You say Polymath like it's a bad thing...

Back in black (and white)

Hiatus much?

Life happens at a rate that I can barely match these days. We closed on the house on Monday, and I’m picking up the keys tomorrow night from the (now) former owner. To quote what I wrote in my boss’s baby shower card “shit just got real.”

But that’s not what I’ve logged into this beleaguered account to write about. I am here to review Iron Man 3, which I went to the opening showing of in Grandville tonight.

To write a review on a comic book movie requires that I step away from the comics for a moment because without doing so, I will be overly critical about things that most viewers wouldn’t give two seconds’ thought. Consider this me putting down the graphic novels, ok?

Let me start by saying that if you don’t like the previous Iron Man movies, then you need to politely decline offers to see the third installment, and not just for obvious reasons. This Iron Man has as many explosion as the previous two, coupled with impossibly more Tony Stark one-liners. They are wonderfully irreverent and beautifully timed, with the exception of a few that caused such laughter from the audience that the following lines were lost. I hope they weren’t important.

This film is narrated by Tony, following the aftermath of the Avengers movie. Not entirely unlike the previous films, this is a story deeply rooted in the evolution of Tony as a human. <Comic Reference> This particular movie loosely follows some of the character development and plot lines of Fraction’s run of Invincible Iron Man. </Comic Reference> He confesses to Pepper how out of his league he felt with the other members of the Avengers – “a man in a can.” He discusses demons and how they are created, sometimes by chance, and more than once by his own actions. These themes are what made Iron Man great, and they are revisited here.

At the beginning of the film, we see Tony struggling to come to grips with the events in New York during the Avengers, along with the fantastically terrifying portrayal of Mandarin by Ben Kingsley. There is also the foreboding friendliness of Guy Pearce’s Aldrich Killian, who invites Pepper Potts to invest in his Extremis project. Sure, he’s friendly and kind of handsome, but you just know he’s got a skin suit tucked away somewhere.

As is rather evident early on, Killian and his think-tank, AIM, are not entirely legit (see: skin suit). Tony and Pepper are having problems at home, and then things blow up. Literally. If you’ve seen a preview, you’ve seen his house falling into the water. After he is attacked in his home, Tony gets the wake up call he needs, and he decides to once again rise from the ashes and prove that he is a hero. By now, yes, it is a little formulaic, but if you’re not into that, then don’t read comics/watch comic movies. That’s kind of a running theme.

Pepper is taken hostage; Tony struggles against impossible odds, not the least of which is his own PTSD (undiagnosed!), and he finally overcomes because he has help in a rather unlikely form. There is the requisite final battle (boss battle, if you will) that involves Tony and friends going against seemingly impossible odds but coming out the victors. Tony proves his commitment to Pepper through a montage of destroying suits, medical procedures, and jewelry.

Highlights of the movie included any and all explosions (who doesn’t like those?), an incredible mid-air rescue of 13 people, the effects used on any and all characters exposed to Extremis, and the end credits sequence was retro and fun.

The sequences involving Mandarin were deeply disturbing. They were not unlike seeing Lawless for the first time – cringe-worthy seems like an apt description. They were visceral, and they continued with the Ten-Rings-as-terror-organization theme from the first movie. I understand the reasoning behind the brutality of the Mandarin in these films, but it is difficult to watch, and even more difficult to marry with the comic version, whose ten rings were actual rings and not a terrorist organization not unlike al-Qaeda (oops! I was supposed to not mention that, huh?).

There may have been just a little too much going on, at least for my taste. This film essentially took three plot lines and combined them, some of which span many many years in the comics. Because of all of the fronts covered, some of the ends were tied loose and messy. I imagine much of that will be rectified come the release to Blu-Ray and DVD and their deleted scenes. At a two hour run time, which is less than some of its contemporaries, they did an acceptable job.

There are a few plot twists that, as a moviegoer, were great examples of misdirection, and as a comic book fan, a little bit of a slap in the face. In the interest of readers who want to see the film, I won’t mention them specifically, but they were well-timed and revealed. They helped keep the pace quick, and some of them helped ease some tension.

All in all, I enjoyed this movie. I’ll probably see it again at a matinee because that’s my zen. As a movie lover, this was a great action movie that had some stellar character development, despite some questionable plot points. As a comic lover, it held to the character-driven feel of the Iron Man comics, while destroying some of what I had anticipated for comic plot.

And, of course, you must stay past the credits.

Have I written about insomnia before?

On stretches like this, more than a night or so staying up later than I intend, I like to console myself by saying that insomnia thrives in creative people. Clearly my inability to sleep works in direct correlation to my ability to create. And, if you’ve noticed a “minor” dip in my number of posts the past handful of months, then clearly you know that is a load of bull.

