7 posts tagged “arizona”

    So I went and took a glass blowing class today. Truth be told it wasn't so much of a class as it was a place where for the same amount of money you would spend on a glass blown object you get to make it yourself and keep it. It turns out that this practice of blowing glass is ridiculously old. As a novel glass forming technique created in the middle of the last century B.C., glassblowing exploited a working property of glass which was previously unknown to the glass workers – inflation. Inflation refers to the expansion of a molten blob of glass by introducing a small amount of air to it. This property is based on the liquid structure of glass where the atoms are held together by strong chemical bonds in a disordered and random network,therefore molten glass is viscous enough to be blown and gradually hardens as it loses heat.
    Wow!!! I am exhausted from that explanation of glass blowing that I copied and then pasted from Wikipedia. I myself have only a slight idea of how it is done at this point, and very little idea of why. I can tell you this though, that for the many years that it has been done, it has been mastered into a fine art. Some of the things these artists make destroy any image of glass blowing that you might have gotten while wandering Pier 1 for something "unique" for your home. The folks that took the time to let us get our hands dirty blowing glass are artists of a dangerous craft.
    Enough of all that, here are some pictures.

Once the bowl that I made is done cooling, I will be sure to post a picture of it. It should only be a couple of days. In the mean time check out what these guys do, and click the link. 

************************************************THE LINK******************************************************!

    This week, assuming it started on the weekend, has been a very varied roller coaster. There has been a decent mix of good and bad going on and up until today the good outweighed the bad.

Friday :
    I finished my first full week at my new job somewhere between two and three. I could probably have stayed later but I had just received my first check. It wasn't much, but it was some cash in my pocket. I was happy and feeling very accomplished. I was excited to get home, get some beers and spend some "buddy time" with Jamie. She drives me to the bank to cash my check and we promptly pick up some good beers, a good bottle of wine and just to make sure we ingested enough alcohol a twelve pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon cans.
    Upon arriving home we kick back and start drinking, Jamie suggests we go out for some wings and who the hell am I to disagree. They were delicious wings with just the right amount of spice and it was just the right amount of food that it wouldn't interfere with our drinking.
    I built us a fire in the back yard, we drank and talked and just generally gave ourselves a good time with nothing but our friendship and a few drinks floating us along. I passed out on the couch watching Cruel Intentions much later that night and I was feeling okay but not great when Saturday morning rolled around.

Saturday :
    Jamie had a vicious hang over and was seriously dragging ass all morning. She threw up a little while I made a run for some coffee for me and muffins for us. The day was purposely lazy, we both sat around watched some television and didn't accomplish any of the hearty goals we had given ourselves the day before. I took a trip to the mall to go eyeball a knife set I plan to buy and price out some chef pants for work. A lazy day without much to speak of other than a feeling of contentment with my life.
    I had recently received an email from my ex girlfriend saying that she had been following this website and that I seemed very happy. I am and I have been, Tucson up until this day had been very good to me. I also was featured on two websites. One my roommate Ethan mentioned me and provided a link to me on his site, and the other was a piece dedicated to me by an old friend. I encourage you to check them both out if you are as interested in me as I am.
    With Jamie still not feeling well I had resigned that with all of this good feeling I was going to go out alone that night. I was going to have a couple of beers and people watch. I had full intention to do something I used to enjoy very much in my days in Baltimore. Without getting into too much detail I got drunk, drama ensued and I found my self generally annoyed with the world. I was so angry at the world in fact that I walked home with my anger on my back and found a random building along the way to take a piss on. This sort of passive aggressive lashing out is very satisfying to me, especially when I have a bladder full of cheap beer.
     Once again I passed out, this time in my bed and unfortunately alone, a little company would have made my night a lot more bearable, but like I said I passed out... so obviously I didn't lose any sleep over it.
   
Sunday:
    Another lazy day, not much of note happened at all. Jamie and I ate left overs, I caught up on Lost online. We called our mothers and made small talk for mothers day. Ethan came home from his conference in Prescott and Jamie got on a plane to Portland for an interview. At this point I would ask you to cross your fingers for Jamie to get the job, she is tremendously qualified, lets just hope this perspective employer realizes it. Anyway, I headed to bed as I had an early day at work, it was the first day we were opening for lunch service and I wanted to be well rested and alert.

Monday :
    With Jamie out of town she was kind enough to loan me her car as transport in replacement of my trusty bicycle and I arrived at work fifteen minutes early bright eyed and bushy tailed. After enjoying a cup of the free coffee owed to me just for showing up I immediately got to work with my trusty parter in crime at Italia Moni. In short we kicked ass, it wasn't horribly busy but her and I have a great vibe on the line and nothing slows us down. Once our day ended I offered Moni a ride home as I had the tools ( Jamie's car ) to provide a service of kindness for a coworker. I decide after dropping her off that in return for Jamie's kindness of loaning her car to me that I would stop and put in some gas so she wouldn't have to stop at six in the morning on her way to work after doing a 30 hour round trip to Portland.
    I find a gas station ( I'm still getting to know Tucson ) and after correcting my mistake of placing the gas tank on the opposite side from the pump I retrieve my wallet from my back pack to go and request ten bucks on pump three. To my dismay and the cause of my hatred for humanity at this exact moment my wallet was completely empty of cash. That morning when I stopped at Ike's for a muffin and coffee I had 85 dollars. My wallet had been emptied during the course of the day at work. Whomever made this trip into my bag did leave all of my cards and only took that which was untraceable. I sighed, my joy to work with the people I have been working with was instantly gone. I had been so pleased with the group that was hired along side of me and now suspected them all.
    Any and all good things that have happened to me in the past several days are gone. It wasn't much money, but it was all that I had. It wasn't much faith in humanity, but it was all that I had. I have two weeks until my next check, and a lifetime of mistrust.

