Magic: Cards and Coins

When I was a child, one of my favorite things was magic tricks.

Now, I was never very good at performing the magic tricks, but I loved to explore them and learn what I could. A few of my successful performances included counting cards, a melting knot, and rope the went through my throat. All these are easy to set up and take little to perform.

All this trial and error helped me to appreciate well performed magic tricks and though I still try to see what is done, I am totally enthralled in each well played performance.

Lately, I have had a friend who does coin and card tricks. I started watching his fingers flow around a coin and though I knew how the trick was done I couldn’t imitate it until he gave me a pointer here and there. I still have quite a bit of practicing to do, but I can and have recently done a clumsy performance that is enough to fool those not in the know but not those with sharp eyes. It helped that I worked in concert with him once. We had been practicing mime, but we would need more practice now that I realised what we can do with mime and magic, but I happened to have a couple coins and we made it look like we were passing the coin back and forth through the air. Of course, I am bad at it, so it only went one way, but if you talked to those who watched… we did it both ways. Amusing.

Sometime after the coin tricks, he brought in cards and I watched the card dance in his hands. I was never able to pull off the card tricks. They require an angle and hand movements my fingers wouldn’t allow. I still can’t, but I do appreciate knowing how the tricks are done. He frowned at me the first time I asked. After I proved I knew how several tricks were done, he tiredly informed me that I had to carry cards around all the time. Well, I took him at his word. I carried the cards around. I didn’t PLAY with cards myself, but in moments of dull times, I would pull out the cards and pass them over to him to play with. He would amaze and astound anyone near us just for fun. He didn’t seem to be happy that I could see through his tricks.

Finally, it happened. The one trick I was unsure of. After he astounded our mutual friend over and over again by using a tactic I didn’t actually see, he not only showed me that tactic, but also showed me the one I had been asking after for nearly two years. AMAZING yet another trick that I have no skill at, but he is so skilled and energetic, it makes me want to practice.

As we were traveling together at one point, he illustrated with hand movements and energy how much he appreciated the masters. I informed him I thought he was amazing enough. Later, he told me that if I liked his performance, I would be astounded with the Grand Masters and he would send me links.

Ok, I know this sounds really weird for someone who proclaims to like magic tricks… but my response was:

If I wanted to see Grand Masters, I would pay for a show. I would rather see someone I know doing amazing things. Then it is more real.

Hobbies and Interests: What are you into?

I was chatting with a co-worker the other day and I realised I never wrote a listing or explanation of all the stuff I have gotten into. Up until now, all anyone has pretty much seen is my claim that I am into a lot of things and then I write about the same things over and over. Manga, Japanese, events/conventions, hanging out, video games, computers, internet…. I am sure you are wondering why I claim to have many more interests when I can’t seem to shut up about all the stuff I am currently into.

I think it is time to share some of my past stories with you. Where shall I begin? There are some blanket topics, such as Girl Scouts, YMCA Indian Princesses, Soccer, Day Camp and Residential Camp, High School, Part-time jobs and Computers; however, inside each blanket lies layers and layers of little things, and let’s not forget the items that fall outside the blankets and can be considered totally random.

Since the conversation with a co-worker brought the topic up, let’s start with basic carpentry. This category can be covered by Day Camp, YMCA Indian Princesses and High School. To start it off, I need to backtrack just a little.

When I was in the lower grades of school, a new group was just making its way into the area. The YMCA Indians were in existence already, but they were still fairly new and it hadn’t yet been established within our area. Since I was able to do things with mom via the Girl Scouts, Dad needed a way to hang out with me as well. I don’t pretend to know what his thoughts were, but I am thinking mom probably found the information and gave it to him to start things off… or maybe I brought a flier home from school. I don’t really know that answer. Anyway, after attending an introductory seminar, Dad and I began what ended up being a family tradition. We joined the YMCA’s Blackhawk Nation and became Y-Indians. My brothers were not yet old enough to join a tribe so for a while it was just me and dad. In those days it was the dads and girls tribes and the dads and boys tribes, and they only ever interacted at certain events. Later, well after I was already out, that changed and there was more interactions among the groups. I am not sure what it is now, but I have a feeling a tribe is now mixed.

