Clovis Chitwood Heavy Industries

I have the most entertaining dreams, except for the ones where I dream I’m getting up and getting ready for work like I should when in the slightly more real world I’m managing to ignore the alarm clock and sleep late, those just suck. I can’t remember the last nightmare I had, unless you count the one where my dream house, when I say dream house I mean the house that I live in in my dreams not a “dream house”, slid into the street.  Maybe that requires some clarification. I don’t remember much of my dreams but the ones I do remember take place in a relatively consistent world. My house for example, it’s kind of like my house but not really, there are more rooms and they’re smaller, less square. And there is a large screened in porch on the back that is literally filled floor to ceiling with even for me not really all that interesting junk left by the previous owners. The floor creak, there is a blue hallway and it’s a whole lot less stable than my real house, hence the sliding into the street in that one dream. The backyard is bigger and occasionally has cars that I am pretty sure I bought some time in the past. Sometimes they even run. In last nights dream there was this rather crude but spectacular multi level water feature. It even had some squatters on one level that I think were Hispanic but I’m not sure. We got along so i let them be. At one point Dad showed up and helped me turn this huge valve to turn it on. Then we stood n the driveway and chatted for awhile. About what I can’t remember. Anyway I didn’t even remember the dream until halfway through the morning when Jay IM’ed me about something and it jostled the memory into mt conscience. Sometimes it’s days before I remember a dream. I’ve tried to keep a dream journal but I remember them so infrequently that the desire has waned by the time I actually remember one upon waking. When I started this there was a point but like most of my dreams I can’t remember it now.

It’s been an interesting week. Work kind of sucked. Found out were losing someone next week. She’s moving to Mississippi. On one hand I’m kind of envious that she’s able to just up and move on such short notice. Were not really close at all but I’m happy for her that she’s doing something exciting. I’ve not really talked to her about it I’m just assuming she’s excited about it, but I think that’s a pretty safe assumption. It stinks for us that she’s leaving behind though. We really need the bodies and it takes at least six months before a new hire is able to really carry his or her weight. Just training her replacement is going to take away from time that could be spent on other stuff assuming they can even find someone in a reasonable amount of time. It took forever for them to find the last person they hired. Thankfully she seems to be coming along rather well.

Outside of work it’s been a great week. Deb had a birthday dinner for Stephania Wednesday night. That was fun. Thursday was Blue Sky with Stephen and Suzie and Alan, then tonight was Macaroni Grill and then Kung Fu Panda. It was alright story wise. Really just an animated Jackie Chan movie. Some of the stuff was lifted straight from Jackie Chan movies. I guess that’s not really a bad thing. The wisdom imparted by the wise old guru, a turtle, which explains why Suzie loved the movie so much, was a little bit on the fortune cookie or inspirational poster type. The moral of the story was “your special just the way you are.” Which in this instance translates to the fact that even a fat out of shape panda can become a Kung Fu master in a few days, just my being himself. Of course everyone is special and it’s important to know yourself and to be true to yourself, but does that translate to it being okay to being fat and out of shape? I’m not saying it’s immoral or bad to be fat. Hell I’m fat. Not chunky, not a little heavy, but fat and I know it. I’m not exactly happy about it though and I don’t really think I should be complacent about it. I know I would certainly be healthier and feel better and I imagine be happier if I lost weight. I can’t think of one thing that would be bad about waking up tomorrow less a hundred pounds, assuming I didn’t just wake up without a leg or some shit like that. Okay I wouldn’t have any clothes that would fit, but it would be a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to buy a whole new wardrobe if I was more conventionally shaped. I don’t think it’s a good idea to identify who you are with your body shape anyway. I can see that being a bad thing at both extremes. I think it would be just as pathetic if I thought of myself as a fat person and used that as a reason to stay fat. Not that it usually takes a reason to stay fat. I’ve not managed to be not fat in close to twenty years. But that would be just as pathetic as becoming an anorexic because to be happy I thought I had to be thin. Wouldn’t it be a whole lot healthier to think of who you are as what you think and do rather than what your body shape is? But even there my argument kind of falls down, I’ve never heard of a ninety eight pound sumo wrestler or a four hundred pound ballerina. Seems like somebody could go out on a limb and make an inspiring movie about a young person who through hard work and dedication, for longer than your typical movie training montage, ends up triumphing over mediocrity.

Damn, that was a little harsh, I didn’t start out to write a rant that just kind of came out. Just to play devil’s advocate, strange position for a non believer but I’m quite flexible for my size, it’s a sweet movie and the animation is top notch. The characters are all anthropomorphs of course but there are scenes that just look so real. Like somebody was out there in this strange world of talking pigs and ducks, China it seems is peopled mostly by pigs and ducks by the way, with a camera filming this movie. Some of the more stylised animation reminded me a lot of Samurai Jack which is not a bad thing at all.

Well this is turning into a long post but I want to mention something else I started this week. FOoSHNARG, Fraternal Order of Secret Human Nashville Area Resident Geeks. It’s basically a Google calendar that I made public, so if your using Google calendar you can see it and add things to it. Go wild. There is also a website fooshnarg.org where you can view the calendar. Hopefully we can keep everything on there and there will be less confusion about what’s going on. If you want to add something but are having troubles just email it to clovis@fooshnarg.org and I will try to get it up.

Oh boy, it’s late and I want to take a lap or two around Nurburgring before I go to bed.