Wholesome Family Activities

So in case you're wondering what it is that I've been doing with so much of my time that I can neither blog nor call up parents at the traditional time (sorry!), here's an explanation.  In a couple of months there's a convention up in Dallas called ReaperCon.  Reaper is a company that makes miniatures, the kinds I've spent so much of my time learning to paint.  The convention sounds really cool: they will have classes, plenty of places to paint, lots of things to do and see, games to play aaaaaaand...they have a competition for painted miniatures.

 Now I have never been competitive about my painting, but I looked at a lot of entries from last year and by comparison, my most recent work seems to match up pretty well.   At least, it does when I take my time.  Plus, they have a very forgiving grading system: you get graded based on how good your mini looks, not how many better painted miniatures happened to be entered in the contest.  I'm aiming for 'bronze' rank, but even if I don't get that, you get a certificate of merit just for entering, and I would hang that up proudly on my wall. A lot of the highest-end painting really is just a function of putting in really a lot of work.  And so in that spirit, I've begun working on my entry already.  I've been taking pictures at the end of each day, to show off progress and also to give you guys a sense of how long it takes to paint one of these guys so that they look really nice.  Also to show off how good I am at this now.  :)

Here is the end of day 1:

they grey is the primer: so the only thing I managed to get done in the several hours I spent on the first day with this guy is to get down a base coat of red, white and skin tone on part of him.  Told you: long process.  You use very thin coats of paint and paint them on usually around 4 or 5 times so that your guy looks like a little person, and not a tiny figurine covered in plastic paint.  The matte finish takes work, but it's crucial for a good looking figure.

Day 2:

A few more colors make their appearance.   did the gauntlet, mask, and the like in a slightly different red color.  I have a back-story in mind where the guy stole the coat from someone on the battlefield, so the color doesn't quite match.  Also, the accessories were given to him by his evil overlords, they are the source of his power.  It's very complicated, maybe I'll write up a story for him later.

Day 3:

A lot of progress on this day.  It was Saturday, and Jess let me paint a lot during the day while she watched Tyler.  the rest of the base coat has been laid down, and I even did the shading on the back of his coat.  I think I did a pretty decent job, but this is one of my first attempts at this sort of dramatic coloring.  A cape is a pretty good place to start, though.  The places where to put the high-and-low lights are pretty obvious.

Day 4:

Oh man, I really like the progress I did today.  I painted that tatoo-thing in the center of his chest like scarification, and it came out looking really well.  I also added some shading to his gauntlet, mask, loin cloth and chest-skin.  You might not be able to tell in this picture (heck, I can't even tell unless I look under the magnifying glass Jess got me for Xmas) but I managed to individually shade each of his ab-muscles.  I'm pretty impressed with that.

And lest you think I spend all of my time cooped up in my room ignoring my parently duties and painting: here's some evidence otherwise:

There was a nice breeze today, so we got out Jessie's stunt-kite and went out to the park.  There were a lot of crashes, but Tyler thought this was one of the coolest things in the world.

Jessie took Tyler skating also this weekend, Kneecaps be damned!  He thought it was also the coolest thing in the world.  Cutest, too!

-N

Updates

I just posted the 30 for my 30 blog link on Facebook, so it officially feels like there is no turning back.  I'm pretty pumped that you guys have been excited about this too, because I can't really imagine how I am going to meet this goal myself.

Because.... well, we are busy.  I mean, owning a home seems to take a lot of time.  Matt is re-keying the house today. I'm learning about hot tub chemistry, and we might even get some laundry done. Oh, and we were both exhausted from another long week at work.  I'm ready to start working from home more again though.

The big news at work this week is that we got a new name.  This means I have a new work email address, a new mouse pad and a T shirt with the new name.  I take it for other people it was more of a transition.  New templates, new color palates, server transitions and some online redirects.  I got a series of emails over the week begging me to update my voicemail, contact info, email signature etc, which seems silly.  I've never used my phone, and I only ever email people on my team.  But, it's been interesting to see how something like a cohesive brand identity comes together.  (It's also super easy to see how it would fall apart, so I updated what I could.)

