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How Eating a Little Bit of Paper Made My Previous Post Possible

Let’s pretend you read my previous post, for the dual purposes of boosting my ego and because making that assumption will make for a cleaner essay.  You know you didn’t; I know you didn’t.  Let’s just pretend.  Let’s also get out of the way that hoary old American social tradition known as a disclaimer:  I’m not advocating that anybody do a fucking thing here.  If you’re so unfathomably lazy that you’d use information on a blog post without verifying it elsewhere, you are destined for hard lessons, and LSD has the potential to mercilessly and irrevocably administer them straight to your brain.

As I combed through my previous post this morning days ago in order to ensure that it read like the humorous recounting of a string of mild bad luck that it was meant to be, it occurred to me that there was a point in my life many years ago when those very same events would have been documented in a very, very emo fashion.  Then, as if by kismet and as I was beginning to write an entirely different essay, Amarok played me some Hendrix.  Are You Experienced, to be specific.  It all brought to mind the catalyst that sparked my eventual emergence from the depression, self-loathing and crippling shyness that marked my childhood:  lysergic acid diethylamide.  LSD, if you’re not a nerd.

I know, I know, just hear me out.  Although if you’re one of those people who think it’s bad just because, then you may as well stop reading it now.  I could tell you that LSD, as well as basically any entheogen ever, are unabusable and impossible to become addicted to.  I could recount how my single experience with it was a defining moment and one of the best things that ever happened to me.  I could even mention that I’m not some psychonaut neo-hippie (unless you consider being somewhat leftist to qualify one as such; I have a left and a right wing, but I suppose you’d say I veer quite a bit to the left in flight) who’s trying to justify his bad habits, but rather simply a regular guy who had a chance to try it, did so, and legitimately benefited far more than anyone would expect.  There’s also the fact that psychiatrists have flirted with studying its ability to treat various mental problems for decades now, but have been discouraged by a preponderance of people who heard about this one guy, he took some one time, and then he like jumped off his dorm roof or some shit because he thought he could fly.  Lastly, I could question the wisdom behind allowing politicians to make decisions that would more properly fall into the domains of physicians and chemists.  You wouldn’t care about all that, though.

There’s a lot of misinformation on LSD, as opposed to something like methamphetamine, which if anything is actually worse than the public perceives it to be.  For one, the hallucinations are far milder at a reasonable dose than commonly presented; you won’t pet dead relatives, you won’t talk to fantastical animals, you won’t traverse alien worlds, none of that crazyness; you are far more likely to gleefully laugh at bad movies, be awestruck by sunrises and intensely love your fellow human beings, and I say this as a self-avowed and unrepentant amiable misanthrope.  Things do tend to “breathe”, and it’s common to see patterns overlaid across your field of vision, though.  There are hallucinogens that can have you being chased by extradimensional lizard aliens, but acid isn’t one of them.  Or maybe it is if you take a massive dose.  Mine was quite small, which is entirely incommensurate with the magnitude, longevity and positivity of the end result.  Massive doses might also bring on the infamous acid flashbacks too, because neither me nor a single one of the friends that took it too had any.  Judging from my research, a flashback isn’t really that bad in most cases anyway, but merely a recollection of how one felt during the trip.  One can also spontaneously and unwillingly recall how one’s first kiss made one feel too,  so I guess we better make kissing illegal as well.  They can be more severe, but again, it almost certainly involves much bigger doses, similar to how intaking too much oxygen can kill you, or drinking too much water.

Everything – every single thing that exists – will hurt you if indulged improperly or to excess.

Not that acid is without danger.  My young-man-emo-phase came with a good deal of self-loathing, as emo phases often do.  When you hate yourself, things such as a string of mildly bad luck similar to that depicted in my last post tend to validate that hatred; oh look, the world hates me too, I guess I’m right to feel the way I do.  Like a great deal of conscious and unconscious thought, it’s a loop that feeds back into itself, becoming stronger and stronger with each cycle.  This isn’t really a new concept: religions and spiritual traditions that emphasize the analysis of the human experience have documented the mind’s incessant tendency to run in circles for thousands of years, such as the Buddhist concept of vāsanā or, roughly, the Shaivist concept of the rāga tattva.  They also generally agree that these loops are incredibly difficult to entirely break, as they are all permutations of desire:  wanting, seeking, obtaining.  When a thing is obtained, another want surfaces.  The more often the loop cycles, the more it perpetuates itself, and it becomes harder and harder to break.

Brief aside before I continue:  before starting this essay I searched ‘lsd tolerance’ on Google to refresh my memory on whether or not it could become a habit.  The first result was a site called Above the Influence, a site which ironically immediately tries to influence you into taking up that tried and true American tradition of bashing shit without having tried it or indirectly experienced it in any way.  One thing of value that it does say is that LSD disrupts the normal functioning of the brain.  Hang onto that.

Now back to the hybrid tornado/train wreck/feedback loop that is the human brain.  Psychological disorders such as the aforementioned depression, narcissistic personality disorder, etc. tend to act as a filter through which everything else is passed.  To put it another way, if your thoughts/desires/longings are the planets of our solar system, then depression is the sun around which they orbit, and which itself is spinning in the center.  This would mean that most all the functions of your brain are subservient to a central dysfunction of ever-increasing power.  It’s doesn’t take a great leap of logic to conclude that disrupting this “normal” functioning of the brain could be good for a person, does it?

There are a few caveats, though.  For one, you need to be on speaking terms with all of your demons.  That’s at the very least, and intimate familiarity would be ideal.  You feel on this stuff, and your mind revels in itself.  It will not respect boundaries.  With a meditative practice, you can go to those cordoned places in yourself as tentatively as you like; with a chemical, those places come to you as they will, and amplified just as your senses are.  If your self-control collapses when those demons make themselves known, they will outright traumatize you on this stuff.  Knowing yourself is a great thing in any circumstance, but here it’s mandatory.

For two, you need to know yourself.  You need to really know yourself.  Nobody ever thinks they’re repressing anything without some hellish introspection; that happens to be one of my specialties, so that well was dry long before I took anything.  I realize I already said this, but it bears saying a hundred more times.  Under no circumstance is it good to be a unknown and foreign country to yourself.

For three, it amplifies what’s already there.  If you’re in a good, calm mood, then your entire body will feel amazing and all of your usual stressors will seem the way those spiritual traditions I keep mentioning describe them:  small, fleeting, ephemeral, like smoke in the air.  You’ll see your own complicity in the pain they cause you, and you’ll realize that without that complicity, they and nothing else can hurt you at all.  It’s like standing up and realizing you’ve been sitting your whole life letting things loom over you.  If you’re in a bad mood, invert everything I just said, imagine how incomprehensibly hard that would most likely suck, and learn the twin virtues of patience/not moping about shit.

So what’s the point of all this?  Who the fuck knows.  It could be that I vehemently believe that a unilateral and indiscriminate war on drugs is proof that we in the country are fucking incapable of learning the lessons of Prohibition and still govern via fear and ignorance, justifying it with some vague doom-mongering about social cost.  It certainly isn’t to encourage anyone to either abstain or indulge.  It’s illegal and potentially dangerous in a subtle, potent and possibly long term way.  Think, be honest with yourself and decide.  I guess it’s not to recount the acid-fueled all-nighter we pulled either.  I’d intended to, but this is way long as it is.  It’s among a number of things I’ve touched on that deserve their own essays, so some other time, hopefully.  Plus, honestly, calling it an “acid fueled all-nighter” makes it sound far more interesting a story than it actually is.  Suffice to say that I saw my stressors for what they really were:  small, fleeting, ephemeral, like smoke in the air.  I saw my own complicity in the pain they cause me, and I realized that without that complicity, they and nothing else can hurt you at all.  It was a hell of a lot of fun too, lest all this spirituality I’m spouting make it sound like myself and my friend were playing monks for the evening.  It’s impossible to say if it was so much fun because I experienced the much-vaunted detachment that is the goal of any worthwhile spiritual practice or if it was just because I was on fucking awesome drugs.

I can say with certainty what the point isn’t:  to try to convince anyone that LSD will cure one’s mental ills.  To me, it’s fairly evident that I was “ready” to learn what my depression was trying to teach me, and “God”/the universe/dumb fucking luck used LSD as a catalyst to bring about that eureka! moment that invariably accompanies any true apprehension of the nature of any abstraction.

In fact, I think the sort of mentality that would seek out a figurative magic pill that would sort their brain out for them is exactly the sort of mentality that would fare very poorly on this stuff.  It’s just not how it works.  It’s not how anything works.  There’s been bad days in the years since I took it.  Some very bad ones, actually, and all flanked with good ones, as it’s always been.  It has to be that way, because it’s the bad days that define the good days.  Nobody wants to believe that, including myself; we all have some thing in our hopes and daydreams that we just know will come along and sweep away the drudgery of quotidian existence, and thereafter all the days will be happy ones.  We wait for true love, plan to have children, gun alongside coworkers for that promotion as if we all wouldn’t just end up adjusting our lifestyles until we were just as tight financially as we are now.  Gamblers wait for the big win.  Artists of all stripes await their big break, and it’s folly, all of it is, every single bit.  True achievement is finding the joy in that drudgery.  It’s there.