One of the first group projects for the tribe was to do a head for a totem pole. Each family got a block of wood that was to be turned into a depiction of the family and end up being joined with the other family blocks to create a tribe totem pole. In order to work on this, we went to a public-ish wood shop and one place I am sure I would get people in trouble for mentioning since I remember going in through a window. We didn’t do that until we were running behind though. Dad and I came up with an idea, he did the major work, but I did get to learn how to do some chiseling and minor cutting of things, but it was really heavy work for a kid. After the carving was done and the band saw work was completed, it was time to glue, paint and decorate the head. This is the first thing I remember when I think of carpentry and woodwork.

Although this wasn’t technically carpentry yet, though I have since learned that some of the work I learned at this time would’ve been work given to young apprentices, it started one of my interests. When I was in day camp, there were pre-cut wood projects to put together. I got to know the wood shop director–it turned out he was the guy who let us into the public-ish wood shop when I was making that totem head–and when I was old enough, there was weekly woodworking classes/sessions where people could just show up and do whatever project they had or pay for the a new one. I remember going to the shop, looking at the available projects for the week, paying my project fee and then learning how to use the tools. I would guess I was in late grammar school, around 7th grade perhaps as early as 5th grade, since I also invited friends with me and, later, siblings.

Learning about the band saw was fun for me. The wood shop director let us do the broad workings, such as cutting off the outside of an easily managed large piece, but since we were kids, he asked us to let him do the details. When he was doing the details he would explain exactly what he was doing. “For this one I am going to drill a hole here and use a mounted jig saw, for this one, I am going to cut a straight line from the outside to the interior and then cut out the shape…” and so on. I am not sure I ever got to work the detail before I stopped going to the field house, but he explained in such detail that I feel like I had done it myself at least once. Later, while working on other projects with dad, I got to use his jigsaw and I know I followed the techniques taught to me at the field house.

Once, I was in a summer art school at one of the local parks, one of the projects was to create a sculpture out of supplied materials. The wood shop director also worked at this park and for this class he supplied a rather large basket of wood scrap. There may have been other things to use, but I ended up using wood and paint for this. I remember spending time at the basket and picking a variety of shapes. Then, after taking it all back to my station, I piled the wood into some weird creation using wood glue to hold it together and painted it bright orange and dark blue.

Sculpture isn’t something I am good at, but it was fun. I would rather have cut the shapes myself. In case you are curious what I did with the sculpture when the class ended, I can tell you. Other students left their sculptures behind and were probably eventually thrown away. I took mine home and it was in my room for many years. One day, some kids I took care of as a babysitter for were having a yard sale and invited me to add stuff to the table. One of the things I brought was the sculpture I was getting tired of. I didn’t really expect someone to buy it. It really was just me being my typical goofy self, I remember being curious what people would say or do. While I was minding the tables for a while, someone came along and asked me about it. I told them it was an art project for an art camp and we chatted about it for while. I told him I didn’t have much love for it anymore, but I couldn’t just throw it away. The guy gave me money for it and asked me to sign the bottom. I was bemused, I don’t know how much he gave me, it went into the box of money, but the story is mine to tell now. I wonder if it still exists.

Still no real basic carpentry mentioned. In addition to these fancy things, I did typical things too. When new self-assembly stuff came into our house, I grabbed it. I followed the directions when they let me do it myself, and read the directions when I was helping instead. There was a lot of this, I remember assembling a lot of things: shelves, cases, bicycles, toy houses. One year I received as a gift a woodburning kit which included a woodburning tool and various additional materials, while my brothers received various other woodworking supplies–a build-it out kit with a clock and a birdhouse and some other things and a kit that involved pounding nails into metal and mounting the result on wood. I left their stuff alone mostly, though I did tell them if they finished their projects they could play with my woodburning tools. Everyone liked my tool, I even once returned home after school to find someone had used it without my permission. They never did complete their own projects. I found their remnants years later and completed what I could since by then they were public domain. My woodburning supplies never got exhausted because after a few intense flurries of action, I stored the items to be completed later when I was better as using the tool. I still have a few bits and pieces, they are still together with both my original woodburning pen and the newer one I bought only a couple years ago.

