It is a new year. I have had a different sort of year. 2009 had some big changes for me. I moved to a different state and started working in a different career field. When I first moved finding a job was hard, the economy was so bad that it seemed like I wouldn’t find anything and at times it felt hopeless. I heard from various businesses I was either too qualified for what I was applying for and they felt I would leave once something better came along with better pay and benefits to I wasn’t qualified enough and they weren’t sure I was the right fit. Then I found work through a temp agency. Even though the pay was low I was able to work enough hours to scrape by and scrape should be a key word. I was thankful that I was able to have some money though and it kept my resume looking shiny being there wasn’t a nasty break in work history. I went from June to December before I found full time employment with benefits. It was a long time of waiting but I consider myself lucky due to the economic climate. It wasn’t easy through 2009 and won’t be easy for the start of this year, however 2010 shows promise and a positive outlook isn’t so hard to imagine.

In other news, I had a good Christmas. I spent it with my girlfriend at her family’s house. It was for the most part relaxing, worrying about being stuck by a blizzard had its moments. New years was also relaxing and I am happy I can have another day of resting to look forward to. I have been taking some pictures of my cat doing the usual. http://www.jpgmag.com/photos/2193303 I added a picture to JPG of Wally. He is a source of joy and entertainment. He is a good cat when he isn’t knocking stuff over. Well, I should probably go to bed because it is late. More updates to come.

It is late… 2am. I can’t sleep and am watching music videos online to keep myself entertained. I am also drinking some home made beer. The latest batch I made turned out to be good. It has a sweet start with a bitter hops bite at the end. When poured into a glass it has good head retention and a deep amber color. There is also a delicious aroma rising from it. The alcohol content sits right below 6 percent. Overall I enjoy this batch, its has strong flavor and is full bodied.

In other news I have completed my first two weeks at my new job. I am enjoying it a lot. I have been contemplating my career choices and have been thinking about going back to school in the near future for a medical related career. It is a large shift from what I was doing before but I enjoy the work I have been doing at my new job.

I have been working on my tiger scratch board and I am making some progress towards finishing it. I have a number of hours of work into it and can’t wait for it to be finished. I started the picture a number of years ago and constantly set it aside for other projects to break the boredom that came with the slow progress. I have been trying to get as much detail into it but that also makes for a large amount of time that needs to be put into it. I have that, a large pencil drawing, and a painting that I am working on. I also dabble with my photography. A friend/coworker from Cirrus Design made the comment that I have hobby ADD and I got a kick out of that description. I more than likely could finish a project quickly if I worked on one at a time but I like working on multiple things at once. If I could only work on my art work and somehow have enough money to pay the bills and not need a job.

Eventually I will have prints available for purchase of my work. Hopefully that will bring enough money that I can do what I want when I want.

It has been a relaxing day. The only big thing that was done was getting groceries and that was fairly easy to do. I also received a message that I am officially an employee at my new job. Due to the holidays I won’t have my first day till December 7th. I am excited to have a set date though. I know I don’t have anything in my background that would make me invalid for employment but I hate waiting for those things to go through. I am going to relax for the rest of the evening and the biggest thing I want to do is watch Stargate Universe. I have been watching the show and it has its ups and downs. I decided to give it a chance after the first few episodes and although it is slow going and there is a lot of character development all at once instead of snippets through out the series, it is interesting to see how the events unfold. I have found it to be slightly predictable, and since there is a lot of character development it has been slow to get to action or some satisfactory plot development. It is slightly boring with the crew being stuck on a ship they can’t use at the moment and I think the trips to their home galaxy with the communication stones is overplayed. The last episode had a very abrupt cliffhanger ending that doesn’t seem to fit with the commercials I have seen for the next episode so who knows what will happen with tonight’s episode. I’m sure it will fit in somewhere in the series. Overall I have been impressed with the series. They expanded on the ideas from stargate sg1 and atlantis, and made an entirely new show. I have read viewer reviews and a lot of people are knocking it for not being like the other series. I am happy with a fresh view on it. It reminds me of Battlestar Galactica the way the camera work is done, the plot development seems like a lot of the old anime series I used to watch, slow to get the the resolution and heavy character progression and development. I look forward to see how the series goes.

