Duggan's Xanga

Kind of Weirded Out

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:10:22 GMT

Shooting victim identified as Sean Duggan, 29

Found out about this courtesy of a visitor to my site and the search results that led him here. Huh. It's not me. I'm living in New Jersey. But the name is right, as is the age. Kind of glad they didn't post a photo. What if he looked like me too?

Not Fond of Fasting

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:40:48 GMT

So, I have to fast for 12 hours for my bloodwork in the physical I'm getting tomorrow and I'm really not loving it. *wrinkles nose* My body requires a lot of fuel to keep going and right now, my stomach practically feels hollow. *sigh* I know... millions of people starving to death. All I have to do is lay off of the food for 12 hours. Still something I wish I were not doing.

Had an incident on the Atomic Think Tank message boards. I recently signed up for a Martial Arts game set in Gotham City. I had a random encounter with a guy whose character was a Batman analogue crossed with The Shadow. He successfully diverted my attention and hid. My character, being a bruiser sort, picked up a random thug and pitched him towards a wall to lure out the vigilante. It worked, but the player was so offended at my choice of tactics (apparently he'd missed the premise of the game and just built a straight super-hero) that he threatened to quit. As a compromise, I rewrote my post so that my character was certain what the vigilante would catch the other guy. Still, it left a bad taste in my mouth. It was ruthless tactics. It was also perfectly in character. Eh.

Well, I should try for sleep. Physical in the morning followed by work and our last rehearsal for Merchant of Venice before we open. One of the guys was carrying a book around on stage. Luckily, he's kind of our understudy for one of the roles, so he shouldn't impact opening night. Still, not a good omen.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:43:04 GMT

Oy... I am so tired. This show is draining, on top of work and recent allergy attacks. I think the show can still come together. It's been ugly, because we've had a number of actors out whether due to prior commitment or due to apathy on their parts. We're so tightly cast (we had to drop the part of Tubal for lack of a person to play him and we're doubling up our female characters to be servants) that we can't replace them no matter how little they excuse their behavior. Pile on to that our director being entirely not forceful enough, a stage manager who professes that it's "not her job to deal with props" and steps out during the show for smoke breaks every 10-20 minutes, our costumes being late... it's not as much of a fun time as I would like. What really gets my goat is that some of the actors haven't even bothered learning their lines. I can understand them not respecting the director. I can almost understand them deciding that the practices aren't worth their time (there is a lot of time wasted during most rehearsals), but taking on a job and then not learning your lines? That makes them look like incompetents! Meh, we'll pull through I know, and I'm in a worse mood than usual at the moment, so I'm painting a terribly bleak picture, but it is still frustrating. Were it not for the good friends in the cast who help me keep my spirits high, I might succumb to apathy myself.

Speaking of good friends, I have also had the good fortune to secure a date last Saturday. ^_^ I thoroughly muffed things from the long walk searching for a coffee shop that was not where I thought it was to my cards being refused at first at the Chinese place we stopped at (they didn't take Discover and my ATM card was replaced recently), but the girl professed that she had a good time and that she would like to do it again. *GLEE!* She's a terribly nice girl. Pretty, intelligent, religious... it makes you wonder what she sees in a shlub like me. Heh... and for my part, I'm relearning how to go about this dating thing again. I'm terribly out of practice and I'm having to figure out that balance between long term and short term thinking again. Ah, but I'll speak no further for fear of jinxing it.

Work is somewhat another matter. I... I'm just having a hard time being inspired lately. I do fine as long as I'm solving the problems of other people, but when it comes to my own assignments, I feel like I'm turning out lackluster code. Functional, but it could certainly be much better work. Oh well, evaluations will be coming up soon. Maybe I will learn more then.

Overall, life isn't all that bad. It's just a wee bit frustrating from time to time. :) Maybe if I wrote more so as to share my burden with my faithful readers out there...

