Catalyst Castle

Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo is one of my favorite manga series. The title can be literally translated as "His and Her Circumstances", but is generally shortened to "Kare Kano" in both it's Japanese and English publications. The series ran 21 volumes in its American publication, and I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. There is a slow section in the middle of the series where the story gets sort of derailed as it explores the lives of various side-characters, but these side stories are also enjoyable in themselves, so it isn't a big deal to me. The main plot revolves around two high-school freshmen, a girl named Yukino Miyazawa and a boy named Arima Soichiro, who are both academic over-achievers. Their relationship starts out as a rivalry wherein the two of them compete for the highest grades in their school, but quickly turns into a budding romance.

I'll admit that this isn't a proper review of the manga, and it isn't meant to be. (If it were, I would have to mention that - while the art is beautiful - it is dreadfully dificult to tell certain characters apart at times. -_-;) I'm writing about the series for more personal reasons. To me one of the most powerful scenes in the series comes at the end of volume 9, when "Dark Arima" makes his dramatic and disturbing appearance. This is a personafication of Arima's doubt and self-loathing that gradually lures him into depression and a self-destructive frame of mind. The scene really struck a cord with me when I first read the series as a teen, and in the last few weeks I think I've had a few encounters with my own "Dark Arima". It's comforting (and not too much of a spoiler) to know that Arima eventually overcomes these feelings with the help of loving friends and family and grows up to have a happy life as a husband and a father - even if he does end up getting shot and killed during the series' only action scene. (Again, not really a spoiler - and an intentionally misleading one at that. ^_^)

Saturday, March 26th, we had the spring cleaning of our Kingdom Hall. I didn't get any sleep the night before, so I was super tired by the time the work was wrapping up, but I did manage to keep going most of the day. Here are some photos I snapped throughout the day.

In early January I wrote a short story called The Most Precious Gift about a teenage girl named Dorothy whose mother died giving birth to her. The story was inspired by a conversation my sister Heather and I had spurred on by an article in Awake magazine on the subject of abortion. Shortly afterward I did a pencil sketch of the troubled protagonist. The sketch sat around for a few months, and just this evening I finally took the time to scan it and do some digital coloring for it. Here are both my original sketch and the finished product. Please feel free to leave any comments on the art and the story (if you've read it).

In late 2002 a very unique show aired on television called Firefly. This sci-fi show featured strong western motifs as it followed the lives of a crew of renegades operating a mercenary ship on the fringes of space. The stories were well told, the characters had depth, and the dialog was tightly written. Unfortunately, the show was short lived at only fourteen episodes. A movie sequel called Serenity was released in 2005, and the story has also been expanded through two graphic novels. Even with the relatively small extent of this franchise, its creators have been able to depict a setting rich in flavor and texture. They've provided just enough for a creative fan to build on and imagine their own stories set in the 'verse of Firefly and Serenity.

That's why it was very cool that they released the Serenity Role Playing Game. As a fan of the setting, and of roleplaying, a couple of years ago I got some of my siblings and friends together to play. We created our own characters to crew our own Firefly-class starship and had some pretty cool adventures together. A few months ago, I got to thinking that it could be very fun and interresting to turn our adventures into a series of short stories, and even expand on them. I'm calling this new "spin-off" series Flyin'. This title is taken from an exchange of dialog between two characters in the pilot episode of the original show.

Simon: Are you always this sentimental? 
Mal: I had a good day.
Simon: You had the Alliance on you, criminals and savages... half the people on the ship have been shot or wounded including yourself, and you're harboring known fugitives. 
Mal: We're still flying. 
Simon: That's not much. 
Mal: It's enough.

To me, that exchange summerizes pretty well the main theme of the show. It's about people living rugged, dangerous lives, and barely scraping by. For many of them, if they're still flying that's good enough.

So, as I set out to begin writing these stories, I found that I was having some difficulty getting a handle on four of the characters I would be writing about, since they were invented by my siblings and friends while we played the roleplaying game, rather than being my own creations. I got the idea to draw illustrations of each of the seven main characters, and I've found that in doing so I've been able to get a better grasp on the characters. So, here below I'm sharing what might be considered an ad of sorts diplaying the main cast of my stories along with the title of the series (click for full view).

Hey, I've posted some photos from our recent anime party here.

Enjoy!

