Category Archives: Activities

Your Halloween viewing guide

October 12, 2014 6:44 AM , 2 Comments ,

I sometimes listen to a program on NPR called The Dinner party Download. They sometimes give suggestions for food, music, and other details for dinner parties as well as cover all sorts of topics.

In that spirit I thought I would put together a list of Halloween movies appropriate for the season in case you find yourself alone or with friends one of these October nights and have a yearning for something seasonal.  I have mixed in some comedies as well as horror movies.  Halloween is meant to be fun after all.  Probably should watch these at night with the lights out for maximum effect

 

 The Walking dead – Incredibly this is in its fifth season.  I mean, I thought the whole zombie premise was barely plausible enough for one 90-minute movie but these folks have managed to squeeze out years of TV revolving around a small band of survivors stuck in a zombie world.  This features the latest in gory special effects.  The plot deals more with character interactions than with the zombie apocalypse.  The stories are solid enough to keep you hooked and the writers aren’t scared of killing off fan favorite characters just to keep things fresh.

Kolchak: The Nightstalker – One of those forgotten gems of 70s television.  Revolves around a reporter who gets drawn into all sorts of strange and spooky situations.  Pretty basic special effects but the writing and acting is solid.  The direct ancestor of the X-files.  You can probably find it online.  More campy than scary.

Salem’s lot – One of the first adaptations of a Stephen King novel.  Follows a writer that returns to his home town as a mysterious plague begins turning the citizens into vampires.  If you expect sparkly vampires then this isn’t for you.  These vampires tend more towards the gruesome.

Ed Wood – Homage to the worst director ever.  Johnny Depp’s portrayal of this pioneer of bad horror movies is hilarious and probably dead on.

The Ninth gate – Speaking of Johnny Depp he does a brilliant job of portraying an antique books collector obsessed with recovering a satanic bible from the clutches of an occult group.

Ghostbusters – A well made comedy.  Excellent special effects for the mid 1980s.  Thoroughly researched and put together.  I wish scriptwriters could still turn out work of this caliber.

The legend of Hell House – I don’t know if I can say that this was based (even indirectly) on Shirley Jackson’s House on haunted hill.  Both movies are quite similar.  Though I find Legend to be more horrifying than its predecessor.

Beetlejuice – Michael Keaton shows his comedic talents in this comedy about a pair of ghosts trying to reclaim their home from the new tenants; a pair of yuppies from New York City.

The Exorcist – I will be frank.  I am not a fan of gory movies or over the top so-called horror movies.  They really aren’t horror movies.  They are shocking movies with lots of blood.  To me horror is something more subdued and malevolent.  This is why I like this movie.  The evil and horror sneaks up on you little by little.  It is still the only movie that scares me.  Everyone talks about the infamous pea soup scene but they tend to forget (perhaps on purpose) the horror built up to that point.  It’s the little things you don’t see off camera that allow the imagination to run wild and scare you more.

The Exorcist III – The Exorcist series was widely panned and I guess with some good reason but I find III did a good job of tying back to the original story.  Brad Dourif does an over the top job as a demonic serial killer

 

Posted in: activities, comedy, Horror, movies, television

add capacity, add capability

October 10, 2014 7:11 AM , Leave a Comment ,

These last few years have been a period of expanding my horizon, shoring up my deficiencies and adding muscle to what I already have.  Hard to say what the overriding motivation has been but the results have been most satisfying.

I’ve had to learn and add new skills to what I could do and learn about things that I never thought I would need to tackle in the past.  The most surprising thing has been that it hasn’t been as hard as I once thought it would be.

For a long time I would not try new things or would not delve deeper into skills and abilities that I already had.  I had grown complacent and content with what I knew.  But one day I looked around and came to the realization that what I knew or what I could do was no longer enough.

People around me, not just younger people but people my own age were passing me by and surpassing me.

“You paint?  when did that happen?”

“you can weld?”

“You know everything about home-refinancing?”

“You can program in Java?”

People around me had a plethora of skills that I never realized that they had and here I was thinking that I knew so much.  Now I’m not saying I’m going to go out and do all these things and master them.  I am however slowly adding to my capabilities and learning more and more.

