Snow

     The past few days we have gotten a great deal of snow where I live. The that live in my area have all been very happy because there have been 4 snow days in the last week alone.
     This also has effected the college exams. My friends who are still in the college program I started last year, but decided was not for me, have told me they should have done exams last week. They are now looking at needing to do 6 exams in 2 days just so they can them done before Christmas break.
     I have been having the great joy of keeping the drive way clear. We have a long drive way and 2 sections off of it for us to park the 4 cars that we have on the property. So far I have gone through over 40 liters of gas in the   walk behind snow blower.

     I find it very interesting how our views on things change as we age. When we are in public school a snow day is like a gift from the heavens. When we get to college having a snow day is not so joyous. You realize that you will need to make up the missed class time with extra work and self study.

     I have a friend, Aztek, who is very happy about all of the snow. He says that the powder is going to make for great skiing. My reply to him when he says things like this is, "feel free to come and help me shovel out". You see he lives in an apartment. The most he may need to deal with after a snow storm is cleaning off is car. Also, even if the roads are bad he walk to the store to get food. I on the other hand most drive every where. So I most always be sure to keep the drive way clear and a car cleaned off so that I do not get trapped in a emergency.

    One thing I do love about the snow, even if it is cold and heavy and nasty, is that it means a white Christmas. My wonderful girlfriend Biohazard loves the snow and is very excited that we will be able to play in the 3 or 4 feet of it that we have in the yard now. So when she comes home from school in a few days for the holiday she is going to be very happy. In the great wide world of things if snow makes the women I love happy, then I guess it is ok and worth a bit of shoveling and snow blowing in my face.   

Cooking

     I have been home alone for about a week. I love my family very much, but I do find that I enjoy to have the house to myself every so often. When I am alone I am able to watch the shows that I want to, and eat the foods that I enjoy, but rarely get to have because other people in my family do not like them.
     Many people do not think that I am much of a cook. The truth is that I enjoy making food very much. I just do not share the same tastes as most people.
     When I make myself lunch when I am alone I tend to make pasta with cream sauce. My sister calls it my junk sauce. She calls it that because I put just about everything in it. I put in bacon bits, shrimp, mushrooms, and anything else that I like that is in the fridge. Over the bast few months I have put in sausage, and once I even put in a ton of olives because there was not much else.
     Most of what I make myself fallows that same pattern. I basically just all my favorite things into some kind of base.

Grandparents

I have spent the last few days moving my grandfather from his apartment into a seniors home so that he could be closer to my grandmother. My grandfather has recently lost his licence. We was walking to see her everyday, but with winter coming that was getting harder.

I have a good relationship  with my granddad.  I am named after him and I feel lucky that I am able to see him as often as I do. Since he no longer drives and I have been driving him home most days. It has allowed me to get to know him much better then I ever thought I could. When you are young you form an image of your grandparents as some kind of fantasy person. They are so much older and are so different from anyone else in your life that they are really beyond what a child's mind can understand. Then as we age many of us move away from family altogether. Then the few times we do see them it is for some kind of holiday or event. Very few of us are able to really spend the every day time it takes to truly get to know their grandparents as "people".
I am one of the lucky ones. I have been able to get to both of my father's parents, and my mother's mother very well. They have lived with in 15 minutes drive of me my whole life. Sadly my mother's father died shortly before I was born. But from the stories that have been told to me I hope that I have been able to form a correct image of my grandfather in my mind. I really do count my self blessed by the fact I can say I have been able to get you know my grandparents as well as I have. You can never see your parents or yourself better then through the eyes of your grandparents. Their knowledge and wisdom allows them to see things in a way that no other person in the world could see. They have not only watched you go, but they watch your parents grow as well.
 

Sleep

     If you look at the time stamp on this post you will see that it is after 1am. Fairly late for some one who was up at 6am this morning and needs to do the same tomorrow.  I find that when I am running on low sleep or if I am up late that I tend to have a better hold on my thoughts. It could also be that since I am tired I am not thinking the best. It is not really that I do anything, I simply enjoy being up at this late hour, and even being up before everyone else. I enjoy that fact that I basically have the house to myself. I can make food and watch tv. I can do what ever I wish with out other people getting in the way. I as long as I am quit I can do what ever I wish.
     My girlfriend, Biohazard (her screen name, not a comment on how I see her) finds my lesser need for sleep odd. She and I have been dating for about  3 years now. When see is home from school is stays here at the house in our spare room. Many nights I tuck her into bed and give a good night kiss. I then go onto stay up for a few more hours before i go to bed myself. Even with that I am the one to wake her up in the morning. She is never really happy when I do. If Biohazard does not get her full nights sleep she is not good all day. I on the other hand may go for a few days with late nights and early mornings. As long as I keep going and doing stuff I am fine. I do how ever tend to fall asleep if I stop doing things. Like if I am a passenger in a car. I have had many car rides where I am fighting to stay awake.
    I find it interesting how such things work. I have never been one who gets a great deal of comfort from sleep. I do not really understand people who look forward to getting cozy in their beds for a night of sleep. I mean I may not be wanting to get to work, but I would rather be awake then asleep.