Nope, no basic carpentry yet. Though I would like to point out, in just the processes I have mentioned thus far, I learned how to follow direction, cut to measure, stylize and decorate. My dad had a woodpile in the basement. It didn’t just sit there. There were projects that involved using saw horses and other ways of measuring and cutting. When our family put drywall in the bathroom as we were remodeling, I learned about plumb- and chalk-lines and Levels; I learned how to tear out walls and put walls in; How and where to put screws in the wall; I learned about the tape that goes in the corners and the stuff that goes on them to make the wall smooth. Over the years living at home and updating the house and fixing things, I learned the basics, but the bits didn’t form a whole in true basic carpentry until I joined the stage crew at my high school.

When I was in High School, after many years of being in plays and singing in choruses in grammar school, I tried out for musicals. I learned how poor my singing and acting were at that time, but I couldn’t just leave drama alone. When I didn’t make it onto the cast due to my inability to learn dances quickly, I joined the stage crew. That one year of producing “Hello, Dolly!” probably was one of the best years ever. Our crew director, a man called Merrill, taught us all how and why to build what we needed. Through Merrill, I learned to take the techniques and skills I had learned all my life and apply it to something useful. We built stairways, trapdoors, walls and boxes that became stages, and then learned how to paint/decorate it all.

After successfully completing the play and learning all these marvelous new skills, I was inundated with requests from family. We had decided we were going to move and we needed to redo the entire house to make it salable. My mother was always redecorating the house once the old wallpaper and paint we had lived with since we moved it was stripped from the walls back in my grammar school era, but now it was time for a few major changes. For the record we didn’t move until over a decade later, but the point was we were trying. We demolished a set of bookshelves we had had forever, they were a blond wood and took up the lower half of one whole wall, the above area was filled with a dark brown cork so we could fill the walls easily with decorations, it belonged to the 70s. We repainted the parts we were keeping and installed our previously free-floating temporary fireplace into the center of it all. To make it fancy, my mother bought the supplies to make the entire base look like marble; a technique I had learned with Merrill. By the time we left the house finally, we fooled many a person. They were surprised to find the marble was actually wood! I consider this a success.

However, the major success I claim was when I assisted my father in building a solid wall with a door. As my brothers were aging, they wanted their own rooms and the only way we could do this was to take away my father’s workroom which was for all intents and purposes a den. Dad was a smoker and he needed to be at the extremities of the house so that Mom, who is allergic to smoke of all sorts, wouldn’t be overwhelmed by it. We converted our previously party ready back porch. The room was already covered solidly, but still outside the house technically. We cut it in two parts: One part was to become dad’s new den, the other was to be storage. We had old cabinets from when we remodeled the kitchen, they were attached to walls and were supported read to become the new storage area. For Dad’s den we needed a wall separator. Between the two of us, Dad and I created a wall that fit in the space and we only anchored it in place. It was fun buying all the supplies and renting a saw-table. By the time we were finished, we had a real wall, real door and a whole storage area that was all in existence until we left the house. That was at least a decade. Built to last? Yes!

….. and that is one story. While I was going through this, I had to nip and cut and try to keep it all on-topic. Nearly every other paragraph could lead to more stories.

What interests do you have? would you care to share them with me and whoever reads these posts? I would love to hear from you.

Update: What’s Been Going On

It has been a while since my last update. I had intended on updating at least once a week, but I seem to have failed at that. Over the last few weeks several changes have been occurring and I haven’t had time to update.