One reason is that I want to be more self-sufficient and know more about life in general.  Doing things helps me learn about things.  Jumping right in and trying things is a great way to learn.  Another reason is that it keeps me busy and keeps my mind fresh.  Slipping into ruts where you do the same thing year after year is dangerous.

Sure you should have some patterns in your life but don’t get stuck into a fossilized mindset.  Stretch out and try.

 

Posted in: activities, life in general, skills

Using your gifts

September 16, 2014 6:43 AM , Leave a Comment ,

“Using your gifts” she said.

“What gifts?” thought the self-deprecating part of my mind.

But that was the writing challenge issued to me by Leslie.  A post on using my gifts.  A true corker if there ever was one.  But the thing about Leslie is that she always does come up with the best ideas and hardest challenges.

I spent Sunday mulling it over in my mind.  The assignment basically had two parts.  Firstly defining what my gifts were and secondly how I could use my gifts in everyday life.

Gifts, gifts, gifts.

The lyrics to ‘Simple gifts‘ popped up in my head.

‘Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free
‘Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
  ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.’

I then searched YouTube for the Aaron Copland version (Appalachian Spring) and searched Wikipedia for the background on Simple gifts and its influences on various social and intellectual movements of the early to mid 20th century.  I then remembered when I first heard that song in elementary school in the early 80’s and how the headmistress would sometimes make us sing it in a round at morning prayers.  But twisting and turning a subject round and round in my head wasn’t helping anything.  People always do say that I have a tendency to do that when presented with a problem.  I will worry over a problem from the left, right, top, and bottom trying out different perspectives.  Sometimes I have to concede that an obvious solution to a problem is the best course but sometimes I will find a path previously unconsidered by others.

The topic kept nagging at me through lunch.  A rock in my shoe would have been less distracting.

Leaving things hanging and unresolved is not my style.  Nor is it to give up so easily.  I supposed that it’s a bull-headed stubbornness that refuses to give up.  A quality that has marked me since birth and one without which I would not be alive today.  I had been in the Colorado mountains one Summer when while crossing a fast-moving stream a rock gave way under my foot and the stream dragged me down with it.  It’s amazing how quickly your mind works in these situations.

“So this is how I’m going to die.  I wonder if my body will be found downstream or if some wild animal will scavenge me.”

A particularly solid rock knocked some sense back into me.

” No.  No, I am not going out this way.”

Just that quickly I decided to live and slowly but surely I pulled myself to shore.  On the wrong side of the stream but on shore.

After sitting on the shore for a minute and considering that I might freeze to death or some previously mentioned wild animal might make a meal of me, I got up and hobbled down the stream and through the woods till I finally found a scientist doing the same thing I was doing, taking water samples, and he drove me back to a hospital.  Somehow I managed to hang on to my satchel full of water samples that I had collected and finished my paper on abandoned mine sites polluting streams.

But again such ruminations didn’t serve to further my purpose.

Perhaps I had to take a new tack on the problem at hand and consider the whole issue via a set of examples, stories, and collected experiences from my own past.  It is said that the INFJ personality types are born story tellers and delight in the role of playing the mentor.  I have also found it valuable in the past to relate experiences from my own life to provide precedents and illustrations for points or ideas that I was trying to transmit to others.  If I advise someone on a particular course of action they usually do not respond as well as when I would furnish them with examples of how I had met with a similar problem and overcome it.  So perhaps some stories relating how my gifts would emerge and be used in situations from the present and the past?

Was the solution to this writing assignment this simple?

Posted in: activities, attitude

the return of college football

August 31, 2014 6:30 AM , Leave a Comment ,

We have once again crossed the stark and trying month of August.  Maybe it’s global warming or El Nino or just old age but August seems to get worse each year.  But we’ve made it once more.  At the cusp of September I can now look forward with anticipation to my favorite time of year.

The rituals have already begun.  Kids and college students are all back in class now, the stores have set out their back to school sales and are slowly bringing out their Halloween decorations.

For me it’s seeing college football return.  I don’t really care for much in the world of sports.  Professional sports are too commercialized and mercenary for me to enjoy.  I know some athletes do practice their sport for the love of the game but for most it’s a paycheck and a job, plain and simple.  I don’t begrudge them the huge salaries they make but neither will I contribute to them.