Here is an image of Wallace produced from the Rasterbater program. It is from a photograph I took and the program converts the image into dots. Once it is printed it is assembled and then presto… wall art.

It is late! I am still up and at it for some reason, must be the coffee I had at work. I am going through my pictures and ran across one I took of my drawing I have been working on. It is not finished however a visual is in order for anyone who is interested.

It is almost finished. I have to add the clouds and sky. I was also considering of adding a 109 cruising in for a bit of suspense in the image. I am still deciding on that one though. Once the image is finished full size prints will be available framed or unframed, price to be determined.

As I write this I have a cat curled up next to me sleeping. I think he misses me when I am gone at work for 9 hrs during the day. When I wake up he always seems to want to play when I have to get ready. He seems bummed when I walk out the door and then he wrecks stuff to get attention. Poor guy, at least I let him play rough with me, even though his teeth and claws are sharp on my hands and feet. He gets his pent up energy out another way by chasing a laser pointer. He loves that and will tear around the apartment in a full sprint swatting at the dot as it moves. It is a blast for both of us. He is my buddy.

I have been relaxing and chatting with Jennifer. We have been laughing about the cat and watching music videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ikdx1bLq3rM

It is from one of my favorite bands 3 Doors Down and from the latest album. It has been used by a major car insurance campaign and there are a few memorable scenes that I have laughed at from the commercials.

I have had a good day so far even though I worked another long day at the temp job. There are a bunch of activities planned for the weekend including cleaning and washing clothes. It will be great once it is done. I better get to bed soon.

It has been a long day. I am winding down with some tv. I am going to watch Mythbusters at 8. I have been watching that show since it started so many years ago and have tried to see every episode. I have been a little worried about the show because it seems like they are stretching to make an episode. Other than that I will most likely go to bed early due to my exhaustion level. I have been finding falling asleep a little difficult lately. Hopefully it will be easier now that I don’t have to worry as much about work after being offered the job yesterday.

Wallace has been sleeping in his cat bed on top of the book shelf.

Here he is on top snoozing. He didn’t seem to like a flash bulb going off in his face when he was sleeping. He ended up moving around trying to avoid a picture opportunity.

Here he is after he shifted, he was not pleased with the flash. He did manage to purr while it was going on. It is my revenge for when he wakes me up in the middle of the night by pouncing on me, purring in my ear, tickling me with his whiskers while he sniffs my face… the list continues but ends with a bang when he knocks stuff over with a crashing bang.

He can be a handful at times. Overall he is a good cat but if it dangles, jingles, or flashes light he can become a terror kitty. The first way of punishing him is corporal cuddling. I got the idea from a you tube video . It starts with a hug that he likes but it continues till he complains. If he continues to act up he gets a squirt with a squirt bottle spray. He has come to recognize the squirt bottle and will plan his escape once he sees someone with it. It is very comical.

I had an interview for a full time job today. It went very well and I ended up having two interviews back to back. In the end I was hired on the spot and now I am waiting for by background check to go through. It is very exciting news and has been a long time of waiting for an opportunity for this. Just a small update, more to come.

I have been relaxing this Saturday night watching Cats 101 on Animal Planet and surfing the internet. Jennifer has been working on an art project and is watching the show as well. We are suckers for cats and have been enjoying the show. I ran across a few interesting articles. One that really caught my eye came from Popular Science…

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2009-10/why-astrophotography-worth-trouble-and-sometimes-disappointing-results

It is very special kind of photography but would be fun to accomplish. Photographing planets would be very tough and would require a small amount of planning. I would like to attempt it once I am able to. The equipment I currently have would not be able to do anything like it. It is surprising what an amateur astronomer can accomplish with the technology out there.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-11/space-hotel-already-has-paying-guests-2012-debut

