I’m having conversations with people about apartments now.  I got a call back earlier and I’ll be sending out more feelers tonight and ideally more conversations tomorrow about some of the apartments I’m looking at.  I can’t wait to get home.  I’ve been thinking more about running a food truck too.  Anyone who has suggestions, feel free to throw them out to me.  One thing I’m thinking is simple burgers and fries, and such.  I’m thinking about different recipes for the beef, cheeses, the usual toppings, perhaps some less usual toppings.  I had some thoughts about incorporating some Laotian cuisine.  I may work in some of that gradually after things get going.  Who knows?  Maybe I’ll work up burgers influenced by other cuisine.  We’ll see.  I may try out some recipes while I finally get packing here.

     Now that I’ve had a conversation about an apartment I can visualize more effectively how I’m going to decorate and ideally configure my new studio.  I’m watching White Collar and I’ve been thinking about trying my hand at painting.  I’ve thought about that from time to time and just haven’t taken the time to invest into it.  I intend to get a drawing table but maybe I’ll get an easel and some paint too.  As a child most of my art was pencil and ink on common white paper.  I never really worked with colors until I started illustrating on my iPads.  I was always interested in painting but I didn’t want to invest the time, energy, and resources into something like that just for it to suck.  Also, I’ve been catching a lot of videos on instagram and all where people are painting and mixing colors.  It’s pretty interesting seeing how so many different artists employ so many different techniques and accomplishing such extraordinary results.  I just don’t know what I would want to start painting.  The obvious would be comic characters.  Super heroes and such.  We’ll see, though, over the next few months.  I may add painting to my repitoire.

     I can’t wait to be back home.  I was never fond of the heat but the valley will always be home.  Walking Oxnard Blvd. and stopping at 7 Eleven for some “nachos” on my way home from my high school.  My nightly pilgrimage to In-N-Out.  Walking through VNSO in the middle of the night after In-N-Out.  So many years I’ve lost being stuck in this shit hole state.  I’m genuinely excited…I think is the word.  I’m not used to presenting ‘positive’ emotions.  Just a few more weeks and I can start to salvage this bullshit existence.  And now it’s time to start making things happen.  

Yesterday I was having a little tummy trouble.  I decided to order some food seeing as I had no interest in getting up out of bed.  My tummy feeling better enough to try something new, I ordered something from Noodles & Company.  It was pretty good.  I ordered some Chipotle Chicken Cavatappi, Cheesy Garlic Bread, and a Rice Crispy Treat.  The pasta was a solid dish.  It has some good spice and the noodles were prepared perfectly.  It’s pretty hard to screw up cheese, garlic, and bread, that said, the Cheesy Garlic Bread is really yummy.  I have to say, though, THE best part was the Rice Crispy Treat!!!  First, that thing was the size of my hand.  It was almost a team lift.  I could barely hoist it to my mouth.  Again, fucking huge was this Rice Crispy Treat.  Then, it was fresh.  It must’ve been made that afternoon.  It was so soft and chewy I had to check my kitchen and make and make sure they didn’t sneak in and use my oven to make it here.  Long story, short, I think I’ll order from Noodles & Company again in the future.

     In other news, I mean news in so much that sometimes things happen here.  I think I just finished an entire tube of toothpaste.  Myself, beginning to end.  I think this is a first.  My entire life there were other people, or the tube was thrown away when it was almost gone, or I get bored and buy a different toothpaste only to get home and find that I still have half a tube.  Maybe I’ve managed to finish a tube before now but I don’t recall.  I get this may not seem like a big success, or a casual success, or even a real one but I don’t have anything else right now.  I’m a single middle-aged man what’s dying alone and only just now moving back to a real city when I’m too old and decrepit for worthwhile women to be attracted to me.  And yes, that sentence would sound less run-on and more comically rambling if you heard me read it out loud.  

     I’ve been thinking about work things the last couple days.  I was reminded earlier that food trucks are a thing.  What then would be an interesting food truck?  What is something that hasn’t been done in a food truck?  I was thinking that a truck making bag lunches would be fun.  I wouldn’t necessarily need to be cooking anything.  At first anyway.  Also, I could swing that one with a Vanagon and that would be a good excuse for me to buy a Vanagon.  Alright, I need a nap and some other things right now.  Until next time.

This week has been a mite wonky.  Full transparency, I’m falling into old habits.  I am aware and conscious of this and am actively working to fix that.  I’ve been taking care of a few things while I have some money.  And now I’m typing with some gloves on.  They’re pretty thick so, I’m impressed I’ve typed so well just now.  Ok, now back to work.  I don’t actually have anything right now.  This may be a short post.  By the way, if anyone has a topic they’d like to read here just feel free to reach out with the contact page.  Otherwise, more likely than not, I’ll just be writing about whatever old TV I’m watching.

     That said, I hadn’t watched The League in quite awhile so, that’s what I’ve been watching the last couple days.  Just starting season four right now.  One of the funniest shows not about football.  There are times I wonder if I were ever to have a child whether I name them Chalupa Batman.  I’m not saying I want to name a child Chalupa Batman but I would like to always have the option.  

