A Re-Awakening

With the demise of an 8-year relationship with a very special friend of mine, I've lost a source for being able to write and expound on subjects near and dear to me. So i decided to see about bringing this blog back as a way of getting my thoughts written down. :)

There are times that I sit back and just like to consider how life works.

Last weekend, I took a late night drive and just wandered around Los Angeles and north Orange County, looking at the sleeping world and knowing that while I'm awake and doing my thing, most of these people will never see the things I saw on my drive.

Many have no clue about what goes on after they turn in, and in watching a USPS postal facliity going at full speed as I drove by made me think a little bit about how the mail gets from place to place. As I drove by, I saw people going to and fro about their business and it was a heartening feeling knowing they were doing so.

I've done the graveyard shift for 8 years and don't mind it one bit. It may cut into my social life and activities, but working nights gives me a different view of things and I like that.

So I'm back, this time for good. I had my PowerBook fixed and a new 80 GB hard drive installed and I'm all set to pick this thing up once again.

It was a strange coincidence that I had enough money to pay for this drive because I didn't have anything else to cover until later in the month. I'm just glad it didn't take very long to fix and I was happily restoring things this past weekend.

I have an enormous interest in putting my computers together and hopefully, with the right kind of break, I can purchase a new Mac later this year. All I can do is hope.

The Power Of Good Characters

One of the things I've inherited from my mother is the insane appetite for reading. Ever since I was old enough to read, I've done so at a brisk clip. As I've said before, there are few things I enjoy more than reading books.

There are times that the books I read just grab me and won't let go. I ran into that with the recently completed Yoda: Dark Rendezvous (by Sean Stewart) and am enjoying that right now with Harold Coyle's God's Children. Though Coyle's dense US Army infantry descriptions can sometimes evade my entire grasp, his style of writing just kept me turning pages and having to force myself to stop to do other things makes for an exciting experience.

Late last year, I finished Kyle Mills's Sphere Of Influence and Smoke Screen in only a day and a half each. Mills, too, has a way of writing that made me keep reading no matter what. In Sphere Of Influence's case, he wrote a character by the name of Christian Volkov that was so magnetic that I enjoyed reading more when he was involved. Volkov is one of the bad guys in the novel but was written in a way that that didn't matter.I liked him and carried thoughts about him long after I was finished.

As a counterpart to Volkov, I also "keep" Ian Dunross, the protagonist of James Clavell's Noble House. Dunross may be a fictional character, but Clavell wrote him with such authenticity that he leaped off the page and took residence in my consciousness. There have been times where I would muse to myself something along the lines of "What would Ian do?" when faced with certain situations. Odd, but interesting.

The Pulse Of Life

It has been an eventful week though at the same time I cannot exactly say what went on. I can say that the week past dragged quite a bit and I'd lost my edge on Thursday night.

Of course, given the typical Friday fucking around when I go in during the daytime, let's just say that I'm glad that this particular week is over.

I still have one extra day to work, but that's on Sunday.


I did go out "on the town" in the middle of the week and felt the "pulse" of life as I walked down the street in downtown Long Beach one sunny and cool afternoon. By pulse of life, I mean that I had my eyes and ears open to what was going on around me and the thrum of life in the big city flowed through my senses. I didn't have anywhere to be until I went to work and was going to do some more book shopping, but as I went to the bookstore, I noticed all the goings-on around me.

It wasn't a particularly earth-shattering observational period, but I felt more or less at home in the crowd just doing my thing. It makes me realize that there are countless folks exactly like me all around the world. We all do our thing, just trying to get by while idiots and blowhards speak in our name as they strut across the international stage.

Sometimes that bothers me. Others, it's as irrelevant as wondering if I can lift a house with my fingertips.

Book Shopping

After going to visit a friend of mine last night, I went out and spent most
of the day on the street and looking for good prices on paperback books
to read. Here's what I picked up:



Harold Coyle

1. Against All Enemies
2. More Than Courage
3. Dead Hand
4. Code Of Honor

Laura Joh Rowland

1. Black Lotus
2. The Dragon King's Palace
3. Bundori
4. The Concubine's Tattoo

Mario Puzo

1. The Fourth K
2. The Sicillian
3. Omerta
4. The Godfather Papers

James Patterson

1. Violets Are Blue
2. Jack & Jill
3. The Jester

I also picked up Richard Price's Freedomland, Glenn Meade's Sands Of Sakkara, Richard North Patterson's The Outside Man and Balance Of Power, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, Larry Bond's Day Of Wrath, PT Deutermann's The Edge Of Honor, and Richard Herman's Against All Enemies.



This is in addition to the four Star Wars Extended Universe novels that I'm wading through at the moment. They are:

1. Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover
2. The Cestus Deception by Steven Barnes
3. Jedi Trial by Dan Cragg and David Sherman
4. Yoda: Dark Rendezvous by Sean Stewart.

Shatterpoint and The Cestus Decpetion were quite good and I am enjoying Jedi Trial.



There are few things that I like to do more than read books. Now I've got some books to keep my mind occupied.

A Return Of Sorts

Tra la la...

I'm more or less back. My machine has stabilized a bit so I can post wtih some regularity now.

There hasn't been a whole lot to say of late other than I'm digging more and more in to the Star Wars realm with book purchase after book purchase. Though I'm not entirely sold on some of the post-Return Of The Jedi series, they do have their moments and I enjoy those immensely.

Where my current interest lies is in the pre-Revenge Of The Sith era Clone Wars books. I'm currently Reading Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover and am enjoying it quite a great deal. It tells a tale with Jedi Master Mace Windu as the main protagonist. I've gained a new perspective on Windu and I'm not even done with the book yet.

Such is a testament by Stover's ability to weave a story.