Even after my experience, I can’t always find it.  But I compared acid flashbacks to a kiss earlier, and it still applies here.  You can’t recall a kiss unless you’ve kissed someone.  Once you have, with a little time and space and just enough peace to imagine, it’ll come back to you.  The way your lips tentatively and hesitantly met comes back.  The moment when all tentativeness and hesitation fell away and you melted into each other comes back.  That feeling of blissful panic, that knowing that if she were somehow snatched away from you now that you’d just fucking die comes back.  What doesn’t come back is the nervousness itself, the uncertainty; there’s only the recollection that they were once there, which brings with it nothing but laughter at how silly and unnecessary they were.  Whatever else happens, whatever else is lost or stolen or destroyed, whatever godawful cataclysms and depredations shake your ground, rain down from the skies or kick in your door, you can always bring it back to you.  It’s true for wives, husbands, boyfriends and girlfriends and lovers, and it’s true for life itself too.  In fact, I coulda just said it was like kissing life itself and saved us all a lot of trouble.

My apologies for using the word quotidian; I am well aware that that sounds pretentious as all hell, thank you.  Apologies as well for taking so long between my last post and this one, should anyone actually care about the length of the interval.  Lastly, introspect.  A lot.  You can leave a strange place, quit a job you don’t understand and you can leave a lover rather than take the time to understand them, but if you are foreign to yourself, then you’ll be lost for every second of your life.


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Rock and Republic ‘Rocks the Cure’ This October

October 22, 2009 at 8:37 pm Leave a comment

This fashion/charity combo just might surpass the fashion/technology combo as our favorite fashion hybrid here at BMS!

Rock and Republic is an edgy label with a sweet heart. The apparel brand boasts everything from women’s cosmetics to men’s shoes, and for the month of October–one rockin’ charity.

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Rock & Republic presents ‘Rock The Cure’, the brand’s initiative to raise money for breast cancer research.

Check out Rock the Cure now to donate and watch a brief clip from City of Hope (After you’ve done your good deed for the day you may want to head to R&R’s main page for a little window shopping…or actual shopping!)

Rock and Republic - Rock the Cure

Entry filed under: Fashion. Tags: , , , , , , , .

PLM as ‘A Central Hub of Product Intelligence’ TGIF: Sequin-Embellished Minidress from BCBGMAXAZRIA

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About BMS

Business Management Systems (BMS) has been a leading provider of product lifecycle management software solutions to the apparel & textiles industry for 15 years, delivering VerTex Toolboxes--an easy-to-use modular system uniquely configured to meet every company's specific needs.

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You Only Get What You Give

I’ve been thinking a lot about dating karma this week.

When I look back on my dating history, there’s like one nice guy, a string of douche bags, followed by like maybe one more nice guy, then even douchier douche bags. I mean, there was probably only one dude who was really HORRIBLE, but the rest clearly weren’t winners, seeing as I’m still single.

Is this a result of my dating karma? Am I putting bad shit out there in the universe?

jon hamm crying

I went on like a billion dates this week (okay, it was only three. but three in 3 days is a lot!), and only one of them was any fun.

I’m so tiiiiiiiiiired of going out on mediocre dates. Like, I used to get excited about EVERY date. I love getting to know people and trying new things. But after awhile it gets hard to be interested in people who really aren’t that interesting.

I’m about ready to get in touch with my friend’s Indian grandmother so she can arrange a marriage for me.

When I can’t expect to have a good time on a date, it’s pretty hard to mentally get it up for any of these dudes. Then it’s a vicious cycle, because I’m probably broadcasting pretty clearly that “I’M NOT FUCKING INTERESTED”. Like I’m sure it flashes across my forehead in neon lights or something. I’m guessing.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t think I’ll be interested, then I become uninterested.

At the same time, I’m also fucking tired of dudes who seemingly have no testicles. I had a third date tonight with Eat Pray Love. I was really into him after our last date, and I was supposed to make him dinner tonight. I had to change plans last minute, but I still let him know that I really wanted to meet up with him, and so we ended up just grabbing a drink. I thought I was broadcasting pretty clearly that “I’M STILL FUCKING INTERESTED.”

Maybe I was a boring slore during dinner (I was exhausted), but it wasn’t nearly the worst date I’ve ever been on. So, obvi, I was expecting maybe a different goodbye than the last two dates. AKA I thought he would maybe actually try to kiss me. You know, like a normal thing that should happen by the third date (or for real, the second. let’s be real).

No dice.

How do you get to be a thirty year old man and can’t figure out how to make a move by three dates? What world am I living in? Makes no sense.

your world

Not everything is horrible, I guess. There’s still one promising gentleman. I’m excited about that possibility, but I’m trying to figure out a way to feel it out without getting too excited. Because when that happens, I usually end up disappointed. Hopefully I send out appropriate signals into the universe. Because he actually seems like he could be a lot of fun.

Or maybe I’m just doomed to keep building up shitty dating karma.

IDK. Questions without answers.

Well. I had an interesting weekend.

Except for by “interesting,” I mean that it was a shitshow. A fun shitshow, but a shitshow nonetheless.

Thursday was my birthday, and that’s where the real trouble started. You would think that by age 26, I would have learned how to not like an idiot when I get drunk.

i did the best i could

Apparently not. I had a whole bunch of wine Thursday at dinner and did some silly things, then I continued drinking essentially the whole weekend and continued to do silly things. There is actually not a single moment from this weekend that doesn’t make me SMH.

I run into this problem a lot. I’ll get to this mental place where I want to be serious about dating and not acting like a slore, then I have a weekend where I seem to backslide into my slutty college ways.

I can't do both

I’m all like XTina, asking “When will my reflection show who I am INSIDE??”
( )

ANYWAY, upon reflection, and after much soul-searching, I’m going to try to learn from the silly things that happened this weekend. I’m remembering that I’m not looking to mess around with any random dude that crosses my path, no matter how cute he seems through my beer goggles. I’m trying to find a quality dude.

Here are some very important lessons I’ve learned from this weekend:

1) Dressing like a sloot will probably make you want to act like a sloot.
I mean that in the most feminist way possible. I am NOT saying that if you dress in a skin tight pleather dress, you’re asking for it. All I’m saying is that, for me, putting on some slutty outfit is like Clark Kent putting on his superman costume, except SLUTTIER. Anytime I make the choice to wear something short and tight out, I usually also resolve to: drink a lot, dance even more, and flirt with one million strangers. And if you know me, when I resolve to do something, I DO THAT SHIT. There is a time and a place for gettin’ a lil buckwild. I think I just need to choose those times carefully and slore around in moderation.

demi dancing

2) The waiter is not your soulmate, and sticking your tongue down his throat is probably a mistake. (BTW, sorry Mom)
Yeah. That shit happened. I’m going to blame the fact that it was my birthday, or the fact that he gave me free cheesecake when he wasn’t supposed to. When I was in college, I used to make out with random dudes all the time. Like, there was actually a time where I was waiting to cross the street and just started making out with a dude who was walking by. One of my friends at college told me I probably needed to chill the fuck out with all that noise, because I was going to end up with mouth herpes. APPARENTLY I NEVER LEARNED. Not only should I have not made out with some random dude WHO LIVES AN HOUR AWAY anyway, but I especially shouldn’t have done it for like 2 hours and then told him that “Sure, I’d love to go on a date sometime.”

nuh uh beyonce

UGH. Do better drunkrachel.

3) No matter how nice the guys seem, you probably should not go out to their van in a dark alley to take a shot of bourbon.
Yeah, so. That shit happened, too. 2 girls, 7 dudes in a band, one dark parking lot. Somehow, my friend and I thought it was totally a good idea. In retrospect, we are fucking idiots. I mean, we were joking with these dudes like “You’re not going to murder us and mutilate our bodies, are you?” and it was funny then. BUT THAT SHIT ACTUALLY COULD HAVE HAPPENED. I could be laying in some ditch with my limbs scattered around me right now. I think maybe that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. (The bourbon was delicious, though.)

what's wrong with you

4) You don’t need to drink every free drink someone buys for you, especially if that drink was on fire 5 seconds before you drank it.
If it can be lit on fire, then you’re probably going to be wasted just from smelling the fumes. You will also probably end up doing stupid shit because of it (E.G., NUMBERS 1 through 3). You will likely end the night passed out on someone’s floor. Also: ROOFIES.

amy poehler

5) Stay the fuck off facebook if you are shitfaced.
Nothing good will come of it. While you’re at it, stay the fuck off twitter too, you silly drunk bitches. You will end up telling someone who you see on a regular basis that you would like to “get rough” with him. Even if it’s true, you probably shouldn’t say it.

SO those are the bad things I am going to focus on learning from. It wasn’t all bad though. Here are some good things I learned this weekend:

6) Sometimes a girl just needs to dance.
BONUS: dancing will burn off a lot of the calories from all those beers you’re probably drinking.

snoop last supper

7) Good girlfriends are hard to find, but oh so valuable.

8) You’ll have more fun if you’re singing at the top of your lungs.
Especially if you’re singing to 90s hits.

9) Never underestimate the power of a sexy outfit.
This is the flipside to #1. If you look good, you’re gonna feel good. And damn it feels good to have men you’ve never met calling you beautiful.

bow down

Also, it keeps the bar tab low. #freedrinks #shots #butijustsaidishouldn’ttakeallthosefreedrinks

10) Even if you end up doing crazy shit, mistakes make for the best stories.
You just have to not make those mistakes all the time.

real responsibility

All in all, it was an epic weekend. I had too much fun and my liver is still recovering. I acted like a drunk idiot, though, and I hope drunkrachel didn’t mess anything up for real in sober rachel’s world.

I think it was good to get some shitshow out of my system, though. It had been awhile, and it’s good to actually have some balance to my otherwise lame and monotonous life. Now I can focus on being a non-slore and actually enjoying the company of quality gentlemen.

