Today’s Photo Blog Challenge of Doom, Craziness, and Awesomesauce asked for the person who has gotten you through the most. Well, let’s be honest here. You get what I feel like letting you know about. So we are going for most recent tragic thing. That will be good enough, right? Sure it will.

If you have been reading since day 1 of this series, you are aware that both of my kidneys failed a couple of years ago (not even two years for those keeping meticulous notes). I saw a ton of specialists, had blood drawn countless times, visited a couple of different hospitals, had several different surgeries, and had a whole stack of stuff happen that I’m not talking about with strangers. All over a 6 month period.

So through all of this, Jen was always there when I needed someone. I had a ton of people offering support and assistance whenever I needed, but Jen always seemed to go that extra mile. She was the one driving me to the hospital and then waiting hours and hours while I was in surgery. She was the one who went on drug runs when they changed up my prescriptions. She even rearranged one of her spare rooms so that I could stay where there was someone around during the period I was confined to bedrest. So yeah… Jen is awesome and continually adjusted her schedule to whatever thing came up. I’m not doing very well at this post this evening, so I’ll wrap it up with the photo the challenge requires.

Day 09 – Gotten You Through the Most

Chose this pic partly because it is awesome. But mostly because I took it, and that seems more in the vein of what this challenge should be about.

Day 08 – Makes You Laugh

hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

This evening’s image.

Day 07 – Your Most Treasured Item

Well, this is my grandfather’s watch, which was given to me by my grandmother after he died. Not sure there’s much else to say about that. I don’t keep it out. I don’t mention it to people. I don’t even think about it all that often. But of all the things I own, it is probably the only item there is zero chance of anyone else ever getting from me.

Another difficult topic! I really enjoy what I do for a living. I have a large amount of autonomy and I enjoy who I work with. So all in all, I don’t really have anyone that I want to swap places with for the day, which is today’s topic if you have not guessed.

Day 6 – Trade Places For a Day

So I am going to keep with a previous post’s theme, and pull from Doctor Who. I want to trade places for a day with Stephen Moffat. If you don’t know who that is, he is currently the Head Writer and Executive Producer of Doctor Who. He also wrote 4 stories through the first 4 seasons; one for each season. And I do not think it is a stretch in the least to say that his stories are the best of each season. If you watch the show, I am sure you remember season three’s “Blink” with the weeping angels. Yeah, that was him. What was the best story from season 2? You should have said “Girl in the Fireplace”, another of Moffat’s. In season 1, it was “The Empty Child”, in which a child asking for it’s mommy has never been creepier. But let’s be honest. The real season is for season four’s “Silence in the Library” with River Song and the vashta nerada. This is the man who gave us (ME!) River Song. And the man who wrote season 5. And the man who wrote the as of yet unaired season 6.

So on one hand, I would love to hang out with Matt Smith and Karen Gillan and Alex Kingston and the other people who make my favorite show. But mostly I just want to watch what happens with River before everyone else does, and get a shot at his notes to see where he is taking all of my favorite characters. Yeah, that would be a good day.

I don’t consider myself to be the sentimental type. I’m not the type who gets souvenirs when I travel, nor the type to venture down memory lane very often. So today’s topic of “A picture of your favorite memory” stumped me. No one event fits this, so I’m going to use all of the times I used to go out on jobs with my granddad. He owned a business putting up siding and gutter and the like. During the summer, when I wasn’t in school, he would take me with him to visit his clients or check in on the job sites where his employees were.

It was during these trips that I learned how to treat people. That I learned how a man handles himself when things do not go his way. How a man deals with difficult people, and how a man stays humble about his successes. It was during these trips, be they a half hour drive to pick up supplies or an all day affair visiting many people, that I discovered that life is not black and white. It was my grandfather that introduced me to gray.

I’ll never forget the time he told me that while stealing was wrong, he would steal to feed our family if it ever came down to it. I don’t think there was even any lead-up to that statement. There often wasn’t. He would be driving one of the trucks while I sat looking out the window and would just say things. About people; or religion; or family; or work; or society. It was during these trips that I realized that at some point, all of those will conflict with each other, and when they do, we must know where we stand on all of them in order to prioritize one over the other. I’m not saying that I understood it then as I do now, but it was all there.