The most interesting change is the fact I am moving residence. Why would you, my readers, care about such an event? Quite simply put, it will give me more access to the internet. More access to the internet away from work and at all hours of the day will give me better time to write up better blog posts. So you should be cheering… or booing if you are reading these posts to be contrary.

Another change is not noticeable anywhere else and shouldn’t really concern anyone, but I wanted to log it anyway. I finally found people to hang out with in New York. Yes, there are co-workers and family, but it just isn’t the same. Now that there are people willing to do events and just go out around the town with me, perhaps I will have more stories to share on this blog! (Insert more cheering… or boos and hisses)

Between work, apartment viewing, going to plays by friends, family visiting and just hanging out with people, I have had no time at all for blogging, or LiveJournaling, or even Facebooking.

I know you don’t believe my “coming up” declarations because the drafts end up on my backend well beyond their use-by date, but I do have a couple things I would like to post about. “How I Spent My Easter” is a story I would like to share, as well as “Peeps-Sushi? I tried making it…” and I believe I want to share some prose I wrote called “Ode to an Old Friend” after I clean it up a bit.

Is there anything else you would like to see from me? I mean, I literally write random things and post them. My blog has no theme other than “What Interests Me Right Now”, but I would love to know what anyone who actually reads this thing would like to see.

What do you think of my modified ‘Desktop’ theme on my blog? My brother has dubbed the mug “The raging rapid cocoa” I’ll get around to fixing that…. along with the dinner mint-shaped marshmallows… but I like it. The flooring/desk doesn’t seem so bad either. Let me know.

This seems to be more than enough rambling, I hope to have a better post up in the near future. Thanks for reading!

Random: A Post of Things

I wanted to write a few random things, so I just collected them and put them in this one post…. maybe it would be better to separate the topics, but they kinda flow, ya know? Anyhow, enjoy!

What do you think of this Cuppa Cocoa? I am planning on adding it to my blog theme. There are a few good ‘Desktop’ themes and I do enjoy them for a quick change and post, but I am not completely satisfied. I decided to do my own objects and then make my own desktop, at the very least to skin an already made theme. This was my first project. I wanted to make it coffee, but someone said it looked more like chocolate, so I added marshmallows. It tuened out really fun. You can see details at the deviantArt page.

Balloon Flower Corsage,
originally uploaded by NiaSkywalk.

Recently Google BUZZ is buzzing. A friend of mine, actually you might know her, Enna Stein. Recently self-published an hilarious book called “The Shallow Girl’s Guide to Reheating Leftovers” and continually promises to do a guest post on my blog (Hi Enna!). Anyhow, Enna is following me on HER buzz and she notices my most recent Flickr upload: Balloon Flower Corsage. She immediately IMs me that she totally wants one. Of course, I tell her Read more…

Tags: art, balloons, high school story

Writing: Nanowrimo Unexciting Update

This year, I attempted to do NaNoWriMo again. Although I didn’t win, I did beat all previous attempts combined and that has satisfied me for now.

Originally, the title of my novel was “Lady Mathilde Gabriel’s Abaddonian Knights” and it was supposed to be an adventure through my version of Abaddon. However, when Mattie arrived in answer to her Daemon Lord’s (Fenrisithian) ‘summons’ the story took a different turn. I found the dialogue and interaction of Mattie and Fenrisithian was too rich and dynamic. If I left her in the world, Fenrisithian and Mattie would’ve had too much happening between them (NOT romantic. Not ever.) and it would’ve ruined any story.

Read more…

Tags: nanowrimo, Writing

Pondering: What is a review?

I recently read a blog where the author was asked to do a blog review of a book. She was given a couple copies of the book by the publisher. The review became a giveaway as well. From what I could tell, the entries to be the winner were pretty big and I know for sure that I entered myself. I didn’t win, but I can’t be picky. I wish the winner well with their prize.

The review itself was simple. She told the reader what was in the book and how it was put together, then she proceeded to indicate her thoughts on the title. The review ended up being only a little less than favorable, but it was fine because that was also my opinion of the book which I had paged through in stores.

