Reflection

In the movie Star Trek - The Motion Picture, Spock pays a visit to the alien ship that has the Enterprise trapped. He melds with the intelligence on board and is thrown back to the Enterprise. Upon his return he relates his experience. He indicates that V'Ger is empty, questioning it's very existence. V'Ger wants to know - Is this all I am? Is there any more? Spock sheds a tear for V'Ger, he relates to the intelligence, as he, at the beginning of the movie also questions his destiny.

So am I.

At middle age, (yes, I've finally given in to that concept), I'm questioning my destiny. What more can I offer this world? What more can I be? Am I destined to be a prepress operator in a small town printer? Is there any more? I decided I'm not prepared to answer yes to that. There must be more, and I intend now to find it.

I've always done freelance graphics on top of whatever job I've had. It's been an enjoyable sideline - being able to work on my own terms without a boss hanging over my shoulder and my ultimate goal was always to do that full time. The concept of working from home intrigues and scares me. I've never made the jump into that because of the uncertainty of it - we're not in any position to give up the steady paycheque yet. I hope to, but I'm not there yet. Working freelance has it's own problems, primarily self-discipline. It's just way too easy to get distracted. I have friends that work from home offices, and they manage it, and enjoy it, but can I do it? I don't and probably won't know.

But there's another destiny I'm shooting for - teaching. I've always enjoyed teaching, as an officer with a cadet corps I always taught the kids, and whatever problems were going on in life or with the corps itself, none of that mattered when you were in a room with the kids, enriching their minds. That was my playground. I had the chance there to entertain, interact, train, and get to know the kids. Seeing the 'ah ha' looks on their faces when they accomplished something was quite a feeling. Teaching in a corps is a little different from school - these kids wanted to be there, that changes the entire dynamic. It made the classes so much more fun. What also mattered was the subject matter. Teaching cadets came with lessons like fundamentals of rifle shooting, Orienteering, fieldcraft, and the like. Fun stuff.

It got even more fun when we went to the field for hands on training. On one exercise, we were accompanied by a driver from the Service Battalion who had no desire to work with kids over the weekend. To him, it was a paycheque. He looked at we officers as 'fake', and refused to acknowledge us. He thought he was above us all. I decided to use him. I put him in a tree, about 15 feet up, and gave him the instruction that he was not to help the cadets unless he felt his life was in danger. Getting him down would be the cadets' job. Then I told the cadets as they arrived at the tree in groups that a Mongolian Tree Sloth had got himself stuck and was too lazy and/or stupid to get down, their task was to rescue the sloth. A leadership tasking, one of many set up around the camp that day. The militia corporal looked at me with an eye of distrust and fear, but he soldiered on and followed orders.

Within an hour, he was getting into it. He was making sloth sounds (really, he made dumb sounds, nobody knows what a Mongolian Tree Sloth sounds like), and he was playing dumb - trying to eat bark, or take a nibble at a kid's arm. He was having a great time. All the while, the kids were trying to 'rescue' him, we kept a sharp eye out for any potential flaws or dangers, but all 8 groups that came to the 'rescue' encountered an ever-more entertaining beast. By the end of the day, the corporal had asked if he could volunteer with the cadets, and finally began addressing me as sir. It was my intention to use him, not teach him. But a good training plan has affects you never count on. To this day, the tree sloth scenario is still used by the corps, not bad considering I wrote the training plan after a half-dozen beers!

I want to teach again. I want to see the 'ah ha' look in people's eyes again. I want to make a difference to a new generation of media aficionados. Most of all, I would like an answer to the question - Is this all I am?

So in the past couple of days I have built an online resume - a website. I won't give the URL here, it's not the kind of thing you just let anyone see. I have also started to rekindle contacts I have at St. Clair College. I talked at length yesterday to one of my old professors whom I have had dealings with over the years, as he's the teacher contact for the Graphic Design Internship program, which I used to take part in. I let it be known to them that this is what I want. I want my foot in the door to the college. I want to be able to use all these years of experience doing all sorts of traditional media and pass that knowledge along to the next generation. Hell, I can't think of anything to do with newspapers or magazine that I haven't done! All that and a teacher too.