As I mentioned, I’m not the sentimental type, so I don’t have any photos from those times. But I do have the one above. Obviously, it was taken early in his life before I was born. I’m not sure why, but it is one of my favorite photos of one of my favorite people.

So that is my favorite memory. While everyone else my age was being taught how to live by their fathers, I was being raised in the old school, by the generation that taught our fathers, but with another 30 years of wisdom on top of that. I believe it made all the difference.

Day 4 – Your Night

I don’t have a typical night. I also don’t have any location or city that I consider my own. I would take a photo of the sky there if I did. So for today’s photo, you get a what I am doing at this moment. I present to you… Casablanca, in case you did not recognize the blurry iphone photo. Sometimes my evening involves playing a game, or reading a book, or walking over to the Plaza. But this evening, I am watching a classic while eating cookies purchased from girl scouts (you may know them as Envoys of the Sith).

Day 03 – The cast from your favorite show

It took me a minute to come up with my favorite show, but in the end it came down to the fact that I would rather talk about Doctor Who than Spooks. Both are epic and fantabulous, but Doctor Who has River Song. And I love River.

The cast of Doctor Who changes every season, at least in part, so I am going to concentrate on this past season; season 5. We have a new Doctor in Matt Smith, who replaced my Doctor (every Doctor Who fan has “their doctor”), David Tennant. I didn’t really like the new Doctor at first, to the point I even made a blog post about it right before the season finale. But after that final episode (which was amazing), I went back and rewatched the entire season to catch what I had missed. Trust me, you will want to do the same if you want the season all the way through. And this time through, I got it. I don’t know if it was because I stopped comparing Matt to David, or if I noticed the brilliance of how they played all of the character interactions because I already knew the plot or what, but the second time through I really loved the new Doctor. As a credit to the new cast, I have actually watched the newest season more than any of the previous seasons; and I have watched the previous seasons all numerous times.

To the Doctor’s right is Amy Pond. Or Amelia, if your prefer and it doesn’t seem a bit fairytale to you. She is the Doctor’s companion for this season, and I thought she was really good. I’m not sure where she falls on my ranking of all of the companions (I loved Donna and hated to see her go), and I may never really know since the dynamics are always so different. I’ve watched the season opener where she screams “WHY DID YOU SAY FIVE MINUTES?!?” before immediately collapsing back into worry that she shouldn’t have spoke about a dozen times and it never gets old.

Amy’s fiance, Rory, is not pictured. Mostly because I don’t care about him enough to not use the above pic. I said this in my previous post, but I think he just acts too much like a person really would in such a fantastical situation. I don’t need that in my light hearted adventure drama. He’s fine, but ‘eh’.

That brings us to the woman on the Doctor’s left. Professor River Song (“ooo.. I’m going to be a professor someday! Spoilers!”). We first met River in season 4 for what is the best story of that season. In it we are told that she and the Doctor keep meeting out of order. In this instance, it is the first time the Doctor (Tennant at the time) had ever seen her, but River had an entire diary of their times together. Flash forward to season 5 and here we are again, meeting River in completely the wrong order. We have not been told exactly who River is, though many things are assumed. Is she the Doctor’s lover? His murderer? The best conman of all time? The Doctor him/herself? No one knows except River, because she is the only one who has lived through it all. The rest of us are just catching up.

What we do know is this. She is completely badass. Imagine James Bond merged with Indiana Jones. That. Just as a snarky woman. It’s brilliant. And what is more brilliant is this… for the most part, we are taking her word for it when she tells us who she is and is not. Even with her complete refusal to tell us (or the Doctor) much for fear of giving spoilers into the Doctor’s own life, she has led all of us, Doctor, Amy, and audience alike, down a way of thinking that makes her who we believe her to be. Maybe it is all true. Maybe none of it is true. The writers claim that in season 6 “everything changes” concerning River and the Doctor. If season 5 is any indication, it will be brilliant. I can’t wait.

