Prop 19

I'll start by stating the obvious: the idea of Prop 19 passing here in California makes me highly uncomfortable.

Not the idea of legalized marijuana - that I can understand, and in some sense, even support. The idea of cutting off funding to drug cartels, and taxing the living daylights out of it to assist the state economically... those seem like reasonable things to do, to me at least. Other countries have well enforced, well regulated legalized cannabis - it's not that humans are fundamentally incapable of managing it.

The part that I have a tough time with is the way that this legalization is being done - specifically that they're allowing personal private ownership of small quantities for personal consumption, rather than making the business a state run institution. How about something like a bar, where people come in, order what they want, and smoke it there? Just check their keys at the door.

It also does relatively little to address the unintended results of such legalization; it seems to me that the vast majority of people who want to legalize this are socially irresponsible, emotionally immature individuals. Allowing that maybe my sample population is off (it could be - maybe there are a ton of socially responsible, emotionally mature people that want this stuff legalized too)... Should our society, our kids, and myself personally be at effect of people who abuse the legalization of this substance? Do we really want to make a gateway drug legal? Underage drinking is a rampant issue, as is drug use by high schoolers (they buy it from dealers, or - shy of that - raid parents medicine closets, sniff glue, etc)... do we really want to make it easier for kids to be using this stuff?

It's not like we're legalizing it in a way that kids would be introduced to it in a safe and sane way - it'd be illegal for people under 21 to possess it - we're just making it legal for the adults. In making it legal for the adults, and confining it to private areas (like the home), we're now potentially legalizing the exposing of all those little babies to the second hand smoke of marijuana.

How about those people who are in recovery? All those people in rehab/drug programs/etc who are trying to get their stuff together - do we want to make it harder for them? By making it harder for them, we make it harder (and more expensive) for ourselves as a society.

What about people who don't follow the new regulations, and don't contain it to their private quarters? With law enforcement already stretched its limits with emergencies and violent crime, laying people off left and right, I find it hard to believe that they'll be responding to calls that sound like, "Excuse me, there's a gentleman toking on the corner of 7th and A Street. What? No, he's not hurting anyone, but it's illegal and it offends my olfactory senses."

I don't see this being regulated anywhere near as well as people seem to think it's going to be.

And how about the unforseen medical expenses of health issues down the line? Who's covering those? I have a hard enough time already knowing that my tax dollars pay for people's medical expenses whose diseases are self inflicted (from smoking, overeating, drinking too much, etc)... I apologize for sounding insensitive, but I'd really rather not add one more thing to the list of ways people can harm themselves at my personal expense. Illness you didn't do anything to get? Sure, no problem! When you do it yourself? ...Idiotic and irresponsible.

I love a lot of things about California.

This is most definitely NOT one of them.

I really hope it doesn't pass.

No on Prop 19.

A Little Overwhelmed

You know... I'm married now.

It is strange, and a wonderful feeling.

It's really nothing that I could ever describe; there's so much going on in my head.

I am overwhelmed with emotion.

I regularly want to cry.

When I realize that I've promised to spend the rest of my life with my best friend. When he comes to bed after me because I go to sleep before him, and he drapes another comforter around my shoulders to keep me from getting cold in the middle of the night. When I wake up at two AM and find his arms still wrapped around me. When he tells me that he loves me, for no reason at all.

When I realize that people flew in from three different countries, and unknown numbers of states to be at our wedding. When I think about all of the feathers I found; when I think about the hawks playing and calling and blessing our ceremony. When I think of all the love and beauty that surrounds me, all of the people that turned out to show their support as W and I went from "he and I" to "us".

When I realize that - due to circumstances beyond anyone's control - a tab is running up against my savings until such circumstances get ironed out. (Eventually, that money will make it back in there, and until then, it's a balancing act of trying to know at what point do I say, "I cant run the tab any higher.")

Between the wedding, the moving, and legal fees associated with the move, W and I are absolutely stretched to our limits financially.

It feels awkward and vulnerable to put that out there, to acknowledge publicly and to the Universe, "Hey, I don't know how this is going to work out here. I don't know where to draw the line. I don't even know if there's a line to be drawn. I don't know that there's a 'right' answer, I don't know that there's a 'wrong' answer, I don't even know that there's an answer. I could use a little bit of clarity...maybe some relief here."

It feels a little bit sad; I miss my parents' house, and the security (or at least obliviousness) of being under someone else's roof. I miss my dog and my reptiles; I hope that the tanks I ordered are ready soon, so that I can move the scaly babies into the place that I am living in now.