     In any case, I need to wrap this soon so I can make the deadline to post this on Thursday and right now I have about twenty minutes.  I’ll be better prepared for Tuesday.

The other day I woke up to an episode of Stargate SG-1 and I was reminded just how talented a performer is Michael Shanks.  The episode is titled Lifeboat.  The episode starts with the team investigating a crashed ship.  While looking at equipment determined to stasis devices Shanks’ character Daniel Jackson is hit with some kind of energy wave.  He regains consciousness and starts presenting unusual behavior, speaking in a manner not at all Daniel Jackson.  Throughout his run on SG-1 he voiced the character Thor, and portrayed the character Ma’chello as both Ma’chello himself and Ma’chello inhabiting Daniel Jackson’s body.  An interesting piece of work. He’s even portrayed very difficult conditions that are always hard for me to watch because his performance was extraordinarily close to my own experience.  Now, in Lifeboat, Shanks portrays something like four or five different and distinct characters with rapid switches from one character to another.  Some people would think “He’s an actor, that’s his job.” and other things to try and diminish this statement but watch a few people try and do this and then watch Shanks’ performance in this episode and then tell me with a straight face that this performance isn’t top three at the very least.  Also, I just watched a clip of his interview on Dial the Gate where he shares a life-or-death experience from his time on SG-1.  And for the record, I say all this being SUPER jealous that he’s married to Lexi Doig.

     Now, back to our regularly scheduled…my bitching and whining I guess.  But not so much!  I’m getting my affairs in order here so I’ll be able to cut my ties to this shithole state and get moved within the next month.  It’s again an odd sensation knowing my net worth isn’t in parentheses.  I need to start seriously packing, though.  I still need to figure out how best to transport some things like my production desk in the studio.  I’m sure I’ll have to dismantle it to some extent.  The thing is that I’ve cobbled together certain pieces to accommodate the equipment and the furniture components are differently shaped, let’s say.  The more I think about it the more it seems I’ll just have to disconnect everything and pack up all the equipment normally and then reassemble everything later.  It’s not a terrible thought in any case it’s just tedious.  And not knowing exactly where I’ll end up ultimately, it’s difficult to visualize how I’ll reestablish the studio right now.  Nonetheless, I can’t wait to be back home.

     I spent many of my teen years walking three miles of Van Nuys Blvd. in the middle of the night, going to In-N-Out Burger to feed myself when my “mother” couldn’t be bothered.  I look forward to being able to visit that same institution regularly again.  A place where I experienced so many good times, find solace from the bad times.  My friends and I celebrated and commiserated so much there.  One place I truly hold sacred.  And then time cherished loved ones and all that.  Just one more month in my exile.

God damn it!  I had a thought of what I was going to write here and then I fell asleep.  And then I woke up and forgot what it was.  It’s still buggin’ the shit out of me!  What the hell was it?!  Meh, whatever.  Alright, I guess I feel like talking about TTRPG stuff.  One of my favorite parts of TTRPGs is character creation.  I’m sure most players are familiar with the process in Dungeons & Dragons.  I have a few preferences in that game but I prefer random generation to avoid repeating my preferences and biases.  I don’t think I’ve seen a good random generator for D&D or at the very least, I can’t think of one at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night.  My favorite game however, the Marvel Super Heroes RPG, had the best character system baked into it.  I put together some screens to further expedite the process.  I even have it saved on all my devices so it can be easily copied into the notes app.  Then one can simply throw dice and mark the results on the note images.  Then you just jump onto behindthename.com to randomly generate the name and biographical information.  I’ve been using this process to create NPCs for years.  There again, the character creation in that system was designed for randomization.  Most games are a little bit trickier to this end.

     The new Marvel Multiverse RPG (MMRPG) is a great system overall.  I’ve acclimated to the power system in this game.  I’ve been vocal about my feelings on the super powers of this game, which were not so much positive at first but I’ve worked out how to do some things that were more nuanced from the older game.  I’ve worked out a method for randomly generating characters for the MMRPG system.  I use an app called Characterize.  It lets you make your own generators.  You make an item to generate and within that item you type in all the possible results for that item.  For example: the item is a four-sided die.  You name the item d4.  And then within that field you enter: 1,2,3,4 .  So, you tap the button and it randomly selects one of those digits.  The generator I put together for this game I built with four fields; Rank, Origin, Occupation, and then I added to that the first power set.  I’ve found that randomly choosing a power set to kick off the character’s powers is more efficient for me to branch out and try other powers I don’t often use for my characters.  And then I use behindthename.com for the rest normally.  There are still numerous factors that can’t really be generated randomly and active decisions need to be made so, the process still takes some time to complete the character.  All said and done, It works very well and is fun for me as I create numerous NPCs.

     Feel free to reach out with questions, suggestions, or just to chat.  I’m going to set up a discord server connected to all this.  I guess that would be more accessible for things like this.  Until next time.