Arrow of God - Chinua Achebe

Well, Thanksgiving is over, which means Christmas is here.  It also means that it is the annual time when my mom starts hounding me for a list of Christmas presents for her to get for me, my wife, and my kids.  Which would be no big deal, except that both of my kids, strangely, seem to have a hard time every year coming up with a list.  My daughter will offer nothing more than vague generalities plus one specific present that I am already planning to get her, and my son will offer up only 2 Nintendo Wii games and absolutely nothing else.  It's weird to me - when I was their age I had absolutely no problem with coming up with lists of at least 20 presents for every birthday and Christmas.  I suppose it could mean that my kids aren't as materialistic as I was...  I hope that's the reason, it surely sounds good.

My kids helped my wife decorate our Christmas tree over the weekend after Thanksgiving and also did a gingerbread house, and then we enjoyed a nice meal of Thanksgiving leftovers (my wife makes an awesome Turkey Casserole).  Then the kids went back to their mom's house to do their Christmas tree there, but they never put one up.  I hope they get one up soon.  I worry a lot about how their life is over there.  The house is always a disaster area every time I see the inside of it, and it always either smells of incense or... something not so nice.  The kids always say everything is fine over there, but sometimes I wonder if they are not telling me everything out of a desire to be loyal to their mom.  Loyalty to both parents is fine, of course... but it makes me worry that they may take after her.  I hope not.

                                                             

Book #4 of 1001 is Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe.  This is the second book on the list by Achebe, and I have to say that it's not really as enjoyable as Things Fall Apart was.  Both novels deal with very similar themes - the changes and alterations to native Igbo(southeastern Nigerian) society due to the influx of British Colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  However, Things fall Apart dealt with this change in its embryonic stage when the British were first moving into the area, whereas Arrow of God takes place somewhat later when the British are more entrenched and the Igbo are more used to them.  But both novels deal with the failings of an Igbo leader-type to come to terms with the changes to his society and his subsequent self-made downfall.  Maybe that is one reason why I didn't care as much for Arrow of God as I did for Things Fall Apart - AoG is simply a weaker story with a weaker and less-interesting main character.  I am certain that I would have liked AoG more if I had read it before TFA, though. 



The Once and Future King - T. H. White

Thanksgiving is this week - yum!  What am I thankful for?  Well, this year, I'm thankful that my mother isn't giving me a hard time because I prefer to spend Thanksgiving with my wife instead of with her.  Can anyone relate? 

I said when I started this blog that I'd try to post on a daily basis.  I've slacked on that lately, but I can already tell the focus of the blog may not be entirely what I originally intended.  Oh well...



Book #3 of 1001 is The Once and Future King by T. H. White.  This book is a modern re-telling of the Arthur legends that have been told and re-told many times since the Middle Ages.  Unfortunately, though, I don't feel that this particular re-telling really does them justice.

I had tried to read this book once before, years ago, and couldn't get much past page 100 or so (out of around 500 pages) before dropping it out of sheer boredom.  I managed to get to the end this time, but I kept a pretty close track of how close I was to the end the whole time, which is never a good sign (and it won't be the last time in this reading project that it happens, either).  Maybe that it's just that I was already familiar with the story and all the characters before I started, and the fact that I already knew basically how the story was going to go, that ruined it for me.  I don't know... It certainly wasn't T. H. White's writing style, the book was perfectly readable.  Oh well...

Without getting into too much detail, the book basically follows the life of King Arthur from his humble beginnings, to his heights of power and glory, to his eventual downfall through his own human failings and mistakes.  All the familiar characters from the Arthur legends are here - Arthur, Merlin, Lancelot, Guinevere, Mordred, etc. etc. - though some of them, particularly Lancelot, are portrayed quite differently than in other popular media.  I'm sorry to report that there are no Knights who say Ni, though...  :P

I really wanted to like this book, but for some reason I just couldn't. 

Blue skies, soft towels

Ahh fall... I love this weather!  The sky is a gorgeous blue, the temperature is in the 50s - too bad it can't be like this year round, but I guess if it was it would get boring eventually...

I took my daughter out to wait for the school bus this morning, and noticed that Venus is a bright jewel in the morning skies now.  I must make a note to get the telescope out early Friday morning and take a look at it up close.  Also, Saturn should be visible in the morning - Saturn is great fun to view in a telescope, but I haven't been able to observe it since it left the evening sky several months ago.