Over all, it seemed like a decent review and giveaway. Story done, continue along.

Except… I saw a comment from the author on twitter indicating the publisher may have been less than pleased with her version.

This led me to pondering. What is a review if it isn’t an honest report from the perspective of a user or professional? If the review hits both positive and negative points as well as an overall opinion, why should marketers/publicity stick their two cents in anyway? I can understand in the case of near liable and slander, but a negative review isn’t necessarily slander or liable.

Read more…

Tags: random, Writing

Gymnastics: Injured List

There is no real injured list in our gymnastics class. It is a class and not a team so the people and the numbers fluctuate drastically. I am one of the few regulars in the class, and I am on the injured list…. that doesn’t really exist. It seems I continue to forget… if I don’t do anything particular with certain muscle set in a month, those muscles go away. I was traveling and the preparations before and after made it so I didn’t attend any gymnastics classes for a month. This resulted in my knee regressing to unusable. It may be the joint, but I doubt it. It is the muscles around my knee that need strengthening again. The knee issues are genetic. This time it was aggravated by not having the right kind of shoes as well. Bad shoes + no focused conditioning for a month = injured. Fail.
Read more…

Tags: injured

Random ..something: Crappy Writing

You may be wondering: Why does your writing stink like fresh fertilizer sometimes and other times it a little better than a kitchen garbage can?

Okay, perhaps you aren’t wondering about in quite the same way. Actually, you probably don’t care one way or another, but I am going to be rude and tell you anyway.

I write while I am working. Sometimes it is a busy day and I have to write sentence by sentence, other times, I have a little more time or my ideas will actually shut up long enough for me to write them down all together during a break or between tasks. When I can actually take the time to write, it looks a little better on paper (screen?) and I usually also have the time to make minor edits.

I know from experience, once I start writing something, if I don’t finish it immediate and post it, it will sit and age in my drafts folder and eventually become irrelevant. For example, I have several ‘Gymnastics’ posts, a movie review of a movie that has been out on DVD now for some time, and a Part 2 of my NYAF post all sitting waiting to be finished or deleted.

When I have the time, I will return to my posts and polish them, but until then, every reader is stuck with my crappy posts… until I finally start writing in advance. I’ll get there–someday–and it will all look pretty before it gets to your feedreader or the main blog page.

Want me to start writing better now? Comment. Serious, comic, random. Anything will do. It will let me know people are actually reading what I am writing and make me feel self-conscious, resulting in a push to write better and more in advance.

Spam is deleted.

Thank you for reading my meager posts. I certainly appreciate it

Tags: Writing

Random Essay: Firemen

A conversation at work brought up Firemen, Fire Fighters, whatever you want to call them these days. It made me wonder: Was everyone raise around firefighters? or did they only become ‘cool’ when they became known as national heroes?

Fire Fighters are heroes. They were heroes before 9/11. They were the everyday heroes that everyone could rely on. My grandfather was a Fire Fighter and was proud to proclaim that he was one of the Brotherhood of the Barrel. I asked about it a few times whenever I saw the sticker decal in his vehicle windows. It was always added to all the cars. He never let up on replacing it. All I remember from those answers were: it was a strike of some kind (I didn’t know what a strike was, it was a hard concept), it involved firemen, and it involved very cold weather and burning barrels to keep them warm.

I had no trouble imagining burning barrels in those days. We had those drums as our trashcans for years and years before the City of Chicago standardized the trash bins. Whenever our barrels rusted along would come Grandpa with a new one, and we occasionally burned trash in those barrels at the curbside. Grandpa was a fireman, we learned fire saftey the right way, through guided experience.

Because I was reminded of all this, I decided to look up the Brotherhood of the Barrel and found it was a Chicago thing. A politician wanted to become mayor, she promised a contract to the firemen and police if she was elected. After she won the position, she refused to honor her word. After several negotiations fell through, a number of firemen walked off the job and began a strike. Through a very cold winter, warmed by burning barrels, not once did the strike falter. I remember tales from my mother about how he was one of the guys who stayed there. This is also where we learned that the Salvation Army is better than the Red Cross in my Grandfather’s opinion, and that is a heavy opinion to possess.

