Darth Brock's Blog

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It seems that everything is moving according to the new plan.  Michelle is in negotiation with her school about how to get to college, Sherry is settling in to her new routine and I’m working on the goals that I set earlier in the year.

We had a guest speaker in this weekend at our church.  He’s the head of the Canadian organization and had a lot of really cool insights into the thinking of the Post Modern kids.

He said that their philosophy is all about the journey.  They really don’t care about the destination as long as the journey was meaningful.  They don’t have answers and can’t articulate why they make the decisions that they do.  Their life is filled with mystery.

The old ways are no longer relevant and they reject the institutions and power brokers that Modern thinkers take for granted.  Society is far more important than logic.

That actually makes me feel a lot better about where Michelle is right now.  Everything that she’s doing is the new ‘normal’ for her era.

An ‘age’ usually lasts about 400 years (it’s been shortening with the globalization of the world, but you can still expect 200 years).  That means that there are only a couple of generations that have to deal with both paradigms at the same time.

We need to find and embrace those thinkers who can freely move in both worlds.  Bilinguals if you will.  I need to find one of these people so that they can explain where Michelle is going to want to head next.

Just one funny story from Michelle’s new adventure:  She works 30 hours a week at a minimum plus 1 job and is making ‘pretty good money’ in her view.  Until she went to the grocery store.  She spent $175 in one trip and used up about half of her paycheck all at once.  She still needs to come up with rent, insurance, gas and cigarettes (oh, and phone and electricity and entertainment) with only half of her paycheck.  Uh oh.

At least work is going really well for her. She’s in a call centre making appointments for people who have purchased technical support from Best Buy.  That means that they are waiting for her call and are excited about getting the geeks into their houses to fix their electronics.  She has to maintain at least 12 calls per hour to keep her job and if she can maintain about 24 cph then she gets a bonus at the end of the month.  Cool.  That $300 would go a long way to fixing her money troubles for June.

Sherry was rained out yesterday and spent her free time getting caught up on some projects around the house.

I got a thank you card from one of the boys that came over to our house for the Guys Games Day In on Saturday.  (I invited three dads and their sons to come over and play games in my arcade.  I’m running a very slight risk of being like Michael Jackson if I’m not careful…)  Anway, two dads and four sons made it out and we played Wii and fooseball all afternoon –from 11:00 to 4:00.  It was a Great time. I would say 9.5 out of 10 for overall enjoyment.

I’ll definitely have to throw one of those again!   My basement is now legendary in the minds of three families.  How cool is that?

I’m thankful that I can build relationships using the stuff that I already own

I’m thankful that I can enjoy my games for an entire afternoon and not feel guilty

I’m thankful that Michelle is making a go of it on her own

I know that God wants me to love those around me and has given me everything I need to do it.

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Yes, the love of my life is one more year older today.  On this day only a few short years ago a little piece of heaven was birthed into this world and they named her ‘Sherry’.

Sherry blesses me daily with her affection and intuition.  She loves to serve (and actually serves to love – ask me about that later).  She’s kind, forgiving, thoughtful, considerate and all mine.

Sherry completes me, where I lack she excels – she has never hesitated to back me up and she always makes me look good.

She has an incredible insight into the relational dynamics of almost every situation and will suggest things for me to say and do to make me look good.  And she does this often and without prompting.

She’s an incredible landscaper, very hard working, has a remarkable spatial sense and is talented with colour and texture.  Our house always looks amazing and our yard is the envy of our neighbors (well, not right now since it’s under some pretty heavy construction, but usually).

She is my angel, my lover, my best friend.

Sherry, I love you.

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It’s about time, but the drama is beginning to subside.  Michelle is settling into her new place and she has an appointment with the guidance counselor at school to see what the plan is for her graduation.

She’s been by to pick up most of her stuff and is just waiting for a truck to be available to get her bed moved over.

She’s been living on Mr. Noodles for the last couple of days – payday isn’t until Friday and money’s been a little tight recently.  She picked up a couple of packages of KD while she was here so at least she’ll have a little variety.

It’ll be interesting to see what she does about a car given that she won’t have enough for rent and her car before the end of the month.

In other news, Sherry’s birthday is this Friday and I haven’t found anything for her.  Yikes.  This is getting a little too close for comfort…  At least we do have dinner plans for Saturday night.

Pastor George has invited me on a trip that he’s going on next week.  He’s headed for a pastoral meeting a couple of hours north of here and wants me to come along.  I’m not sure what our plans for our vacations days are this year – I’m not sure I can spare three full days off.

I’m thankful that I’m allowed to play

I’m thankful that I have some pretty cool toys

I’m thankful that we were created to have fun

I know that God created me with a desire to play and I know that He’ll encourage that aspect of my life.

We’re looking forward to having a nice Mother’s Day’s lunch at our place.  I’m working on making all the arrangements now.  It should be a nice time.  Bernie has managed to wrangle us some very tasty ribs and I’ll BBQ them with some chicken for variety.

