a legitimate problem I'd do what I could to alleviate the situation and help the customer, (case in point, customer gets in an argument with one of the temps, I hear the commotion and walk over to ask if I can help, the customer looks at me and says, "I want your name, and I want your owners name, this is unacceptable!" after about 2 minutes it was, "oh let me get your name, I want to tell your boss what at good job you do here, thank you so much." gush gush etc etc, oh yeah, I rock). If a customer is just making a fuss because they're stupid and didn't read the contract or are just trying to sucker me out of a deal, I say to myself, "oh bring it on suckah!" and the real fun begins. It might just be that I'm a horrible person but I get a laugh out of grown adults trying to badger me/lie to me/ try to butter me up to get a measly little discount on something. Oh, also the highlight of my day is when parents are letting their children run amok in our store, banging on drums and keyboards and hitting $7000 cellos with $3000 violin bows (I shudder when I think of it), and I walk over and give the happy little children the old "stink eye" and shake my head at them. The poor little kids stop dead in their tracks with a horrified look on their face and run whimpering back to mommy. Ah what joy that brings to my heart. And when the parents get mad I say, "oh what was that? you want to pay for that $7000 dollar guitar your kid is abusing? no? I didn't think so." It's the simple things in life that bring real joy.

Hmm lets see gotta scrape the barrel for something worth writing about. Been doing some cool things with photography. Don't have as much time to work on it as I like, but slow and steady wins the race right? I put together a quick & dirty website just to get a gallery up and some basic info. I'm working on trying to spruce it up but it's slow going as I'm having to teach myself a few markup languages as I go.

I had the opportunity to fly up to Idaho last September to do some engagement photos for a few couples, plus do some family photos for some good friends while I was up there. It was a shorter trip than I would have liked, but I enjoyed getting back up to Idaho for a short visit to see friends. Wish I would have had more time to visit more people, but hopefully I'll be able to sneak up there sometime this year to visit.

I've been able to do a few shoots for family & friends down here. I really want to explore deeper into digital art, doing more than just regular photography, using it as a basis for more surreal art. I took a photo on the fly when I was up in Idaho of an old barn up in a barley field. Didn't think much of it, but I threw it up on a website and a bunch of people commented on how it looked like it was shot from the perspective of the girl in the painting "Christina's World"





It wasn't intentional of course, but it gave me a cool idea of doing a series of pieces trying to recreate the point of view of subjects in famous works of art. I dunno, it looks cool in my head.

Hmm lets see, I'm such a lame person I have nothing interesting to write about. I can't even think of any witty dry humor to share. I'm losing my touch in my advanced state of old age.

Hmm old age, oh! I'm going in to see an orthopedic surgeon in a few weeks. I've had a bulging disc in my lower back for the past couple of years. That coupled with other back problems I've had for the last 7 or so years, and I've decided that it's time to throw in the towel and get some medical help. As I understand it they'd be going in through my abdomen to cut out the bulging portion of my disc. Sounds painful, but I spoke with my doctor a few years ago that had this procedure, he said you go home the same day feeling like a million bucks. I'm sure it's going to be painful but I am tired of feeling like a cripple.

So, new year, new years resolutions. I normally think new years resolutions are on the side of lame sauce, but now that I look back on the last few years and what a waste of life I've been, (waste of life you say? but Rulon think of all the good you've done! I have? Well let's recap: steadily declining physical health, a divorce, mounting debts, can't decide what to do with my life, can't stick in school, dumped by a girl I really liked because I was divorced, in short, absolutely nothing worthwhile) I think it's time to get off the sidelines and be more proactive in not sucking at life. First and foremost, I need to get out of the, "I'm a cripple, I can't" frame of mind. It's a little harder than it used to be to get out and go hiking and camping and all that active stuff I used to do back up north, but I'm going to try my hardest to go hiking & biking, taking time to cook healthy food and stop eating out so much, stop wasting so much time on the computer & XBOX.

What's sort of sad/pathetic is that I actually really like to cook, and without patting myself on the back too much I'm actually a really good cook, but I'm so lazy and easy to please that I never take the time to cook for myself. When I have people to cook for I whip up all these awesome dishes (chicken alfredo pizza, bangers & mash, stuffed mushrooms, southwestern pork & black bean stew, quick & easy stir-fry etc etc) but when I'm just trying to feed myself, I'll just pop open a can of tuna fish & eat it straight from the can (lived on tuna & pancakes for two months, tuna casserole anyone?). I love cooking, it's such a stress reliever, great to just get my mind off things. If only I had someone to cook for, sigh...

Random thought, sporks are awesome, I'm working on a years supply.

So it's 12:30 in the morning. I've been trying hard to get to bed earlier, but living in this new house has added a new cause of sleepless nights. I'll be in bed drifting off to sleep, getting ready for an awesome dream, (I have the weirdest dreams as of late, I have this reoccurring dream of Darth Vader and I fighting polar bears in the desert. I just can't express how awesome it is, but I digress) when I hear what sounds to me like a young child crying outside in the yard. This obviously gave me some cause for concern, and as I was sitting up to check it out the soft crying sound turned to a bone chilling heart stopping blood curdling scream. Pretty soon horror turned to outrage when I realized it was some stupid feral cat in heat advertising her wares. If would have had a firearm handy there would have been some cat sauce plastered on the fence. As it was I tried to drown out the noise and go back to sleep, but my heart was still doing a death metal drum solo, so any chance of sleep that night was shot. I hoped that it wouldn't be a reoccurring thing, but I have suspicions that some tabby cat pimp has turned my back yard into the local feline red light district, and business is booming. At first it was once or twice a month, but now at least two or three times a week I'm startled from my peaceful slumber by the raucous lovemaking going on in my backyard. As if I didn't have a hard enough time sleeping, now there is freaky cat sex keeping me awake. I was never fond of the feline persuasion, but now I hate them with a passion. We really need to get a big dog. A really big dog. Like this dog.



With all the cats we have breeding in our neighborhood a pooch like that (I think I'll name him cuddles, or tiny, or BFD) will have a veritable smörgåsbord of "the other white meat".

Well kids, my back is going on the fritz and I'm having a hard time sitting up and typing. I'll try to write more often, when I have something really worth writing about. Sorry for the lame post.

~roO