Ok, back to domestic projects.  I would love to finish putting my office together before I start acting like stacks of things on boxes was the look I was going for.

A Subtle Shift in Priorities

Well just take a look at how timely this blog entry is. Ha! Fantastic.

Recently, which is to say 'the last few months', I have not been enjoying the prospect of going to Judo. I would realize it was Monday, my normal Judo day, and my stomach would sink. Judo isn't that bad, not really, but compared to some of the other things I do with my evenings, it just always felt like a waste of an evening. We often spend a frustrating amount of time just talking about stuff, and I've never felt like my progress has been that marked. I got my black belt, I guess, but I still never really felt like I earned it, but just going to judo because it was 'judo day' hasn't really felt right in a while.

I sat down with Jessie to talk about my 'crisis of activities', something that comes up every few years, and she told me exactly what you'd expect her to tell me: if you're not enjoying it, then why are you going? We have our Kinect at home for exercise (and it keeps kicking my ass), there's no need to go if I'm not enjoying it. So for now, I've decided to take a hiatus from Judo. As Jess reminded me: I can always go back. They've been doing Judo for a couple of centuries now, I don't think they're going to quit anytime soon.

So I certainly don't lack from good uses of time in my life, or at least not fulfilling ones. Miniature painting continues to be great fun, and I'm getting better at it with every mini I paint. I even have a permanent home for my painting, now, as opposed to just keeping it in the library and moving it every time we want to play cards or something. I carved out a little corner of my studio and now have my stuff all set up for all the painting I could want. I also shuffled my studio over so it's now in the same upstairs room as the guest bed. We can use the old studio room for...other things.

There's also Piano, which I am attempting to be as diligent as possible about, because you know what practice makes, don't you? I did get a little down on it because, like most of my hobbies, it's not really leading to anything. I'm not going to any recitals, or joining a band, or anything. Though the better I get at piano, the easier it will be to compose music in the future, which is nice. Still, though, playing the opening to Journey's “Don't Stop Belivin'” is a pretty good way to end a day, so I keep at it. If anyone knows of a band in Austin looking for a piano player without a whole lot of time to invest...let me know.

But if I'm cutting back on Judo, perhaps it would be a good time for me to try doing something else with my time, eh? Maybe a little...VOLUNTEERING? Yeah, I know great minds think alike.

I scrounged through various volunteer listings online, hoping to find something that could make some use of my expertise. Something maybe with education, too, because I really, really like education. I ended up signing up for Austin Partners in Education. I start on Tuesday.

I'm volunteering! It's quite exciting. All I saw on the sign-up-form online was that they needed people to help with groups of two-or-three middle schoolers who need help learning math. Sounds up my alley, yes? But I had some questions, which I brought to the lunchtime training session I went to last week. Turns out this group has around 2000 volunteers (!) and what they do is one class a week, the whole math class meets with a group of probably 10 volunteers who guide them through the lesson for the day. The job is to ask questions, get them thinking, and generally show our excitement for the subject matter at hand. I can do that.

I'm coming in the the middle of the school year, which usually means I'll be replacing someone who couldn't make it through the year (Life happens, you know?) so I'm hoping that I'm up to the standard set by my predecessor. If this goes well, and I've only got something like 7 more classes before the end of the year, maybe I'll sign up for a full year next time.

Of course, right after signing up for this, the local community magazine came out with their summary of a boatload more volunteer opportunities, so I can certainly expand if I want. I may have to, if I'm going to help Sandlin meet her goal.