Eventually, the strike caused the mayor to give in and a contract between the city and the services was struck. As far as I know, it is still holding today. My grandfather was one of those men who wouldn’t back down and demanded what was promised and paid for in good faith. I can understand why he would take pride in what he’d done.

I’ve been surrounded by firemen, policemen and various other service men for my entire life. It seemed our suburbish area of the city was a hotspot for these brave men and women. We had a fireman, policeman and mailman all on our block. This was a common occurance. There is even an area nearby where you can purchase house only if you are in civil service. At this time of year and all through and beyond Christmas, it is a festive place to visit. The whole neighborhood seemed to always celebrate harder than anywhere else. We would park our car a bit away and walk around looking at all the fancy displays. And if one or two houses weren’t decorated, it was all good, they were helping us they didn’t have to dress up their place.

I knew not everyone knew or loved a fireman. I didn’t know that not everyone respected them. That came as a sort of shock. We grew up learning how the fireman helps, how you should call him when you weren’t sure of how to get rid of flammable material, how he would come to your aid if you were trapped in a burning building. They would come to parades and block parties. We would even occasionally get a ride on the trucks. Why would ANY one disrespect a fireman? It totally escapes me.

Since we grew up the way we did, you have to know mom was very well informed. Once, we smelled electical scent coming from somewhere. Mom and her nose tracked down the origin to be my baby brother’s fan in his bedroom. In a total bit of controlled panic, mom shut off the fan, hit the electrical switch, then called the firemen to make certain there wasn’t a fire in the ceiling.

The firemen showed up sirens blazing and knocked on our door, my mother was waiting. It just happened to be our neighbor too. Quite exciting. He and his buddies explored the areas above and below, the floor above the fan was warm. Seems mom was very efficient in her caution. After they disconnected the fan and were walking out, they commented about how they wish everyone was like this. They would rather have a call as a prevention than have an emergency call.

That made me very proud of my mother, the fireman’s daughter.

Moral of this story: An ounce of prevention with a little bit of well informed panic, is (potentially) worth a house and many lives… and firemen save lives even when they don’t rush into a burning house.

Miscellaneous Thoughts: Reflected Glory

When I arrived at work on Monday morning this week, I did my usual routine. Made my coffee, sat down and logged into my computer and instant messenger. When I arrived online, I was bombarded by a giant message that read: “check your stats! I got famous overnight!!”.

Bewildered, I clicked over to my adminstrator page to check the statistics, which up to the point never peaked past a few hits in the few weeks since I installed the plugin. To my utter shock, I noticed I also had quite a few more hits than usual. I am under no impression that I drove the traffic here myself. The most shocking was to see more than 200 new subscriptions! When I returned to the instant messenger conversation, I was informed Enna Stein’s “Letters to Ira Glass” Tumblog had gained an audience due to the Facebook Fan Page for This American Life.

Normally, Enna Stein writes for KosherPorkChops.com and typically she has a fairly small audience as internet blogs go. Since we are friends and since she was feeling generous once, my tiny little blog made it onto her blogroll, fairly near the top. It seems several of her new viewers decided to come visit my stuttering and struggling little universe. Reflected glory, it seems, is almost as awesome–and as stressful–as getting it full in the face! Feel free to use my fan created banner here. If you hotlink you can get the monthly updated image that reflects her website header, let me know in comments if you do please!

Thank you for taking some sort of interest in my little blog. I invite you to take the time to comment and let me know what interests you found here that made you think it was worth sticking around. I am ever trying to find topics that interest me to post, however, sometimes something I may take for typical might be actually interesting to a reader.

Here is a parting question: Which blogs, websites, social media, etc do you frequent mostly?

Comment your answers. This isn’t a poll, but mebbe, just mebbe I will find a reason to feature your comment in a future blog post.