theturtlemoves

Things are going places in my life. Up, up and away places.

Starting about six months ago my life dove into chaos, turmoil, loss, and change.

Now, and since the start of the year, it feels like something is rising up out of it all.

Rising up, lifting me up, carrying me up high, carrying me away to places and feelings I hardly know at all.

I've immersed myself in a social scene and am coming away with friends, relationships, and opportunities.

I've thrown myself into the education system and am coming away with confidence, skills, and opportunities.

I've opened myself up in ways I've never dared before and I'm coming away with experiences, memories, and opportunities.

It's an incredible feeling to have all this uplift coursing through my veins and I'm going to take everything that comes my way, tempered with respect and consideration, but not held back by fear.

Damned fear.

My companion for far too long and one I'm going to kick to the curb with a vengeance.

Bring it on life.

Today has been a good mix of socializing and crafting.

Plans are in the works for a future bad movie night and an evening of just... eating. Yay!

I think I'm sick of the beard though. It's starting to feel awkward and anti-social.

Next up I need some sort of web project so I can get my hands grubby with code and design again.

Can anybody suggest some sorts of projects I could go to work on? I'm lacking in ideas right now and would like to get...

wait...

hmmm...

I think a site for the Thomas the Tank Engine campaign of steampunk horror would be awesome. So I'll start on a design document to figure out what I want the site to do, then get to work on it.

Time to get full-size versions of those pictures from Andrew!

Less busy today, managed to squeeze in a nap and some curling-up-and-ignoring-the-world time.

That felt really good, although it left me feeling like I should have gotten more done.

I'm still starving for people though so I'm gonna go cause some damage in that regard.

How? Dunno.

We'll see.

On that note - anybody got a spare ticket for Sin City's New Year event? I'd like to go.

Anyway, to bed.

Christmas is still lingering in the air around here - the smell of turkey, the faint jingling of tunes, leftovers packing the fridge, and a tree the size of Michigan looming unobtrusively in the corner of the living room.

It was a lot of fun, pictures have been posted and a great heaping helping of dinner has been consumed amidst friends and family.

For Gareth, monies towards his newfound VEX addiction. One I wholly support.

For Mister, LEGO galore (another addiction I wholly support) as well as art supplies and a 'wee screwdriver.

For me? Clothes and tools. Surprisingly exciting and something I'll be using to build shelves in the near future.

Now it's 2:30am and I'm still awake. All the work I do to make the sugars in my diet (read: apple pie and brownies) as slow as possible can make my blood sugar continue to rise after bedtime and tonight I was roused from my slumber to find my 6.2 had climbed to 19.9.

The solution? Medicate, hydrate, and wait - I should be settled soon and back in bed within the hour.

Thankfully a tryptophan-fueled nap from 9-11 will help me deal with any missed sleep.

How about everybody else in eChristmas-land? Have things been filled with ho-ho-holiday cheer?

I keep meaning to start writing something, anything, on a daily basis so as to get the habit of writing going again. Somewhere along the way, I've ceased writing and it's making the skill rusty and awkward. Not fun.

I think I've posted to this effect before. Recently even.

Well, here we go again.

Monday was the first day in a while I've made it all the way through my Egoscue exercises and it felt great! I'll give them a go tomorrow too and see if I can get past that damnable Supine Groin Stretch again.

Well, once I've picked up that locally-raised meat order and finished a few final Christmas errands.

Then at home it's wrapping & card time. Do I have tape? I think I do. *fingers crossed*

At least I know I have the hardware required to open a can of tuna!

Anyway, 'tis too late but I wanted to get this done before I sacked out.

Hello everybody,

The pictures and video I took of Gareth competing in the VEX 2010 Season Opener event in Richmond BC are up!

You can find the pictures here: VEX 2010 Season Opener

And the videos are here: Adrian's Youtube

On the day of the event, Karen drove everybody out to the event for the 8:30am start so Gareth and his team could set up and get ready for the 10am competition start.

Early morning aside, it was a great day for everybody. Gareth engaged with other robotics students to talk robots, strategies and compare creations. The main event was well-run and about as organized as one could expect of a school program. Karen, Julie, Mister, Jael, Amy and myself were all on-hand to watch as the competition began and the 44 (!!!) competing teams got to work scoring points by planting plastic donuts onto various scoring posts around each arena, or by hoisting a robot up the central ladder structure.

Gareth's team was 'Gladstone Greased Lightning' for this event (although that will be changing later) and their robot was built to pick up and deposit donuts with a front forklift and gripping gears to pull the donuts onto, or push them off of, the lift. This gave them a great ability to score points, and to de-score other teams by pulling their rings off the scoring posts. It was a solid design with a few other robots doing the same thing - including the one built by the team that lead the scoring into the finals!