On June 20th, 2009, I organized a group of 16 brothers and sisters from our congregation in Lake Mary, FL to go up to Keystone Heights to help with the preaching work there. Keystone Heights is a small, rural area near Gainsville. There were only 5 local publishers who met with us. Their congregation is small in relation to their territory, so they really need the help. I worked with my brother Aaron and my sister Heather in the morning. We had a lot of fun and were able to speak to quite a few people. Other groups had even more success. One brother and sister started a Bible study. For the most part their were very few bad experiences, though one young brother got chased by a dog, and another one got chased by a parrot. Here is a picture of some of the group breaking for lunch:

March 26-29 I was in Pennsylvania for my friend Jonathan Hauk’s wedding. While I was there I stayed with my grandfather and my brother David, and was able to visit with some other family and friends as well. The weather while I was there was comfortable temperature wise, but very gloomy and rainy the whole time.

Friday I got to hang out with Jonathan for most of the day, helping him run some errands and set up the reception hall before the wedding. I also me his bride on Friday. Her name is Shu-Hui. She is a native of Taiwan, but she’s been living in the US for a while now and she speaks pretty good English. I didn’t get to talk to her too much, but she seems like a really nice person.

Saturday was the wedding. It was very nice – very simple. The reception was simple and elegant as well. Jonathan gave a brief slide presentation of their recent trip to Taiwan where he proposed to her. I was impressed by the degree of attention Jonathan gave to creating an Asian theme at the reception. He even had the chairs specially imported from Taiwan.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable weekend, and a very nice wedding. I wish Jonathan and Shu-Hui the best, and I’m sure they’ll be happy together.

I had the pleasure of attending a costume party last Sunday evening. It was put on by Joshua and Hannah Frye. The occasion was that Josh is moving to the Miami area, and he wanted one last party with a bunch of his friends. Josh and I used to be good friends when we were around 10-12 years old. Since then we’d grown apart as our interests changed. I hadn’t done anything with him or his family in years, but it was nice of him to think of me on this occasion, and it was cool to hang out with them again.

So, first, the costumes: I went as some kind of medieval nobleman/warrior. Heather went as a medieval forest-ranger/archer. We didn’t exactly plan it that way, but our costumes matched really well. Hannah was Marie Antoinette. Josh was… something. His costume consisted of all black clothing, a black London Fog-style coat, and spiky, gray hair. When pressed for an answer as to who or what he was supposed to be, he finally answered with “Myself, 2 million years from now, when my powers have fully developed.” The rest of the costumes of the 20-or-so guests covered a wide range of characters including Don Quixote, the Invisible Man, a couple of evil clown minions, and a Zombie Caesar.


The evening was never boring, as the Fryes had 3 activities for us to do. The first activity was a Lego building contest. The party guests split into 2 groups. Each group got a bucket of Legos and 10 minutes to build something. 3 judges compared the creations for creativeness, etc. My team won, though it had little to do with me. ^_^

The second activity was an elaborate treasure hunt, which featured several well-written and well-hidden clues. The Fryes definitely have a knack for theatrics. They placed CD players in trees and on roofs playing creepy music to add mood to the night-time, out-door treasure hunt. Some of the clues were pretty challenging to find and to follow. I was very close to actually finding the treasure, but in the end, someone else beat me to it. The treasure turned out to be a wooden chest full of candy. The victors were kind enough to share. Yum!

The third activity was a costume contest. Everyone had gotten the chance to admire each others’ costumes over the course of the evening, and towards the end we all voted on which one we thought was best. Hannah won for her big, fluffy dress, and her elaborate hairdo. It was really well done. Josh told me afterwards that I was the runner-up.

Somewhere in there, there was another “activity” of sorts. While everyone was just standing around chatting, Josh suddenly put the lights out, there was a scream, and when the lights came back on one of the guests was lying on the floor pretending to be dead. Josh then moved around the room, accusing various people of the murder in an inspector-like fashion, until one of the other guests finally admitted to the murder in a dramatic/comical way. I’m not sure if all of this was staged ahead of time (the “culprit” was in on it), or if the idea was to just toss accusations around until someone came up with a funny improv confession. I really don’t know. I should probably ask. But as I write this it gives me the idea to write some simple rules for playing out such a scenario as a rules-light role-playing game. Hmm… Interesting possibilities.

Well, that’s that. It was a fun evening. I hope everything goes well for Josh in Miami, and hopefully I’ll have even more chances to cosplay in the future.

It’s been a while ago now, but I wanted to share some quick thoughts about my most recent trip to Keystone Heights, Florida. On November 8th, I went with about 20 brothers and sisters to help the congregation there cover some of their seldom-worked territory in the recent tract campaign.