The college game though.  That still has a tinge of purity about it.  Particularly in the small schools.  Most of these kids will never draw a check or even see a game except as a spectator.  Yet even knowing that they won’t make this into a profession they still pour their hearts and souls into each game.

I’m not much into TV anymore and Lord knows that I don’t have much free time for it either.  But kicking back and catching a couple of games on a lazy Saturday afternoon is something that I still like to do.

The excitement and energy from those games is infectious.  Even if I know nothing about the particular schools playing, I can get into how intensely these players are trying to win for the rest of their school bodies.

So yes, Once more I will be wrapped up in college football until early January.  A bad habit?  Maybe.  But one that I think I can afford to continue with.

Posted in: activities, football, sports

HMNS. my home away from home

August 27, 2014 6:14 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is an edited reprint of an article from 2008]

 

They brought a special display to the Houston Museum of Natural Science in August and the display was ending next week.  I realized this was one of those once in a lifetime deals you can’t pass up

For the first time ever the remains of Lucy, the first step in human evolution, were displayed outside of Ethiopia.  Australopithecus Afarensis was the first step on the long road to humans.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science is located near downtown in the museum district.  If Houston had a cosmopolitan center then this would be it.  Wide boulevards, parks, a trolley, it might remind you of Central Park in downtown New York City.  The museum itself is somewhat small for a major city but its a favorite for school kids.  I certainly adored coming here even as a kid back in the 1980s.

 

I bought a ticket for the display carrying my camera and cell phone.  I expected they wouldn’t let me take pictures.  The flash can damage old relics, so I had my cell phone camera too, but to my surprise they made me turn that off too.  So I couldn’t get any pictures.

But pictures don’t do justice to this.  Tiny little bones, just fragments really.  You could see the relationship, the long path to our skeleton, but just barely.  They made up a model of what she would have looked like.  Just barely 3 foot tall.  There was a 7-year-old girl with her parents.  They were looking at the model and I couldn’t help but look back and forth and compare them to each other.

I wandered out of the display and went to look at some of the permanent exhibits.

I mentioned diamonds didn’t I?  The museum does have one of the best jewel displays around

A pirates hoard of gems of all types.  Glittering in their cases.  If you stood in the right spot you would be blinded by the gleam

Being Houston, it had to have a display on the oil industry.  Sponsored by who else but Exxon.  The one thing i didn’t like is that since kids are the prime target for the museum most of those displays are geared for kids with lots of buttons and Disney like videos for them.  Kind of dumbs it down for the rest of us.

This is a well log.  When I first started out I had to read these everyday.  Shudder.

 

Last but not least a model of an armadillo from long ago,

Overall it was worth it to see Lucy, something I may never see again in my lifetime and something that most people wont ever see.

But mostly I just enjoy wandering the cool darkened halls of the museum.  There’s something soothing about being in this building with all the knowledge and study that it represents.  I feel rejuvenated just coming here.

 

Posted in: activities, Houston, museum

the 2014 vacation plans

August 25, 2014 7:03 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I admit that whenever I see web pages like “places to visit before you die” that I get enthusiastic for travel.  Of course that is the point of these websites and of travel magazines, and TV shows.  To show you all the pleasant aspects of travel and to whet your appetite to go and do something different and most importantly to spend money.

So inspired by this and a need to find a vacation spot I started looking.  My first thought was to go to the other side of the planet and try Asia or Australia or the Indian Ocean.  All have lovely places to visit and are really affordable.  But one of my friends pointed out that I would probably spend at least 3 solid days traveling on planes and waiting in airports.  I barely have 10 days in total so that’s on hold for another year.

So I would have to confine my trips to something closer to home.  I’ve been to most of Latin America.  Canada?  Didn’t really impress me as that different from the US.  I don’t just want to stay at a generic McHilHyatt type of hotel.  Those are for conventions or business meetings.

Ice hotels in Sweden in mid December?  ummmm pass.  Maybe a bit too different.

Machu Picchu came up in conversation as a possible destination.  But I’m thinking “ok I’ve seen the rocks, now what?”

Ladera resort on St Lucia island in the Caribbean would be nice, depending on the hurricane season of course.

Patagonia is another.

I’m just so scattered that nothing really speaks to me.  I know, first world problems.  Normally I would have had this figured out by now but this year has been nothing but hectic.