I’ve got two dates set up this week (including date #3 with Eat Pray Love!), so hopefully those go well. And maybe I’ll dress juuuuust a little slutty.

Because, like I said, you should never underestimate the power of a sexy outfit 😉

I’ll Make a Man Out of You

Online dating is weird, isn’t it?

My experience has been, anyway.

I started really hot and fast on I was talking to like a billion guys and it seemed like I was going on dates all the time. It was exciting getting so much attention and having something to look forward to (and having something to write about, too)!

who's up next

I felt like a hot commodity, and thought these dudes actually realized that I was a real catch!

…..That was like two months ago, though, and my attitude about online dating has drastically changed.

I don’t care to give as much energy as I did before. I’m becoming less confident that I will really find my “match” online. And I’ve stopped being nice to online dudes just to be nice.

fuck all that

I feel like my experience with mirrors  my real world dating history – but in reality, making that comparison would be giving me a lot of credit.

On one hand, there are similarities – I start out hopeful that I’ll find a great guy, then I become jaded when I realize 1) most guys end up disappointing me in some way and 2) most guys can’t check off even half of my boxes. I think maybe these realizations come more quickly in online dating, but other than that the same old  patterns are there.

mindy disappointed

But like I said, I can’t really compare with the real world too much because there’s one HUGE difference between online BoBachel and real life Rachel:

Real life Rachel is a huge coward.

Yeah, I’ll admit it.

I have no cajones when it comes to dealing with men in the real world.

i stole it from the internet

Today after work, I went out with a bunch of coworkers for our weekly happy hour and my love life came up.  Why? Well, it seems that my love life is a frequent topic of conversation among not only my coworkers, but also everyone we work with at the courthouse.

Apparently one of the bailiffs wants to date me. I’m not interested in him because he is, for lack of a better word, ugly. (Sorry, dude). Everyone knows that he’s got a thing for me. Unfortunately, he’s not the same bailiff that I want to maybe date. Apparently everyone knows about my crush on the other bailiff, too. It’s a really depressing would-be love triangle.

BUT my coworkers started giving me a bunch of (well-deserved) shit about the whole situation because I’m probably responsible for a lot of the mess. I’ve been a real idiot about the Cute Bailiff. Anytime I see him, I turn into a frickin middle school girl and either ignore him or say like two stupid words to him.

You’d think that I, a cute, smart, successful-for-my-age, 20something, would have big enough balls to at least SPEAK a sentence to this man.

spastic child

It shouldn’t be that hard. I should know better. And if I actually didn’t act like an idiot, the non-cute Bailiff probably would realize I wasn’t interested in him, and the hubbub at the courthouse would subside. AND I COULD LIVE IN PEACE.

That’s not even the only instance of cowardice in my non-interwebs romantic life. I’ve been really passive about the whole Lawyer Man situation, too.

I was supposed to see this dude over the holiday weekend. It didn’t happen. There were some contributing factors (e.g., we both came down with some plague-cold hybrid virus), but my gut tells me I should move on.

Like this panda:

rolling panda

I’ve read “He’s Just Not That Into You.” I buy into it, because for real: if a guy is into you and wants to date you, he’ll make it happen.

This guy hasn’t made it happen yet, nor does it seem that he has plans to.

I’m trying to summon up some of the courage and sass of my online alter-ego to improve the situation in my real world possible romances. I need to just chat the Cute Bailiff up and ask him to get drinks with me. I need to tell Lawyer Man that if he really wanted to date me, he’d get his ass to Kentucky.

My mental shift over the past few months has been to make just another dating option, to have it be as close to real life as possible. Sure, it’s really easy to come off as an appealing, dateable girl in a paragraph or two, but should it really be harder in real life?

In reality, it should probably be easier. I should be able to get the guys I already know, too.

So I think I’m  going to make an adjustment, in part due to the barrage of shit I took today. I’m going to be more BoBachel in my everyday life, because BoBachel at least goes on dates. Rachel doesn’t.

do over

From this point forward, I resolve to be as cute and sassy in real life as I try to be in the limited snapshot I’ve provided on the internet.

I can’t be afraid of rejection of ANYONE, let alone these dudes I’m currently dealing with. I need to start acting like the hot commodity I know I am.

demi dancing

Because in the end, they’re just boys. They’re nothing to be afraid of.

So, I guess if I want to find myself a boy I’ll have to man up.

Hold On, We’re Going Home

So, it’s been awhile. Did you miss me? I missed you. Really, promise.

What I HAVE NOT missed that much is In the last two weeks I’ve become rather apathetic about it. Online dating is starting to feel like this:

sidetracked baby

It’s actually really weird because I’m actually still in contact with a few interesting guys. I even had some dates lined up this last weekend!

My first scheduled date was with this dude Eat, Pray, Love. We went to this AWESOME craft beer bar that I most definitely will be visiting many more times (especially when you all come to visit me?).

I wasn’t sure what to expect looks-wise because half of his pictures were of him visiting cool places and he looked like a dirty hippie because those places  probably didn’t have running water. But he was super cute! He actually kind of reminds me of this guy (look familiar, Gossip Girl fans?):

Cute, right?

There was a little moment at the beginning of the date where I was an awkward idiot. Before I met him at the bar, he had apparently texted me to tell me he was waiting outside. I missed that text. Not realizing he was waiting for me outside, I walked up to the front door to go inside. He stopped me and asked if I was Rachel. I was taken aback, and the first thing that popped out of my awkward mouth was “Oh, you look …different than I expected.”

awkward britney face

…Ugh. It took me like five awkward follow up apologies to get my foot out of my mouth. What I was thinking was “you’re really cute!” but what I actually said made me sound like a real asshole.

But I guess he got over it because after that, the date was great! In fact, as far as first dates go, it was definitely up there as one of the best I think. Eat, Pray, Love was  nice and normal and interesting. He’s traveled all over the place and is training to be a pilot. He has a tattoo on his forearm, too. I don’t usually go for that kind of ink, but on him it was kind of sexy. I really liked him a lot.

My second scheduled date didn’t go. It’s with supposed to be with this SUPER CUTE med student. Like, just thinking about the fact that he’s going to be a hot doctor gets me worked up. I WOULD say he’s out of my league but I am pretty FABULOUS!

Anyway, Dr. McHottie was going to take me to dinner, but he got called into do important doctor-in-training things. He kept apologizing that he had to cancel, and he promised to make it up to me, so I took a rain check.

Swoon. Sounds like just what the doctor ordered.

So, you might be saying to yourself, “Rachel, it sounds like you’re living the dream! Many cute boys want to date you! What’s up with all the dating apathy?

What’s up is that I’m still really conflicted about this real life boy I’ve been crushin’ on forever, Lawyer Man. We’re supposed to see each other when I go home for Thanksgiving and I haven’t been able to think about much else for the past three weeks. I’m very excited to see him, but I’m also really unsure about the consequences of us seeing each other. Right now it’s like we’re doing this weird dance, or playing chicken.

I’m conflicted because he lives hundreds of miles away and he’s only moving farther away. And I can’t tell how serious he is about us trying to work something out. Maybe it’s one of those things that I’ll have to feel out when I actually get some face time with him? I don’t know.

What I do know is that I have a mental block right now. I can’t mentally or emotionally commit to the idea of giving any of these internet dudes a chance because of how I feel about Lawyer Man. It’s one of those things that I think would have me wondering “what if?” if I didn’t give it a shot.

my emotions

Anyway, I hope I gain some insight after this weekend and my trip home. Whatever the outcome, having some clarity on what to do with my dating life would be something I’d be very thankful for.

Kiss Me

I just went on a third date with the Man Child and I’m feeling …. apathetic? Yeah. I think maybe that’s the right word. (Side note: in discussing this date with a friend, I used the word “maybe” about 23425320 times to describe my feelings about the date. Obviously I’m pretty undecided about the whole thing).

ANYWAY. So the date.

I had just seen Man Child on Friday, so I was pretty excited when he suggested we play trivia together at a local bar just a couple days after our second date. I mean, third dates are fun, and I LOVE TRIVIA.  I was looking forward to something more laid back with him, too. And Man Child is cute and really nice!

lauren conrad aww

BUT THEN, all this mind fuckery happened over the weekend with real life boys. Going into the date today I wasn’t really very excited about it. I was more excited about the real life boys than I was about Man Child.

So I get to the bar for trivia. Man Child was as adorable as always in casual wear – jeans and a sweatshirt, I think that’s like a midwest uniform. I really do love a boy in jeans and a sweatshirt. And he was nice and funny, too, just like I remembered.

HOWEVA, overall, the date was “MEH” because I was distracted, both by things going on in the bar and things going on in my head. (Side note: I think he may have also been distracted, but by my doing, because I wore a VERY low cut shirt and my boobs looked preeeeeeetty glorious. My bad.)

It was like last week when I went out with Funny Man: through the date I felt as though he was more my buddy than a romantic interest. I started to get that feeling at times during my date with Man Child. The date vacillated for me between buddy-hang-out-time and we-are-on-a-date-time.

As trivia came to a close, however, things just got weird. Man Child said he’d have to jet right away once trivia was done to pick up his drunk buddy. I was fine with that, because WHATEVS. However, I didn’t realize that that meant once we left the restaurant, we would split ways entirely after barely even speaking “goodbye.” Like, literally, he waved goodbye to me. Not even a hug. AND, still, no kiss. After 3 dates.

what are you waiting for

That’s weird, right? Like, I can understand maybe not going in for a kiss under certain circumstances, but is anyone too busy even for a hug? It’s like we’re back to the first date where he tried to shake my hand.

What’s more weird about the non-kiss at the end of the date is that I CAN’T EVEN DECIDE if I wanted to kiss him at the end of the night. I feel like after three dates, maybe I should have made up my mind about that. Right? Sure, maybe physical chemistry can build over time, but how long am I supposed to give it? And at what point does my indecision about whether I find this dude sexy/want to devour his face turn into leading the poor schmuck on? There’s got to be a time limit on that kind of thing.

IDK. My Bff Jill. I have no answers right now, only “MEH” feelings. I have no idea what I will say if/when he asks me out for another date.

i wanna take a nap

BUT, I’ll tell you who I don’t have “MEH” feelings for.

Yes, folks, you read that correctly. Pushy Man is back.

I thought, happily, we’d forever be rid of the Pushy Man after he cancelled on me to bone some dumb slore he’d been seeing for awhile. I was apparently quite wrong, but again, NOTHING ABOUT THIS MAN SURPRISES ME ANYMORE. He literally has no concept about what is normal, right or appropriate when it comes to human interaction. So I was not shocked when, over the weekend, I received the following message from the douchenozzle:

“So yeah….Kind of weird, I broke it off with the person I decided to pursue because she wanted a serious future right away….I’m not there yet.

Anyway, if you’re looking to take it slow like completely plutonic, let me know. You seem like a pretty cool and intelligent person fun to hang out and have a conversation with.

william shatner wtf

These things went through my head in no particular order as I read fuckface’s message:

– Thanks for again acknowledging that you decided to pursue someone else, but you have now started this message off by making me feel like sloppy seconds.

– At age 29 (YEAH, this jerkwad is 29), you should probably not be surprised when girls who you “decide to pursue” want a serious relationship. Also you should generally not be surprised about that when YOU ARE DATING GIRLS FROM MATCH.COM. Come on, dude, wtf do you expect?

– Plutonic? It’s PLAtonic, you ignorant asshole. And, YES, you earn the right to be judged for spelling mistakes when you consistently act like a socially inept assface.

– Speaking of “PLUTONIC,” taking it slow and being platonic are two VERY separate, mutually exclusive things. One implies a romantic relationship. The other implies the lack of a romantic relationship, or maybe that you expect to get some without paying for my dinner. NO THANKS, I’LL PASS.

– Is that last sentence even English?

– DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT PLATONIC MEANS??? (Probably not because he can’t spell it).

Anyway, I didn’t even bother to respond to this man. I imagine he’ll get to age 32, still be single, and his parents will arrange a marriage for him (Because, yeah, he’s Indian. And there are websites for that kind of thing now).

I just really am horrified to imagine what this Pushy Man must be like in person. I would imagine it’s pretty unbearable.

Le sigh. These fuckin’ dudes. Got me swearin’ like a sailor because they are so RIDICULOUS.

Real life boys aren’t any better, BUT at least I know I want them to kiss me.

Le sigh to that, too.

giant wine glasses

I need a drink. GOODNIGHT, Y’ALL.

Phew, what a weekend. Thank god I have tomorrow off from work to decompress. I had girlfriends in town last night and we went to a karaoke bar, where we witnessed a fight. It was eventful, to say the least. The hangover I’ve been battling all day tells me we had a ton of fun, too.

My Friday was pretty fun, too! I started the weekend out with a pretty nasty head cold and a date with Iowa, who I think I’ll only refer to as Man Child from here on out. Because, you know, he’s a man child. He’s probably like a year younger than me, but he just seems so young. Especially considering most of the other dudes I’m talking with are several years older than I am. Man Child doesn’t act immaturely or anything, he’s just definitely more youthful.

Anyway, I had a really nice time with the Man Child. We went to this yummy tapas place not far from my place. I had forgotten just how adorable this guy is, and the conversation flowed  well. I really enjoy his midwestern sensibilities – he’s kind and down to earth, and just a really nice guy. It’s refreshing.

There was one odd thing about this date, and my last date with him, as well. After our first date, which was just for drinks, he ended the date by attempting to shake my hand.

I was kinda like, “cute, but no,” so I shrugged it off and gave him a hug. But it was still weird.

After this second date, he hugged me. I was a little surprised he didn’t try for a kiss, but at the same time, I guess I had told him up front that I was gross and sick. Maybe I’m thinking too much about it, and maybe it’s not weird at all that he didn’t try to kiss me. Maybe I’m also being a big slore expecting everybody to want to kiss me all the time.

Anyway, I liked seeing Man Child, and I think I’d like to see him again, but I’m not sold on this guy yet. (That seems natural for a second date, though, right?)

I think part of my hesitation with Man Child is that so much is going on in my real-world life. I have two very different story lines playing out right now that are complicating things.

First, I’m still lusting after this stupid sheriff’s deputy at work. I try to flirt with this guy all the time. I don’t think I’m very successful. I am actually pretty certain he doesn’t know my name. I don’t think of myself as a SHY person by any means, but I kind of turn into a pathetic middle school girl when I’m around him. Like, I never know what to say or how to start a conversation.

no logical explanation

My boss thinks I should just get it over with and ask him out. I’ve been plotting all week, trying to figure out how I can do that. Friday I fell asleep thinking of how to catch his attention. I felt a little bad because I was thinking about this Deputy rather than the dude I had just gone on a date with.

To further complicate matters, someone from my past has resurfaced and forced me to consider how I feel about him. We can call this guy Lawyer Man. I have known him for years, and we have always had a very flirtatious friendship. I talk to him all the time. Anyway, things between us are quickly growing more complicated and it’s making me reconsider whether I even want to keep doing at all. I can’t decide if our clear mutual attraction is enough.

live off love

The thing is, even if I do keep dating some of the men I’ve been talking with on, I’m concerned that my complicated friendship with Lawyer Man will keep me from wanting to commit to any of the other guys. I haven’t decided yet if that’s a bad thing.

Honestly, I probably shouldn’t be thinking too much about committing to anyone yet. I’m definitely getting ahead of myself if I do that, because I haven’t gone on more than two dates with anyone from

I keep telling myself I should just go with the flow and see where things take me. Maybe I should actually start doing that? And maybe if I do that the answers to my current dilemmas will resolve themselves.

Regardless, maybe my currently complicated situation isn’t so bad. It’s certainly refreshing to be dating nice men, rather than my typical type – douchey assholes who treat me poorly. And, hey, excitement and options aren’t a bad thing when it comes to dating.

What a Girl Wants

I was supposed to have a date with Pushy Man at 9 pm tonight.

Yes, that’s right! I was going to give the pushiest human alive a chance, even though when he set up the date, he again directed, rather than asked, me to meet him at a certain time at a certain place. But yes, when he set it up, I was willing to at least meet him.

Since I started doing, my philosophy has been that everybody deserves a chance. So, I was going to give Pushy Man ONE chance.

This morning as I was showering, though, I began to rethink the whole thing. As I was sudsing and lathering, I realized that I didn’t find him particularly interesting. I thought he came off rude at some times, and inappropriate at others. By the time I dried off, I had resolved to text him and call off our date.

I got out of the shower and he had texted me this:

“I have to cancel this evening.I’ve decided to go stay with a girl I’ve been seeing.sorry for the inconvenience”

hold da fuck up

Like, for real…..what?

I actually think I might have laughed when I saw it. Did he really have to include all the details about his future boning of this other girl? Did he also really need to send a message without proper punctuation? ABSURD.

I texted Pushy Man back, “It’s okay. I was going to cancel, too.”

Pushy Man’s awkward text message was unsurprising, based on our past interactions, and not even a little bit upsetting. In fact, I’m pretty pleased that instead of going out with him, I get to sit on the couch and catch up on the Biggest Loser and The Voice.

ANYWAY, the whole interaction with Pushy Man, my mini crisis over the weekend, and a long discussion with a friend have me rethinking my approach to both and dating in general:

Why should I be giving chances to guys I’m not really interested in?

In my last post, I said I wanted to treat just as an extra method of meeting people – everything else, dating-wise should be the same! BUT I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY BEEN DOING THAT.

In real life, I would be way more discerning (AKA JUDGEY) than I’ve been so far on

Hey, I have very specific tastes. I like what I like, and that should be okay.

can't choose who you love

So, I have resolved to start acting on as I would in real life. MY TIME IS VERY PRESH. I’m not going to be talking to any of these bozos anymore unless I’m actually interested in getting to know them/sucking their faces off in a dark theater.

I’m not gonna waste my time anymore by faking nice to every dude who winks at me or sends me a dumbass message and uses the wrong form of your/you’re. It’s all about return on investment, and I need to start investing my time more wisely.

I’ve decided that, to get what I want, I need to be a little more of a bitch. I’m also going to start following some new rules:

1. He’s gotta make the first move.

I’m not saying I’m going to sit idle on, but I’m not doing more than winking at these dudes anymore for the most part. I want an assertive guy, so I’m gonna need a guy to put in some effort to date me. If a dude wants it, he needs to chase it. I don’t wanna be the pants-wearer all the time (because lord knows how much I hate wearing pants). So, TRY A LITTLE ROMANCE, INTERNET DUDES! EXERT A LITTLE EFFORT.

2. No fatties or baldies!

(That’s a Sex and the City reference, btw, not a reference to how much of a bitch I’m going to be in dating from now on).

Everybody has a type. I know what my type isn’t. I’m not going to waste my time with a dude I don’t find physically attractive. Like I said, I’m looking for a dude whose face I want to devour. And, I’ve found that if I don’t find a gentleman at least moderately attractive right off the bat, my feelings probably aren’t going to change much. So, I’m turning my superficial up just a little bit. Like I said, it’s all about ROI.