Updating at last

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 02:14:57 GMT

Yes, I know it's been a long time. I've been feeling... uninspired. *shrug* A couple times, I've thought "Oh, I should go home and blog about this," but laziness always wins out. So, here I am, such as I am. What's going on in my life? Still doing Capoeira with the ASCAB center. I'm still... not terribly good at it. I still enjoy it for the most part, mostly because I don't really care that I'm bad at it anymore, but it is frustrating, both the times when I get too dizzy and out of breath and have to step out, and those times when I pair up with someone else and I can't help but feel I'm holding them back. I'm also in rehearsals for two shows. Merchant of Venice opens next week with Collingswood Shakespeare. And then, in November, I'll be playing the Fairy Godfather in a production of Sleeping Beauty with Village Playbox theater. I'm more excited over the latter. Merchant has been... eh. Attendance at practice has been low, at first because it was vacation time and a lot of people were out. Now... I feel like many of my fellow cast members have given up on the show. I will do my best, but I worry that the show will be lackluster. Sleeping Beauty will be a kid's show and I think it should be a blast!

Other things in life... Bev still wants me to move back down to Pittsburgh. The job market down there is as bad as it is up here, so I will be sticking with my current job for the time being. I have some friends down here and I'm slowly becoming a bit more social. Oh! There's a Young Adults group for church! ^_^ We spent the night discussing last Sunday's readings. It was interesting. Our priest is a bit liberal in my tastes — you could tell that he was carefully choosing his words at times so that he could state dogma while indicating that it wasn't necessarily his personal belief — but I was able to make some input on various subjects. And there are girls too. Woohoo for Holy Women! *wry grin* Quite honestly, getting a girlfriend here in town would be a significant factor in me sticking around. Maybe it's my biological clock ticking, but I really am feeling that urge to find someone and settle down.

One of my co-workers died on Friday. He wasn't anybody I was close to, but I knew his face. He did so young too, in his 40's, from an embolism. He'd been to the doctor the week before and was scheduled for a follow-up appointment, but he never made it to it. It's kind of scary really. It makes me wonder if I should be more worried about my health. Maybe I should go ahead and see a doctor for the occasional pain in my chest (I've been prone to it most of my life, but lately, it's been different. Less of a "feels like something's cramping along the sternum" and more of "someone stuck their fist into the left side of my rib cage and squeezed. My cholesterol readings are excellent as is my blood pressure. I don't eat as unhealthily as many people think. I exercise fairly regularly and I'm within my weight class. There probably isn't anything wrong, but how dumb will I feel if I guessed wrong? Heh... not at all since I'd probably be dead, but still.

No other real news, I guess. Still doing PbP games on Mutants and Masterminds. I'm enjoying myself. It's enough for now.

He took a foot to the face at 5 MPH

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:04:12 GMT

So, I'm really beginning to think that I'm just not well-suited for Capoeira. Practice wasn't horrible, although I still get tired and out of breath too quickly and I continue to have trouble with maintaining my balance on the kicks. Then, we did roda, the sparring circle. Except, it's not really sparring in the sense of most martial arts. It's kind of like a breakdance competition in some ways except that you do direct attacks at the other person, albeit without much force behind them and frequently intentionally kicking high when they duck. And I'm not used to that. Every other style I've done, you're not trying to hurt the other person, but you have to attack with intent. Here, I just can't seem to get the hang of it. Some of it's the inability to manage both the speed and the control. Even when I'm not directing any force into my kicks, it still has a fair amount of mass to it and to get my kicks above waist-high, I have to accelerate it a fair amount. If I try to take it slow, I just wind up getting tagged continuously in the ring and I'm told to do more. If I bring up the speed, I risk accidentally clocking someone. And when people jump in with a kick, my natural reaction is to defend myself and reflexes usually don't listen to the control side nearly as well. And there's other aspects too. I just don't get a lot of the movements. To paraphrase Zorba the Greek, "I think too much, boss." And when I just relax and let myself roll with it, that's when my combat instincts take over. Lastly, my endurance is lousy and that works against me for this style. There's a lot of extra movement in the style, dodging and flourishes, and I just can't do those if I want to be able to breathe when the attack comes in. My teacher once told me that the style emphasizes dodging over blocking or taking hits because you have to be ready to fight the next day. But, for me, if I try to do the dodges, I can't fight the guy I'm against now. Except, again, I'm thinking fighting and this is not fighting! Och! But the lack of endurance is hurting me on this issue too because as I get more tired, I drop further into my combat reflexes and it's harder to get my aching muscles to halt a kick in mid-motion because the other person forgot to dodge.

