Happy Halloween All! Since Jason has declared a personal blog ban on excessive pictures of our beloved pet (so the blog can't be considered all about him), it falls to me to bring you the joy that is Newton. Jason and I were invited to a Halloween/Birthday party for a dog park friend and of course, Newton had to come...stylishly costumed of course. Other dogs were there, including two german shepherd mixes that dressed up as Batgirl and Darth Vader. Good times were had by all, especially Jason who enjoyed not one but two "HOT LINK" hot dogs. Jason, Newton and myself are all doing well, looking foward to seeing trick or treaters tommorow evening. All three of us wish each of you an especially Happy Halloween!

I have done absolutely nothing for the last 4 days and I love it! If you didn't know, I arranged to take today as a holiday off from work. I worked through some holiday a while back and that meant I got to use that holiday whenever I felt like it. They expire at the end of the year so I figured why not use it so I get a longer weekend and so Newton doesn't have to spend so many days home alone in a row?

Yesterday I slept until 11:30 AM. Then I got up, walked Newton, watched TV until about 1:30 PM, then fell back asleep until around 4 PM. The only constructive thing I did all day was to take Newton to the park so that Helen could come straight home from work and get to bed early.

The only thing I've done today, other than walk Newton, has been to catch up on about 3 episodes of I Love The 80's in 3D. I can't turn those programs off for some reason. I have no picture, because one, I'm lazy, and two, it's hard to photograph lazy. Hehe.

Finally posting some pictures of our home. The occasion,.. the girls only book club get together hosted by non other than Helen. Needless to say, we finally had to get off our asses and make our place presentable so we could have company over to our place for a change. Whatever the reason, our place has finally morphed into a home without our quite realizing it. No pictures of the bedroom yet, because it's still a work in progress and I need a wide angle lens to get a decent shot of it. Let us know what you think of our style or lack thereof!

Did I mention I had to take the dog to the dog park when the girls arrived, and then behave myself in my room when I got back? Hehe.

So it's silly. But these are the vidoes I took so you are all stuck with them. If you can't get the video to play, give it another 24 hours then try again. Otherwise, let me know. Enjoy.

Lift 1

Lift 2

Lift 3

Ferris Wheel 1

Ferris Wheel 2

G Force 1

G Force 2

Wind Surf 1

Ferris Wheel View 1

Phat Leg

As you can probably guess, Helen and I went to the Arizona State Fair held here in Phoenix. We are trying to set up a tradition where one night a week, we take turns taking each other out. This was date number one, and I was in charge so Helen didn't know we were going to the fair until I slipped up and told her that when we left would depend on when it stopped raining. After that she guessed it.

We got started a little later than I would have liked but I figured there would be no real downside because I love to see the lights on all the rides and attractions anyways. Now, because we picked the day before I decided on the event, it turned out that tonight had no particular attractions going. No cheese eating contests, no pizza eating contests, no performers, and right in the middle of the week on a day where it was raining earlier in the day. Basically we hit the sweet spot for having the park all to ourselves. That meant, no lines to wait for rides, all the food was ready to go, and the hecklers at the stands were desperate. Hehe.

We ate food that was absolutely awful for us. Not the least of which was a donut about the size of a soccer ball. I rode rides while Helen smiled and took photos, marveling that I enjoy that sort of gut wrenching activity. We walked the park, holding hands and had an excellent time. I even convinced Helen to get on the VERY large ferris wheel. I think that my idea of a fair is eating fried foods and getting on a ferris wheel with a girl, so I got everything I wanted.

If I hadn't mentioned it so far. The weather in Phoenix is awesome. You couldn't ask for better nights to walk around a fair in. We are doing fine, hope you are too.

It's late obviously. But I don't want to go to bed because Tuesday night is like Saturday night for the rest of you. So I figured, why not play around with Photoshop. What do they say... idle hands are the devil's tools. Enjoy.

I have to give Pam props. Her blog is generally full of interesting ideas about life, love, and the world in general. My blog is mostly about what happened and what will happen. Her blog makes me post interesting diatribes about my thoughts, and I think this one would make for interesting reading. Taken out of conext my post might sound strange, but see if you can find the post I'm responding to and visit her darned blog at Xangity's Xanga Blog. Hint: The post was in the last month or so.

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Ok, better late than never but I'll post my thoughts on the matter. Both of you are easy pickings for the first psychic hotline / gypsy / get-in-touch-with-your-dead-(insert here) that you just can't get over.. blah blah.

Reincarnation: Yes. But not in the way you think. Everything you are gets used again by this universe. Energy does not disappear. Therefore, some of you that was whole spreads out again to become something useful. Whether those pieces recognize the process or remember anything is a moot point, because having made the change they would be so unlike us as to probably make communication impossible.