Aaron and I worked with Dena O’Brian and a couple of other local sisters in rugged, rural territory. The roads were crazy! We actually had to go up and down hills in Florida! Some of the roads were only made of very loose sand, so Dena had to kick in the 4-wheel drive to get through. When the SUV started fishtailing in the sand it felt like the “Dinosaur” ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It was fun. I didn’t have much success in the territory (I got to speak to a couple of Russellites, which was interesting but unproductive.), but Aaron had a good call on a man with whom he placed a tract, magazines, and a Bible Teach book.

Around noon time, the whole group met back at the O’Brians’ place and had a picknick lunch together. While the rest of the group began the 2-hour drive back to Lake Mary, Aaron and I continued in service for another few hours and then spent the night at Brian and Dena’s place. After attending their meeting the next day and going out for lunch, we headed back home. All-in-all, it was a good weekend.

This is a post to consider my activities over the past month, and identify trends in how I spend my time. My idea was to do this after 4 weeks, but I accidentally let a 5th week slip by.

Here are the top 10 activities I spent the most time on in the last 5 weeks:

1. Sleeping
2. Work
3. Theocratic Activities
4. Reading
5. Movies/Shows
6. RPG Preparation
7. Housework
8. Card/Board Games
9. RPG Play
10. Blog/Wiki

A few observations about those:

I'd like it if I could have RPG Prep time no greater than RPG play time. Doing so requires that I get more efficient and more disciplined about how I prep, and not over-prep. I have a feeling that I'll never get this where I want to though because, honestly, I like fiddling with RPG systems, building character stats, and detailing story ideas.

I was surprised how much time I spent on housework, because it never feels like I spend that much time on it. I guess that's good though. I suppose that it's spread out enough that I don't really feel like it imposes on my life.

It's a shame that writing doesn't even appear in my top 10 activities, because I enjoy it so much. Actually it's been hard to write with family visiting, because more activity in the house makes it harder to concentrate on writing. Not that I'm in a hurry to get rid of them, but hopefully my writing will increase when my family has finished their visit.


Now, the whole purpose of logging my time was so that I could see how I was using it and make adjustments where necessary. So here is a summary of some of the adjustments I've made over the last 5 weeks. The first week my theocratic activities only tied for 3rd place with reading. This past week they were firmly in 3rd place, with reading in 4th. My time spent reading has varied from one week to another, but overall it hasn't decreased much. So, I've actually been able to increase my theocratic activities. Work has been picking up, so I'm spending more time on that than I was 5 weeks ago, and my housekeeping has increased slightly. Other than that, not much has changed, at least not drastically.


So, what now? Over the next few weeks I'd like to continue raising my theocratic activities by maintaining and increasing my spiritual routine, especially in the areas of personal study and field service. Thanks reading my weekly time logs. I encourage everyone to try keeping a similar log. You'll be amazed how it can effect your productivity.

This post is coming a little late because I've been busy. Here's my report for last week. It wasn't as great as the previous week, but it was OK.

The biggest disappointment was that I didn't get out in service at all. Also, I missed 1 day of personal study. My theocratic activities still held third place amongst all of my activities though, right after sleeping and work. Reading was a pretty close fourth, and movies/shows and housework tied for fifth.

While I did miss service last week, I guess I can still be happy that, overall, I didn't let my spiritual activities drop below third place. That means I spent more time on personal study and meeting preparation to make up for it. I'm not entirely sure why I missed service both Thursday and Saturday, but I suppose a big factor might be my sleeping schedule. Sleep has been a bit erratic for me lately.

My brother Brian and his wife Cherie finished their visit last week, however, and my brother David will be leaving tomorrow. While I enjoy their company, I know that their presence disrupted my schedule somewhat. Hopefully things will begin to stabilize more soon.

In the coming weeks I need to refocus on service and personal study in order to keep up my spiritual routine.

This post is coming a little late, but I just haven't had a chance to do any blogging lately, mostly due to visiting family.

Last week was GREAT. Once again, I managed to put my theocratic activities firmly in third place (after sleeping and work), and I met a couple of other goals which included getting out in field service twice and doing some personal study each day.

Here are a few more observations:

Sleep was very irregular last week. I still got a little more than 50 hours of sleep through out the week, but it was like, 6 hours two days in a row, and then 10 hours, and then 5 and a half, etc. I'm not sure what that means, it's just an observation.

Reading was a big activity last week with 13 hours devoted to it. That's quite a bit of time, but since my theocratic activities went so well I'm not too worried about it. I'm finding that a big part of balancing my schedule is just making sure I get spiritual activities done instead of putting them off while I waste time, rather than cutting back on anything in particular.

One sad note about last week is that I got no role playing in all week. Oh well. I still had a lot of fun doing stuff with my family.