It should be a really pleasant meal.

We’re also looking forward to having a nice quiet dinner out in celebration of Sherry’s birthday (this Friday) – we’ll be heading to a really nice little Italian restaurant. 

Then later this month we have the dinner club, Mom’s birthday and Michael’s birthday.

Whew.  Then next month we do it again with Father’s Day, Michelle’s birthday and Dad’s birthday.  Yikes.  At least it’s been a few months since Christmas so the gift budget can recover a little.

I went over to a friend of mine’s last night and we played Apples To Apples – that was a lot of fun.  We laughed and chatted and had a really nice all around good time.

Tonight is going to be a little bit of project time and then taking it easy in anticipation of a very busy weekend.

Sherry and I are planning a photo shoot for the near future.  It’ll be vampire themed and it should be a lot of fun.  We’re doing the makeup research now and collecting pieces of the costumes.  If any of them turn out I’ll post them here.

I’m thankful that Sherry is willing to model for me

I’m thankful that we have a photo studio in our basement

I’m thankful that Michelle’s doing ok.

I know that God wants us to love each other and has gifted us with the ability to do so.

Friday night was really nice – there were about 120 people at Georges birthday party – it was a nice turn out for a really nice guy.  We only stayed for the meal (from 6 to 8) we skipped the dance afterward – we’re really not dancers and Sherry was exhausted.

The move at Shelly’s was a little different.  Most of the big stuff has been moved the day before, so we were more or less moving boxes around the house and unpack some of the kitchen stuff.  Sherry stayed and did a full eight hour day, but I got about an hours worth of work done and then just hung out with the guys.

It was nice, but I had a tonne of projects waiting at home for me – if we had known, I would have sent Sherry and I would have stayed and worked on my own stuff.

Sunday was a nice easy day.  We worked on the wine project for a bit before church and then headed to the States as soon as the service was over.  That was a nice trip.

Then we picked up some chairs at Canadian Tire and came back to work on some projects around the house.

Today I’ll be working on a major, major bug in my flagship product. That can’t stay there very long, but unfortunately it’s a nasty bug that’s going to be brutal to track down.  *sigh*.

Michelle is painting her apartment – we don’t get to see it until the painting is done – appartenlty it’s a little run down and she wants to freshen it up before she shows anyone.

I’m looking forward to seeing it.

I transfer old vinyl records to CD (and 8-tracks and reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes).  I also transfer VHS to DVD (and 8mm reels and super8 and digital8) as a hobby.  The hobby is actually paying fairly well recently and I have two $500 jobs coming up in May.  That should be a good time.  Anyway, I’ve made about $800 since January and I’ve been spending it over the last couple of weeks.

I have a new hard drive (to hold all that video) and then I splurged on an iPod Touch (8G) and a couple of other things.  It’s been really fun.

I’m thankful that I can use my talents to generate income

I’m thankful that Sherry lets me use my hobby money completely frivolously.

I’m thankful that there are so many cool gadgets out there.

I know that God gifted me in the area of Technology and that He wants to bless me through that talent.

So, it turns out that I really do like Fridays.  There’s something about knowing that tomorrow morning I get to do something new, something different that makes a difference in your attitude.

Of course this tomorrow I’ll have to move my Sister-in-law pretty much all day, but that’s ok, it’ll be out and about and with my sweety.

Lunch with Don was really nice.  He patiently listened while I told him how hard it was to deal with Michelle’s piercing mess.  Then we talked about his job and his idea for creating a website to generate revenue – pretty cool stuff.  The food was excellent too.

So, I met up with Michelle today – she’s getting an apartment this weekend – the girl that she’s been hanging out with wants to move out of her Mom’s place too, so they’re pooling their resources on an apartment.

It’ll be about $550 plus electricity split two ways, so, say, $300 per month each.  Then she has insurance at about $200, gas at $200, repairs are about $50, phone at $50, food at about $100.  She makes about $1000 per month, so that leaves about $25 a week for all the rest of the expenses (clothes, entertainment, College Savings).  I suspect she’ll need to get another job…

I’m hoping that Sherry will be let off work early today due to rain.  That would be really nice.  We’re celebrating George’s 50th birthday tonight with a potluck dinner.  There should be a LOT of people there.  I’m really looking forward to it, but we won’t be staying late since we have a really big day ahead of us tomorrow.

Michelle’s counselor at school called today to see what the plan was and she put me in touch with a guy from Continuing Education.  He said that she may be able to salvage some of the credits from this semester.  That would be really nice.

I think I’ve broken one of my big projects.  Bummer.  The video isn’t rendering properly on my laptop anymore and I’ve uninstalled the program that was working.  That means that we should be getting a surprise demo request shortly – just to make sure that I don’t get lazy…

Oh, hey, I’m planning a little party for the guys (and their sons) a week from tomorrow.  We’re having a Wii party!  It should be a blast – I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’m thankful that I get to celebrate Georges 50th with him tonight

I’m thankful that I’ll get to use my Wii without feeling guilty

I’m thankful that my relationships are all pretty cool.