So, what happened today was that I was aiming a front kick at the guy and he dropped into a crouch. I don't know whether my foot dropped because I was trying to re-chamber to avoid over-extending or if Ijust automatically tracked the moving target, but I caught him lightly on the chin with my foot. Hitting people on the ground is a big no-no here (although I've never gotten a good answer for what one is supposed to do when the other person goes to ground), at least if you're still upright. I didn't mean to hit him at that. But it was just the topping of a night where my control was just not adequate. And, it may have been because I was already feeling down on myself for having accidentally tagged him, but I got the impression that no one believed me when I said it was an accident. Or maybe they just felt that it was an accident that would not have happened if I'd been adequately skilled. I don't know. Either way, this whole thing has got me a bit in the dumps. I'm going to keep going, of course — I signed a contract with them and I'm not going to throw away money — but I may have to make some decisions once the contract is up as to whether I want to continue. Maybe I'll try the Krav Maga school in the area.... won't do anything for removing combat reflexes, but maybe I'll take more to it. I really want to enjoy Capoeira. It's just... not agreeing with me.

Existential Angst

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:46:46 GMT

I am scared to death that I'm falling into mediocrity.

I guess I should add some context. Like most people, I want to believe that I'm something special, that there's a quality in me that people can see and admire. Moreover, there's a part of me that's convinced that somehow, I'm exceptional, that there's something in me that will make me famous, that will make a mark on the world. Every day, the belief in the latter dies a little more. I know that I do have good qualities. I'm fairly intelligent, I'm a decent programmer, and I'm good enough at singing that people will compliment me on it. Back when I practiced, I wasn't half bad at swing dancing. I've had people tell me that I'm good at listening to them, and that I've given good advice in the past. I'm good at revising papers, tuning them to make them better. *shakes head* I guess, at the core of it, I have unrealistic expectations, of myself, always have. Anything I do, there's something in the back of my mind saying that I could be exceptional, that one day my talent will be recognized, that I'll make that breakthrough that will put me in the books. And, well, I'm starting to realize that it's as rational as the bit in my mind that whispers that I could fly if I really believed that I could (for those worried about me, no, I don't get these thoughts near cliff edges or anything. :-p I may be irrational, but I'm not crazy). Best case is that I'll live an ordinary life. I'll have my job which I'll be adequate in. I'll have my hobbies which I'll be good enough at to enjoy. And, God willing, I'll have a loving wife and kids to dote upon and bring up to be good people.

And, I guess that's a major source of my angst. I'm having trouble holding onto that hope of finding the right girl. So many of my friends are married, having kids, living life in love. Me... it's been months at least since I last even had a date. I just can't seem to find the right girl. Or maybe, I've found the right girl, but I haven't realized, or I just haven't figured out how to let her into my life. Girls I've known in the past flash through my mind and there's this constant litany of "you should have tried" ringing through my mind. I know I have fairly high standards. I know that I have some rigid criteria. But goshdarnit... there has to be some Catholic musical theatrical drop-dead gorgeous redhead out there for me! :-p Heck, I'll settle for just the first so long as they understand that theater and music will always be part of my life. *sigh* Meh... keep on trying, right? It's the old door-to-door salesman adage, that if you try 10 doors and 9 get slammed in your face, you're still making one sale out of every ten. Thing is, in this case, you have to wedge your heart into that doorframe every time, knowing the door's probably going to get slammed into it, but you're never going to make the sale if you don't.

So... yeah. I want to be somebody. And really, I want to be that somebody for that one person. Whoever she is. And I wouldn't mind doing something great, something...

