To Disneyland we go ... in eight days.

Instead of following my writing calendar and finishing up the first part of my book I have spent my day obsessing about my favorite place on earth, Disneyland. Disneyland brings out the kid and the angry adult in me all at the same time. I spend months planning the trip which brings out the angry adult in me as my family works against me at every step wanting to just run around and be unstructured at the happiest place on earth while I NEED us to stay organized with a game plan. Once we get there I am just a kid with a list of things that I need to do. I am not crazy about my lists but its the only way I can relax enough to have vacation. People have tried to change that about me and those people are no longer in my life. It isn't something that I want to change about myself. Being organized is something good not bad. I enjoy myself way more than anyone else there so why would I change that part of me and my trip. Well I am really just rambling about Disney and there is nothing floating in my head but Mickey and Minnie figurines so I am hopeful for a better blog tomorrow.

Ancient Aliens

I have spent a good portion of my day today watching ancient aliens from the history channel instead of writing but I guess its for a good cause because eventually I would like to write a fictional book on the subject. I have learned lots of interesting theories and renewed a passion that I have had since I was a young child about learning as much as I can about the mysteries of ancient aliens that have visited earth in the past. I don't buy into all of the theories but I do believe that skepticism clouds a lot of the field of study to the point of stunting it. Sometimes it pays to think outside of the box and a great deal of knowledge can be learned from it. When I was young I lived with the biggest skeptic in the world, my step dad. He at one point threw things at me and kicked me out of the house and would not allow me to return until I admitted that aliens did not exist and that humans were the only life in the universe. I didn't cave in but snuck back into the house. What was he going to do keep me out forever? I would just hail a ride from a passing UFO and kick this planet by the wayside. I am a believer, not in hillbillies from Kansas being butt fucked by some horny green guys with some sex toy but I do believe that humanity is on a fast pace and ancient civilizations knew way more than we give them credit for. I believe that we may have been visited in the past and there is phenomena that exists that human kind just isn't able to understand because of egotism, politics and living in a giant bubble of protection because we are too afraid to take the next step. Look at NASA at the moment. There are people in the private sector of space travel ready to take the next step to mars with a one way mission and NASA is trying to hold us back. As is the president but I will leave all of that for another rant. There are tons of people who have already volunteered to help set up the first human colony on mars and eventually there would be two way missions. We need to be brave and bold as humans and be willing to explore. How are we ever going to be part of star fleet if we can't even get to mars :) ? I have seen a UFO before and I have seen some strange phenomena. It scares the crap out of me but I will fight for my beliefs in the face of skepticism. Once those skeptics can put aside their ego's and really sit down and have a logical debate maybe I will listen to them. For now all skeptics will be shut out by my ears and the history channel will entertain me for years to come.

Star Trek

There were many things on my mind all day to blog about. I thought about having a deep blog but my head is way too spaced out at the moment and I thought about blogging about work but that would just further the battle I am having that work is taking over my life and not giving me enough time to write but instead I will blog about Star Trek. Tonight I went over to my in laws for dinner. After dinner however is when the magic happened and my awesome father in law knowing that my wife had disappeared and I was feeling awkward as I usually am when alone with him because we have nothing to talk about put on star trek. I love star trek but had no idea that he too shared this passion. It was the new movie, and before anyone goes off on how horrible it was all I have to say is suck it. I thought it was great. It was really the only way to reboot the series without angering people about time lines and what not. J.J. Abrams fixed that by chucking the time line out the window. Eventually my wife and mother in law joined us and we shared little tid bits of information that we had learned through the years and relished in the wonderful music. I smiled and laughed at all of my favorite parts and we planned to see the next movie when it comes out at least six times. I saw this one six times I am hoping to match it or go better depending on how much I like it more than the first. Star Trek ranks third on my favorite movies of all time. The first being Stardust and the second being Mary Poppins. Yes I know these are rather odd movies and very different but that is how my tastes run. I love the new star trek movie passionately. When the bad robot first pops across the screen and the first note chimes I stop breathing and ignore everything else around me until Kirk steals the car and then the world once again exists. There are just certain parts of that movie that always suck me right in and I am there in that world of adventure and exploration and I never want to leave. Sure I loved the television series. I loved the original, TNG and Deep Space Nine. After that it doesn't exist to me. The genre grew tired and over done until JJ came along. Now it is reborn with fresh eyes. I am sure there are tons of fans out there that are angry and let them be. They want to cling to the dying creature that refused to grow up. I don't want to any longer. Star Trek Enterprise the series was just plain ridiculous. JJ managed to reboot the series by going backwards but that is hard to do. You can't always look backwards to see the future. JJ got lucky the creators of Enterprise didn't. I am saying it again and will always say it they should do a series about Star Fleet Academy. It will draw in the sci fi crowd and if you put sex and hot guys it will draw in the greys anatomy crowd and if the story is done right ( Yes I am totally volunteering to do the story the correct way ) then it will be a masterpiece. I guess we shall see what the future holds for star trek. Live Long and Prosper.