Ultimately I may end up not going at all.  I’ve been spending more and more time working and I have several different side projects going and at various stages of completion.  So vacation planning has tumbled down to near the bottom of my priorities.  One thing that I can’t do is to have work suffer because I am off on vacation or have one of my side projects collapse because I’m not there to tend it.  I hope that things will clear up soon and that I am able to make a decision.

I have to make up my mind in less than 2 weeks to book with sufficient time and right now (as of the 24th of August) everything is still up in the air.  Like I said, hopefully things will become clearer in the next 2 weeks.  If things do line up then I will be off on vacation.

Posted in: activities, vacations

these days

August 17, 2014 7:20 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I thought that you were supposed to take it easy as you got older.  It seems that I am busier than ever these days.  Where did I ever find the time to relax in the old days?

But relaxing is still vital to my life in general.  I’ve noticed how much worse my performance is if I have been pushing myself hard all week-long.  I get more apathetic and slouchy towards Thursday and by Friday I am “out of gas”.  Of course it’s on those days that someone calls up with half an hour till quitting time with some vital project or who needs answers “now”.

“que sera, sera” what will be, will be.  What a lovely attitude.  I wish I still had the luxury of embracing it but honestly if I let up for a moment, things immediately seem to totter on the edge of total collapse.  I don’t dare let up for a second, and that’s not me using hyperbole or trying to self-aggrandize my role in my life.  Believe me, I’ve tried to let up a couple of times this year and had near catastrophic results.

The little bit of free time at the end of the day and the free time I have on the weekends is golden and I must use it for all that it’s worth.  I may come off a little bit boastful on social media “I’m doing this, I’m doing that” but it’s really not.

Happy moments are far and few in between these days.  When you think about it, you have a choice whether or not to embrace the happy moments of your life. I have to grab and enjoy each and every one.  Unlike happy moments, sad moments are usually not optional.  They will impose themselves on you whether you want them to or not.

These days I have to make the most of what I have.

 

 

Posted in: activities, time

market day

August 13, 2014 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Although the modern supermarket is now the model of efficiency and now provides shoppers with a plethora of choices and the maximum of conveniences it lacks those elements which were once the hallmarks of the venerable market square.  The social function of gossiping, chatting, and lingering over the merchandize happens only as an after thought.  The thought that a supermarket might serve as a meeting and gathering place to discuss issues that affect the community is pretty much unheard of these days.  Today’s supermarket is all business.

The black tarred parking lot radiates heat back up as I step out of my car.  This spurs me on to cross the vast open and lifeless expanse and to enter the supermarket as quickly as possible.

The automated doors open and a blast of cold air wards against any of the summer heat entering into the store.  I grab up a little shopping basket.  I almost never use a cart as I don’t buy all that much.

Fruits and vegetables from all parts of the world.  A chance to try something exotic.  Most of these odd products ultimately end up rotting in place.  The few that do get sold go for eye-popping prices.  I grab up some lemons, limes, apples, and plums.  Broccoli and green beans.  Simple produce and not too exciting but the foundation of my diet.

The bakery.  Yummy cookies, cheesecake, pies.  All look so good.  Too bad I can’t stop.

The meat department.  Ground turkey and ground chicken.  Once just for healthy eating, now more of a necessity as beef prices go up and up.  Tilapia, bland and boring but filling.

Cottage cheese or yogurt this week?

The checkout lanes.  The same old magazines on the racks, same old candy bars.  Check the smartphone for Facebook and twitter updates.  Suddenly it’s my turn up.  It’s all a rather mechanical transaction which makes me wonder why they don’t install more self-serve checkout lanes.

Back into the car.  Although I appreciate the convenience and selection I can’t help but feel that there is something missing from the whole experience.  Something that can’t be weighed on the scales or price checked by the scanners.  The vital human element has been almost totally extruded from the market experience and going to the market is no different from going some hardware store these days.

Posted in: activities, life in general

incompatible

July 24, 2014 6:27 AM , Leave a Comment ,

So I was in a large bookshop the other day just rummaging around in the travel section and reading up on vacation spots around the world when I see a former date over in the romance novels isle.  I didn’t exactly hide but neither did I go up to her.  She was not the worst date ever but we had definite compatibility issues.

