Klang!

Great workout this morning, I had lots of energy and was literally bouncing all over the place.  Also, a funny/amazing thing happened:  Rev and I were practicing the Shaolin Broadsword set there came that horrible sound that said “och, you just dragged/hit your sword on the ground!”  Having felt an impact, I assumed I must have goofed and done just that.  Rev exclaimed and looked to his left, and I thought “wow, I wonder if I sparked the thing good.”  Nope.  Turns out I didn’t hit the ground.  Neither did he.  It was our swords that actually crossed paths.  Amazingly mine was fine but his had this chunk taken out of it near the tip, with the metal literally curled up and to the side where the one sword had carved into the other.  Wow, that was something… never had that happen before!  (I’ve broken staffs, but never damaged a sword…)

Your Shaolin Kung Fu factoid of the day:  The broadsword is known as the “Marshall of all weapons.”

LotD

All I needed to know about life I learned from D&D… an amusing video.

And that’s the way it was, addendum

The sunsets here the past few days have been gorgeous, with the mountains, a bisecting layer of lower clouds and higher up clouds catching all the red/orange and setting the sky fire.  Wow.

It’s before the end of January, so I think I can post this addendum here to my ‘end of year’ recap…

FC 2010: We’ve Struck Fur

FC 2k10 was this past weekend, roaring in with the theme of California Gold Rush.  Another con past, another fun time had.

LotD and QotD x2

To start off the new year… (of a fashion…)

The known universe:  http://www.wimp.com/knownuniverse/ (very cool, impressive, perspective-ising video)

QotD:

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

– Albert Einstein

And for 2010:

“The art of living can be defined as the ability to live the ordinary in an extraordinary way.”

– H.M. Luke

http://www.wimp.com/knownuniverse/

What I Love: Vol 10

I love conversations that make a difference.

[Normally I don’t say anything more about these, but this one I will make an exception because damn!  A single conversation that completely alters an area of someone’s life, giving them freedom and possibility and joy and passion where only upset, stuckness and frustration was before?  That’s awesome (and can well be addicting!).]

Eat beets!

Sh_t red!

And that’s the way it was

Let the tradition continue:  Holy cow this year certainly went by quickly.  As in, really fast.  I guess as the saying goes, time flies when you’re having fun…  and this year has been FULL.  So time again to pause time for just a bit and look back over the past twelve months and revisit my travels…

And what travels they have been, what an amazing year this has been.   When I said that this year would be my year, being the year of the Ox (my Chinese astrological sign, now 3 generations later) who knew just how great I would create the year?  Life is certainly grand.  I am fulfilled, excited, self-confident and living with wonderful peace of mind.  And this year has been full of pretty substantial happenings, and a year of making good on long time wants, dreams and desires.

Holiday Scatteredness

Welcome to the almost-end-of-the-year!  I’ve been having a great holiday, home in Canada where it is a bit white on the ground (but not by much, alas).  Great times staying with my parents, visiting a bunch of friends, and I even played a round of BattleTech, which I haven’t done in ages.  Now that I have space to hold people around a table I’m thinking I ought to host a few BT games this year…

Pretty much by chance we drove by the new Whitby public library and went in to have a look.  I like it!  Very nice, clean, modern lines, and I could tell right away looking at the detailing that the architects were on the ball.  Have a look at it here.  The spaces have a good feel to them, and the material palette remains limited and well executed, and the whole is varied without being busy.  Above all there are many different reading spaces with lots of glazing, so plenty of choice about your reading environment.  Good stuff, surprising to me to see something so well done in Whitby.  Guess my view of the town needs to grow.

I’ve been using my netbook a tonne while at home too and I am loving it immensely.   Eee PCs FTW.  So uncumbersome and easy to port around and yet it’s a cinch to type on it and the keyboard feels nice, exceptionally clear screen and a battery life that makes having a portable computing device to do work on the road actually worthwhile.  Between the train trip and here I’ve edited books, done a bunch of writing, many ‘net related things, even played Master of Orion on it.  So fun having this thing.

Unfortunately, before leaving Cali I carefully copied all the trip pictures onto an SD card so I could bring them home to edit while on vacation… and then left the SD card in my machine in Cali.  Oops!

And that’s it for this pretty random post.  Call it holiday verbiage… make it a great celebration everyone!

Nifty recently

I found some great dental floss made of pure silk – hooray for reducing unnecessary polymer use and the oil needed to make them!

Also began grinding nut butters (peanut and almond) freshly at the store.  I bring back the same containers to refill, wastelessly.

These are awesome also because I get a better product (better tasting in the latter, works better and softer in the former), costs less and it has cascading benefits in transport, disposal, and etc.

This is not hard.

And we all love otters: