04 January 2010
Today, Jennifer and I watched episodes #11 and 12 of the new NBC show Community. We just started getting into it this week, actually. Last fall, I saw some commercials for it, and they looked funny. And I like Chevy Chase. Or, more correctly, I like the Chevy Chase that was. So, when the TV season began and the season premier of the Office concluded, I left the TV on as Community started. But I only watched 10 minutes. Turns out, they make a lot of easy jokes at the expense of community colleges. I’m not sure why this is warranted, but it seemed a bit excessive to me. There were jokes that only middle-agers or high school drop-outs go to community college, and an ongoing joke is that the dean is an incompetent idiot. None of the teachers seem to have any training for their positions, either.
But then I saw some other clips from the show, and I figured it was worth checking out a second time. The thing is, that’s what sitcoms do: they make fun of the easy stuff. It used to be family-based, but now it’s community-based (The Office, Parks and Recreation, Community).

05 January 2010
Speaking of colleges: why do they have to stick their hands into your wallet at every turn? “Do you want to park here?” “Oh, that will be $90…” My bill for last semester even has a $12 fee that they charged me for waiving their health insurance option. I think I’ll start doing that: I’ll call it the friend option. If you want to be my friend, cool. If not, cough up $12, Mr. Enemy!
Anyway, I went to pay my bill on-line, and they tried charging me a $107 convenience fee. Sorry, nothing’s that convenient. I called the college to ask if I could stop by and pay the bill in person in an effort to alleviate the ‘convenience’. “Sure,” they said, “you can stop by, “but we still charge the convenience fee.”

06 January 2010
I spent my lunch break yesterday and today sending queries to literary agents.
When I first completed my book, I began looking into prospective publishers. I obtained this really thick book from a friend that lists every publishing house in North America. The book was, like, 4 inches thick. You’d think with that many options, you’d be bound to find someone.
A few people have said to me: “Did you know that Harry Potter woman got rejected 157 times before someone finally agreed to publish her book?” This has all the ear-marks of an urban legend, but I’m sure that some author, somewhere, did write to an insane number of publishers, only to finally get an acceptance. But my problem has been different: it’s not that I’ve been rejected oodles of times, it’s that I can’t find anyone to write to in the first place.
Take that 4-inch book, for example. Big chunks of the book are only for short stories, poetry, and essays. This left about 300 pages of book publishers, which I carefully paged through. There were probably 2,000 publishers listed. Of those, about 100 said they weren’t accepting any new submissions. Another 1,000 only work with fiction. Another 300 only work through agents – they don’t want to hear from the writers directly. Most of the remaining publishers had very narrow markets: only cook books, only Jewish-interest, only computer-related. This left me about 100 publishers, of whom several had closed up shop, and a few more (who said they were interested in works of a religious nature) turned out, upon closer inspection, to only want faith-affirming manuscripts. This left me with a list of 16 publishers.
At any rate, I expanded my search into the field of agents today. I’ll see how that goes.

So, I’ve had this idea for a while now and, since it’s a new year, I’m gonna go for it this time. I’m gonna write about something from every day this year.

I know that doesn’t sound like much, so let me break it down a little. I’m certainly not gonna write about EVERYTHING (e.g.: Got out of bed, ate breakfast, brushed my teeth…), but I’m gonna try to find something unique, newsworthy or otherwise notable from all 365 days this year. So, for example, I’m not gonna mention that I went to work, or went grocery shopping or mundane things like that, unless that event somehow ties into something interesting. Also, I’m not gonna write everyday. I’d like to, but that would just bring out more unhealthy OCD, and it would lead to frustrating situations wherein I’m speeding home from a party to get online by 11:55 at night so that I can quickly write something. No, instead I’ll just write whenever I feel like it (hopefully at intervals of no more than 4 or 5 days) and, in doing so, cover the most recent days. Kind of like a glorified Facebook mixed with a toned down blog.

Here goes…

01 January 2009
We went to ProEx to get some pictures taken. My mom had these pictures of me (back when I was four) with a certain stuffed animal. I still own that same stuffed animal and so, I thought, I’d be fun to duplicate the pictures with my son. We styled his hair similarly, he wore a similar outfit, had a similar pose while sitting on a similar stool in front of a similar background. In fact, I started to feel like the outfit wasn’t similar enough, and I panicked for most of the rest of the day (and into the next day) worrying that we should retake the pictures. But I think I’ve made my peace with it: there’s no way the pictures can be that exact and, in not obsessing about it, we’ll be more free to take similar – albeit not exact – photos from any future sons (or grandsons!).
Despite his recent behavior when being photographed, Owen was a good sport – a great sport, really. I think it has something to do with the fact that I bribed him with Jimmy John’s if he behaved. After leaving the photographers’, we ventured over to Jimmy John’s…and proceeded to pay the price for the rest of the day. I’m not sure what is in that bread (but it’s in Subway’s, too), but something about it turns my digestive tract into a burning cauldron of, well, I’ll just leave it at that.

02 January 2009
I take it as a point of pride that I can sometimes go an entire day without using a vehicle. Today was such a day. Think of what it means: it means that I’ve got enough funds in the bank and food in the fridge so that I don’t have to go to work or run any errands. It’s not that I don’t get anything done on days like this. Quite the contrary, we gave our home a good cleaning, I finished up a book I was reading, and made some good progress on a couple of filmlets I’ve had been working on.
We watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie this evening. Back in September of 2006, Jennifer and I decided to start getting all the episodes from Netflix and watching them in order. We made the same goal with Quantum Leap and Northern Exposure, too. We finished those two shows last year, but Little House went on a wee bit longer, so we’ve still got over four seasons to go. Jennifer and I both used to watch Little House when we were kids, so it’s fun to relive them now that we’re adults. I bought us the complete set of Little House books as kind of a family Christmas gift, so I hope to read them all this year, too.

03 January 2009
We had company today (thus the thorough cleaning noted above). My sister and her husband Mike came over for a belated Xmas celebration. We’ve done this for three years now, although during the last two holiday seasons we’ve aligned our get-togethers closer to December 25th. They brought some gifts for Owen who promptly played with the packaging the gifts came in instead of the toys themselves. Then we all went out for dinner. Having a fun day like this makes for a downer of an evening – I’ve only been at work for 6 of the past 16 days. Tomorrow it’s back to the old routine: a full five-day week with all my co-workers back from their vacations. I’m not sure why, but I never take any time off during the holidays. (Maybe it’s because we have nowhere to go requiring additional days of travel…?) Most of my co-workers were gone for part or all of the last two weeks. I think, last Monday, my department was operating at 1/3 staff. The down side is, you feel like you’re the only one at work when everyone else is off partying. The up side is, I carried over 6 vacation days and now, with the roll-over to 2010, I have over five weeks of vacation time. So, if I wanted, I could take an entire month off of work. Yay for me.

So here are my favorite television shows from the 2000s. Since TV shows, unlike albums, books, and movies, don’t have a single “release date,” it’s not always easy to say which decade a show belongs to. So I’m instituting this arbitrary definition: the show must have premiered in the 2000s for it to be counted from this decade. That means that two of my favorites, The Simpsons and Star Trek: Voyager, don’t get to appear here even though they both aired new episodes in this decade. Sorry, guys.

10. Rome
Okay, I just started watching this via Netflix, but I like it. I’m even tempted to place it higher (or is that lower?) on the list, but I haven’t really seen enough episodes to give it a fair assessment.

9. Survivor
Just a guilty pleasure, I guess. Completely forgettable (I’d be hard-pressed to name more than two or three winners, much less all the other contestants), but fun.

8. The Rerun Show
Wish this would’ve lasted longer than the seven episodes that it did. Still, I laughed at these comedies of comedies far more than I’ve laughed at pretty much any other comedy.

7. The Office
Started off good, but now…not so good. It seems to have lost it’s direction, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s jumped the shark. Still, there were a few good seasons at the start.

6. Wonderfalls
A unique, weird, clever show. Cancelled too soon…

5. The Amazing Race
Hey, look! Another guilty pleasure. God, I guess I love these extended game shows.

4. Pushing Daisies
Dark humor mixed with great cinematography. Too many loose ends were (not quite) tied up at the end when it was prematurely cancelled, but I don’t think it’d be fair to hold that against them.

