The Evolution of an Insatiable Bookslut: Tony’s Tale

This was originally posted on Insatiable Booksluts.

Unlike many booksluts, I was not a natural born reader.  I have no stories about teaching myself to read or learning to read before I started school.  But I had a lot of people in my life who read to me at a young age.  My mom read Little Golden Books to me all the time, and so did my Aunt Jill and Aunt Stephanie.  I could recite my favorite books from memory, even if I couldn’t understand the letters and words.

One of my childhood favorites

Once I started school, it wasn’t until near the end of kindergarten that I learned to read very simple words, and throughout first and second grade, I struggled with reading and usually got placed in the slower reading groups.

But my love for information and a good story overcame my difficulties.  Despite my challenges with school-related readings, I started reading books on my own.  I always loved library day, and I would check out books from the A New True Book series to learn about different kinds of animals and dinosaurs and whatever else I was interested in at the moment.  They fed my information addiction like a 1980s children’s version of Wikipedia.   At night I read stories by my nightlight when my parents though thought I was asleep.  I had a variety of storybooks and an illustrated book of surprisingly graphic Bible stories that my dad used to read from.  This one quickly became my favorite, and when Dad’s job got too busy for him to keep up with family readings, I started reading it on my own.

All I see now is a bunch of white people posing as Hebrews.

Before long, I was moving on to bigger and better books, and my school librarian guided me to the mythology section.  I read everything in it.  Then I spent a while devouring Choose Your Own Adventure books.

For summer vacations, I would ride my bike down to the park, and then to the pool, and then I’d go to the public library in damp swim trunks with the moisture soaking through the bottom of my T-shirt.  I checked out how-to books, and I read about all kinds of different crafts and artwork, drawing, origami, and making neat toys out of junk.  I also read even more about animals and some of my favorite books were the ones about where to catch critters and how to keep them alive in homemade habitats.

I apologize to all the creatures who suffered this fate at my hands. Animals once considered me a super villain.

Those first years of reading were great, and I enjoyed them very much, but as I got older I moved on to different kinds of books.  At the age of twelve, I spent a day at my Aunt Tina’s house and I told her how I planned to read The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings because one of my friends had suggested it.  She put the conversation on hold as she ran into a different room to dig in her closet, and she came back with a bare green hardback copy of The Silmarillion.  I’ll never know what the dust jacket looked like.  “This is what came before The Hobbit,” she told me.  She let me borrow it, and I read the whole thing before I read any of the other books.  How, as a twelve-year-old, I had the patience for dry reading like The Silmarillion, I can only attribute to my previous readings of mythology and the Bible.  I quickly moved on to Tolkien’s other works, and finished off the entire Tolkien section of my middle school’s library, including Farmer Giles of Ham and his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Following Tolkien, I made a deal with one of my friends that if he read The Hobbit, I would read Mossflower by Brian Jacques.  I loved it for the anthropomorphic rodent heroes, and I read every other book that was available from the Redwall series.  Even better was Watership Down.  After that, I became an indiscriminate sci-fi/fantasy junkie, which continued throughout my high school years.

Strangely enough, I very seldom enjoyed the “literature” I was assigned to read for school.  I won’t hate on A Separate Peace or The Great Gatsby too much, but I never got myself interested in them enough to match the enthusiasm that my English teachers had.  I was never assigned to read Hemingway, so naturally, he became my favorite literary author.  Of all the things I was assigned to read in high school, the only two I really appreciated were Grendel and To Kill a Mockingbird.  I obsessed over the dragon’s lecture to Grendel, trying to puzzle out all the big words and make sense of what my teacher had summed up as “a bunch of gobbledegook”.

Like Susie, I joined in academic competition and got to read and analyze a few literary works.  The one I remember best was Antigone.  I don’t know if it was the work itself or just that particular translation, but I found it moving.  Other than these few exceptions, though, I spent most of my time in high school reading pulp sci-fi and fantasy novels.  If I could have unread all the Terry Brooks books and been given the time back to socialize, perhaps the Virginity Fairy would have relieved me of my V-card much sooner.