Karma: Yes, but again not in an individual sort of way. Good people can have shit lives and feel bad about it, and don't gain any particular wisdom or satisfaction with life that makes it all better. You know it's true. Bad people have great lives, entertain all their depraved desires and feel very satisfied because of it, then die thinking that the gravy train has just begun because they are christian whatever and think they haven't been "very" bad and therefore get to see what's beyond the pearly gates. What do they know, maybe its true. You know it happens.

Karma actually works by resonating out like a pebble in a pool of water. One pebble into a large pool creates a ripple so small that when it returns to the point of origin it may be so small as to be imperceptible. When I do good it resonates strongest with the people closest to me or the people involved. If that in turn causes them to do good, then several pebbles hit the pool causing a proportionally larger ripple.

What this means is good things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people is only true in the sense that when they do what they do, those affected typically respond in kind. Think about that when someone in a traffic jam drives all the way to the end of a closed lane and tries to cut in skipping everyone else that's been waiting. Everyone that sees it, sees that it worked for that one person, get's convinced that its the only way to get from A to B faster, tries it during the next traffic jam, and the traffic jams get worse for the city as a whole. Then again, think of this when you see a woman trying to lift a bookcase into a car alone when you stop and help her. She is reminded of the kindness of others, feels a little better about people in general and donates a little more than she realized she could to a Katrina affected family somewhere.

Nobody can count on their own karma helping them or hurting them in this life. All you can do is decide what kind of world you wish to live in and send that out to into the world through your actions.

Mental Issues: Personally I think that tendencies towards particular mental illnesses have to do with the fact that you were raised by someone exhibiting them. Like it or not your little monkey brain sees that the behavior has not caused your parents premature death and therefore it is on the table as a behavior to be copied during your adult years. Survival of the fittest.

In the genetic sense I'm constantly amazed that more people aren't labeled as crazy. Think about this. My eye is literally different from yours. When you and I look at a colored piece of paper, we literally see different colors. The only reason that we can both agree that it is a particular color is that we have been trained to associate a word with the shade that we individually see. The truth is, the only thing we are agreeing on is that the word matches the same thing we have individually seen before, not that we are in fact seeing the same color. It's a fine point but it must be made. Now multiply that by a trillion because of the complexity of the brain, and throw in the random chemsitry caused from eating different things, breathing differently, etc... and it's amazing that we can agree on anything at all. After all, crazy is just someone thinking something other than what the rest of us agrees is there. Just like the colors thing, we can not argue that what we see is the same or not, we can only argue about whether the words we use for a concept are the same or not. Crazy is just someone with a different vocabulary.

Connections between people: Its your brain giving you information you didn't know you had. You open your eyes a split second before a ball is going to hit you. In that split second your brain has taken note of EVERYTHING within your field of vision, identified the most interesting feature within it, assessed the potential for harm to yourself, sent and recieved signals to your extremities and still had time for your slow ass muscles to move you out of the way of the ball! It does this every second of every day. Can you really be suprised that when you spend enough time with someone you start to get a feel for patterns with that person that border on a psychic connection? Geesh.

I mean psychic connections, karmic and timely retribution, and whole scale reincarnation sound nice and all but that's just the little nomad in you trying to get out and worship ancestors to protect you from the scary lightning gods that are pissed about something you've done. Don't let the nomad win!

Just a short notice. Nobody was using the MissingGrayMatter forums, and I was tired of updating them so... they're gone. I may bring something like it back in the future, but it will be based on demand at the time. Later.

So I'm limping around the house and I notice something crawling around on the screen just outside the sliding glass door. As far as I know there are no mice in the house. I could have sworn I saw one just before I stepped on the hammer last week, but with the blinding pain I experiened a few seconds later I can't be sure. Either way, this guy is outside just exploring and I thought I'd snap a photo and share.

Ok, sorry about the picture, but I'm behind on my posts and this is what is happening in my life. Here's the story behind the photo.

I get all my tools together to put together a massive new bookshelf I bought from Ikea. Most Ikea furniture doesn't require any tools or comes with custom tools in the box. As a side note I should also state that these tools are designed take the skin right off your fingers. Anyways, because I got the tools out and didn't use them I forgot they were on the floor. Several piles of clothes later, and I couldn't even see them. At this point it was just an accident waiting to happen.

The hammer was laying on its side, claw end towards me. I'm carrying a box and step right into it. I fall trying to take the weight off my foot, whack my head on the large plastic container I was carrying, then limp in to wake Helen from a dead sleep by informing her that I've hurt myself and need some help. At this point I just sit on the floor in the bathroom and try to fight off the woozy feelings which lasted for about 20 minutes.

Don't worry, I'm fine now. Doctor says I'll be limping around for another week or so, basically back to normal in 3 weeks, and completely healed up in 6 weeks. This all happened around 6 days ago, and this is the after picture. Hehe.

I admit. I just wanted to be the first one to put some of the weddings photos up. Here are two of my better photos, unedited and posted straight to this site. Of course I took about 100 more pictures, but I'll be posting some of the better ones over the next few days. So far, it's been a great trip, a fun wedding, and we are very glad we came. More to come soon. Check back often.