I have created things at work – mostly documents, forms, and ideas that I’m sure my coworkers are groaning inwardly about every time I open my mouth. I have written in my trusty moleskine – the thoughts that I’m not brave enough to share with the world as a whole.

But other than that, I’ve watched the minutes and hours tick by while stand up flickers in front of me. I sometimes open a word document (okay, okay, notepad) and stare at it in hopes that I can put something on the screen worth reading. I usually get “I am an idiot,” and then I trail off, but my fingers don’t actually do any typing. Self-deprecating has always been my fall-back for inspiration…not sure what that says about me. It hasn’t been working lately.

Work has been going swell. I love my job. I love my coworkers. My boss wants me to move up, and I want to move up, and my coworkers came out to celebrate my birthday, and I felt celebrated and loved and…there’s that. That’s pretty awesome.

The house stuff is still going well. To be honest, I haven’t been thinking about it because we still have to close. And then we have to wait a week to do anything after that. That’s still pretty awesome.

But you know what’s not awesome? I was awake until 2:30am, went to work, struggled to keep up, and now here it is, creeping up on 11, and I know I’ll probably stay up late again. Bad habits breed bad habits; what’s next?

The worst part is that I could be doing other things. I could be catching up on my reading. I could be writing (oh, wait). I could be crafting or studying or solving the world’s problems, and instead I’m watching Craig Ferguson circa 2009, waiting for something that isn’t going to solve my problems anyway. And it makes me feel isolated. I feel like I’m the only person alive in the world one nights like this; sometimes that can be a peaceful feeling, but most of the time it’s unnerving.

Right now I’m unnerved. I guess that’s why I’m writing about it (maybe again. I really feel like I’ve written about insomnia before). When I feel alone and isolated, I like to write, shout at the world, whether it’s willing or able to hear me or not.

A new era

We’ve put in an offer on a house, which was accepted. The inspection went well; we have the disclosure paperwork from the bank on our dining room table, which we will sign this week. It feels surreal still. We don’t close until late April, and we won’t move in until May. I know this feeling well – this is when time seems to contract and expand all at once. Looking at the calendar, it feels as though it’s going to be a decade from now before we’re dragging our furniture into another new place, but hopefully the last time for a while. And during that month-long decade, I’ll get a whole lot of nothing done, so when it is time to drag the furniture, I will be completely unprepared.

Things are about to change…some things never change.

With the month or so that I have, I hope that I can get some ideas solidified. I also hope I have the mental capacity to see those ideas through, take pictures, and post something.

So…here’s to a new era. Hopefully.

The (actual) first day of Spring

The sun showed its majestic face today, and it just so happens to be my day off. With the weather channel touting a balmy 40 degrees in Holland, I simply had to get out and adventure.

I went to the lake – the first time since August, I’m pretty sure – and I was looking for some peace of mind, perspective, and any other number of philosophical ideals that start with the letter p. Mostly I wanted to enjoy the sun and my day off. I brought my camera, my sketchbook, and my trusty Moleskine.

I had ever intention of playing the part of deep artist while there, but I have to admit that the wind made it difficult to do much in the way of paper crafts. I walked around, took some pictures, and I did some writing. Here are some snippets of my writing:

“This is reminiscent of 4 years ago, sitting on the beach in Steilacoom. It feels like an eternity ago – sitting alone at a Denny’s, trying to figure out what the **** I was going to do, how I could make it on the West Coast.”

“So much we can learn from nature – its wisdom surpasses our meager understanding of it.”

I don’t know if I found what I was looking for. There is a lot going on in life right now. We made an offer on a house, have the inspection tomorrow, and if all goes well, we’ll be closing at the end of April.

My boss has declared officially that he is grooming me to move up in the company, and while I am excited at the opportunity, I am already saddened by the thought that I would have to leave my current team to go lead another one. My desire to stay where I am is silly and selfish, and really, when the time comes, I know that I will move on. It’s an exciting opportunity.

I also decided to pump the brakes on school. I’ve been rushing into things headfirst for so long that I’ve forgotten to breathe. It was when I made that decision that things at work started to fall into place. I’m still going to go back to school, continue learning, but I’m not going to be in such a rush. My life has been nothing but a swift and unpredictable current for the past 5 years; it’s time to slow down. I just hope that I can actually, you know, slow down with it.

I should take Frodo’s advice

“My dear Sam,

You cannot always be torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years.”

