Happy New Year

I hope everyone had a happy new year. I just got finished hosting a party. It was a different group than who I'm used to hanging out with. There was plenty of booze and food to go around. All in all it was a good time.

Not much else happened today. I guess I mean yesterday since it's already 2 a.m. here! I got off work early. I cleaned the house up and finally watched the Big Lebowski. It was as great as I remembered. I always catch something new everytime I see it. Also it's one you can leave one and casually watch and enjoy pretty much any scene.

I hope everyone has a happy and prosperous 2009. I plan to keep blogging this time around. So add me to your blog role!

Also I decided I liked the look of my old blog so I went back to it.

Going with the Flow

After reading some comments from last night's post I realized I came across at the end sounding like a drone. Well I'm a state employee so in a way I am a drone. :P But I was asked what kind of place would the world be if everyone went with the flow? Well a boring place.

I do believe that we should not always go with the flow. Bucking the system every now and then is a good thing. It gets people thinking about how things could be done differently. When I posted last night that you should go with the flow and not take life too seriously, I didn't mean to imply you should blindly walk through life.

With my job there's a lot of rule and procedures. I have to go with that flow because most of it is set in the statutes. We have a lot of deadlines and well most elected officials don't really follow those deadlines. There's rules in place for those occurences. It's a stressful situation at times. People tend to get stressed when this sort of thing comes up. What I do is just follow what guidelines are in place and guess what? It works out. The key is to stay calm which is difficult.

This is an example of when going with the flow works. Maybe going with the flow isn't the best description to use. Maybe rolling with it is better. Or riding it out to the end, perhaps?

As far as not taking things to seriously, I don't believe you should. I think you should hold dear the things that matter. Take things seriously that matter to you. But worrying over mundane thing is not the way to go. I've found in my short life that things usually work themselves out in the end. We usually learn a lesson on how to deal with similiar circumstances in the future.

I think we can learn something from the Dude, from Big Lebowski. But we don't want to be ultra complacent like him. I want to thank my two internet friends for bringing this issue to my attention. It made me think what I said through. And gave me the opportunity to write it all out. Which is what this blogging thing is all about.

New Look

I've spent the last 45 minutes messing around with my blog look. I'm sporting lime green now with three of my favorite movie characters of all time at the top of the page. What does everybody think?

After spending an hour looking at Big Lebowski Pictures, I think I'm going to watch that movie. It's been a while since I've seen it. I remember when I first saw it. It was about 4 1/2 years ago maybe a longer. I ran into a guy the state agency I worked for did business with. He was visiting from Tampa and I randomly ran into him in a Borders bookstore and talked to him for a long time about books and movies. He was/is a cool guy. At that time he'd been a quadriplegic for about 10 years. He lead a successful life and was an all around good guy.

Anyways, he got talking to me about the Big Lebowski and how much he loved it. He recommended to me that I should see it. He was into philosophy and into looking at things in different ways. He felt the movie was a guide to life. Or at least had an example of how to approach life, and of course that means living like the Dude. We went our separate ways. I believe this was a Thursday. The next Monday he showed up at the office during the afternoon. He had spent the weekend in town. He had a gift for me. It was the Big Lebowski. He had a letter he wrote as well. It was offering some words of wisdom to me. I was entering my senior year of college and had just moved out of my parents' house. It was the typical letter people give kids that were in my situation. At the time it meant a lot to me. I don't remember what it says and I don't have it anymore. But I still have that movie.

I wonder from time to time what happened to that guy. About a year after that he wasn't working us anymore and someone else took his space. Last I heard which has been a while, he had hit some tough times. Needless to say, that night I went home and watched the movie and loved it. I can't say I agree that it's exactly how you should live your life. But I think we could all be like the Dude. Go with the flow and don't take life so seriously. Because just like in the movie most of what we think is a big deal turns out to not really be a big deal.

Does somebody have the case of the Monday's?

Working through the holidays is a drag. There's not much going on and nobody is at work. It makes for an almost depressing atmosphere. The work day wasn't completely boring. I had several wrong numbers from people trying to find out what's wrong with their food stamps. I really don't like giving people the run around but I'm not the food stamp office. The main problem is that the state operator is giving out the wrong number. I've talked to the state operator 2 or 3 times but they insist that they do not give out the Senate committee's number out. Of course after I talk to them I get an influx of calls of people looking for food stamps or other types of assistance. Coincidence? I think not. But I do my best to help them. Plus it gives me something to do on slow days.