Back in 2005 a mutual acquaintance introduced me to Betty (not her real name of course).  She was 20 at the time and was in college and seemed fairly bright and mature.  So I finally got round to asking her out and gave her the choice of where to go.  She picked this “Chinese” restaurant where the food was microwaved and the decor came out of a Pier One catalog.  Midway through dinner she mentioned that she had promised to meet up with her friends at a club and wouldn’t it be fun to do that?

So off to the club we went.  It was called polly esthers.  A 70s style disco where the 20something crowd hung out and danced.

This was ironic for two reasons, One, none of them had even been alive in the 70s, and two, the club had given up on disco and was mostly playing modern stuff.

So we get to the club and her friends turn out to be mostly younger guys.  I made a valiant effort to dance but I’m just not a dancer so I quickly desisted and hung out at the bar while Betty was on the dance floor with her friends doing shots and boogieing down.  After a while I decided this wasn’t for me and told her I was taking off.  She said she was going to stay and grab a ride home with her friends.

Couple weeks pass and she calls me up and says she wants to make it up for the dance club and wants to go out again.  So we settle on dinner and a movie.  I took her to one of the better Vietnamese restaurants so she could sample real Asian cuisine and she didn’t like that.  Something bout too spicy.

I tried to come up with some topics of mutual interest but I was coming up with little to nothing at all to talk about.  Her interests mainly centered around contemporary music, TV, and celebrities.

Then we headed off to the movie that she picked.  This was one of those Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy movies (Ok we get it Jennifer, your marriage sucked).  We settled in and the previews came on.  One of the previews was for the 20th anniversary of “Back to the future“.

I commented “Wow, I was a kid when this came out”, she commented “Wow, I wasn’t even born back then”  and that’s when I realized I had made a horrible mistake.

Betty was cute enough but there wasn’t really all that much common ground there between us and the age difference didn’t help things.  So after the movie we ended the night on a fairly muted note.

Luckily she started dating some other guy and that was the end of my involvement with her.  I was honestly happy for her and for myself.  We could have continued dating but I don’t think anything positive would have come of it.

Back in the present she picked out some romance novel and headed off to pay for it without noticing me.  I buried my nose in a travel guide for New Zealand.

Posted in: activities, dating, life in general

Noblesse Oblige, not just for the holidays

July 16, 2014 6:26 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Noblesse Oblige, or the nobility’s obligation.  The idea is basically that those that have more than others have an obligation to share the wealth as it were.  If you found yourself in the enviable position of having more that you have a duty to use that good fortune to improve the lot of those less fortunate.

It’s an ancient concept.  All the major religions have something similar.  The Greeks and Romans considered it part of the upper classes duty to do something for those that didn’t have enough.  The concept even extends to our modern times.  After all, any kid can quote the line from the movie Spiderman “with great power comes great responsibility.

So it’s not all that alien.  But you don’t have to be a superhero or a filthy rich millionaire to do this.  We live in the richest, most powerful country in the world.  In fact in the history of the entire planet.  We have resources, education, and access to information that was undreamed of even a couple of decades ago.  So even the poorest of us can do something to improve the life of someone else.

The holidays are a perfect time for this concept and many people do take the time to do something nice.  But it would be nice if people practiced this all year round.

I’m sure that every town in the US has a food pantry for homeless people or a shelter.  Clean out those closets and get rid of some of that old clothing that doesn’t fit any more or that you don’t like.

Twenty bucks, just scrape together 20 bucks and go to the supermarket and buy some food (and not pumpkin pie mix or canned artichokes)

Volunteer a Saturday morning or an evening at an animal shelter.  Animals need your help too.

If you live online like I do then try a crowdfunding website like Kiva or Kickstarter.

It really doesn’t take all that much to make someone’s crappy day go from bad to bearable.  And you don’t have to do it because you’re a saint or a Dudley do right that says their prayers every night and goes to bed at 8PM or a high society matron that’s trying to get a tax write off.

You can be the most irresponsible party animal in the world, you can drink and smoke with the best of them the rest of the year, but for just for a couple of hours for one day, just do this one thing.

Just do it because it’s the right thing to do.

Posted in: activities, charity, life in general