This quote has been running through my head on an incessant loop for the past few hours. The rain outside falls in patterns that mimic the cadence of the quote in the film, and if I stare into my mug of coffee long enough, I can see the words floating there.

I caught up with a dear friend of mine today; it was great to hear from her. She is going to Italy for the summer to be an au pair. She’ll know more of my great-grandparents’ mother tongue than I do by the time I start fall semester. I think she’ll make a great nanny, and I think she’ll have a great time.

I also can see the green gleam of envy sparking in my mind, and I hate that.

Knowing my weaknesses is something that I have striven for ever since I learned how to be introspective. I know them; I have intimate knowledge of each of them, when they are present, and why they are. I have not learned how to combat them. Generally, I try logic, but logic has so little control of emotions, which in me, run rampant.

For the most part, I have learned to just let those emotions run their course. I allow myself to feel jealous, to wonder freely if I’ve made the right choices, maybe even wallow in something akin to self-pity. I don’t know how else to handle them. I think about them; I study them. Often times, I hate them.

I am trying to learn how to harness them.

Sure, it’s true that, in my life now, I cannot simply pick up and move to another country for a few months. I have a husband. Soon I’ll have a mortgage. I have a cat.

But I can do other things, and every day that goes by with me not doing them is not doing me any favors. If I’m completely honest with myself, then I know that, even were my circumstances different, I still wouldn’t go for a grand adventure because it requires work, and the thought of that work exhausts me.

Really, I am very lucky that Eric is patient. To spend every day with my contradictory nature, every moment switching from one extreme to the other, must be a chore that only a saint can handle. I tell him I want to travel, so he says we can delay buying a house, but then I tell him I don’t want to do that. He says okay, and then the next day, I’m looking at airfare to London.

Perhaps the most ridiculous part is that, really, I could have it both ways, but I am unable to reconcile that fact in my mind. I get so caught up in the details that I completely forget that nothing in this world is so black and white. It’s not even gray scale; the world is technicolor.

So Frodo’s advice is perfect for me, and not just because he uses my name. I’ve simply been interpreting it the wrong way. I always thought that, between the lines, he was implying that Sam would have to choose – adventures with Frodo or settling down with Rosy. But being torn in two does not lend itself to choosing one half; it is about finding a way to reconnect the disparate pieces, to become whole again.

I desperately want that. I wish it were easy. Sometimes I wish the path were visible ahead, marked clearly to avoid straying off course. It’s not. It never will be. The road goes ever on and on…

The most frustrating game

“The world is made up of two classes – the hunters and the huntees.” – Richard Connell, The Most Dangerous Game.

I’d like to amend that statement. The world is made up two classes – the hunters and the sellers. And lately I have sucked at hunting.

Eric and I began our more serious efforts for house searching in January. January 5th or 8th, I can’t recall, but it was somewhere right in there. Two months ago. We’ve gone out a handful of times with our real estate agent, and we have considered looking at over 40 houses. Of the 40-something we’ve considered looking at, more than half of them were sold before we could get out to see them. We’ve seen 16 houses in person, and of those, half again have sold, some of them while we were looking at the house.

I am not exaggerating. Eric and I loved one house in Hudsonville, and while we were wandering through, our agent called the selling agent, and we learned that it had sold two hours before we got there. It’s become something of a painful joke for us; our agent says that our luck has been completely unprecedented.

We’re not being picky, here, either. Maybe that’s our problem, but we’ve considered houses in four different areas, and there seems to be no safe zone where houses are sold out from under us. Seriously, that situation in Hudsonville has happened to us twice. And when we asked to make an offer on a third house, that one had sold right after we looked at it.

“It’s a buyer’s market,” is what everyone keeps saying, and to them I say “oh…you must not be looking to buy a house right now.” We’re at the tail end of that first-home-buyer’s grant, not that we were planning on making use of it, and this is generally considered the off season for real estate. We can’t step foot inside a house that doesn’t need tens of thousands of dollars of work done without it being sold before we pull up to the driveway. I’ve considered offering our terrible luck as a service to people trying to sell their houses.

I suppose I should point out that not every house has sold. The two that I really liked are still available. One of them is on a busy street, and Eric is not fond of the neighborhood. The other one would need to be completely redone, short of just bulldozing it and starting over. Sure we could get it for less than one-hundred, but we don’t have the kind of cash flow for that sort of overhaul. And Eric said it was creepy.

We are going to try narrowing our search and getting out more frequently, perhaps just one at a time, to hopefully get more nets out there. We went to an open house yesterday (and skipped two because it didn’t look like anyone was at those…not even a realtor), and I’m going out to look at two on Tuesday with our agent while Eric is out of town.