I've been loosing my passion for this work lately, for many different reasons. I need to get it back. I feel my talent is currently being wasted in a cubicle, and I'm hungry for more. I'm hungry for a change of pace, a new opportunity, a new beginning, a new reason to look up. I think this is it, I just hope the college agrees with me. So Monday I will shove my foot through the crack in the door and force it open. I will make more calls and feed more contacts.

Spock and I have something in common besides bad hair. We're both asking the same questions. In the movie he never found his answer, I hope in the next week or so to find mine.

Have a great weekend.

flu season

We've all been hit by the flu around here lately. Last Friday, after surviving the initial burst that Kim and my daughter fell victim to, I spent the night sharing the bathroom with my son. We took turns. I managed to crawl out of it by Sunday night, just in time to go to work on Monday.

Sigh.

Why can't I get sick during the week instead of the weekend. We're all better, however tonight, my daughter again ran for the bathroom. A week to the day since she got it last time, it's back. Kim spent her day off yesterday bleaching every touched surface in the house, and opened every window for most of the day, bringing scornful comments when my son came home from school about the fact that it was warmer outside.

We've been through the worst flu season in our families history this week, all four of us hugging a toilet almost simultaneously. It wasn't fun.

I didn't eat a lot for about five days, and weighing in at a whopping 140 pounds, that's not something I can well afford to do. I did come home tonight to a wonderful dinner and all four of us with appetites, the first sit down dinner since last week. That all eroded within hours. Now we're back fighting the demon.

Tomorrow should be fun - again. Seems like we've all done this before. Here's hoping it passes me by this time, we don't need spring coming in like this.

Cheers.

The couch

Yesterday I decided I hate my couch. Before I took Kim to work in the morning I told her that in no uncertain terms. The couch is an old, ripped up piece of crap. It does have a couple things going for it - It's big and very easy to fall asleep on, but ick, it's just ugly. It was a freebee about 10 years ago, so it's had a good run, of all the old 'apartment' furniture we started with, the couch is the last remaining piece of early marriage start up stuff. Over the years we've disposed of most of the cast offs and begun to build our own collection. When mom passed away and dad sold the house, we acquired a great deal of their antique furniture, something I consider heirloom, not cast off, you certainly wouldn't find any of this stuff on a curbside.

Dad lived with us after he sold the house, so essentially, he still had all his furniture. It was just in our living room upstairs instead of his downstairs, especially his couch. When we moved in here, dad had his own apartment, and his sofa went down there for him. Getting it down there was a feat to itself and we vowed that it would never come out of the basement.

Until yesterday.

In my living room, one sees a unique collection of furniture, my mom's easy chair, an old wing back, a marble top cabinet that has to be a hundred years old, the old victorian style coffee table (actually dating from the 60s, but it looks nice), and one really ugly couch. Time for change.

As I was laying on the 'new' couch yesterday in dad's living room; which is now the family room since his passing, playing a game on the PS2, I realized what I needed to do. I paused my game, pulled out the tools and started working. I removed the kitchen cabinet that prevented access to the doorway, removed the door and the jams to that room, removed the banister from the stairway, and moved anything out of my way that would prevent the sofa's escape. I asked a friend for help, and we were on our way.

Within an hour, we had the beautiful antique sofa in the living room, along with the matching chair, and the old ugly one was relegated to the family room. All pretty effortless considered the vow that it would never happen. It did.

So now, in my eyes, the living room is complete, a showcase sitting room, where I would be happy to accept company and entertain guests. OK, so the 'new' couch isn't as comfy as the old junky one, but we'll get over that. For the most part, we don't even use that room, the TV is rarely on anymore, the room has become a staging area of sorts - people get up in the morning, sit there over waky waky juice deciding a game plan, and then move off.

Kim's not too happy, but at least I didn't move something in front of a door this time. In our old apartment, I moved the furniture around while she was at work and forgot to tell her. That night she came in leaving the lights off so as not to wake us (Iain was a baby then), she tiptoed in and smashed into the chair I'd moved. I woke up to a loud 'ooophf'. She never forgave me or let me forget that.