The Virginity Fairy visited me a little later than she did most people I know.

The Virginity Fairy visited me a little later than she did most people I know.

Near the end of my high school days, my friend Eric introduced me to Stephen King by getting me The Shining as a Christmas gift.  I got a few chapters into it before my dad confiscated it for religious reasons.  Undaunted, I read ‘Salem’s Lot, keeping it discreetly hidden.

Given my unwillingness to read most assigned books, I really wonder what possessed me to major in English when I started college.  Nevertheless, I did.  During my years at Indiana State, I hardly had time to read anything that wasn’t part of the curriculum.  It turned out that this was my time to finally gain an appreciation for some of the classics.  I tore up Things Fall Apart by recently departed Chinua Achebe.  I also loved me some Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bram Stoker, and Mark Twain.  Over the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I decided to embrace my heritage and read the Bible from cover to cover.  I liked Ecclesiastes the most.  At that time in my life, it was comforting to know that everything is meaningless.

I kept reading and working my way toward a degree in English literature.  I was required to read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for a pop culture class.  I followed the morbid misadventures of Bigger Thomas in Native Son, and I finally got a lesson in Chaucer where the professor assigned the Miller’s Tale.

Not all of my reading was in English.  For my classical studies courses, I translated Ovid, Vergil, and Catullus into English.  I especially liked Catullus.  His love affair with Lesbia mirrored my own heartbreaking college romance, so I really related to the euphoric poems at first, and the miserable ones later.

I graduated and took a break from reading literature for a while.  Instead I read self-help books about business as I tried to find my way in the world.  Thinking journalism to be a viable option for making a living, I started reading magazines and newspapers more than books.

In the decade since college, my appreciation for books has continued to develop.  For whatever reason, I did Cliff’s Notes on A Tale of Two Cities. (I had blown it off to read Fight Club and Choke.)  I remembered that the lecture made it sound interesting, so I went back and read it years after I graduated.  I read the remainder of the Harry Potter series after the last book finally came out.  I also discovered Gregory McGuire, Christopher Moore, and George R.R. Martin.  Finally, my best friend Eric–the same one who got me The Shining–talked me into reading The Gunslinger.  I shirked a lot of my personal responsibilities as I got sucked into that world.  Not long after, I began my love affair with audiobooks.  I usually listen to books I’ve already read, but occasionally I listen to something completely new, especially if it’s non-fiction.  I’ve done On Becoming a Leader, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Pimsleur courses for Cantonese and Japanese.

My most recent discovery is Haruki Murakami.  I just finished Norwegian Wood, and I have The Wind-up Bird Chronicle in my to-read queue.

So there it is: Tony’s dirty, dirty past as a bookslut.  What about you, fellow booksluttians?  Did we read any of the same books?  How did you come to be a bookslut?

Life in the Military: Sometimes We Die

When I go to work, I do my job.  I do it with all of my heart because I take pride in what I do.  Some parts of it suck, but I do it anyway.  I think most of the people in my community feel the same way.  The day-to-day becomes a mixed-up blur until we get sent away, and then we fall into the blur of a new routine–be it stateside training or overseas operations.  Whatever we’re doing, wherever we’re doing it, it usually feels like it’s just a job.

Until it’s not.

A few days ago, four members of my community died in a plane crash in Afghanistan.

When the news came out, the press didn’t release any names because the U.S. military wanted to notify families first, but the news was enough for us to know that we’d lost some of our own.  Many of my close friends have been on that same deployment, and all of their faces flashed across my mind.

Monday, we finally found out who we had lost.  Among them was a close friend to many of my friends–the brother of one of my coworkers.  To hear my chief tell us the unfortunate news in a wavering, tearful voice . . . he made it sound like it could have been any of us.  It could have been any of us.