Today’s topic is the person you have been closest with the longest. Since much of my job revolves around understanding exactly what is being asked of me and then giving you what you want despite what you said, I must point out that there are plenty of cases where these two are mutually exclusive. But I know what they meant, so here we go.

I’m not sure how you don’t go with some family member here, unless you are young or never moved from where you went to primary school. But I’m not and did, so I lost contact with most of those people except for the occasional facebook status. Here we have my cousin Jonathan. There really isn’t a ton to say about it. He’s a couple of years younger than me, we grew up near enough to each other to hang out some (with his younger brother Griffen), and we chat about random mess all the time. You have to have people in your life with whom there is no real point in keeping secrets and with whom you can bounce insane ideas off of without fear. Those people you can say anything to or ask anything of, and not worry about their reaction, because they know who you are and what you are about, and are not swayed by the comments of the moment.

There’s a comfort that comes with trust, where if we are playing video games or are out fishing or are finally chatting again after not seeing each other for six months, it is all the same. So while there are a stack of people I am close to, and many people that I’ve known for a long time… this is the photo I could find.

So there will be posts from me to clog your twitter and facebook walls for the next month or so. As with most of these type things, they will be fairly egocentric and will mostly be on stuff you don’t care about. If that surprises you in any way, might I be the first to welcome you to the Internet. Enjoy your stay.

Day 01 – A picture of yourself with ten facts

So I already asked a question about this one. Am I supposed to be holding these facts listed out on a sheet of paper for this day? Is this some artistic use of the word ‘facts’ that I must find a way to represent in photo form? How am I confused already when we haven’t even started? In the end, you get a photo of me. And this blog post will contain some facts (about me? I suppose) if I can stop rambling and just write them down… and make them up.

1. I have lived in 5 different states. Two of those twice. In 11 different houses.
2. I’ll go for practical over theory about 9 times out of 10. This doesn’t always play well with me being a standistus argumentatavum maximus.
3. In my entertainment, be it books, movies, work drama, etc, I don’t deal with whiners well. I have stopped reading many a book series that others love because the “hero” needs to stop being depressed for half a second and remember that he/she is awesome. See Harry Potter book 7, Bourne Identity book 2, and The Hunger Games book 3.
4. My musical taste is random enough that I have difficulty listening to my iTunes collection on shuffle. Metallica to Pomplamoose to Dan Le Sac to old school jazz is just a little too jarring.
5. I write JavaScript and deal with User Interface issues for a living. And I love it.
6. I believe that people are the best and worst things about life. Often the exact same people.
7. I built all of my own computers for years, but now the idea of doing all of that work when I can just buy an iMac depresses me.
8. Both of my kidneys failed in 2009.
9. I’m going to travel more this year I do than most years, which shouldn’t be difficult.
10. I have only been out of the country once. Not sure when I’ll get a chance to remedy that.

And there we have it. Day 1 down. There will be less lead up for the rest of the days. I may or may not keep the rambling to a minimum. We will just have to see. Until next time!

Cool premise. I suspect it will turn into the standard ‘monster of the week’ fare, but dinosaurs randomly showing up in London is pretty fun, and the overarching plot of where did the portals come from and how they work is interesting.

I don’t feel any empathy for the male lead. Cutter doesn’t make me care about him, and his wife isn’t any better. They could both die next episode and I’m not sure I would care.

Not a fan of the people from Home Office, but I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to hate them. Mean government types with guns and all that.

But I do like some of the actors, really. Connor (as played by Andrew Lee Potts) is funny, if slightly annoying. But that’s his character, not just how he is playing it. And so far he has pulled through when it counts.

My favorite character is Abby, played by Hannah Spearritt. She’s the resident lizard expert. Not really sure why I like her, though that she seems to be the spunky in contrast to all the government types certainly helps.

So far the show has been a little hit and miss. Love the temporal portals and the whole mystery there. Not a big fan of the love triangle they are trying to make with some of the characters. Dinosaurs are cool. Government idiots are not.

All in all, the seasons are only 6 episodes long, so I’ll finish out this season and at least start on season 2. I’m not completely sold yet, but I can see Primeval becoming really worth my time.