Book #2 of 1001 is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.  Of all the stuff Douglas Adams published in his (regrettably too brief) lifetime, this one is my favorite.  It combines a very interesting premise, a good plot, and memorable characters together with a major dash of sheer inventive lunacy and the result is supremely entertaining.  I'd read this book along with its sequels many times before starting this reading project, but it never gets old.  We come to find out that our little planet Earth is in fact the greatest, most complex computer ever created, and it has spent the last few billion years working on finding the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything... A previous computer had come up with the Answer to said Question (42), which makes everyone realize that they never understood what the question was in the first place.  Regrettably, just before the Earth's program is completed and the Question unveiled, the entire planet is destroyed to make room for a new hyperspace bypass.  Luckily, the Earth has a single survivor, an Englishman by the name of Arthur Dent, and he is now wanted by a race of pan-dimensional mice in order that the Earth's program can be retrieved from his brain cells.  Of course, there's more to it than that, and the whole book is liberally peppered with various asides and subplots that are far more interesting and entertaining than the main plot as well.  This one is a classic in my book.

People get offended far too easily; Things Fall Apart

Yesterday was Veterans' Day.  Apparently, the Garfield newspaper comic strip for the day was considered offensive to veterans by some.  Personally, I don't see the big deal.  I didn't read the strip yesterday since, for me personally, Garfield has long since gotten so stale and repetitive that it hasn't been worthwhile for years.  But I checked this one out to see what the hoopla was all about - it's no big deal.  Click here for the story and a link to the strip.  Really, it's not even worth a mention other than as yet another example of how so many people today just can't seem to make it through the day without finding something to be offended about. 

Book #1 of 1001 is Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.  First published back in the late 1950's, the novel is an account of the colonization of the heartland of southern Nigeria by Britain in the late nineteenth century and its effects on the society of the native inhabitants.  Specifically, the novel is the tale of Okwonko, a respected member of an Igbo village who has achieved a high place in his society, but loses everything over a period of time due to accident, his personal failings, and finally his inability to cope with the changes that come along with British colonization.  This is not a novel that I likely would have ever picked up on my own, but I found it absorbing from beginning to end.  Achebe paints a well-realized picture of the local life and customs of Okwonko and his friends and relatives, both the good and bad of it.  While the village of the novel is not a place I personally would want to live in, it nevertheless comes to life vividly as a snapshot of a way of life that has been forever lost.  I'd highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.  Okwonko himself is a sympathetic individual who has worked hard to be well thought-of by his peers and looked up to and respected by his family.  Unfortunately, his need and desire to rise to the top of society results in his own downfall.  Despite his shortcomings, the humanity of Okwonko goes a long way towards making this a memorable read.

Healthy body, healthy mind

Like a lot of people my age, I've been fighting to keep from gaining too much weight and trying to eat healthy to keep good health as I get older.  Oh, how I miss that white-hot metabolism I had when I was 18 and could eat whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted, and it would never stick to me at all.  Oh well, I know that it happens to everyone, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much.  I weigh more than I'd like to but I know that others have it much worse.  Right now, my BMI is right at 30, which is right at the border between overweight and obese.  I don't want to be obese!  When I quit playing WoW my weight was around 260.  Since then, I've made an effort to exercise more and eat a little better, and have managed to drop around 30 pounds.  I'd like to drop another 40 or so and get down to 180.  My diet plan is pretty simple - first, I cut out almost all of the sugary soft drinks that I was previously drinking.  I do still have a couple of diet sodas in a day, but I mostly drink tea, Crystal Light, and just plain water.  I think that by itself helps a lot.  I also have tried really hard to cut down on the between-meal snacking.  That's been a little harder, especially since my son's annual Cub Scout popcorn came in this week and now I have a big box of it sitting in the kitchen, calling to me.  I keep raisins and peanuts in the house for when I need something between meals - it's certainly better than Ruffles or Twinkies!  For main meals, I eat basically whatever I want to, but I always change one thing about the meal to make it healthier, for instance having a diet drink or water instead of regular soda, or going without mayo, or not using salt, etc.  I'm not going on any strict diet plan or making major wholesale changes to what I eat because I know I'd never be able to stick with it.  That's what trips up a lot of people, trying to do too much too quickly.  It's not the kind of weight-loss plan you see people pushing on health-related web sites, but it seems to be working for me so far.  I recently had my blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol levels checked and they are all within acceptable limits, if maybe a little higher than ideal on the cholesterol.

Since I've been out of WoW, I've started a new reading project.  I got ahold of a copy of "1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die (2006 edition)" back in April, and I've decided to see how many of them I can get through.  I'm currently reading my 19th book from the list and have enjoyed most of what I've read so far.  I've read a lot of books that I would have never picked up on my own because they aren't the genres that I usually gravitate to on my own.  As I make entries on this blog, I'm going to briefly review the ones I've read so far and also review each new one as I finish it.  I'm basically going through the list by author name in alphabetical order, though there are a few exceptions.