The help comes in faith I guess. Remembering that life has always worked out - that the universe has always worked /for/ me, not against me. Remembering that somehow, the ends have always been kept together long enough to get them tied.

I am uncomfortable; I wish I could make that feeling go away, and I figure that the best I can do right now is to simply acknowledge it and know that this too shall pass.

It is Sunday, it is drizzly and gray; there is nothing to be done but enjoy the day.

The rent check is not due for another two weeks, doesn't need to be written for a week and a half. Things will be done before then, maybe bringing some clarity, some relief.

I saw my parents and my animals this morning, and I'll see them again in not too long I'm sure - they're really very close; I could literally walk over in less than an hour.

“The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.” -Erich Fromm

A Collection Of Thoughts - Six Days To Go

Here I am, six days away from being locked into holy matrimony with my very best friend - you would think that, more than anything, I'd be a mess of excitement, nervousness, and anxiety about the upcoming nuptials. This is what I've been led to believe, anyway, through love songs and televisions series, and the various people peppering me with questions about the wedding and my emotional state upon approach.

The reality tends to be something less than expected (by myself, any ways); it's exhaustion (both physical - from burning the candle at both ends with planning and preparation and allergies, and mental - the stamina required to do wedding planning in nearly all of my down time for the past several months is incredible, and I'm about running on fumes at this point), anxiety (not about the wedding, but about moving out of my childhood home), childish anger, incompletion, and resentment toward partners from past relationships (one in particular), and a very deep seated calm (as if I am doing exactly what I were placed on this planet to do).

There are moments of excitement, some moments of nervousness (closer to a doubt, really), some rare moments of all of the above... and mostly, a forward look to the relief of being able to take a breather from this sort of activity once everything is done.

There's also the knowledge that this sort of thing (hopefully) comes once in a lifetime, and that it might be worth living all of it up - soaking in every moment of logistical nightmare, ex-hating, anxiety-ridden-packing, frenetic scurrying back and forth to make sure that we have everything we need for the big day...

There's a sort of humility in knowing that we're going to stand up there and declare to the Universe, "Forever!", and hope that the Universe nods and goes, "So it shall be." To hope that the both of us continue to place our relationship at the forefront, continue to build walls where there should be walls and windows where there should be windows, and not take our eyes off the blueprint of partnership and love.

There's a lot of books on marriage - how to keep one healthy, how to avoid damage, how to repair and rebuild... I don't see that stuff in wedding planning books. Maybe its because I'm not looking for it, maybe its because I'm looking in the wrong places, but I think that there are a lot of things that aren't addressed... There's an entire romance about weddings that - while necessary, and exciting, and - well, romantic - is detrimental I think, in the sense that people don't acknowledge that it's only a part of the story.

People don't talk about how to keep a family from crashing and burning when they don't like your chosen partner, they don't talk about the mental overload of details, they don't talk about maintaining stamina, or going into debt, or nearly going into debt, or the strain that can put on people. They don't talk about how to say no, or how not to lose yourself, or how not to live through your children; they don't talk about boundaries and space and time and how to be good to yourself as best as you can, or how much time planning will take and how to work that in on top of your already jam-packed schedule. They don't talk about meshing cultures as seamlessly as possible, or how to be okay with other people being angry at you while they process whatever it is that you're doing; they don't talk about how to stick to your guns without drawing them on someone. They don't talk about coping with your parents being angry, or unsupportive, and they don't talk about how to respect your child's wishes, and treat them like an adult in the truest sense of the word.

There's just a lot of things they don't talk about.

DIY Escort Cards: A lighthearted Tutorial, Part Two

Alright! The rest of this is pretty intuitively obvious, but something about making a tutorial that only takes you half way seemed a little silly to me. In case you're just now entering this, the first part of this tutorial can be found here:

http://littlepathfinder.blogspot.com/2010/09/diy-escort-cards-lighthearted-tutorial.html

Just as a reminder, for this part you will need (and I'm quoting here):

1) Pencil with eraser (I happened to have a fancy-shmancy mechanical [which has the added benefit of a nice 'gentle' eraser; VERY important that the eraser be clean, and easy on the paper], but as long as it's got both a point and an eraser, you're good)
2) Micron Pen (I'm using .25mm line width - for what I was drawing, this seemed to work best)
3) Permanent Markers (Again, what you need will really depend on what you are drawing. For my black I used a fine point Bic Mark It, and for the colors I used both Sharpie and Bic Mark Its, depending on what was available)
4) A good pair of Scissors
5) *OPTIONAL, but RECOMMENDED* A good sense of humor. If you're undertaking this particular task, there's probably something a little kooky about you anyway, but hey! You're about to sit down and draw who-knows-how-many little dinky place cards for people, and they probably wont even look twice at them. Remember this on hour three of repetitive lines, come up with some ludicrous remark, and keep on truckin'! :D

Now, ignoring the poor photo quality of the images found here, we're going to assume that you've printed up those glorious escort cards on the Card Stock Paper that you purchased, and it has left you something that looks about like this:



Take those scissors and cut your cards out - you should be left with something like so:



Then, verrrrrrry carefully fold it in half...