I received a message (via Facebook) from a friend Debbie which read, “I was pleasantly surprised to login to Facebook and see on my home page "LJ Daniels is now a fan of Lucas J Daniels" (or something like that). We should all be fans of ourselves. :)”, and it got me to thinking.

            My reason for creating a “professional page” on Facebook, was honest from the start as long as you read yesterdays blog… but you have no way of constructing the correlation, so I will explain it to you.

            Ethan one of my two generous benefactors, is quite the scientist, vastly intelligent on the universe and it’s structure ( which mostly goes over my head ). Ethan is beginning production of a film about such things and has produced a trailer. I am helping him network and “pimp himself” as I often do on many social websites. For that purpose I created a mock “professional page”, to show Ethan how it could work and benefit him. I am also a bit of an ego maniac so instead of just editing a page, I went ahead and published it to Facebook. I also went to the length that I became a fan of myself.

            This is where Debbie and her message came in.

            I responded to her “of course I am a fan of myself. I am helping a friend set up a batch of networking through his website, relevant to the movie he is making and made the page to show him how cool it can be. It's funny I think, but I must ask, why are you not a fan of me?”

            … and of course this is where I got to thinking…

            At first I was thinking how amusing it was to get that kind of message from a girl I “dated” in the 9^th grade… and then…

            …and then I thought to myself, “Why the fuck not?”

            I might as well just own it. I am doing research for a book. I am finishing a number of other things I will be attempting to have published.  I might as well do more than look at Google Analytics to figure out who I am writing to. It is important to know who actually reads this.

            So I’m going to fucking own it.

            Visit my Facebook page, this is where I am going to be keeping people who are authentically interested in my writing and being kept up to date.

            Visit this link to join up and become a “fan of me” Lucas J. Daniels

            On a slightly unrelated topic I felt very aged thinking this whole thing through before I wrote it down. I was outside, barefoot drinking a beer and leaning on the fire poker as if it were a cane. I lifted each foot individually for as long as they could stand to be warmed by the fire. I thought about things, poked at the fire… and looked at the sky.

I felt quite old while I thought about this thing.

After another day looking for a job and filling out applications all over Tucson my hand is sore... but I have some writing to do... and it's as part an application for pseudo writing job where I could make an overwhelming fifty dollars a week.
The reason I even mention it is because it has gotten me to ask what is fair of me as a person and a writer.

    Hemingway always believed his stories ( which all had relevance to his life ) improved the further he was from the experience... I don't know that I agree. I have had personal success writing about things as they happen to me, but the impact on people and lives around me is where I began to have problems.
    If people knew that I might write about them, they start to act like a person on a reality show.
    They choose their words carefully.

    I perhaps also start to over analyze their actions, and motivations in what they do and say.

    I have this story idea, of course it involves me. I gave it a working title of "120 days in Arizona" in my head but haven't put any of my thoughts through the pen. I am debating and struggling on how to approach what I want to and what I have to write. The characters of my life will always reflect, but what impact of disagreement or resentment am I willing to take?
    ... but I am wandering from what I wanted to say. I have to write to this company a relevant experience to the business that they are in. I have a lot of exposure to this business and know what I want to write, but the subject delivery has to be mechanical and succinct. I don't know if I can't keep from a thought going astray.

    I had so many true intentions to make this a pure ideal of an entry. I was going to be creative and insightful about my trip and the surrounding events. I had high hopes for myself I really did... I was wrong.
   
    I also thought for a moment that I was going to write a hugely complicated blog, with links and videos featuring an anthology of "retards in cinema", but I am too lazy for that tonight.

    What to write about?
    What to say?

    I'll get back to you tomorrow.
   
    I seem to have crossed the path of some sort of mental inhibitor, something that has changed the pathways and ability to think... perhaps alien technology. I should go make a tinfoil hat to keep them from stealing my thoughts.
   

    I would like to say first that I am not a science guy in any respect. I appreciate it, understand enough to have passed ninth grade earth science, but I am no expert and not adept at communicating it properly... but tonight was cool and not because of the science.
    Full with the intention of writing about the discovery of (allegedly) D.B. Coopers parachute in Washington and a break down of the events and my personal theories on what has happened to him.
    I can sum it up quite simply.
    He is a skeleton near the tippy top of a tree.

    That being established, lets get to what I want to write about.   The Sonic Boom.   
    I experienced my first one tonight as the space shuttle Endeavor entered into the atmosphere on its way to Cape Canaveral. It shook the house with such fierce that I suspected the neighbor of having an exploding meth lab.The sonic boom in and of itself is dam cool, both in principal and photos.

Example:

But to be honest that is not the boom that I would like to talk about. I have had a sonic boom in my life, a quickening event that has shaken the ground that I stand upon... and is leading me to (in a few days stand on new ground).
... and the details aren't important...
What I learned about myself is ... but I am not sharing that tonight, not yet. I am still trying to find all the right words.

    I spent a lot of time in a field in the sun ,meditating in a way, with literal vultures circleing me and snakes parting the grass around me. I figured it all out and with a sonic boom stood up to go and start setting things right. I will have a lot to say about it once I get all the words right, but for now I have packing to do... and writing to do... and maybe learn a little more about science eventualy to improve my brain.

It would seem that in the next few days that I am Arizona bound...alive and forever in debt to the kindness of my friend.

There are semantics to work out, but I will be westward bound soon enough... and it would seem that my posts will be coming two hours earlier.

Lets all for one moment bow our heads in joy for humans treating others like humans... it is such a rarity these days.