That’s the moment when you realize that this is more than just a job.  Sure it pays the bills.  Sure it’s stressful and monotonous.  Sure the benefits are good.  But sometimes the things they ask us to do are dangerous.  Even when it doesn’t seem dangerous because you’re used to doing it.  Sometimes we go out and don’t come back.

I don’t really have much else to say.  I did not know the guy personally, but so many people I’m close to knew him very well.  Whatever the case, it hurts to lose one of our own.

Things I Like: Taking Pictures

In February I took a month-long photography class with weekly two-hour sessions, and when I was done, I decided to take and post a photo a day in March.  A photo a day may have been forcing it, but I still got some pretty good results on some of them.  Here’s a gallery of a few of my favorite photos since February.

I couldn’t not post a pic of my ukulele.

This was me playing with different lighting.

Up close and personal with Mr. Brown

I took my kids to the Marina.

Here’s the neon sign outside one of my favorite restaurants.

Haku was kind enough to pose for me.

My girls shook off the water at the shower house by the beach.

Whiskey and music: a few of my favorite things

This may seem strange, but I saw all the colors on my food shelf and decided to shoot it.

This is a view of my neighbor’s place from the shower.

Just a candle

This was my first successful shot of a blue rock thrush. Next time I hope to get a male.

My favorite knicknack, the frog bottle holder

Some of Danielle’s kokeshi dolls

I took advantage of a rainy day to freeze drops of water.

I thought these were my best of the month, but not necessarily that good.  As always, comments are welcome, and so are constructive critiques.

Metablog: Confessions and Caveats

Hey, all!  Did you miss me?

It’s been a few months since I’ve blogged, and it seemed high time that I came back to it.  Part of the reason I’ve been gone is because I have been busy, and part of it is that I’ve been feeling a bit down.  The thought of blogging was putting extra pressure on an already pressured existence, so I took some time off.  Why engage in a pastime when it only adds to the tediousness that you’re trying to escape?  The time away has been nice, and now I feel refreshed.

So . . . about those confessions and caveats . . .

Some of you may have enjoyed posts about my family life, and I certainly enjoyed writing them.  However, my wife and I have been planning to get a divorce for some time now, and it has come to the point of action.  I’m not asking for anyone’s two cents or prayers or any such nonsense; we both feel it will be for the best, and the wife, kids, and I will all be better off in the long run.  Things are amicable between the wife and me, and I don’t care to publicly air all the dirty laundry or point any fingers.  My personal life will mostly remain personal.  However, I thought it was only fair for people who follow this blog to know that I’m no expert when it comes to marriage.  Despite this, I have no intentions of taking down any of these posts.  Who knows if they may yet help someone else?  Or more likely, they can provide amusement as a humbled man eats his words.

Surely there’s a bright side, though, right?

Of course there is!  (And I’ll tell you what it is once I figure it out!)  In the mean time, I’ve taken up photography, cooking, and brushing up on my game. (Do people still say that?)  I will post galleries of some of my best shots and recount anecdotes and mishaps as I transition from married to single while finding ways to still play a major part in the lives of my children. Likewise, I’ve been invited to continue writing for Insatiable Booksluts, so keep an eye on that blog for more posts by yours truly.

That’s it for now.  As always, comments are welcome!

Adjusting Your Sleep Schedule

I don’t know about you all, but whenever I miss sleep, I am irritable and pissed off at the world.  I try to keep myself on a regular healthy sleep schedule to counter this, but with my job that’s not always possible.

There are plenty of reasons for a person to adjust their sleep schedule:  It could be that you changed shifts at your job, it could be because you traveled to a different time zone, or maybe you just want to stay up later/get up earlier for personal reasons.  I have some friends who can adjust their schedules easily; however, I am not one of those people.  As such, I have researched and experimented to discover methods for adjusting my sleep schedule that may help you, too.