The rest of the days was fine. I got to leave early, always a plus. I had to check on my parents' house because their out of town. I got some laundry done and I've actually put it up too. It usually sits in my laundry basket for a week before I put it back up.

My brother went out tonight so I was on my own. I tried a new type of frozen burrito. Well, it's new to me. It was surprisingly delicious.

I then watched a movie titled, The Limey. As weird as this might sound I remember reading a review of the film back in 1999 when it came out and have wanted to see it ever since. It's an early film by Steven Soderbergh before he hit it big with Traffic, Erin Brokevich and Ocean's 11. It's a tale of revenge starring a cool as ice Terrance Stamp (the bad guy from Get Smart) as an ex-con trying to find the answers to his estranged daughter's death. Soderbergh used some interesting editing techniques in the film. Some worked some didn't. I enjoyed the film. It wasn't the best film I've ever seen but it had it's moments. Most notably Stamp's performance. That is one cool poster also.

I feel like blogging but don't know what to blog about

The title sums it up. I haven't posted in a few days. I'd like to tell a funny story but nothing funny has really happened, yet.

I saw a few movies this weekend. Valkyrie starring a one-eyed Tom Cruise and The Spirit.

Valkyrie was actually pretty good. It was distracting that no one spoke in a German accent. The story itself was interesting. It was also intense throughout. The acting wasn't bad either.

The Spirit was not good. I still liked it, sort of. Pieces of this film worked but not all of them. It felt like I was watching a science experiment where there wasn't a set hypothesis to begin with and therefore there wasn't a clear result. But at least now I know what I'm going to be next Halloween.

In other new, I spent most of my Christmas money already. I bought a couple of shirts. I bought some comics out of the $1 bin at a local comic shop. I actually finished up the series, Way of the Rat. I had bought the first story arc a few weeks back and enjoyed it. So I went back and got the rest of the series. I'm looking forward to reading them. The shop didn't have all the issues. I'm still missing 3 or 4 but that'll give me something to look for for the next couple of years.

Christmas breakfast

In my family we have a tradition. Every Christmas my mom has any family that happens to be in town over for breakfast and to open presents on Christmas morning. It's one we've done ever since I could remember. Well since my brother and I have our own house for the past two years we've asked if we could host it. The past two years we've gotten the same response, no. I feel my mom doesn't want once to encroach on her territory and also she didn't think we could pull it off.

This year all of a sudden she says we could do it. We didn't even ask this year. Later I found out that originally the only people in town this year would be my parents, my grandmother, and my brother. And me of course. So that's a much more manageable crowd. Well this week we got the added surprise that my aunt, uncle and cousin would be here as well. That's a little bit more. My brother and I were up to it. It's only eight people, no big deal. Well mom did what mom's do. Worry about it. I guess she worried that the house wouldn't be clean or we'd under cook the breakfast casserole. Who knows. And well I'm starting to think that my mom and grandma and to some extent my aunt thinks that my brother and I are perpetually 12 years old. Never mind we're in our mid-twenties have full-time jobs, pay a mortgage and other bills.

And after some nagging and seconding guess on her part Christmas morning came. And to her surprise we pulled it off. Everything was nice. The food tasted good. No one got sick. The house was clean-ish. It was a nice Christmas.

Another storyline from this Christmas was the present we got from my grandmother but that's a post for another time...

It's Tuesday

Before I start I have an update on my co-worker who was in an accident this weekend. Her surgery went well and she's still in ICU. They are expecting to move her to a regular room either Wednesday or Thursday. She's apparently in good spirits though. However, she's got about 14 weeks of therapy ahead of her.

Today got off to a good start. I left my I.D. badge at home. I tried to sneak in the door behind someone but unfortunately I ran into a security guard who made me walk to the front entrance of the capitol in the cold. I set the metal detector off and had to have the wand waved over me. Great start.

The rest of the day was slow. I was busy first thing in the morning but things fell off after that. This is the calm before the storm. January is when it'll really pick up and by March we'll be starting session and keep going nonstop until May.

My boss let me go home at 3:30. I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to tidy up the house. Then I posted my nominations for the 2008 Cappies. What's the Cappies you might ask? Well it's the annual comic book awards that the users on the message board I frequent, the Captain Comics Message Board, vote on annually. Maybe after the first of the year I'll post some of my favorite comic book moments from 2008 along with my favorite movies and some other stuff.

This evening I went to Bonefish with my family. The food was quite good. The company was well....It's the holiday I'll stay positive and leave it there.