So let's see, what do you need to know about Tyler. He's coming up on his terrible twos. They're not really that terrible, cause he's such a great kid normally, but you can definitely see where the beginnings of a furious little id are going to create a few frustrating afternoons before we get him properly civilized. He doesn't want to share, he gets angry when he can't have is way...you know...kid stuff. On the plus side, the house next door to us sold, and we met the neighbors today while we were getting ready to take Tyler out biking. (We bike, he rides behind). They have a 9-year-old boy, and a 2-year old boy as well. Score! Jess made them cookies. They move in tomorrow. We know pretty much nothing more than that (except their names) but we are going to bring them cookies, so I expect we will be fast friends.

Tyler is starting to sing. You have to know what you're listening for, because he can't carry a tune yet and he only get's about 70% of the words, but we've heard him do 'Twinkle Twinkle', '5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed', 'The ABCs,' and 'The Itsy-Bitsy Spider', with hand motions and everything. He is also really excited because he gets to go to Disneyland for his birthday, or at least near his birthday, and Nana and Grandpa are going to be there too. Though to be honest, at this point the trip is about 30% for Tyler and 70% for Jessie. Also, we get to visit some friends in LA while we are out there, so good fun then, too.

-N

30 for My 30th

I am turning 30 this year.* 

Several of my friends have already been through this milestone birthday so I both expect to survive it but also to dread it quite a bit.  I don't want to dread this birthday, or treat it as just some other day in some year.

And for more complex reasons, I've been thinking about my legacy a lot lately.  I've got this PhD, which is cool, but I don't exactly use it for curing cancer.  I've had some great students, but they were destined to do great things before they met me anyway. I've been living in Totem lake for about a year now, and I don't know a single soul in this community. I'm ok with the fact that I'm not going to win a Nobel Prize, but I think I should still have an amazing life.  That's what it's for, right?

The day that Matt and I moved into our house, we jumped into the hot tub after dark.  The house was a mess, filled with our cheapo college furniture and all our dusty stuff that our friends and family mercifully helped us move over. We were exhausted from the move.  On our back porch, steam from the hot tub glossed all that over and we looked at each other and just said, "This is it. That's all I want."  I felt like I have no more ambition for myself; I've got a great house, a great job, a great life where I have tons of free time to myself.  To quote Noel, "This is why I went to college."

But, I still get the nagging feeling that I could be doing better, living a better life.  Be more connected to my community, and live a life of service.  That's important to me.

A huge amount of my 20s was spent on myself.  Getting through college, getting through grad school, finding a job.  These are things you have to do for yourself, and are important so that for the rest of your life you can focus outward a bit.  Now I feel like I've got those things mostly under control, I'm ready to start thinking outward. I've been thinking about various places I would like to volunteer with and support, and it's hard to find a single thing that seems like it's going to fill up that feeling.  I worry a lot about hunger in my community, but the FoodBank mostly seems to need volunteers during the week.  STEM education is really important to me, but it's hard to know which volunteer opportunities make a difference.

I had this idea on the bus one morning, and I need you all to support me in it.  It's too hard to find any one thing that will be as important as I want to be.  What if I do something HUGE instead?  Instead of fussing over whether one little thing is more important than some other little thing, I'll just do a BUNCH, and that will be a big thing.

Here is my idea: 30 projects for my 30th birthday**.  Each project either takes 30 hours, or raises $1,000 dollars.  Think about it, we could raise $30,000 or 900 volunteer hours- how cool is that??  That will be something exciting to celebrate, instead of just getting a little older.

And, actually, that brings me to the next part.  You know what I want for my birthday this year? Your time or money, invested in our communities in the service on one another.  Help me in my efforts to raise money, or to rack up volunteer hours by taking on a project of your own, or supporting one of mine.

I haven't figured out how I will track all this yet, or what all 30 projects should be, but you will be hearing about it in the coming weeks.  I figure I have from now until my 31st birthday to get it all done.  That's more than a year to do meet this audacious goal, either by myself or with your help. So will you help?

* in July, don't freak.

**I've cross posted this here, where I expect to do most of the tracking for this project. Check there for future updates on the projects (although I am sure I can't resist sharing some of that here as well).