Ready for bed, rockin’ the frog PJs

When adjusting your sleep schedule consider your circumstances.  Once I traveled to a time zone that was 17 hours different from where I’d started, but because of the schedule I needed to work, I was able to get by without adjusting my sleep schedule at all.  Other times, I’ve had to adjust drastically and immediately because I had to go into work a few hours after my plane landed.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when making a time adjustment:

How much of a shift is required?
Do you need to change for only an hour or two, or do you need to adjust to a fourteen-hour time zone change?  It’s much easier to set your clock one hour back for daylight savings than it is to move from day shift to night shift, and you will have to adapt your methods accordingly.

How long will you need to be on the new schedule?
You’ll want to treat a one-time instance differently than something that is more long term.  If you just need to pull one all-nighter for a work project and then immediately go back to your normal schedule, you may want to adjust differently than if you have to go live in a different time zone.

Why do you need to change your schedule?
How important is it for you to keep a set schedule?  If you’re going to Hong Kong to enjoy the night life, it may be perfectly fine to keep sleeping during the day.  On the other hand, if you’re going to Hong Kong for a week of daytime meetings, you’ll definitely want to make sleep adjustment a priority.

Once you’ve figured out the terms of your adjustment, plan for it.  Obviously the more notice you have, the better, but make do with what you’ve got.  Here are some things to help out before you make the adjustment:

Be in good health and well rested
Eat healthy meals and get plenty of rest prior to changing your schedule.  The better the state of your health, the easier it is to make adjustments. (I once made the mistake of trying to travel after staying up all night.  Big mistake.)  Avoid using caffeine so that if you need it during and after travel it will be more effective.  Drink plenty of water before and during your flight (if you’re flying).

Allow for time adjustment when making your schedule
If you are traveling across time zones and you are able to give yourself an extra day or two in the new time zone, do it.  Schedule your flight to arrive on Friday rather than Sunday so you will have the weekend to overcome jet lag.  If you’re trying to adjust to a new shift for your job, you can start on your days off rather than on the day when you start the new shift.  This provides a bit of a cushion for your time adjustment.

Stock up on the supplies you’ll need
If you’re going to start working nights, buy thick, dark curtains and powerful lamps.  If you’re traveling, pick up a sleep mask and ear plugs.  I myself prefer not to use sleep aids, but if it’s something you’re willing to consider, talk to a doctor about using Ambien, melatonin or whatever else may help you.

Begin adjusting in advance
If your schedule will allow, set your alarm back or ahead in one or two hour increments each day, and go to bed earlier or later as needed.  This isn’t always possible, but it helps if you begin making the change gradually.

Set your watch as soon as you step on the planeBegin your transition immediately.  If it’s night time at your destination, try to get some sleep by covering up with a sleep mask and putting in some ear plugs.  If it’s day time at your destination, stay awake by stretching, walking up and down the aisles of the plane, and drinking a lot of water.

Crashed out at the airport

And once you’ve reached your destination or once you’ve begun your new schedule, whatever you have or haven’t done to prepare no longer matters.  You’ll probably be tired at the wrong times and wired at the wrong times despite your best efforts, but that’s why this is the hard part.  Try the following:

Stay awake!This is the hardest part sometimes.  If you’re in a new time zone, try to stay up until 9 p.m.  Drinking water, exercising, and moderate doses of caffeine can all help you to stay awake until a reasonable time, but self-discipline is what will help you the most.

Control your periods of light and dark
This one helps, especially if you’re moving to a night schedule.  Most people’s bodies are wired for a diurnal schedule, so it is easier to stay awake in the light and sleep in the dark.  If you’re on a night schedule, turn on all the lights when you need to be awake, and block out all the light when you need to be asleep.  Curtains help, but sometimes they’re not enough, so you may want to get a sleep mask as well.

Get on the right meal schedule
Fast until it’s the right breakfast time for your new schedule.  Then eat lunch and dinner accordingly.  This will let your body know what time you’re on and ease the adjustment.