At least this time all the pieces are in the same place as the old ones. Today's job is to put the kitchen sink back together, replace the banister and rehang the door I took apart to get the thing through. No job is finished until the mess is taken care of.

Cheers.

A new internet antagonist

New blog out there, check it out...

http://logicallychallenged.wordpress.com

Can't type...

Olympics...

night.

Disturbingly intriguing

So Windsor is finally (?) on Google Street View. I have mixed feelings about this. It's really disturbing to see my house in all it's detail on the internet. We're in the mix now, with millions of other homes online. A sort of visual phonebook. Now, with online reverse look up cabability, it's easy to identify who lives in whatever house catches your fancy. Too easy, and too scary. Google has made efforts to obscure faces and license plates and other identifying marks on it's photos, but it isn't quite enough. On the other voyeuristic side of the coin, it's really quite entertaining! I found myself spending a lot of time just cruising Windsor's streets looking around. A kind of virtual walk - of course being winter, that's the only way I want to get around this town right now - from home. Believe me, there's lots to see.

When the images first went up, we immediately raised waves because of something unfortunately and untimely caught - a murder scene. Just two hours before Google's car went down Wyandotte near Wellington, a man was knifed in the Leopard's parking lot. On the first night, the scene was online, complete with crime scene tape, cruisers and a large blood stain. What a great way for Windsor to make it's international voyeurism debut. Luckily, Google saw the error of it's ways and removed the images. Well, almost all of them. there is still one shot where you can plainly see the tape and one cruiser. I of course, captured it.

There is also this shot...

My niece on a swing in the local park, staring straight at the camera. It's obvious it's her, she lives on that swing in the summer. Really? children on the neighbourhood swing is not out of the ordinary, but it's still a little wrong in my books.

Google also caught some images that are just plain interesting, things completely normal, but now captured permanently. Like the guy getting a speeding ticket on Ouellette Avenue, or the two guys with the wheelbarrow moving screening gravel off a residential street. They were looking right at the camera, they knew what it was, as did the guy waving to the car.

Windsor endured a very painful and long employee strike last year. Guess when Google arrived. Yup, as the pics of the long grass, garbage piles, arbitration signs, and strikers in front of city hall can attest, the world now sees Windsor at it's finest. A dirty, stinky, angry mess. It doesn't take much to find these images, pretty much any park will do. I avoided taking caps of the lineup at the city dump - too many bad memories there.

But along with capturing us at our worst, they also captured our best. There are many areas of Windsor that have long been notable for their beauty, historical significance, and serene nature. Places people go to enjoy long lazy summer days, or private places extraordinarily well kept. There is one place I love to ride by every now and then - the Lowe

Martin house - childhood home of Paul Martin Jr., former Prime Minister of Canada. After years of neglect, this gorgeous rumrunner house has finally been purchased and is undergoing an extensive restoration, and the owner is sparing no expense to maintain it's historical look and feel. I like to buzz by on warm days to see how he's doing. The new owner has been known to invite people into the home to see the progress. He understands the significance of the place, and he wants it to be a part of Windsor's history - not history itself. He even had school classes tour the home. It's too bad there aren't more of these guys - well to do enough to make a difference and well to heart enough to care.

There's blight, burned out homes, empty lots, vacant buildings, graffiti, and a number of other things you may expect from a large city, but you'll get that everywhere. What bothered me most was the image of the former Grace Hospital, where my mother trained as a nurse, worked here entire life, had her memorial service after her passing; where all three of her children and five of her grandchildren were born. It's in ruin. It's being rebuilt as a long term care facility, but still, seeing it like it is now, captured, is just wrong. I have too many good memories of the place to see it like that.

Google has made these places easier to find. But with all the crap this city has endured lately, let's look at the positive. Windsor is a very green, very vibrant place. Lots of trees, lots of people, lots of activity. With every shot there were bicycles, joggers, families, or just people just going on about their days, mostly with total disregard for what just captured them.

I'm only glad I didn't see myself anywhere. I have adding some more here, most don't need any sort of commentary, they're just random shots. However, I'm particularly fond of the pic of the port-a-john right smack in the middle of the Ambassador Bridge - right on the border between the US and Canada. Draw you're own conclusions.

Enjoy.