Winning the first round was a great start to the day, but technical issues cropped up and lead to a final score of 2 wins and 4 losses with 56 points heading into the finals - 26th place. In every round where their robot wasn't hampered by a glitch, they did fantastically. And, even in the rounds with technical difficulties, the announcer commended them on continuing to do their best despite the problems.

The finals consisted of eight three-robot teams and Gladstone Greased Lightning was picked to join one of them - putting them into the finals in both of their first two competitions! They won their first round with a spectacular set of blocking/scoring moves from Gareth, the team driver, that put them into the semi-finals. A technical problem in the second round caused problems but they still won by a hair, only to lose in a tie-breaker that ended their run in the semi-finals.

After they were eliminated, Gareth stuck around to root for his fellow Gladstone students in the finals until the event wrapped up around 4pm.

A spectacular day on many, many levels. The pictures and video really don't do it justice.

As a final note, all Gareth wants for Christmas is money for VEX parts so he can build his own creations. ;o)

Onwards I go, swimming through a pile of introspection and positive encouragement towards a goal and a better sense of what to do with myself and how I (and other humans as well) function.

This career exploration course is wicked handy. Taking myself seriously, from taking the time to figure out my own issues, to investing in or appreciating my skills, has never been a strong point for me. I've always put myself at a distant third compared to my friends and my work and plowed on - making it this far due to a level of competence/ability that I've never acknowledged and am only now beginning to realize I possess as I look around at other capable people, professionals, grown-ups even, and realize I'm standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

Only now am I understanding how much better of I would have been if I'd sunk my brain into some post-secondary 10 years ago. But, what is, is, and now it's time to take hold of what I've got and turn it into something that will let me survive and thrive.

While I set myself up to achieve goals in terms of education and career, I'm also taking aim at the things that make me happy and satisfy me. Namely community building and games. That's taking the form of VCON this weekend so off I go tomorrow with the kids in tow to geek out and have some fun.

After that, there is a plan in the works to revive the VGG. Mister is in school now, this gives me time during the day, so I'll be talking to a new admin crew to see about breathing some life into it. This time I'm going to take it seriously though - watching what AJ has done with the Carnival Band is phenomenal. Taking the business of running the organization properly, investing time into the skills of doing just that, and carrying on in a professional and businesslike manner have served her well and grown the band into a recognized entity in the city.

I feel bad about how poorly the VGG was handled and want to get it rolling again, properly this time.

Whoo boy, I do like my plate full don't I?

So, what does this mean?

Well, basically no bread.

Why? Here are a few reasons:
- The Paleo Diet Solution (aka... How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days) )
- The Vegetarian Myth

Ummm... wha?

Ok, so, basically grains don't go down without a fight. And, their 'fight' tears holes in our intestines - letting all sorts of awful things through, causing inflammation, and making us feel gross. Oh, it can also lead to Celiacs and maybe even Diabetes.

Well, I'm a bit late on the latter, but haven't any urge to dabble in the former (I'm lucky that way, lots of diabetics also suffer from celiacs) and generally like to feel good.

Plus, I've ditched bread a few times in the past when my guts have felt a bit wiggy. Sticking to other foods feels... better? I don't know, introspection and/or observances of my own inner workings (intestinal or otherwise) is a weak point. Solution - install a window into my innards! Wait... no. The goal here is fewer holes in my guts, not one great big one.

So, yes, away with the grains. I'm still working on whether I can eat bran (*fingers crossed*) which hopefully won't contain any of the problematic grain elements, and... oh, yes, peas would be nice but I'm still puzzling out whether I can eat those. Corn too, but it's a no-no due to that zein stuff. Sheesh.

The good news is that uber-hippy 'sprouted grain' breads should be fine.

Why? Because grains, which are basically plant-eggs with a white, a yolk, and all the rest, convert into baaaaaaaaaaaby plants once they get wet enough to grow. This means that 'sprouted grain' stuff is like eating a plant, a plant that's too busy trying to grow to be able to fight back.

Ha-ha! Suckers...

Well, here's hoping at least. This sort of dietary-fu is so niche and non-standard that there really isn't a lot proving anything one way or the other.

Oh, I am also up waaaaaaaaaaay too late because I can't sleep for beans.

Anybody know a good PHP tutorial site for me to play with while I'm depriving myself of sleep?

I have just had a fairly successful spot of surgery to correct a minor issue and now need to sit myself down for some rest & recuperation for a few days.

So for the next bit I will be located at home on my couch, or possibly in bed depending on how much this takes out of me.

Guests and company are welcome!