Use power naps to your advantageIf you know you’re going to have trouble staying awake later, head it off with a 15-30 minute cat nap.  I recommend doing these earlier rather than later, and they are particularly effective if you are going to have to stay awake for an all-nighter project or event.  No matter how tempting it is, though, don’t let yourself sleep for more than 30 minutes.  If your body goes into full REM sleep, you will wake up groggier than when you started.

Substances?
I don’t recommend relying on coffee or alcohol to control your sleep schedule because their effects can vary from one individual to another.  Still a cup of coffee shortly after you wake up and another one after lunch can help offset those times when your body may need a jump start.  Alcohol is not a good sleep aid for me personally because I wake up as soon as it wears off, but I have friends who say it helps them sleep.  Know what works for you and use it safely and smartly.

Suffer!The biggest bummer is that although many of these items will help, you will probably still be tired for a few days while your body adjusts to the new schedule.  Sleep deprivation makes me cranky, and I know it.  Be conscious of what it does to you, and make an effort to be positive and have a good attitude despite your own personal suffering.  It will all be over in a few days, and in the mean time, you can be enjoying your life and everything around you at different hours than your body is used to.

If you have to adjust your sleep schedule, I hope you find these tips helpful.  These have all worked for me at one time or another.  Are there any methods you use to adjust your sleep patterns?  Leave a comment and let me know!

Review: Goals for the Year 2012

The holiday season has been bittersweet for me. I have had the chance to visit friends and family in my native land for a few weeks, but I’m no longer acclimated to cold and snow, and my immune system couldn’t handle all of the local diseases, so I’ve had multiple flus and colds to get over.  On the up side, my youngest daughter got to see snow for the first time, and I was able to take my kids sledding.

My oldest two and my niece built a snow man in my sister’s back yard.

I enjoyed a jam session with Opa on his banjo and me on the ukulele (Who says the ukulele isn’t a bluegrass instrument?), and I spent my New Year’s Eve singing karaoke and hanging out with my friends the Shenanigan Girls.

When considering the whole year, I couldn’t decide if 2012 belonged in the Things I Like or the Things I Don’t Like category, so I just decided to give it an impartial review compared to my goals from last year.

Achievements Unlocked

One of my very first posts on this blog was a list of goals for 2012.  Some of these goals I had actually forgotten about, and others I abandoned on purpose.  Let’s take a look at how I did:

• Goal #1: Be funny.  I’ll let my friends and readers be the judge on this one.  I’d like to think I didn’t fail too badly.  Status: Accomplished
• Goal #2: Post to this blog once a week.  I made a total of 86 posts in 2012, so while I may not have posted every single week, I did average more than once a week.  Status: Accomplished
• Goal #3: Post a video to my vlog once a month.  Inspired by the likes of Hannah Hart, Jenna Marbles and a bunch of girls who speak Cantonese, I thought it would be fun to start a vlog.  I tried it, and it turned out that I did not enjoy it, so I let this goal go.  Status: Failed
• Goal #4: Write a book.  I wrote two first drafts and before that, I got a really good start on another draft that I wouldn’t mind revisiting.  NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo were great motivators for this, but the best help has been the support of my fellow bloggers and writer friends. Status: Accomplished
• Goal #5: Write a play.  I completely forgot about this goal and did not even make an attempt.  Big fat fail.  Status: Failed
• Goal #6: Learn Japanese.  I forgot that this was one of my New Year’s goals for 2012, but I worked on it nonetheless.  I can hold basic conversations, order off of a menu, and tell a cab driver how to get to my house.  On the down side, I can’t read very much at all.  There’s plenty of room for improvement, but I’ve certainly come a long way on this.  Status: Accomplished
• Goal #7: Don’t Get Anyone Pregnant.  My wife hasn’t had any more babies, and nobody has called asking for child support, so I may have actually succeeded at this.  Status: Probably Accomplished

You win some you lose some, right?