Very good! See, if you believe in yourself, amazing things are possible. ;) Now, grab your pencil and start lightly outlining whatever design you're going to put on the card. I went with feathers, since that's the theme for all of the escort cards - the ones for the Bride&Groom (that you're seeing here) are a little more involved than the others, but it's the same basic process. When you're done sketching, put down the pencil and look at the card.



If it looks the way you want it to, pick up the Micron Pen and start the outlining process (any thin black pen will work, but I HIGHLY recommend picking up a Micron; not only does it come in a variety of widths, but it works well on the paper and will save you a ton of time without having to worry about any inking problems that come from using a generic sort of pen). I personally also colored in any of the little detail areas with the micron pen, to avoid any potential fudge-ups or bleeding issues with the wider tip of the permanent marker.



Now, if you are using the same color for inking that you are for outlining, do yourself a favor and use a test sheet to make sure that your inks are compatible before you start coloring everything in - the last thing you want is for the marker to dry and have it be an obviously lighter or darker color than the supposedly 'same' color ink you used for the detail areas. Taking a few moments to do a test run will save you hours later if there's any noticeable difference by allowing you to see BEFORE you color in all of your cards. Assuming that you've done this test and everything looks good, after you're done drawing in the details, take your permanent marker and fill in the 'larger' inking portions.



Add any final details, and voila! You're done! :D

Note!

I will be completing the tutorial on escort cards as soon as the computer I am printing them from is up and running and available again. >.<

Also, for those of you interested in following my strictly herpetological adventures, check out my other blog:

http://ratsinthefreezer.blogspot.com

DIY Escort Cards: A lighthearted Tutorial, Part One

What the heck is an Escort Card?

It's that little paper doohickey that you set out for people so that they know where they're sitting.

Awesome! So this will tell me exactly how to do that, right?

Well, this will tell you one way to do that. My wedding is going to have a buffet, so I didn't worry about including anything more than their name and table number, and I went with making the foldable ones that look like little tents. So, if you follow this recipe without ANY modifications, you'll end up with a tented escort card, that has the person's name and table number on it.

Ready?

Excellent, let's begin with the technological part - that thing you do on the computer.

You will need:

For the computer portion:

1) Cardstock Paper
2) A printer that will print on Cardstock Paper (the first one I tried wouldn't - it was a little too thick)
3) MS Word, and a basic working knowledge of it (I'm using the 2010 Student/Home version - if you're using a different version, you'll have to figure the tables out for yourself)

For later:

4) Pencil with eraser (I happened to have a fancy-shmancy mechanical [which has the added benefit of a nice 'gentle' eraser; VERY important that the eraser be clean, and easy on the paper], but as long as it's got both a point and an eraser, you're good)
5) Micron Pen (I'm using .25mm line width - for what I was drawing, this seemed to work best)
6) Permanent Markers (Again, what you need will really depend on what you are drawing. For my black I used a fine point Bic Mark It, and for the colors I used both Sharpie and Bic Mark Its, depending on what was available)
7) A good pair of Scissors
8) *OPTIONAL, but RECOMMENDED* A good sense of humor. If you're undertaking this particular task, there's probably something a little kooky about you anyway, but hey! You're about to sit down and draw who-knows-how-many little dinky place cards for people, and they probably wont even look twice at them. Remember this on hour three of repetitive lines, come up with some ludicrous remark, and keep on truckin'! :D

Alright, let's begin. First, open up a blank document in MSWord. Because of the layout that I've chosen for my escort cards, which is wider and shorter (for pretty obvious stability reasoning), I'm going to go up to Layout and change the Orientation to Landscape.


Then I went and removed the margins (I'm not posting a picture of that, you can't read it anyway when its compressed to fit here), but you go to Page Layout > Margins > Custom Margins, then change Top/Bottom/Left/Right to zero inches, then hit "Okay".