And... I probably should leave it at that, but one of my original points was that part of the problem with me doing great things is that I recognize in myself a certain laziness which precludes it, that I won't even have the chance to do something great unless I buckle down. And in my heart, I know that that is unlikely. So, ultimately, the failure is completely mine own. And I can't change that without being someone else.

Life... and Death

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:42:11 GMT

So, yeah... it's been a while. A lot has happened and I could probably write a decent-size entry about it. Instead, I'm going to sleep. Here's some life expectancy quiz results to tide you over.

Dead At 80

From Heart Attack

View my profile: FuzzyBoots

Find out when and why you'll die, take The Death Test!

Scientist / Velociraptor Slash

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:10:19 GMT

Somewhere out there, Randall Munroe just sat up in a cold sweat...

Was someone abducted?

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:27:37 GMT

Either I had some very strange dreams last night, or sometime in the early morning one of my neighbors got dragged kicking and screaming into an ambulance. At first, I thought I'd left the TV on, then remembered that I don't have cable and I've not set up rabbit ears (actually, rabbit ears probably don't work anymore what with digital broadcast, I guess...). And I didn't have the TV on last night, but it also randomishly turns on and changes channels (I suspect that one of my neighbors has a remote on the same frequency). Anyhow, once I realized it wasn't the TV and it wasn't the tape player (I'm in a habit of using self-made self-hypnosis scripts to help me relax and drift into sleep. I had one time where the tape I was using wasn't completely cleaned and I wound up with political commentary followed by a baby crying some minutes after the script had completed. That was weird to wake up to), I noticed that there were flashing lights through my curtain. I discreetly drew back the curtain (there's been a police action or two in the complex and I didn't want to get shot by mistake [yes, I know, paranoid and all]) and saw a police car pulled up beside, an EMT pulling a gurney out of the back of the ambulance, and some people standing by. The background noise was angry (female, I think) yelling and moaning, appropriate for a psychotic episode or maybe just bad alcohol poisoning (I've heard people sound like that when they're in that "puke up your guts over and over again and swear you'll never drink again" phase), and a fair amount of banging as if someone were running into walls and furniture. I considered stepping out and asking what I could do to help, but then decided that things were beyond my ken, closed the window, restarted my tape, and went back to sleep. In the morning, there was no sign that any of it had happened. Maybe I'll run into my neighbor and I can ask after it. *shrug*

In other news, I think I'm getting better at Capoeira once more. I still need to keep moving — I still have a tendency to plant myself and kick, then hold position to show the point — but I'm reacting a bit better to the incoming techniques. Midsummer rehearsals continue apace as well. The iambs are kicking my butt, but I've got a good chunk of the show memorized, I've got a handle on the character (or at least who I see him to be), and I'm slowly getting the music out of my voice (apparently, I have a bad habit of intoning rather than speaking). It proceeds well.

Bubbles: Like My Dreams They Fade and Die

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 10:23:08 GMT

I woke up this morning with three very important things gleaned from my dreams. I forgot all but one in the 30 seconds it took for me to sit up and get to my computer to note the three things down. And now, I'm wondering how to apologize to someone for a response I sent to a message I can't find any record of having received. {shakes head} I could say that I'm sorry, Kate, for being confused in my dream as to who you were and only realizing later in the dream, would it do any good? Would you ever see it?

It was a really weird set of dreams. I was back on my college campus (not entirely certain if it was Dayton or CMU) and a number of different things happened including me running into a girl who I'd met at orientation and had in another life (alternate pants leg in time?) very clumsily asked out. She changed features too, going from kind of short and plump with long blonde hair to short and skinny with short red hair. The facial shape changed too. In my waking hours, I don't remember who either is, although I have my suspicions. Oh, and at one point, I remember being in a kitchen and another point drinking some kind of a protein drink which might have been based on peanut brittle except that the bottles kept multiplying. Either that or I was drinking old stale bottles of it. It's all so disjointed now.

Another oddity, I woke up a few minutes before my alarm again, totally awake, but convincing myself it was too early and going back to bed. I like the fact that I'm waking up on time. Now I need to actually get up at that time.