This article also caught my attention. As technology advances the commercialization of space is a given and this is evidence of such. While not very practical or economical at the present time colonization of space will be inevitable. As resources become scarcer than they currently are and the world population continues to increase mankind will have no other choice but to inhabit space. There is seemingly unlimited resources in space. A few that I can think of off the top of my head include the asteroid belt, and the various moons orbiting the gas giants. The asteroids have a high content of heavy precious metals. The soil of Mars also contains all the elements for advanced polymers as well as evidence of water. The moons orbiting the gas giants are also impressive. Titan orbiting Saturn contains more hydrocarbons than all the reserves on Earth. I would like to think once we inhabit space we wouldn’t need the hydrocarbons for propulsion and basic energy needs, however we would have enough for every person for what ever need they had. On top of that we wouldn’t have to fight over the resources on the planet. That could be wishful thinking though based on the history of mankind. We as a species are far off from that at the present time. The future is fast approaching though. In my lifetime I will most likely see the start of the process with bases placed on other bodies in the solar system. Plans are already in order for a moon base for the expanded focus of manned exploration of Mars. Who knows what the future will bring.

Today has been a busy and very interesting day. It started with a jolt with a loud bang coming from the other room in the middle of the night. There was a bathroom tote attached to the shower wall with suction cups that fell off with a very loud clang and bang. After checking it out I went back to bed only to be disturbed about half an hour later at 3 am with sounds of explosions and broken glass. It sounded like muffled gunshots and it was very alarming. My mind was racing trying to figure out what was going on. My pistol is located right under the bed… do I grab it and investigate, what was that sound, I didn’t hear anyone outside or inside the building right before it happened…. in the split second from the first bang 2 more followed and after I was jolted awake again I began to figure out what was really happening. After the third bang I could hear fizzing and instantly thought OH NO NOT MY BEER!!!!! It turned out to be the home made pop. Jennifer and I wanted to try it and see how it compared to the stuff that can be purchased in stores. After tasting it when it was ready I didn’t really like it. It tasted to medicinal and didn’t suit me. At any rate there will be no more samples due to the violent end to the experiment. Unlike the beer the pop is all sugar and the yeast in it kept making carbonation and didn’t run out of steam like it would in the beer with the small amount added with priming sugar. We unwittingly made glass grenades that were placed neatly in the study’s closet. The explosion was so violent that glass shrapnel was embedded in the door and wall. The shards also had enough force to ricochet off of the ceiling and land on top of things placed on the top shelf of the closet. The boxes right next to the bottles had neat tears with glass all over the interior.

Jennifer and I ended up spending all morning and afternoon cleaning and removing glass and pop residue. There is still some cleaning to do with the carpet. We are using carpet cleaner to lift the pop out of the carpet. It is going well but it is slow due to the wait for the cleaner to do its job. We are very grateful that the bottles exploded in the middle of the night instead of some time that we could possibly be in the closet gathering items. Who knows what would have happened if someone would have been next to that, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been good.

The temperature here has been mild. It was 65 deg here today and we have the windows open. Wallace is loving it. He enjoys sitting on the window sill taking in the rays and sniffing the air coming in. He also loves looking at the birds that fly around and land on the ledge right outside the window. He was very mad and has been acting out due to him being sequestered in the bathroom while the cleaning was taking place. He probably assumed he was in trouble or something and is now acting out.

We also stopped by a thrift store to look for an old game. Jennifer has a school project where she has to make her own board game and make a business proposal to go along with it. She has to make a working model as well. We were looking for a game board to use as a base and paste on the image of her game board on top. We couldn’t find anything large enough to work for her purposes. We did meander through the store and found something that would work for decoration in the apartment. We got a glass container and Jen wants to put her left over balls of yarn in it and put it up on the shelf for color. I thing it is a good idea and the jar cost 50 cents. We could also put some twigs or other thing in there to add to its appearance but who knows how it will look. So we didn’t leave disappointed.

For the rest of the day we will be relaxing after all the events and our next major decision will be what to eat for supper.