     So this is the first of my late night posts. i am sure the future will hold more late night ramblings. Right now it all makes perfect sense to me, but we will see what I think about it when I read this once I have had a good nights sleep.

  

Scrap

    This evening I helped my Dad strip down things for us to take to the scrap yard. I find it interesting to see how things such as washers, dryers, and ceiling lights breakdown into fairly basic materials. Most things that we find around our homes today breakdown into copper, steel, and other such materials.

    What i was thinks about as I did this was how a lot of people these days just throw a lot of things out with out even a second thought. Many do not even do as my Dad and I did and take things apart so you can get the money for the metal and such.
   Last year I had a house mate who was very big on on recycling. She was so dedicated to making sure that every that could be recycled was it drove me nuts a lot of that time. But, since she was willing to deal with it all, I put up with it. One day I was in my studying, as I often was. I preferred to keep to myself at home, mostly because on top of the recycling thing we were also in the same program so she really drove me nuts because I spent so much time with her.
       So there I was studying when my house mate knocks on my door and says she has been cleaning the kitchen and wants to know if she can throw out some stuff that the last tenets had left behind. She had found an old vacuum, a coffee maker, and a Crockpot. I took a look at them and said they looked fine. If they were not in the  way why not just leave them there in case the next people might like them. When we moved in we needed very little because so much had been left, why not keep it that way? She really did not like this idea. In fact she kind of twitched.
       She ended up throwing the stuff out, having it around bug her that much and I really did not care enough that I was willing to take time away from my studies to deal with it.

      To me that is a prime example of how things seem to be going with out culture today. Many people give face time to recycling, but only as far as it means that they put it out on the road for someone else to deal with. Now she or I could have taken to a second hand store, or I could have taken the time to take them apart for scrap. When push came to shove we did not. I was busy and she just wanted them gone.

        What I feel it all comes down to is that fact that if we really want to stop waste we need to be willing to deal with it. Often dealing with it means that we need to keep it until we can deal with it properly. How many of us are willing to do that when we can just as easily make it disappear by throwing it in a magic black bag that if we leave out on a certain night will be taken away. Like a child leaves a tooth for the tooth fairy. We are getting better. Mainly because many cities are now charging for garbage removal, but will take recycling for free.

Next time you buy something like a new coffee maker and are thinking what to do with the old one think to yourself can I really say i recycle and that I am a good person if I throw something out that really can be broken down into pieces and recycled?
  
 

Inner Compass

      In my life I have been a few different things at a few different times. When i was younger i was a child and a student. I was a little better at the first then the second. As I got older I made the change from being a child to being an adult. I went from being a scout, to being a scout leader. I went from being a passenger to being a driver. I went from being a student, to being a member of the work force. As i member of the work force I found that at times I was the teacher instructing a student.   Most changes in life only go one way. But now i find I am becoming a student once more.

     In the new year I will be starting back to school once again. This time it will not be in a "safe" program. When I went to college before I took woodworking. It was a trade I have a fair degree of skill in and made me happy when I was going through high school and I worked in for a few years after college. Sadly I never found happiness working in the field. Industry takes such things and whittles them down until all that matters is money. Before long you find that what once brought you the greatest joy is only full of sadness. Then you get to a point where even the money is not worth it. You work hard and you can not even make the money you will need to move out of your parents basement and make a life with the person you love.
      So i moved on to retrain. but sadly at that time I had not taken  in the full scope of what the bast years of working had to teach me. I went to retrain in a field I had no interest in and really only hoped it would make me lots of money. I began a college program in marine navigation. I loved the schooling. I enjoyed going to class and  doing well. I had never done well in school before. The years of being in the work force had shown me that I could do anything I set my mind to. Even in an area like school where I had barely scraped by before. It was that joy I got from doing well that blinded me to the fact it is a career that would take me away from the very thing I was working to have, a life with my only true love. If I had kept on I would have maybe see her and any future family we may have 4 times a year, and I would miss most every major event. So a moved on with one year of train that means little on paper, but a great deal for my self image.
   Come January when I start school in  Nursing. A field I wanted to enter when i was younger, but self doubt made me think I could never succeed. I will do so with a strong will and  the knowledge that I can do what ever I set my mind to as long as it is where my inner compass points.