A retail workers guide to surviving Black Friday !

Here I am after a four hour nap watching Dr. Who on netflix and just plain old relaxing. Even during my nap I couldn't get black Friday out of my head. Today I drank more caffeine than I ever have in my life. I also crashed harder than I ever have making today incredibly hard. People who work in retail work incredibly hard. Especially on a day like today. They give up time with their families all to bring the products for a bit less to the masses. Today people were pretty nice. I only had a few problems but for the most part the masses were grateful for the help I could offer and that I pointed out the great deals from the ad. Unlike last year where the masses turned on me as if I were a pinata and they could just beat me down with a bat and get some sort of candy for their efforts. To survive black Friday don't drink too much caffeine and go to bed early. there is no better advice than that. My head is now swimming again and I think I need more sleep. Please next time you are shopping be nice to those that help you. They sacrifice a lot to be there to take care of you as a customer.

Things I am thankful for

I am thankful for many this year. There is always the standard :family, job, friends, good will and peace. But I am going to stray from the norm and say what I am really really thankful for in my life. I know its cliche but I am thankful for the little things. Like watching a parade with my daughter and wife, the little pink ornaments on our Christmas tree and the love and affection of my cats. I am also very thankful for Internet piracy. I am super thankful that I can just think of something that I want to watch and instead of driving forty minutes to get to best buy and be told by all of my coworkers that I shouldn't be there when I am not working she can just download it and we can go and buy it at our convenience. Yes we are those people that download things and if we like them we go and purchase them. I do not feel the need to pay to rent it and then pay to purchase it. Its a waste of money at that point and I am tired of purchasing things that I will never watch again because they are awful. Critics are not trustworthy. I am thankful for peppermint mocha coffee mate creamer. I wake up every morning that I go to work and make myself coffee in my very expensive but free to me coffee maker and drown the brown liquid in creamer. Its delicious and tastes like Christmas. Every morning is Christmas morning then and it makes me happy. I am thankful for interior designing. I love to decorate and when I am not writing I am imaging how my house would look if I had disposable income. It would look amazing by the way and it would make Martha Stewart want to shell out money for my services. And finally I am thankful for my laptop for without this amazing device I would have to write my novel by hand and that just isn't happening if I can help it. I have tried that before and that is why I have quit in the past. At six years old I tried to write my first book as I was learning how to write. I did it all by hand and it was difficult. Those five pages front and back were the hardest thing I ever did. I was the only six year old with carpal tunnel syndrome. Thank goodness I didn't have to wear a brace, that would have been embarrassing. I hope everyone is thankful for all of the great things they have in their life and never take anything for granted. I am the last one to talk, even so I am more than willing to give out advice. Happy Thanksgiving everyone !

Pre Black friday jitters

Authors seem so important when they are famous and live in their big houses and seem to be full of ideas but they all come from somewhere. I come from retail. I have done my duties as a secratery ( hated it ), a baker ( it was okay ), a teachers assistant ( best job ever ! ) and as a specimen processor in a lab. It seems so glamorous now comsidering where I am now to just sit on my computer all day and know that tons of people think of me as important but it occured to me today that its unneccessary to put celebrities on these giant pedestals. I am important now, at my job at home and really nothing will change other than having disposable income so that I can buy crap that I don't ever need. I may even keep my job at Best Buy ( best employer ever for a big box company ) if I get published just because I know if I had my way I would become a recluse and never see the world again. Don't get me wrong I despise working retail and feel as if it is sucking the soul right out of me but I love it too. There are certain customers that go out of their way every week just to come in and say hi to me. There is a mom that comes in every couple of weeks with her young son because she can't afford a console of her own and he just sits and plays and she chats with me. It makes my day to see the smile on that little boys face as the game starts and he is immediately transported into another world. I would miss out on those things if I lived in my mansion in the middle of nowhere with no neighbors and no outside contact. I think my creativity would dry up and not only wouldn't I be important anymore but I would become even more strange than I am right now. Now it is late and technically Thanksgiving so I hope everyone has a great thanksgiving and hopefully soon I will have more followers for this blog. So for the two people who follow me one of which is sitting right next to me have a great holiday!