I just want this search to be over. I want to be able to focus on preparing for school, and I don’t want to have to find a house once school starts. I certainly would prefer to be moved in by then, too. There are so many questions I have about my future right now that I would like to have just this one part answered.

I’ve never been a fan of hunting, and house hunting is not improving my outlook at all.

Why I’m not crafting right now: the true Holland story

If you’ve been kind enough to keep reading my blog, you’re probably thinking “where are the crafts?” I am here to answer that question.

Maybe you’ve heard – or even told someone – that there is a difference between an excuse and a reason. The truth is that a reason is just a socially accepted excuse. The more people do amazing things and overcome dire circumstances, the fewer reasons we have and, conversely, the more excuses. All of this is to say is that I hope my excuses can, at least in this gallery, be socially acceptable.

When I first moved here, I was in desperate need of decompressing from the classroom. I was a terrible teacher – a great mentor and support for my kids – but a terrible teacher. I am not used to sucking so bad at things, and Arkansas was just such a miserable place, so I sought some time away from things. I rediscovered my love of making things then.

I was so excited to have free time, and I had so much pent up creativity that I dove into sewing and drawing and painting. It was a great time. But I am not good at staying inside, and I have had a job of some kind since I was 14. It was only a few months before I started buckling down and looking for jobs again.

For various reasons, I ended up taking a part time job in retail. I worked shifts starting at 5am, so when I got home, I was exhausted, and my bed time was 8pm most nights. Even though I had time to spare, I was always tired. I worked with craft supplies all day, though, so I was often inspired, and I found ways to fit things in. I also had every weekend off, and that made the summer months flexible.

Wanting a little less early morning and little more cash flow, I took a full time job – still in retail. I started during the holiday season, and while I had previously pledged to create all manner of Christmas gifts, I was suddenly working 40 or more hours per week and at fluctuating times. Some weeks I closed 3 nights, others I opened. I had forgotten how hectic a retail schedule can be and how hard it is to juggle life with consumerism.

And now…now I’m just worn down. I have always tended to be anti-consumerism, and yet here I am feeding it. I am still tired, but for different reasons, and most days, I come home, cook dinner, squeeze in what time I can with Eric, and then go to bed. I work most weekends, so my evenings (or mornings) are now precious commodities for laundry, dishes, or reading a book.

I feel guilty.

I am apathetic at best and nihilistic at worst lately, and my creativity is suffering for it. Even on days when I feel the spark, I go to my craft desk, and I end up staring at it for what seems like eternity. The only place I haven’t lost my drive is in the kitchen. I feel like that’s cheating though. I can’t very well be a polymath if I’m only ever cooking.

So consider this my reason for not bringing out the big guns. I hope that, once I start school (which seems like a far-away dream), I’ll be able to introduce a new type of craft through engineering. We’ll see.

A little about winter

For 25 years of my life, winter has been a time of cold weather, probably some rain, and maybe some snow. Snow meant no school – a day off! – and hopes for more than what we usually got in Georgia. Our meager inches of fluffy white goodness were never enough to build a snowman.

Then I was in Seattle, where it snowed two times while I lived there, and only once so much that I was excited. I still got a day off work because Seattle doesn’t plow, and I lived on a hill with a sheer cliff-face for a road leading downtown. We took a walk and found five buses that were trapped on the hill! It was a great day. Most of the time, it was just cold and cloudy, but not so cold that it iced over.

Arkansas got cold, and we had a day of snow in November; I still had to go to work, though I think we had a delayed start. I lived 30 miles from where I worked, and there were about 9 bridges on the way. Every single one had ice, and every single one had at least one car that had tried to go across at its normal 70 mph and failed. One of the bridges in particular had about 13 cars off the road.

And now I’m here in Michigan. Let me tell you about winter in Michigan.

There’s still no sun (just like Seattle), but now it’s always bitter cold. November and December were mild, which was some false advertising. Since January, I can count on one hand the number of days that we haven’t had snow on the ground. And if right now you’re thinking “oh, but Michigan knows about snow! Their roads are fine!” then you have not lived in Holland, and you are buying into the lies.

90 percent of the time, the roads are not plowed. There’s salt on them, sure, so they might not be as icy. But the only clear space on the roads are where larger cars than mine have already traveled. And those larger cars, being so much larger, just keep on driving at their normal speeds. I don’t think my car is physically capable going over 30 mph when it’s 20 degrees.

So every day that I drive to work, I’m – to use Eric’s terminology – white-knuckling it for about 20 minutes, hoping that the snow on the road is just snow and not snow-covered ice or that when I get to work, I won’t be trapped in 2 ft of slush.