I know that God wants me to have a strong network of friends to help me through the rough patches.

"Show us a mannequin"

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I made this mannequin out of 1 1/2" PVC pipe to hold my Darth Vader custume between wearings.  If there's enough demand, I'll post the How To Make Your Own Mannequin instructions.

So, Michelle’s plan seems to be to drop out of school, save like crazy and then do the five credits that she needs over two semesters next year.

That should work, she’ll earn almost enough to pay for rent, gas, insurance and repairs – there won’t be much left over for entertainment and it’ll be tough finding time for homework after school and work, but she’ll give up the rest of her social life (which she won’t be able to afford anyway) to get’r’done.

I’m really hoping that she’ll learn perseverance through the effort of working full time and going to school at the same time.  I’m also hoping that she learns that $8.50 an hour is not enough to live on and that her current career arc isn’t sufficient.

My Mom has started to poke around in this problem now.  There are drawbacks to being the parent of the only biological grandchild.  I wish Mike would hurry up and have kids to distract Mom.

She’s suggested that Michelle go and live with her.  That would last about four hours.  When I was 18 I came back home for a University Co-op program and I couldn’t take it (and I grew up there!).  I’ll mention it when I talk to Michelle, but I can’t see it working out.  It might work if Mike offered his place…  although she would have to pay rent for the whole lesson thing to work.

Today is a dentist appointment and then coffee with Rick.  That should be a good time.  Then there’s nothing major on the books until Shelly’s move this Saturday – that’ll be a whole boatload of work!  Not that I mind doing it, but we need to be careful to keep our calendar clear for a couple of days before and a couple days after…

Sherry is hoping for a rain day tomorrow to help me deal with Michelle’s issues.  I really don’t understand Michelle only melts down after Sherry goes back to work (the exact same thing happened this time last year – and I am NOT going to go through that again. Period.)

I do get to have lunch with Don tomorrow.  That’ll be a good time too.  Don is planning on writing an ebook to start generating residual income.  Very cool.  I’ll be walking him through some questions that he needs to answer before he gets started.  It should be fun.

I’m thankful that I have enterprising friends.

I’m thankful that none of my friends have ever been divorced.

I’m thankful that Sherry and I have a rock-solid relationship.

I know that God will protect Michelle while she’s lost in the wilderness.

The only reason that I ask if teenagers are able to reason is that I was chatting with Michelle about dropping out of high school because she wants a lip ring six weeks earlier than she’s allowed to get one. 

She said that it was complicated and I wouldn’t be able to understand why she’s willing to throw away a year of her life because she wants to have a lip ring.  Apparently it isn’t a ‘fashion statement’ it’s an indication of ‘who she is’.

I told her that she needed to pretend to be someone else for six weeks and then she can resume being who she really is.  She didn’t like that suggestion.

Wow.

So, now I’m the unreasonable one because I want her to be able to finish high school and put off the lip ring for six weeks.  She’s the reasonable one for insisting that the lip ring IS who she is and removing it for six weeks would be ripping out her soul.  Ummm.

If there are any teenagers (or recently graduated from teens to early 20's) out there that can bridge the gap and explain why a lip ring six weeks early is worth jeopordizing your high school career over - please, please, please clue me in.

Today is my wedding anniversary – we’ve been married 18 years now!   Whohoo!  We don’t really have anything planned for the celebration – we just got back from London for dinner and show (it was a double date, but it was still a lot of fun)

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We had supper at Ben Thanh’s and then we went to see The Cody Rivers Show – it was really intelligent humour – it was really, really funny.

There was one skit with two code breakers and the guy on the left spoke his sentences with the longest words first and then the shortest words last.  The other code breaker spoke his lines sorted alphabetically.  So instead of saying “Hi! How are you?” he would say “are Hi! How you?”  Very clever.

We had a breakfast with the leaders in the church on Saturday and that was a lot of fun.  That night was our Dinner Club meeting (which didn’t really work out the way we expected due to scheduling conflicts and a little miscommunication).   It was Allan and Nancy’s place and Todd and Maria filled in for Eddie and Lerryn.  We had ribs and beer – it was a blast.

Sunday was breakfast with Rick and then church and a photo shoot with John’s family.  The kids and family photos turned out fabulous, but due to privacy concerns I’m only posted the one of John and Stef. 

The evening was easy and we went to bed early to try and recover from two consecutive late nights.

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So, Michelle dropped a bombshell today.  She came home on Friday with a lip ring (which is against the rules for the next eight weeks – why couldn’t she just wait two months?)
Anyway, facial piercings are not allowed at her co-op job, so the boss asked her to remove the lip ring (which would cause it to heal over while she was there) and she refused.  Then she told him that she was dropping out of High School so she didn’t need the co-op credit anyway.

WHAT?

I’m glad that they sent me an email explaining what happened, but I’m a little frustrated.

What, exactly, is she going to do without a high school diploma?

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Aaarrgggh.