New Goals

So what am I going to do in 2013?  Here’s my new goals list:

• Keep up the good work from last year. I want to keep writing blog posts once a week, and I would like to continue on some of the other projects I started, like polishing my most recent NaNoWriMo project. And I would certainly appreciate it if I managed to not get anyone pregnant.
• Submit a novel for publication.  I wrote two books in 2012, so 2013 will be a year of editing. I’d like to get one novel in the kind of shape to publish, and I could certainly stand to find myself a good agent once I have that done.
• Take up model photography.  I got a camera a long time ago because I wanted to learn photography, but I never really got into it like I meant to.  I have recently been enjoying classic pin up and cosplay photography, and I thought it would be fun to start taking my own photos.  I don’t know anything about photography, so I have a long way to go on this.
• Not have a drinking problem.  As you may already be aware, I enjoy strong drink and telling amusing this-one-time-when-I-was-drunk stories.  Of course, the stories I don’t tell are the less amusing ones where I embarrass myself or others or have to call around and make apologies the next day.  I’m still not sure what “Not have a drinking problem” means, but so far I have suspended my drinking as of January 1st until I figure it out.

So here’s to improvement and making changes. I hope everyone has a happy New Year!

Things I Don’t Like: Santa Claus

I have a confession to make: My kids know that Santa isn’t real.

If you read my Saturnalia post, then you probably know I don’t really get all that into Christmas.  I think the whole holiday season originated as a campaign to keep people from killing themselves during the most gloomy and depressing time of year.  The weather is always crappy, the days are dark, so why not celebrate something to feel warm and happy?  Christmas is just the Christianized version of all the previous holidays where some missionaries got together and decided to change the theme to celebrating the birth of Christ (who was more likely born in Spring according to historical research).

As a result of this weird bastardized holiday, we have a whole bunch of strange traditions that have little to do with the nativity of Christ.  There’s the Christmas tree, kissing under the mistletoe (although I like kissing, so that one’s alright), and hanging lights.  Then there’s the gift-giving tradition, which is supposedly based on the gifts of the wise men.  Commercial opportunities led to contemporary Christmas traditions like bratty kids making excessive Christmas lists, Black Friday violence, and Santa Claus.

There are a lot of things about Santa Claus that I just don’t like.

• He’s a weird old guy who lives in the North pole, but somehow makes a lot of simultaneous appearances all over the world.
• There’s the beard.  People with large hoary beards cannot be trusted.
  

  You know who else had a beard? Charles Manson.

• He makes a naughty and nice list.  Nobody’s perfect, Santa. Who are you to judge?
• According to tradition, he sneaks into your house at night.  If Santa were real, wouldn’t he get arrested for breaking and entering?
• If you camp out near a mall Santa and observe, you’ll notice that the majority of small children freak out when put in the arms of the big red stranger.  Santa is scary.
  

  Child’s intuition: this man is going to harm me.

• He wears red. Red is the color of communism.
  

  We’re on to you, Santa.

• He’s not real, and I don’t really like lying to my kids.  I know some people say it’s all in fun and holiday spirit, but when my oldest daughter at age five explained why she didn’t believe in Santa, my wife and I just told her that she was right.
• Santa is a total detraction from any semblance of religious meaning in Christmas.  If you’re telling your kids there’s a Santa and letting them focus on getting gifts, why not just call the stupid holiday Santa-mas or Nick-mas?

That’s not to say I’m a total humbug, but for the material side of Christmas I try to get my kids focused on the act of giving rather than receiving. We do Toys for Tots every year and have them each pick out a toy for a needy child.  We take them shopping for each other or for Mom and Dad and try to teach them how to pick out thoughtful gifts that we know the other person will appreciate.  Our Christmas gift exchange is usually focused on one or two significant gifts for each child and maybe some items they need like new clothes or school supplies.

On that note, Merry Christmas to all of my readers.  I don’t judge people for passing on the Santa Claus myth, as many close friends and family are enthusiastic about selling it to their kids.  Still, it’s not for me, so don’t expect me to teach my kids the names of reindeer or read “The Night Before Christmas” before they go to bed.  Are there any holiday traditions that you love or hate?  Tell me about them in the comments.