3. I’m not looking to be a sugar mama.

So, prospective suitor, you have a part-time retail job and hope to stay there for awhile? That’s great for you, but I THINK I’LL PASS.

I have always been an overachiever. Sure, I’m mega lazy sometimes (weekend-long binge of Breaking Bad? YES PLEASE!), but I think I deserve it. I have worked really fucking hard to get where I am. Shit, I’m 25 with two degrees and a job with a pension. I need a dude On. My. Level. Cypress Hill said it best: “She said, ‘I want a man with a plan and ambition.'”

So, YEAH. I’m not playin’ around with these jokerz anymore unless they 1) are in a job they’ve worked really hard to get to or 2) they are working toward some end goal. I don’t necessarily care what that end goal is. I understand that not everybody can be a BALLER ATTORNEY like me. But I want a dude that has goals and a vision for his future.

SO, those are my new rules. I’m gonna try to stick to those. Why?

bitch please

But also, I think if I actually stick to that, I’ll find better quality dudes online. Like, dudes that I might actually want to date.

As far as REAL LIFE, non-interwebs dating, I’m gonna switch stuff up there, too. I am actually going to try to put myself out there more. I’m going to try to break the ice with interesting strangers. I’m gonna make an ass of myself.

As a friend recently told me, “you never know, your soul mate could be that cute guy buying your favorite beer at the grocery store.”

Well, I drink a lot of beer, so I’m gonna start talking to all those cute IPA drinkers.  What’s the worst that could happen? They’ll be weirded out and I’ll never see them again? There are worse things.

The thing is, my old approach of “LOOK ADORABLE AND BE WITTY AND SMART IN PUBLIC” isn’t working. It doesn’t even work when I wear yoga pants.

So, I’ve decided it’s worth trying something new.

Best case, I’ll meet some überhot dude who likes what I like and we’ll live happily ever after. Second best case, I’ll just meet someone who likes what I like and we’ll both have beer (OR WHATEVER).

Anyway, TL;DR. I’m just going to keep my eyes open for dudes that strike my fancy. In real life and on the world wide web.

And I’m going to try to trust the process more. I don’t need to be forcing the issue so much. I’m 25. I’ve got about a billion years of life left. If I don’t find anyone today, tomorrow, next week, or next year, WHATEVS. Not the end of the world.

go with the flow

But hey, if I stick to what I want, and try to put myself out there more, maybe I’ll actually be successful and end up with I want.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

Yeah. It’d be really nice.

happy endings


text:
Bocoup recently hosted OpenVisConf and we wanted to think of a fun and useful way to present the proceedings. We created a visualization that uses the slide transitions in speaker videos to produce a visual overview of each video. You can see the result here.

Video Tiles

You can click on the colored rectangles to expand them and see thumbnails of each frame shown and further click those to start the video playing at that point in the talk.

In this post I want to share a bit of the process for how we generate the data for the visualization, and hopefully show how easy it is to get started with video and image processing.

Our goal is to extract interesting frames that could give a visual overview of the video. In this case, we can define interesting as a slide change, though we don’t want to completely ignore transitions in animations either.

To achieve this goal we will use OpenCV to process the video. OpenCV is a computer vision library with official support for C++, Java and Python. For this project I used the Python bindings.

Each video goes through 4 main steps.

1. Frame Skipping & Preprocessing

We first extract one frame per second from the video to produce a new video that is dramatically smaller in size. This makes the subsequent steps execute much faster. We may also need to crop the video down to just the portion with the slide content.

2. Frame Differencing

We then take each frame and subtract it from it’s previous frame to calculate the number of pixels that have changed. We record this number in a data structure for use in the next step. In OpenCV this image differencing is as straightforward as diff = cv2.subtract(currentFrame, lastFrame). In order to make this faster and more robust with respect to noise (e.g. analog noise in the video signal), we convert to grayscale, shrink, and then blur the frame before we calculate the difference. This can be achieved in a few short lines of python

gray = cv2.cvtColor(frame, cv2.COLOR_BGR2GRAY)
gray = cv2.resize(gray, None, fx=0.25, fy=0.25, interpolation = cv2.INTER_AREA)
gray = cv2.GaussianBlur(gray, (9,9) ,0.0)

This is a pretty simple approach for detecting changes and it works decently well for our use case. OpenCV has support for more advanced techniques where you first try to learn or estimate which pixels are background pixels and separate them from the foreground before looking for changes. This approach does not work well for all slide decks because the ‘background’ can change dramatically from one slide to the next.

3. Scene Detection/Keyframe Selection

To select keyframes that represent likely scene changes (aka slide transitions), we examine the data we collected about each frame in the previous step and calculate some basic summary statistics such as the mean and standard deviation of the number of pixels that change across all frames in the video. We then loop over all the frames again and select as our keyframes the ones where the number of pixels that have changed is more than ‘X’ standard deviations from the mean. We write out the selected frames as images at various scales to use on the web.

Using these statistics helps us further filter out changes that are due to noise in the original signal (which should be evenly distributed across all frames) as well as gives us a loose way to tune how many frames we want to get back. A higher value for ‘X’ will produce fewer frames with greater inter-frame changes while a lower one should produce more frames with more subtle changes. In this project I experimented with values from 1 to 2, and settled on 1.85 just via visual inspection of the result for this set of videos.

4. Dominant color extraction

At this point we have a set of thumbnails that we can use to give an overview of the video. But in designing the visualization I wanted a more compressed view than the image thumbnails. So let’s go back and extract more data from the video frames. For each selected keyframe we extract 5 dominant colors. This is done using K-Means clustering, a simple machine learning technique that was actually explained by one of our speakers, David Mimno, in his OpenVisConf talk. K-Means is built into OpenCV so it’s just a few lines of code.

# convert to np.float32 matrix that can be clustered
Z = image.reshape((-1,3))
Z = np.float32(Z)

# Set parameters for the clustering
max_iter = 20
epsilon = 1.0
K = numCols
criteria = (cv2.TERM_CRITERIA_EPS + cv2.TERM_CRITERIA_MAX_ITER, max_iter, epsilon)

# cluster
compactness, labels, centers = cv2.kmeans(Z, K, criteria, 10, cv2.KMEANS_RANDOM_CENTERS)

You can imagine it as plotting the color of each pixel in a 3-dimensional space (one dimension for each color component) and then finding clusters of points in that space. We use the centroid of those clusters (which will be a coordinate representing a color) as the dominant colors in the image.

In our visualization we used the 2 most saturated colors to generate our gradients as opposed to the two largest clusters (which will often be the background) to give it a bit more pop.

Visualization and more…

And that is basically it! We’ve generated a selection of frames from the video as well as color information about those images that we can then use to do other things; such as create a web page to present these videos.

The code for doing this video processing is available in this repository. I don’t write much python but it was really easy to get started and become productive, so I encourage you to look into it if you have a relevant project.

The front-end visualization code from the OpenVisConf site is also available here. It represents a slightly condensed version of what you can see on the OpenVisConf site and is an example of how the data produced from this process can be presented.

Special thanks to Irene Ros, Isaac Durazo and Greg Smith for their help and feedback.

Happy Hacking!


text:
Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Petrine Office

Yes, Matthew, this post is for you. 🙂

In The Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic

Notwithstanding all the problems connected with the papacy throughout the history of the Church, two things speak in favor of its recognition within the Communio Sanctorum and its apostolicity.

In the first place (and we have already touched upon this) the Petrine element is taken for granted, so to speak, right at the beginning, in the Petrine texts of the New Testament. And of these the most impressive is not the passage in Matthew but rather the overpowering apotheosis of Peter at the end of John’s Gospel of love, which begins with the choosing of Peter in the first chapter and contains, at its center, the Apostle’s great confession of faith in the Lord.

Longer excerpt here

The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church

Just as Peter builds on John and John is within (and beside) Peter, the Petrine aspect perhaps appears nowhere more clearly than in Paul. Conversely, Pauline influence is unmistakable in Peter’s letters, [10] which are evidently intended to transmit wholly Petrine tradition. Again, we see two striking figures (who do not in the least blur each other and who have distinct theological and ecclesiological valences) in perichoresis, nor could it be otherwise among the members of the “living Body of Christ”.

Still, not every member communicates in the same way with the other. Within the manifest structure (which we stress is not definable in terms of tight distinctions) there are delicate lines of relation, most clearly drawn and represented by Luke and John. Luke portrays a family relationship between Mary and the Baptist, and, as Paul’s companion, he circumspectly builds a bridge between the latter and the Gospel tradition. Luke and John both bring to light deep, hidden mariological dimensions. In the episode at the foot of the Cross, told only by John, he who in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles is always shown together with Peter becomes “son” and guardian of the Mother. Thus he is shifted into a discrete but totally indispensable central position (mediating between Peter and Mary, between the official, masculine Church and the feminine Church) that alone can give these two dimensions of the Church’s mysterium their place and proportion. Only where these concrete proportions are seen, understood and meditated upon in the light of faith, can one speak to advantage about the office of Peter in the Church. Moreover, this cannot be isolated from its most intimate connection with and within the collegium of the Twelve, each of whom was explicitly called by name.

