Entries tagged with family

Current Mood: accomplished

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Went Walking

I woke up at 5:30AM, got up, dressed, had some toast and went walking with MacKenzi. I had gone walking with MacKenzi and her mom yesterday, but her mom walks too fast for me, and by the time we got back to the house, I was tired, thirsty and starving. Today MacKenzi and I decided to let her mom do her walking while we would go at our own pace. We started at 6:30, and walked a mile in half an hour. When we got back, I was feeling good. I wasn't overly tired, and I wasn't hungry. The toast was a good idea. A really good idea.

I'm going to continue getting up at 5:30AM so I've got plenty of time to eat a small breakfast before walking. I'm also going to get into the habit of working on a project of my choosing for half an hour to an hour after walking (with a shower in between, of course). I figure that'll help me get back into my writing, and once college starts back up again, I can use that time to work on home work or get a head start on major projects (or the research for them). Once I get my course schedule at orientation (on August 31), I'll figure out a second block of time (and perhaps a third or fourth or a 'just in case') for doing homework and projects during the day (or working on a project of my own if I don't have any homework or school projects just too keep me in the proper mindset about those times).

Something I discovered yesterday was this website called ZenHabits which had some really great tips for simplifying and de-stressing your life. One of the things the author talks about is getting rid of clutter--on your desk, on your walls, even on your desktop. He gave a link to some really awesome programs, one of which was Launchy: The Open Source Keystroke Launcher. It's really great because it can open all sorts of programs and documents quickly without having to clutter up the desktop. My desk top is almost completely cleared of anything save the screen saver now, and I love it.

Since he's also a writer, he also gave some links to programs that would make it easier to write--one's were they took up the whole screen and had all the options hidden until you put the cursor where they should be so all there was was a plain screen (with a background image) to write undistracted. The one I downloaded was Creawriter. I've poked around it, but I haven't had a chance to use it yet. It looks really neat, though. I played around with the setting and changed the background image to one of rain hitting puddles of water (which I found on Google), and turned off the ambient nose for now (the cracking of a fire).

Alright, so it's a lot later than I had planned to write it, but it's still morning, and now I've written it. Mission accomplished! I'm making progress already.

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Drawing :)

I haven't done much drawing lately so I figured I would try drawing my niece last night. It's a bit wonky, but still good. I just need to take it slower and pay more attention to the proportions and position of the base structure. You can seem some of the lines haven't been erased yet.

This took me an hour and a half to do. It was a bit frustrating because I wanted it to be perfect, but I realized I just needed to take a breath and acknowledge that, yes, I do need more lessons and more practice, but I am good all ready. After that I felt better.

( drawing under cut )

Current Mood: geeky

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Knife Store and Geekiness

I'm not sure how my e-bay store will work now that I've decided to go to Louisiana next year. I mean, I don't see any reason not to do it for this year and get some extra pocket cash, but I'm not sure how MacKenzi's parents will feel about how me operating a weapon's store out of their house, and I can't have knives and stuff delivered to my dorm room. I mean, the only thing I'll be doing with those knives is having them delivered, taking them out of the box to make sure they're all right and then ship the off again.

On the other hand, I was planning on selling dragon figurines and such as well, so I could probably still do that if I wanted to. I don't think they'd have a problem with that. So I could continue selling the figurines and such and just discontinue the knives for a few years until MacKenzi and I get our own place.

If I can ever get the router number to our bank so I can set up Paypal to work with e-bay, then I'll get around to discussing it with her parents.

It's also come to my attention, that I need to clean up my room again and maybe get something to hold my knives in. I have seven pocket knives and only one is really suited to be decorative (pretty much at the expense of it being a functional tool, but, you know) and while the rest look pretty cool to me, they're not decorative knives. So having them all over the place is more like clutter than decorations. But that's just because I have clutter all over the place already so it just seems like they are.

However, I should probably get a case or something to keep most of them in, and then switch out one or two to have around to use as tools and decorations. (After all, who needs scissors when you have a badass looking knife?) I just need to find a good case.

Also, I have to wonder why collecting knives = psycho/uncomfortable to some people. I don't understand what's psychotic or awkward about collecting knives. It's a hobby. Some people collect beanie babies. Some people collect stamps. Some collect baseball cards or figurines or preserved butterflies or some other kind of bugs. Some people collect guns. And some people collect knives.

Now, if I was going around stabbing people with them or was a violent person, I can see why that would be concerning. But despite the fact that when I get pissed I talk about wanting to punch people in the face or rip them apart or beat the shit out of them, the fact of the matter is is that I've never actually hit someone (rough housing doesn't count). I've never actually tried to hurt someone. So I just don't get it. I had to do an "ice breaker" speech for my Speech Communication Class, and I mentioned it and people got awkward. I mean, I'm not complaining because I don't ever see these people outside my class, and my friends think knives are cool too, and at least two of them collect. My cousin-in-law Sean collects swords (he has them hanging on the walls around his and Brianna's house) and takes fencing classes. My grandpa even had some decorative swords around their house (I don't think my grandma's taken them down since he died either).

And my girlfriend even thinks they're awesome! I mean, that's part of why she's my girlfriend in the first place because that's one of the things that I love about her: that she doesn't think my knife collecting is weird or creepy. So that's pretty sweet. She even took me to a knife store while I was down visiting her, and she thought it was adorable how excited and into it I was. They had sword canes there! I've never actually seen a sword cane before! It was AWESOME. I need to make some extra money to bring down when I visit over Thanksgiving so I can buy one and ship it back home. Russell will be so freaking jealous. :3

So maybe it's just because I know so many people that appreciate the beauty and coolness of knives and swords that I don't get people's aversion to them or awkwardness around people who collect.

*shrug* I just don't know.