To grandma's house I go

Every time I go to my grandma's house I am overwhelmed by the smell of cigarette smoke.  It is horrible to most but I find it sweetly comforting.  She smokes Kents which not being a smoker I couldn't tell you how they taste but I could tell you their smell is mild and only slightly smells of tobacco.  Mostly its just smoke that you smell.  Its a smell the lulls me into security like a big hug.  Not that I learned what a big hug feels like from my family.  We aren't really affectionate people but I learned at a young age that its the little things that are signs of affection.  Like my misguided grandmother sitting downwind from me so that her cigarette smoke wouldn't infect my air space even though it obviously did.  During my childhood my grandmother changed her hair color as the seasons changed.  Mostly it was frosted blond with gray highlights because it was so hard to hide her gray.  Now she is covered in gray and doesn't bother to cover it up.  She is thinner than she used to be and diabetic now to boot.  I have always worried about her smoking and about her health even when I was in elementary school but now even more so.  There will always be a part of me though that will cherish the smell of those cigarettes.  Every time I smell them I will think of her and the wonderful memories that I have of her.  Of every trip we took to and from Sacramento so that I could spend time with her.  Of every summer I spent staying up late in her house and eating junk food for months.  Of working late at the bakery and sitting on the cold bus bench outside with the only warmth coming from that damn cigarette.  Even when she's gone certainly from her smoking abuse I will still crave that smell and breathe in deeply to remember her. Its funny that I don't associate a smell with my own mother but I certainly do with my grandma.  I hope she has a long life and proves every statistic wrong.  Grandma I love you.

My first blog. There goes my innocence.

Well here it is my first blog of probably many.  I love to talk about myself and everything around me so shutting me up will probably be a concern of mine.  Today is a great day to start a blog because I can do one of my favorite things ... rant.  I love to rant.  My favorite subjects to rant about are Steve Jobs, Religion and Hollywood.  Today my rant is about over privileged Actors and Actresses and basic famous  people who get things like book deals that they do not deserve.  I would kill for a book deal and today on perezhilton.com I see that Kendra Wilkinson has a book out.  Its not fair but life rarely ever is.  It makes me angry that she doesn't even care that there are people like me and the people that I meet with every week that work hard and write even harder and make almost no progress.  I am also upset because there is going to be a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer that will not include Joss Whedon but will have some undeserving unqualified author who does not have the right to reinvent the series.  Although I rant it does make me depressed.  Today I made a lot of progress on my book and I backtracked a lot once I learned of the Kendra book that is out.  I was supposed to create my synopsis today so that I can write my query letter to find a literary agent instead I ended up spending my evening crying and worrying about never making it as an author.  When I see headlines about people like Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton getting book deals it breaks my heart because some ghost writer is out there not getting any credit for writing a horrendous book about someone famous for just existing.  I am grateful that I have Amanda, my wife, by my side who understands that I am Bipolar and can switch moods at the blink of an eye at times.  Today was one of those days that set me off into the land of depression but I am on my way back now.  Some day I will become a real author just like Pinocchio became a real boy.  Some day someone will wish hard enough and there I will exist to sign books and create characters and become an eccentric.  Not that I am not already there I am pretty eccentric at times but I think becoming published and have access to disposable income I will become eccentric just for the sake of having a laugh.  I am sure that once I am out there people will look at me and tell me that I am undeserving but at least I can tell them that I wrote my own book and I didn't have to steal someone else's franchise to get my career going.  I will work hard to get where I will be and while I may not stay strong I have Amanda to lean on who is stronger than anyone I know.  Enough blogging now its time for Sims3.