I figure at the rate I'm going now, it should take me around 35 or 40 years to get through the entire book.

The biggest waste of time ever...

As of today, I have not played World of Warcraft in a little over 3 months.  Before that, I'd played since just after the game went retail in late 2004.  I'd taken a few breaks before that, but always went back.  This is by far the longest time I've gone without playing and I hope that I can make it a permanent break.  WoW is nothing but a huge waste of time and money and Blizzard (the company that makes WoW) is doing everything they can to keep their subscribers addicted so that they will keep spending that $15 a month.

Some people who play WoW truly do get hooked on the game to the point where they neglect family, friends, work, and other far more important parts of their lives.  I honestly don't think it was ever that bad for me - I didn't neglect my kids, my work performance didn't suffer, and I never got upset when asked to miss a raid to do something out of the game.  I'm sure my ex-wife would probably disagree and say I neglected her, but if anything, WoW was, for a while, my retreat from the living hell she was making of my life.  After we divorced and I started seeing the lovely girl who is now my wife, I introduced her to WoW since she is a computer geek just like me and she enjoys playing it now.  She isn't playing quite as much now, since I don't play any more and she would rather do things with me than sit in front of the computer and play without me.   So, as far as addiction goes, I feel I've dodged that bullet.  But I know that there are others that haven't.  I posted a link to Wowdetox.com - there are a lot of stories on there from people who are trying to get over addictions to WoW - I go there every day and read the new posts and it helps me remember why I quit playing WoW. 

Like I mentioned, I played WoW for about 5 and a half years.  I didn't neglect anything important in my life, but I spent pretty much all my "down" time on the game.  There's a command in the game where you can view your "played" time, which is the amount of time a given character has been actually logged in the game since creation.  I had 6 characters at the level cap and 4 more characters that I was levelling up.  I checked their played times and added it up...  it averaged out to several hours a day, every single day, for well over 5 years.  That's too much. 

If you are unfamiliar with WoW and similar games (MMORPG's or Massively-multiplayer-online-role-playing-games), let me just say that there is no end of the game, you are never ever finished, and there is always something else for you to do.  In order to succeed at the game and maximize your character's potential, you have to spend a lot of time in game doing things you don't want to do to gain money and items to allow you to do the things you don't want to do.  It really can become like a second job.  On top of that, you have to pay a monthly subscription to Blizzard in order to maintain your access to the game.  So you end up, over time, spending hundreds of dollars for... nothing.  You don't get anything out of the game for your efforts but virtual gold and items that you don't even own.  If Blizzard shut down WoW tomorrow, the players would be left with absolutely nothing for their efforts but a set of installation CDs.

Maybe some of it is simply burnout on my part.  Given the amount of time that I've spent on the game that's certainly possible.  But the fact remains that we are less than a month away from the release of the game's third expansion, and I have absolutely no interest in purchasing it or playing it.  I've spent the last few months rediscovering some of the things I used to enjoy doing, such as reading and movies and, yes, playing other games that are not such a time sink.  So, it's time to move on...

Happy Birthday...

Well, yesterday was a pretty normal day...  Monday is one of the nights that my kids spend with me per my arrangement with their mother.  So, I left work a little early and picked up my son from school, then their mom dropped off my daughter after ice skating.  I'm not real happy with her for that.  She works at the ice rink where my daughter skates, and she is there almost every day, including weekends.  We previously had an arrangement where my daughter would not go to the rink with their mom on Mondays, but would instead wait at their apartment after getting dropped off by the school bus and I would pick her up after I get off work - that way, I could spend several hours with her before bed.  We changed the arrangement a couple of months ago because my daughter ostensibly needed additional skating lessons to prepare for this years' big regional skating event in Colorado.  Well, they ended up not going to regionals (a good move in my opinion since there's no way they could afford to go, more on that later), but my daughter has still been going to the extra lessons and I've been losing out on my time with her.  I finally said something to their mom last night and she agreed to go back to our original arrangement, but she was pissy about it.  She gets pissy anytime I remind her of the fact that there is more to life than ice skating.  I doubt she would admit it if she even realizes it, but she is living vicariously through her daughter.  Oh, I've got a lot to say about my ex-wife.

Today would have been my paternal grandmother's 100th birthday.  She passed away back in March of 1998, but I've thought about her every day since.  My daughter was a baby when she passed away and my son had not been born yet, so they don't really have any memories of her.  She was very important and special to me, and I miss her terribly.  I hope she is proud of me.  It's funny that I worry more about her good opinion of me than I do about my own mother (someone else that I have a lot to say about).

Yesterday was a good day at the office, and today will be another - the sun is shining, the temparature is great for November, and all will be well!