3. Battlestar Galactica
This is how every good drama should be: tight script, with an actual plan so that all the stories can be fully carried out and resolved perfectly. I think this show had the best series finale of any show I’ve ever watched.

2. Arrested Development
…And this is how every comedy should be. Another show cancelled too soon…

1. Firefly
…Speaking of cancelled too soon: I think this show is pretty much the poster child. I actually think this show was better than Battlestar ; unlike that show, this one had no clunker episodes and it had a few really awesome characters.

Here’s looking forward to another decade of prematurely-cancelled shows.

My friend, Jamin Shevik, passed away on Friday. He was 31 years old.

I use the term “friend” perhaps a bit too loosely here; I haven’t actually spoken to him in over three years, and even then, we only spoke for about ten minutes.

Jamin and I first met in April 1990. We were both members of the newly created Apple Valley Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. At the time, I was 14 years old and he was 11. That’s a difference of only a little more than three years, but, when you’re 14 and 11, that’s a rather large gulf as far as friendships are concerned. For the first couple years after I met him, I knew him only as one of several young kids who would come up and talk to me and the ‘older’ boys before and after the meetings.

    In 1992, the elders in the congregation decided to pair up just about every young boy with a slightly older boy in the hopes that the older boys’ good examples would rub off onto the younger boys. My friend Rhett began studying with Jamin (I, incidentally, was paired up with a boy who would one day become my brother-in-law). Rhett often invited me to join him in going over to Jamin’s house to study the bible with him. I often did, and this pattern lasted for years. I looked forward to going to Jamin’s house, actually. For one thing, it was far more fun than knocking on doors. But also because (and more relevant here) Jamin was fun to talk with. He and Rhett often deviated from the bible-themed topic and Jamin was eager to talk about everything from the latest movies to astronomy.

    Rhett always invited Jamin to accompany us on our teenage escapades, too. In the morning, Jamin would join us in knocking on doors (where he and I would playfully discuss our hope that no one answer the door), then in the afternoon we’d head into the city to eat lunch at some groovy coffee shop and shop for CDs. He and I often attended concerts put on by our talented friends, and we – as the only non-musicians among our pals, sat on the side and worked the controls. He was always a willing (as opposed to all the reluctant people) participant in the short films I made (including, most recently, this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVwmeB-aiM8). Jamin, in fact, was with us so much, that when I got together with my friends and Jamin wasn’t there, I’d ask Rhett where Jamin was.

    Later, Jamin began attending the same high school I had attended. At the start of each trimester, he’d come over and talk to me after the meetings and we’d exchange notes on his newest set of teachers – “Oh, you have Mr. Smith for woods class? He’s crazy,” I’d say. “I have Mr. Brown for driver’s ed,” Jamin would say, “I don’t think he has a sense of humor.” “No, he doesn’t,” I’d assure Jamin.

    As young adults, this pattern continued. I could always count on him to be a friendly face at the meetings; he was one person that was always available and willing to talk. When I showed up at the meetings without my wife (and I frequently did), I’d often ask Jamin if I could sit next to him. At one meeting, we tried to ‘out-comment’ each other by seeing who could raise their hand more often. Another time, we stopped paying attention long enough to discuss some recent developments in cosmology we had both been reading about and, at the next meeting, Jamin helpfully showed up with a Discover magazine for me to borrow. It was the clearest explanation I’d ever read on string theory, and I returned the magazine to Jamin the following week, informing him I had torn out and mailed in the insert so that I could subscribe to Discover, too.

    In more recent years, we drifted apart. Once I moved out of Apple Valley, we no longer had the constant compulsory rendezvous at the meetings. Jamin was invited to my son’s baby shower but he did not attend. I asked his mother where he was, and she explained he had just gotten married. This was news to me, in the truest sense, as I was unaware he had even been dating anyone. I asked her to extend my congratulations to her son.

    Over a year went by before I heard from Jamin again. He called me in the summer of 2006 to request that I videotape his wife’s baptism, which was to take place at the upcoming District Convention. Though I wasn’t even sure if I would be attending, I agreed to it. That day, Jennifer and I met his wife for the first time, and Jamin seemed positively happy to be married and to introduce us to his wife. I taped the baptism, then stayed up late in the hotel room that night uploading the footage and burning it onto a DVD. The next day (July 30, 2006, the last day of the convention), I searched through the crowd to give Jamin and his wife the disk. I found them, we talked, and, as it turns out, that was the last time I ever spoke to him.