Longer excerpt here

About Joshua Michael

Writer. Catholic. Fan of John Henry Newman and the Inklings.
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2 Responses to Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Petrine Office

  1. Matt says:

    I love what you’ve selected here. The first time I encountered this line of interpretation was in vB’s “Razing the Bastions” (which is one heck of a book for being written before Vatican II). His interpretation of the Petrine, Johannine and Marian aspects of the Church was immensely helpful to me. As a Protestant who grew up in very “low church” setting, the Petrine structure of the Church was always viewed with suspicion. It was in undergrad that I began to see the episcopal structure, not as “repressive” as I had been taught, but as a necessary structural girding for the more Johannine and Marian aspects. I was so happy to find Balthasar’s articulation did not pit Peter-John-Mary against each other, but rather saw them as mutually formative and reinforcing. Such an articulation is, I think, the best embodiment of a truly “Catholic” ecclesiology: a Church that is secure in its own identity and vocation as to allow a few different “ecclesial personality styles” to perichoretically structure the shape of the Body. You certainly don’t find that in Protestantism since Protestantism is, I think, inherently polemical.

    • I’m glad that you like my choices. I’ve just bumped vB’s Office of Peter to the top of my wishlist.

      The first place I encountered this line of thought was in the first volume of the Glory of the Lord, which I only managed to get halfway through. I keep promising myself to return to it later, but it’s hugely intimidating.

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text:
Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Blog Tour & Giveaway - The Moon Virus Series by Cassandra Lawson

red smoke abstract on white background with copy space, concept red style Moon_Virus_Box_Set Goodreads
This box set contains the first four books in the Moon Virus Series.
Book 1 - Raven's Blood
Book 2 - Embrace the Heat
Book 3 - Seducing Death
Book 4 - Shattered Restraint
The first two books each contain a graphic scene involving physical and psychological abuse which may be disturbing to some readers.
Front Raven's Blood.jpg
Book 1: Raven's Blood
Following the death of her wood nymph mother at the hands of vampires, Raven worked hard to build a life for herself in one of the few remaining human settlements. Her life takes a frightening turn when she finds herself an unwilling guest in a vampire settlement, but things are not anything like she expected them to be. Still, she cannot help but feel that her attraction to the vampire leader is a betrayal to her mother’s memory and her human friends.
From the moment Connor first laid eyes on Raven she has thrown his entire world off-balance. In order to prove his strength as a leader, he has no choice but to take her up on her offer to trade her freedom for that of her human friends. Having begun his life as a slave, he has no interest in keeping the wood nymph captive. As a man, he has no desire to feel this overwhelming attraction to a woman who hates him and his kind.
As Raven spends more time with the vampires, her feelings for Connor grow even stronger and Connor finds that she may be the one thing he cannot live without. Unfortunately, a new danger emerges that could threaten the survival of vampires and humans alike. As Connor struggles to unravel the mystery of the attacks from a new species of vampire, a madman will go to any lengths to get Raven’s blood.
Ravens Blood Teaser

Front Embrace the Heat
Book 2: Embrace the Heat
On her seventh birthday Layla’s mother mysteriously disappeared. Raised by a wood nymph in one of the few remaining human settlements, Layla learned to fight from an early age. She also learned to distrust the vampires who rule most of the land. When a vampire saves her life, Layla finds herself more than a little drawn to him, even knowing he could never give his heart to a human.
The trauma of his childhood left Simon weary and distrustful of all humans, until the day he saved Layla’s life. After seeing the spirited human fighting like a seasoned warrior, Simon can’t help but respect and admire her. He soon learns that Layla is much more than he ever imagined, and he finds it hard to stay away from her. Despite the depths of his feelings, Simon knows there can be no future for them.
Both of their worlds are turned upside down as Layla nears her twenty-seventh birthday. Suddenly the male vampires are inexplicably drawn to her, and Simon is no exception. As they unravel the mystery of Layla’s heritage, an enemy from their past resurfaces and threatens to destroy Simon and all that he cares for.

Embrace the Heat Teaser

Seducing Death Front Cover.jpg
Book 3: Seducing Death
In the decade following the brutal murder of his wife and daughter, Ian has existed in a world built on grief and hatred. Just when Ian has finally begun to claw his way through the shadows of his past, a knife to the heart ends it all . . . or is it the beginning? After waking up in a strange home, Ian’s only companion is the woman who saved him. Undeniably drawn to her, Ian finds himself wondering if it really is possible to love again.
Trapped in a world where she is little more than a pawn for the Fae, Kyleigh long ago accepted the reality of her existence. She is no one’s savior and no one’s guardian angel; she is death. That is until she breaks all the rules to save a vampire many believe beyond salvation. Ian sparks a passion she never believed possible and reawakens emotions she thought long buried.
While secluded in a realm between life and death, Ian and Kyleigh are free to explore their feelings for each other. When enemies, past and present, join forces to destroy those Ian loves, they are forced to leave the safety of Kyleigh’s realm. Can their fragile bond survive when they are faced with the demons of Ian’s past?

Seducing Death Teaser

Shattered Restraint Front Cover.jpg
Book 4: Shattered Restraint
As a half-breed shapeshifter, Quinn has always assumed she would be sent away when she fails to change into a lynx on her twenty-seventh birthday. Her future seems hopeless until she meets Danny, a human who helps her dream of a life beyond the next two years. When she discovers that everything she’s ever believed about her heritage is a lie, her world is turned upside down, and she is no longer sure she can fully commit to Danny.
Captured by enemies of the born vampires, Danny is forced to face his greatest fears while struggling to stay alive. Thoughts of Quinn, a woman he barely knows, keep him sane. After his escape, fate intervenes and Danny finds himself rescuing Quinn. While Danny’s future still seems uncertain, he is sure of one thing—Quinn is the woman for him. Now, he just needs to convince her that they belong together.
In the sanctuary of the shapeshifter community, Danny and Quinn are free to explore their growing feelings without world interference from the outside, but Danny knows he can’t avoid his old life forever. As the sanity of an old enemy rapidly unravels, no one is safe, and the born vampires must face a foe who will stop at nothing to destroy them.

Shattered Restraint Teasser

Buy Links

Cassandra Lawson is an author and homeschooling mother of three from the San Francisco Bay area. She has always had a very active imagination and loves making up stories. When she is not writing, she enjoys baking, spending time with her family, listening to music, or curling up with a good book.
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Modern Physics

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Pearson/Addison Wesley, 2008 - 558 pages
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Modern Physics, Second Edition provides a clear, precise, and contemporary introduction to the theory, experiment, and applications of modern physics. Ideal for both physics majors and engineers, this eagerly awaited second edition puts the modern back into modern physics courses. Pedagogical features throughout the text focus the reader on the core concepts and theories while offering optional, more advanced sections, examples, and cutting-edge applications to suit a variety of students and courses. Critically acclaimed for his lucid style, in the second edition, Randy Harris applies the same insights into recent developments in physics, engineering, and technology.

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About the author (2008)

RANDY HARRIS is a popular speaker at conferences, churches, and college campuses across the United States and around the world. He is a professor of theology and ethics at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas, and has received numerous awards for his classroom work. He holds degrees from Harding School of Theology and Syracuse University, and is the author of "God Work: Confessions of a Stand-up Theologian" (2009), "Soul Work: Confessions of a Part-Time Monk" (2011), and other books. He is a single Christian who grew up in Bentonville, Arkansas.

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Showing thread: Happy Thanksgiving!

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From both myself and all of us here at Boss Battles,

Thank you for your continued support and dedication to the server that many of you have called home for quite some time.

I truthfully believe that this support and dedication from one of the best communities I have come to know will continue in the both near and far future.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Tag Archives: Graphic Novels

Part II: I love comics — but is this one safe for class?

Just because something is created in the comics (aka sequential art) medium, does that change the gravitas of the content? Would a serious topic be diminished presented in comics format?

Sometimes, comics versions of stories are seen as lesser or substandard. For example, many ‘classic’ novels have been presented as graphic novels, such as: Macbeth, Hamlet, The Odyssey, Frankenstein and Beowulf.

And many fine original stories have appeared as graphic novels, such as: I, Witness, A Bag of Marbles and The Outside Circle, to name a few I have recently read. But again, they are considered less than traditional novels.

But the following comic got me wondering about what degree the comics medium might diminish or inappropriately intensify a topic.

Consider the following comic from fusion.net: a victim of rape and her story as told to Jen Sorensen by Anonymous entitled “The phone rang. It was my college rapist”.

(Note: some may find this content disturbing.)

Should I have included the disclaimer “some may find this content disturbing”? Isn’t that the point? I asked a number of women colleagues to read this comic along with the question of “Is this comic ‘too much’ for high school students?

My colleague, Angie, who works in the field of guidance counseling, suggested that this comic is a reality for some high school girls already. And that the topic of sexual assault needs to come out of the shadows and into the forefront of conversation. But, as my colleague Annette and I spoke, I had the feeling of ‘but they are still young adults’.

Where is the line?

Macbeth, as a contrast, explores murder (of a leader, of a male best friend, of women and children, of innocent civilians) as well as mental illness and suicide, and this text is part of the fabric of high school English courses.

I wonder if a concern might be whether the offending or disturbing act is overtly depicted versus merely suggested. Lady Macbeth, for example, dies offstage as does Lady Macduff and her entire household; the rape and subsequent phone call of this comic are depicted more directly by the artist.

But violence is shown quite clearly and in brutal fashion in such war films as Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List.

Is war violence somehow safer than sexual violence for classroom discussion?

And yet in Canada, it goes without saying that a woman must face the possibility of sexual assault throughout their lives (1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted in North America — www.sexualassault.ca

So, as a dad to three young girls, do I want them addressing difficult  topics such as those found in this comic in high school even if it makes them uncomfortable.

If it will forewarn them of very real dangers, I say “Absolutely.”

I love comics – but is this one safe for class?

I love graphic novels and comics.