If you’ve ever wondered about ancient cultures and what made them look up at the sky and think, well, we’ll just worship that giant yellow circle in the sky, you have not lived in Michigan. Because when Spring returns, and I get to see the sun again, I am pretty sure I will sacrifice a goat to it.

Paczki Day 2013

Last year, while living in the dark place that is Arkansas, I had to make my own paczki for Mardi Gras. My Polish man deserved to celebrate in a style befitting his heritage, but Arkansas has never heard of a paczki, and they were nowhere to be found. So I made a lemon curd filled pastry that we called a paczki.

Although we are now in a Dutch area and paczki are available at every local supermarket, the ingredient list on these boxed delicacies make me blush.

So, tomorrow being Mardi Gras, and I having a day off, I thought some baking was in order. Here is the first batch:

Like last year, these are baked, so they are slightly healthier. However this year, to appease my coworkers who will be enjoying the fruits of my labor, I opted for a custard filling instead of fruit. I guess what I left out with the oil, we gained in the egg-milk-sugar filling.

I also went a step beyond this year by glazing the paczki to help the powdered sugar stick better.

Did I mention that I actually have an icing gun of sorts now, so I can bake and then insert the delicious filling, instead of having to make two thin pieces of dough wrap around the filling? I scare myself sometimes.

In case you are interested, here’s how I made them this year:

I mixed 2 cups of flour (1 cup of all purpose and 1 cup of quasi-pastry flour) with two packets of yeast, a quarter cup of a sugar, and a pinch of salt.

I melted a half stick of butter on the stove top with a cup of milk and two tablespoons of honey, cooked them together for about five minutes.

I added a tablespoon of rum, one egg, and two egg yolks to flour mixture, then the melted milky butter goodness.

These mixed together into a very very doughy substance, to which I added about another cup and a quarter of flour to make more solid. This I let sit for ten minutes.

After ten minutes, I rolled out the dough and cut out circles with my half cup measuring cup (about 2 inch diameter), and let those sit for an hour.

At the end of the hour, I started my first batch in the oven while I made the glaze to go on the paczki – quarter cup melted butter and a quarter cup honey.

Ten minutes into baking, I glazed the paczki, then let them cook another four minutes.

While the paczki baked, I also made the custard filling: 2 cups of milk (scalded), half cup of flour, two thirds cup of sugar, one egg and the egg whites leftover from those yolks. I cooked these for about 5 minutes until thick, then added a teaspoon of vanilla.

Once the paczki cooled a bit, I dragged them through powdered sugar, and a few minutes after that, I filled those suckers with some custard.

I haven’t tasted one yet because Eric’s not home, but considering the nearly 5 hours this has taken me, they’d better be the best damn paczki ever.

🙂

In other news, I got my letter from GVSU, so I am another step closer to collecting another degree or two. Woohoo!

An Update

It is snowing again. We’ve gotten 2 feet (approximately) in the past week. I am typing on my new Samsung laptop; my Toshiba’s motherboard crapped out during a diagnostic I had one of my fellow Agents run it through. Alas. 4 years with that computer; I bought it when I lived in Seattle, when I had first started working finally and had my studio apartment (that was more expensive than the house we’re renting here). I needed a way to apply for better jobs, despite not having internet in the place. I couldn’t afford it.

I’ve been afraid of using this computer because it’s really nice. It was my Christmas present from Eric, and it is the kind of computer for gaming or Auto CAD for engineering students.

About that. I am still waiting for a letter. I am getting angry and frustrated because this has become an unnecessarily long process. Delta State got the transcripts up here finally – almost two weeks ago – and I called today, but they just told me that I would get something in the mail. I applied in December. I realize that another week or so should seem minor, but it’s just grating on me.

During my offline time (great time, given the computer crash), I read the first three books in the Malazan series and started the fourth, did some great cooking, and learned how to drive on snowy Michigan roads. My crafting has taken a back seat, but I think that comes with the winter territory. I made red velvet cupcakes last night with homemade cream cheese icing…I’ve amazed myself. I always said that I hated baking; I don’t, as it turns out.

We’ve been looking at some houses, and we’re going out again on Saturday. I’m anxious to get out there and find something.

I’ve been working a great deal. I have today off. I have been researching other school possibilities, since I am mad at GVSU. I haven’t picked up my book yet, but I should.

I’ve seen some great crafts on display in the blogs I follow. I love it. I am off to read or write or bake (I need to make a real batch of cupcakes for my coworker’s birthday tomorrow). Keep it crafty!