In a world of busyness and frustrations, where I am repeatedly let down that friends do not respond to emails or phone calls, or are too busy to get together, or forget to follow through on plans we made, I will always remember Jamin as someone who was willing to spend time with his friends and who put forth all diligence to follow through on plans he did make.

    While spending time with Jamin’s brother Luke back in March of this year, I asked Luke how his older brother was doing, and he said, “Jamin is Jamin, you know,” and we laughed, but he added that Jamin seemed to be doing fine. I hope that in death Jamin finds the peace that eluded him in life.

With both my wife and me enrolled in college classes right now, I thought I would discuss what we (okay, mostly ME) have learned so far…

Here’s a weird thing: My wife has not taken a single test in any of her classes yet, and, apart from a “take-home final exam” (I call that kind of exam an “assignment”), she’s not gonna have any tests. I, meanwhile, have had nothing but tests. In fact, my grade for the class will be based on two things: the five exams given in class, and my participation in class.

When my wife came home with her first assignment handed back to her a few weeks ago, she was glowing with excitement that she had scored an “A”. She said something about really knowing the material, but then I pointed out that getting an A does not necessarily mean you know the material, but only that you know exactly what the professor expected.  I will concede that these two ideas may overlap considerably, but still, I am confident the latter trumps the former.

My wife has been spending a lot of time on a group project, which I think is intended to teach her how stupid some of her classmates are. She pretty much hates doing group work, and I fully empathize and sympathize (is it possible to do both?) with this opinion. I completely despised having to work closely with other students on projects, particularly since and my grade was partially in their hands. I am always concerned that the grades of all in the group will average out. What I mean is, if I am paired with a student who has recieved all C’s in the class, and I have gotten all A’s, then I have to put forth that much more effort to ensure I am not saddled with a B on the project. It’s as if I have to give 110% so that their 80% effort will result in a 90% for both of us.

Maybe this sort of group work helps you learn how to work with others, but here’s my blanket statement: I don’t need to know this. I mean, in my day-to-day life, if I can’t depend on or trust someone, I excuse them from my life. At my job, if a co-worker is grossly incompetant, they don’t last long. And, even if I am forced to work alongside them, it’s not as if their incompetance results in a decrease in my wages. 

I don’t mind working with someone if it’s an in-class assignment (for example, I had to do a lot of lab work last time I was in college, and it made sense to team up with someone to split the work & to collaborate on the observations), and I didn’t even mind the old ‘pick a partner and work with that person’ task, but I really hated being assigned to work with specific people and having to meet with them after class and draw up work for a forth-coming single assignment that would be graded one combined grade for me and the slackers.

Now onto my class: the three tests I’ve taken (and the two still to come) are essay tests. The professor writes a question on the board, and then I have one hour to write out an answer.  This is not my favorite kind of test. Actually, I think it’s my least favorite. The whole time, I am writing as fast as I can while attempting to maintain legible penmanship. I begin thinking things like “Oh, I’ll have to forego writing about such-and-such because otherwise I’ll run out of time” and “Shoot, half the class has already finished, how were they able to write so succinctly and I’m not even half done yet?” Despite the frenetic pace, I am forced to stop writing every ten minutes just to flex my fingers & wave my hand around to crack all the joints, simultaneously cursing my other hand for being useless.

I understand that a written essay is probably the best way to determine if the student has grasped the material presented, but – especially since we can use our notes during the test – I’d rather write an essay at home and bring in to class a perfectly formulated, legible (as it would be printed via computer), coherent essay. This would avoid the professor having to ask students to come into her office and read their illegible essays to her (yep, that’s happened, but not to me) and it would prevent me from having to tack on ideas all willy-nilly in my essay as they randomly come to mind and as I come to see that I do, in fact, have 30 extra seconds to fit in certain points. As it is, on one of my tests, the professor wrote something like “Should’ve mentioned such-and-such”. My response to that is: I would have, but I didn’t have enough time.

Anyway, I’ve gotten an A on every test so far, so maybe I should stop griping.