While I admit to being a lifelong fan of comic book heroes and their adventures, I am always on the lookout for comics and GNs that tell non-superhero stories –particularly ones aimed at young adults. I do this because I want to find new reading material for my high school students — but am also looking to change the minds of teacher colleagues who may think that comics and GNs are only about Batman, Superman or The Hulk – not that those are bad!

I digress.

Two excellent examples of recent non-superhero graphic novels that I have read (and tweeted about as @mistercooke on Twitter) include:

  • The Outside Circle by Patti LaBoucane-Benson and Kelly Mellings: after being sent to jail for murder, a young First Nations man strives for redemption through an exploration of his own culture.
  • A Bag of Marbles by Joseph Joffo, Kris, and Vincent Bailly:  a Jewish family living in Paris must make the heart-breaking decision to send their children away as the Nazis rise to power.

I would love to get both of these books into the hands of students and teachers to show that powerful, disturbing, beautiful, humane, transcendent stories can also be told through the medium of comics. Or as comics guru Scott McCloud says “sequential art”.

I have discovered, in my own practice, GNs can be light reading, entry point reading, a gateway to other reading or a challenging reach book, depending on the reader, as there is a literacy unique to comics that some are more familiar with than others.

Indeed, I love comics and graphic novels because the visual nature of comics adds both an immediacy and a new layer of complexity that both invites me in and challenges me as a reader.

But could this immediacy be dangerous?

I discovered a longer comic today that presented a difficult conundrum for me as a teacher: can this visual nature of comics and GNs be too immediate? Should some subject matter be left to the reader’s imagination?

What is that comic, the content of which vexed me so? It shall appear in my next post, posted post-haste.


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Some men gender-swap by female masking. Women don’t seem to feel the same urge in reverse. Interesting…

February 14, 2015
Masking as female and male at an ondel-ondel performance, Jakarta.

Masking as female and male at an ondel-ondel performance, Jakarta.

There’s a subculture of men who mask themselves, envelop themselves, in latex from top to toe, wigs and all, as women. Many know them as ‘living dolls’; much of their networking is online (for some of their networks, see Last year the UK’s station Channel 4 put out a TV programme about them (, and there’s been further coverage at and The aim for most of these men is not to feel beautiful in a new skin (after all, some go for a hag-like look, or, if not that, definitely don’t attempt some beautiful ideal). More, they seem to be intent on occupying another, opposite, persona: female therefore opposite, but frequently very different in character as well.

‘Persona’, along with the words ‘person’ and ‘personality’, actually comes from the Latin word for mask. We all adopt a variety of personae for different people and situations, of course. At its simplest and most superficial, a persona is an attempt to make a good impression in social situations; at its more complex and far-reaching, it can be ‘mistaken, even by ourselves, for our true nature’ (

‘Masks are an impeccable metaphor for the personae that encircle our souls.’ So declares a blog piece on female masked performances, ‘The Masks of the Goddess’, at by Lauren Raine. Our chosen personae, this ignorant non-student of Carl Jung gathers, according to Jung mimic, echo, a set of eternal archetypes: common character types that have imbued our cultural and spiritual evolution since we emerged from the primordial slime.

Psychologist Stephen Larsen tells us:

‘The primary function of the mask is to unite the indwelling wearer (and the observer) with a mythic being, or as Jung would say, “an archetypal power”.’

If you’re the academic type, there’s a fascinating study of the mask as archetype in classical Greek drama, Italy’s traditional Commedia dell’Arte and Japan’s oldstyle Noh theatre – among other things ( Other cultures show similar archetypal mask usage, e.g. the ondel-ondel performance pictured above.

Sod all this theory and trying to sound intellectual. Have you ever worn a mask? Think back. The experience is unforgettable: you feel safe, invincible, invisible, even; and – maybe most strikingly – able, if you want to, to interact with the world and with people in a way uncharacteristic of your ‘typical’ self.

Yet male and female masks, whether representing archetypes or otherwise, contrast drastically, give clearly distinct gender messages. However ‘archetypal’ and generic they may seem, we instantly recognise a visual sexual difference. (Maybe we even seek it out?)

Could we ever mistake this mask for female?

Could we ever mistake this mask for female?

... or this mask for male?

… or this mask for male?

And yet, a blog that studies and advises on beauty and the face makes some interesting claims:

‘The “Mask” by all accounts is a distinctively female configuration [my italics]. The male face seems to be a particular variation of this female “Mask”….

The “complete” male variation from the “Mask” would be a combination of:

1]. The specific age variation with regard to the Mask.

2]. The typical male variation from the (female) Mask.

and 3]. The particular ethnic variation from the archetypal Mask….

The essential Phi Mask (i.e. the geometric ideal “beautiful” image of humanness) is actually that of a woman. The male image is a variation on that mathematical female image.

Developmentally all human faces begin as essentially feminine – even if genetically male. Through multiple exposures to testosterone the genetic male face gradually transforms into the male configuration. But again, male faces essentially start out physically as female.’ (

Back to female masking. As far as I can establish, women don’t do male masking. Is the above one reason for that difference? Are living doll men instinctively trying to reclaim something of the feminine look they subconsciously sense they had in some hidden ideal past? Yet according to Lauren Raine in her writings on goddess masks, arts, spirituality and healing in the arts and myth: ‘Women and [my italics] men exploring mythology may choose to work with an archetype.’

So how come women so rarely, if ever, choose to wear male masks? More to the point, why? After all, Raine reports that both have in common that, in performance situations, they ‘work with an archetype… sometimes to call back something they feel has been lost’.

Maybe it’s what they feel that they’ve lost that distinguishes the sexes. For men, maybe it’s a closeness to the feminine. The earliest initiators of the living doll movement tell of finding inspiration from the ’70s and ’80s TV series Mission Impossible, in which several of the female actors masked and unmasked themselves with a magical sweep of one arm over their heads.

Dana Lesley (Anne Warren) disguises herself as Mioshi Kellem (Lisa Lu) to re-enact the latter's murder in 'Mission Impossible': 'Butterfly'. To achieve this visual trickery, they cut between the two actresses at the moments of masking/unmasking.

Dana Lesley (Anne Warren) disguises herself as Mioshi Kellem (Lisa Lu) to re-enact the latter’s murder in ‘Mission Impossible’: ‘Butterfly’. To achieve this visual trickery, they cut between the two actresses at the moments of masking/unmasking.

Something of this is about a seemingly miraculous transformation – could it be, almost healing? The Channel 4 film shows the masked men staring at their female selves in mirrors, revolving and mesmerised, almost in awe. Even though many men who dress as living dolls keep that part of their lives secret, some have a background of loneliness, and/or of difficulty in getting or keeping girlfriends. During the Channel 4 programme on living dolls, one interviewee, Robert, enthuses of her female alter ego, ‘She’s amazing. And she’s all mine!’ So maybe this is partly about the possession of a relationship that’s not possible otherwise; or maybe it’s an extreme step out of a lonely, shy self into another self entirely (what could be more extreme than adopting the other gender?).

For women, according to Raine, at least in the context of more staged ‘performance’, it’s very different. In donning a mask to play a part, women are still finding themselves ‘drawn to [that] figure because it affords them an opportunity to explore something they believe they do not know’. But in our case, the female case, it seems more a matter of exploring female archetypes where we sense a missing connection. Raine cites examples: ‘Turquoise’, who discovered a ‘joyful opportunity to reconnect with the “instinctual woman”‘ by dancing the part of Artemis; and another, who in enacting the myth of Inanna’s descent to meet her dark twin Ereshkigal, found she could explore the ‘underground’ of her own psyche.

The moral of this piece may sound as if it should be that men really are from Mars and women from Venus. But you know they say that we’re entering the millennium of the Goddess, an era where the female’s in the ascendant? I can’t help wondering if this brief gendered squint at masking only reveals that (sorry, men!) women really are ‘further along’, just a smidgeon more evolved. (Alternatively – sorry, sisters! – are living doll men more evolved in their willingness to transition from their gender to the other?)

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family reunion 2006

(Better late than never – here are some words and images)

BUCK & GASCOIGNE Family Reunion a success

More than 100 descendants of pioneer families BUCK and GASCOIGNE descended on historic Alison Homestead, Wyong NSW Australia on Saturday 11 November 2006 for a long overdue family reunion.

Family came from all over NSW and Queensland to Wyong Shire where their forebears settled in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many BUCK and GASCOIGNE descendants are still living in the Wyong and Tuggerah Lakes area and are connected with other pioneer families such as AMOR, BEDDING, DUNCAN, FERNANCE, LEGGE, STACKMAN, and WALMSLEY.

Alison Homestead, home of the Wyong District Museum and Historical Society, was the perfect venue. The wide verandahs and aptly named breezeway helped to keep folks out of the heat of the midday sun. Many toured the museum’s collection of artefacts used in the work, home and school life of our ancestors. The volunteer staff were very knowledgeable and ensured all were well looked after.

Many of those at the reunion were descended from the six children of Thomas GASCOIGNE and Sarah PATERSON. Thomas was the licencee of the Commercial Hotel (now the Grand Hotel) at Wyong before taking up 60 acres at Pipeclay Pointt in the 1890s in the area now bounded by Howelston Road and Gascoigne Road, Gorokan.

Thomas also built and operated the ferry ‘Wyong’ which could be hired by holidaymakers and picnic parties for transport down the Wyong River and across the lake to the Entrance and Toukley.

As the reunion was held on 11 November – Remembrance Day – those assembled took time to remember family who had served in the two World Wars and other armed conflicts.