You now have the basic page to start with. HOORAY!!! Pat yourself on the back. ;)

Next, decide approximately what size you want your escort cards to be. If it helps, take a piece of regular printer paper, put it on the table in the 'Landscape' position as seen above, and fold it to about the size you want - this should give you an idea how many columns you're going to have when you go to make the table (more on that later). Me personally, I went with the "What's it look like if I just fold it in thirds?" approach, (which gave me a width of approximately 3.67" per card-looked good to me!), and thus when we make the table later, it'll be 3 columns wide.

Then, you've gotta decide how tall you want them to be; remember, this is a tented card, so you're going to need double the space that you would for a flat card (ie: if you want a 2" tall card, you'll need 4", 2" for the front, 2" for the back). Again, I went with the "Huh, what's easily divisable into this size paper, remembering that I need both a front and back for my card?" and (with all of my mathematical genius) came up with 4. Okay, four divides into 8.5 and it comes out to... um... well... This gave me something just over 2" tall- looked fine to me, and it made it pretty easy.

I promise this will get less confusing later.

With me so far? Pick your approximate width and height, and - my personal recommendation here - be nice to yourself, so that you're not futzing with an extra .0976" that you can't figure out where it came from/where it went.

Okay?

ONWARD!

Go back to your document, Insert > Table > Insert Table.

HAH! Here's where those numbers come in. See that spot that says, "Number of Columns"? That means "How many wide do you want it?" I go back, see that I folded my paper in thirds, and enter the number "3" here.

Then, I go to the place that says, "Number of Rows", and I enter the number "4". But WAIT!!! THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT I WILL FIT A NAME IN EACH OF THOSE ROWS! It's okay, take a deep breath. This means that - vertically - there will be TWO place cards per sheet. There are four rows because you need a front and back for each card. Bear with me here, I know it's hard. ;)

Then, BEFORE I HIT "okay", I click "AutoFit to Window". THEN I hit "okay".

This should bring up a table that leaves you going, "WTF IS THAT?" It's okay - it should look something like this:


Now, click on one of the boxes in the table, and put your mouse over it. This should bring up the image of a little square down by the lowest, right hand corner of the table.

Click that little gray square, and drag it all the way to the bottom of the document. This should stretch your table to the size of the paper, like such:


Okay, the hardest part is over. Now, LEAVE YOUR TOP ROW BLANK! Go down to the second row. Pick your font (I used "Baroque Script"), your positioning (I centered it&set it a few lines down from the top of the box), and start typing!

I shrunk it down so no creepers can read the names on mine via the internet (I don't know why they would, but hey, they're creepers), but basically, this is what the page should look like once you've got the information entered:


Once you have the first page done, you can either start all over on a new page, or do what I did - select the entire thing, hit "ctrl+c", then paste it and just replace the names.

For whatever reason, I had compatibility issues with the font that I selected (user error I'm sure), so what I had to do to print them was first save them as .doc, then save it as a .pdf - I did this by going to File > Save&Send > Create PDF/XPS Document. Then I printed up the .pdf and used that as my blank.

Print that up, and come back here when you're ready for drawin'!

More Later

Well, after 8 trips and two sets of proofs, the programs still have a minor glitch (they don't match the final proof, which leads us to believe that there is some sort of communication error between their computer and their printer or something) - except that they used up all my paper printing them up, and as such, these are the programs I'll be working with. I was too tired to argue when I picked them up, so W called them as soon as I got back to the house; they agreed to give me a full refund, so I'm only out the cost of the paper - I'd rather get that back too, but there isn't much they can do about it, since that was purchased through a third party (http://www.paperandmore.com - awesome deals on great paper, by the way).

Moving on.

Got those all completed and tied together and made pretty-pretty with the help of some very useful friends on Thursday night - 150 programs, all told. I'm really happy with the way they came out. Thanks guys! :D

W and I also completed our home made 'cake topper' - I'm not sure we're actually going to put it on the top of the cake, but if nothing else, we can have it sitting near us at the head table while we eat. Who knows. It was fun if nothing else.

In addition to the programs on Thursday night, my very-useful-friends assisted me in an emergency (voluntary/precautionary) evacuation of W and my new house. There was an enormous explosion only a few blocks away; homes were obliterated, lives were lost, and the area made international news. We are beyond grateful that our lives were not more dramatically impacted than an evening of disruption, fear, and uncertainty.

For me, the evening brought back flashes of a near-miss from my college years; an incident from which myself and three friends walked away only by some unattributed grace of the universe. For W, it spurred a reliving of his involvement with 9/11 - he was there when the planes struck; the smoke, the fire, the planes, the sirens, and having it happen as close to the date as it did...

W, B, W's dog, B's bird, and our friend Greg (who lives nearby) all ended up with me at my mom and dad's house for the evening.