Yes, I'm lazy. Sorry for the lack of updates! I've just finished going through my final major revision/edit of "Dance Panda Dance", my first novel. Working on the start of my third novel, "Hayden Smith, Sardonic Space Cowboy". So I'm a bit busy. Here, for your edification, and hopefully amusement, is an article I wrote for my work's Spring newsletter:
Spring has sprung! Like so many things that tend to spring! Wonderful children's toys, Tigger of Disney fame, and well laid, highly lethal booby traps.
Commercials persuade us that spring brings sunny days and fanciful frolics among the flowers. For those of us used to West Coast weather, we know spring only brings rain that's slightly less freezing than winter rain. Instead of freezing immediately on our Gore-Tex™, it may linger a while, as super-cold flu-inducing wet, and _then_ freezing. For this we should rejoice! Rejoice and pile into our nearest retailer to buy consumer goods in the latest spring colours!
Despite the clash between idealized spring and reality, there's much to do. Spring cleaning, spring makeovers, anything that has to do with rebirth and renewal; as we all -- in our own ways -- go through the motions of our agrarian ancestors. Those who first noticed that "Hey, after that really cold time when everyone starves and stuff, things regrow!" It's as old as history itself.
For some, spring is celebrated with home repairs and/or upgrades. The chance to walk into a store the size of the Death Star; where professionals who actually wear tool-belts non-ironically walk in and feel quite at home. These are the same professionals who get phonecalls at midnight to fix things like joists and and correct poor flashing. And yet, for some reason, we think we can do the same because we've just watched ninety eight hours of HGTV and boy are we psyched!
But it's an admirable goal, where one can really polish up on curses, blue phrases, and the sort of swaggering talk that would make a longshoreman blush. Frustration piled upon anger layered upon anxiety: that's what home projects are made of. And besides, it's Spring! Spring, time of rebirth and such! If nothing else it gets us out of our comfort zones. For those of us less mechanically inclined, it gets us waaay out of our comfort zones. Home repair is a fantastic world where a thingamajig has a specific name (say, a grommet), and several different whatchamacallits which look suspiciously alike have a entirely different names (pliers, hand vise, c-clamp).
But no one said rebirth was easy. Heck, birth, by all accounts, is no walk in the part, there is no reason why a reoccurance should be easier. In many ways, the process of cleaning and fixing and making things anew all seem to share the same theme of pain. Which is a good thing. Pain gets our minds off the slightly less than freezing (yet more copious) spring rain, the thousands of ads telling us we are not experiencing a monsoon in the middle of a temperate rain forest, and the nagging fact that the two months of relative sunniness is still three months away.
Spring has sprung! Like so many things that tend to spring! Wonderful children's toys, Tigger of Disney fame, and well laid, highly lethal booby traps.
Commercials persuade us that spring brings sunny days and fanciful frolics among the flowers. For those of us used to West Coast weather, we know spring only brings rain that's slightly less freezing than winter rain. Instead of freezing immediately on our Gore-Tex™, it may linger a while, as super-cold flu-inducing wet, and _then_ freezing. For this we should rejoice! Rejoice and pile into our nearest retailer to buy consumer goods in the latest spring colours!
Despite the clash between idealized spring and reality, there's much to do. Spring cleaning, spring makeovers, anything that has to do with rebirth and renewal; as we all -- in our own ways -- go through the motions of our agrarian ancestors. Those who first noticed that "Hey, after that really cold time when everyone starves and stuff, things regrow!" It's as old as history itself.
For some, spring is celebrated with home repairs and/or upgrades. The chance to walk into a store the size of the Death Star; where professionals who actually wear tool-belts non-ironically walk in and feel quite at home. These are the same professionals who get phonecalls at midnight to fix things like joists and and correct poor flashing. And yet, for some reason, we think we can do the same because we've just watched ninety eight hours of HGTV and boy are we psyched!
But it's an admirable goal, where one can really polish up on curses, blue phrases, and the sort of swaggering talk that would make a longshoreman blush. Frustration piled upon anger layered upon anxiety: that's what home projects are made of. And besides, it's Spring! Spring, time of rebirth and such! If nothing else it gets us out of our comfort zones. For those of us less mechanically inclined, it gets us waaay out of our comfort zones. Home repair is a fantastic world where a thingamajig has a specific name (say, a grommet), and several different whatchamacallits which look suspiciously alike have a entirely different names (pliers, hand vise, c-clamp).
But no one said rebirth was easy. Heck, birth, by all accounts, is no walk in the part, there is no reason why a reoccurance should be easier. In many ways, the process of cleaning and fixing and making things anew all seem to share the same theme of pain. Which is a good thing. Pain gets our minds off the slightly less than freezing (yet more copious) spring rain, the thousands of ads telling us we are not experiencing a monsoon in the middle of a temperate rain forest, and the nagging fact that the two months of relative sunniness is still three months away.
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