Ernest BUCK enlisted in the AIF in August 1914 and was posted to the 1st Battalion, 1st Infantry Brigade. He took part on the Allies landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and two months later was shot in the chest. Ern was evacuated to a military hospital on the island of Malta, then to a hospital in Manchester England. He was unable to rejoin the fighting as his chest wound affected his heart and he returned to Sydney in May 1916. (see pte ernest buck – anzac for his story)

The LEGGE family settled at Tuggerah in 1896 and Byron LEGGE married Ernest’s sister Bertha BUCK in 1915. Ern came to visit them and recuperate from his wounds and decided to stay. Byron LEGGE was a builder, as was Ern BUCK, and they both found plenty of work in the booming Wyong Shire.

Ernest married Madge GASCOIGNE (daughter of Thomas and Sarah) in 1923. They built a house on the lake at Pipeclay Point and raised nine children. Ern would fish in the spring and summer and work building houses and other construction in the colder months.

Five of their nine children, Ron, Tom, Shirley, Hazel and Midge still live in the area and Mick and Bernice travelled from Queensland to attend the reunion with their families. Eldest daughter Jessie and another son Stephen were fondly remembered by their brothers, sisters, daughters, nieces and nephews.

The reunion was a resounding success! Those gathered representing four generations mingled and caught up on news of family life and new additions to the family tree. The youngest present were Lewyn PILIC, Kaylee QUINN and Harrison BUCK, all born in 2006 and descended from both the BUCK and GASCOIGNE lines.

Any descendants who would like further information on their family history or future events can contact Susan Buck at family_history ‘at’ (replace ‘at’ with @).

Thank you to Kerrie BROOKS and John MAJOR for sharing their photographs.

2 thoughts on “family reunion 2006

  1. Pingback: retouching family photos | branches of our family

  2. Is there going to be another reunion any time soon? I am part of the Gascoigne Family ( Ike Gascoignes Granddaughter, Daughter of Harold Gascoigne) I would love to be a part of it.

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Facebook Deals launches in Europe

Facebook Deals, similar to Foursqaure’s Check-In Offers, launches in Europe from Monday 31st Jan. One of the first up is Argos, who are using it for charity donations. The first 10,000 people to check in through Facebook Places will see £1 each being donated to the Teenage Cancer Trust. With 1/3rd of the company’s sales coming through their website, and 60,000 plus fans on Facebook, it looks like Argos will find their 10,000 check-in’s pretty quickly.

Whilst the Argos deal is the most high profile, other brands including Debenhams, O2, Alton Towers and Mazda are also taking iniatives. YoSushi! who are offering 5 free plates and a drink for those checking in to selected restaurants. At a time when retail sales are taking a plunge in the UK, Facebook Deals may help drive some business back to the high street.

iPhone 5 to have NFC (Contactless Payments)

All the signs are there that the next iPhone will include contactless:

  1. Richard Doherty, director of consulting firm Envisioneering Group who work on NFC hardware, told Bloomberg that the next iPhones/iPads will have NFC.
  2. AppleInsider has discovered that Apple this week put out a call for an engineer with NFC experience.
  3. Apple filed a number of NFC related patents in 2010.

Aside from all these signs, NFC makes a lot of sense for Apple. At the moment their itunes store pays massive transaction charges for purchases bought on credit cards. Though highly profitable, it would be much cheaper for Apple to see more NFC payments which would debit a bank account and reducing their transaction costs. Google have already added NFC to their Nexus S, but the addition of a contactless iPhone will make the technology almost inevitable.

The infrastructure of contactless is appearing in many countries – aside from Japan and Korea who have had contactless phones for years, the US now has 750,000 contactless payment terminals. In the UK similar NFC devices are being rolled out in numerous shops and restaurants where there are 42,500 contactless payment points. Barclaycard and Everything Everywhere (Orange and T-Mobile) re-announced their plans to deliver a contactless handset from April 2011. With the payment technology added to phones there technological barriers to contactless will be removed. Of course, there is still one big ‘if’ with the whole – will users want to adopt it? It looks like the handset manufacturers (and banks and operators) are assuming they will. However, mobile is littered with technologies that users weren’t interested in (in spite of Face Time, how many people actually make a video call?). When it comes to NFC payments the big question from users will be security. How easy will it be for someone to get hold of my money?

It’s the NFC Shoe! Utterly Brilliant or Totally Stupid?

I really can’t make up my mind whether this is the best or the worst idea ever. It’s the NFC shoe. Fashion house WeAretheSuperlativeConspiracy (there’s a catchy name if I ever heard one), have embeded an RFID chip into a shoe. It allows the wearer to walk over pads to trigger a number of actions: take a photo and send it to Flickr, add a friend to Facebook. I’ve never been one for wearable technology – most of them make people look stupid, but this has the advantage of being invisible. Given that the next couple of years will be big for contactless, maybe, just maybe the contactless shoe will catch on.

Read more here

Google Local Search: is this how they will get into social media?

So far, Google’s attempts at social media have been something of a failure. Google Buzz annoyed many people and was seen as a breach of privacy. Latitude had the same problem. When it comes down to it, Google are a search company and not a social media company. However their focus on local search as led to an interesting new product. Hotpot shows recommendations on Google maps. Now they have added a function to see your friends local recommendations. This could be a good idea. We often value our friends recommendations so why not include them in their maps? It’s not a fully fleged social network a la Facebook, but nonetheless this could be their way in. It will be available in the web and Android versions of their maps. More info here.

When it comes to location, SCVNGR may have got it right

A while back, I argued that Foursquare is not social media at all, but it’s actually a game. Yes, it has the tools of social media, but when you look at how people interact with it, it’s the gaming element of becoming mayor that keeps users engaged. There’s an interesting interview with (the very geeky) CEO of SCVNGR (what have they got against vowels?) explaining the difference between what they are doing and the Gowalla/Foursquare approach. The key difference is the challenge element and making each check-in different. When you consider that this is actually what keeps the Foursquare users engaged, the it looks like SCVNGR have nailed it.

You can view the interview here:

[blip.tv http://blip.tv/play/hYwigfOAaAI%2Em4v%5D

Where do AdMob’s 2 billion daily requests come from?

The Google Mobile mobile ads blog has given some insight into the countries that generate the most traffic to their mobile Ad network, AdMob. The 80:20 rule still seems to apply, with just 17 countries out of 190 served, providing 80% of the traffic. Whilst North America is the biggest region, Asia takes second place, with Europe in third. Surprisingly India saw the most ads served in Asia. Although the country has a large mobile population, it is generally represented by lower end handsets and small data usage. However this shows the trend towards more smartphones and a growing middle class population. In Europe, the UK represented 1/3rd of advertising traffic, with France and then Germany some way behind.

With 1000% rises in traffic in some territories, Google predicted that 2011 would be a ‘break-out year for mobile’. It looks like mobile advertising has really come of age.


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DAMN the french toast is good!

(Facebook repost)

OMG, log off and go to 26 Beach for their Apple-Cinnamon Croissant French Toast or whatever other fun varied creations they have.

YES we clearly dove in and didn’t have any interest in waiting just to take some photo.  Ok, fine, after we started eating I then thought to take a photo before it was too late LOL Seriously people, we were hungry and excited.

Can we first say I LOVE CROISSANTS.  SECOND, freaking pecan sauce ran over my toast – how dare they!  Ah, I am thankful it did.  Third, I love the aroma and taste of baked apples combined with the salty flavor of crispy bacon.   OMG – OMG – OMG!!!  The Eagle went with The Peach Melba French Toast served with caramelized peaches, vanilla ice-cream and melba sauce.  AND YEEEESSSSS we loved everything about this experience, ok fine experiences because we clearly have gone back more than once, twice, FINE ok so I’ve gone back a few times AND YOU SHOULD TOO!!!

What does it look like inside?   I know, like I said I wasn’t doing those kind of pics.  Well, as you pull up to the curb and park you will enter inside and notice a two in one split style restaurant.  What does that mean?  Once you check-in at the counter located directly at the entrance, to your left offers an eclectic indoor – outdoor area.  Brick accent walls are surrounded by paintings, white-painted wood and bird themed, girly dust collectors.  The tables are dressed with white cloth topped with glass.  Mixed match chairs fill in the space and don’t forget about the feminine patio umbrella.

The right side of the restaurant gives you the typical cute I’m in LA while eating brunch atmosphere.  I think it’s great because depending on your mood, you have two eating options to compliment the feel of the day.  Black booths, windows, clean, more minimal than the other side, you get the idea.

The menu offers a variety of different cuisines for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Our selected items cost us about $13 per plate, not including sides.  A little costly, but worth the money.  And I’ll be honest, I’ve never eaten there for any other meal besides breakfast and brunch.  However, my friends have and they seem to always enjoy their meals.  And the website is always promoting their burgers so sure, go check it out.  For myself – I’m sticking to what I love.

All that to say – 2016 and past – nothing to more to say – FRENCH TOAST – blog has ended – breakfast – WHY are you still reading this – PECAN SAUCE – I tell everyone about this place – started eating before I could take a pic – Marvin takes me often – Got DAMN them – inside offers two seating styles, outside patio (left) inside restaurant (right) – get into it – REVIEW THE MENU – licking fingers – lots of french toast VARIATIONS – MAKING OUT WITH FORK – ‘velka’ is fork in Russian, random fact – EAT your life AWAY – I make out with breakfast items often…

DROPS Keyboard! (headed to 26 Beach)

Amenities (parking, location, seating, menu selections, etc) ***
Customer Service (greeted, helpful, polite, checking-in, etc) ***
Cleanliness ***
Experience (themed, music, atmosphere, energy, etc) ***
Taste ***
Price **

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