I am back with an update. I seem to go through cycles of posting every year or two.

I have been very busy working. Things are going really well and I have some interesting opportunities that I am pursuing. My Kona coffee spa line has been a big success. Plus, it is fun to create something that you really enjoy. It also gives me something to do with the coffee & espresso grounds! I have also been spending a lot of time working on developing a clothing line (just tees for now) to accent the handbags, jewelry, and footwear that I have been creating. I think I am really going for a “lifestyle company” concept. It is great fun…

Not much else is going on right now - things are just sailing along smoothly. Alternatively, I have been working so much that I haven’t paid attention to much else! At any rate, things are going well.

I just finished reading Cyrano de Bergerac and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I enjoyed Cyrano greatly and disliked Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It is most certainly not Lawrence’s greatest work. Why do most people actually enjoy it? I thought it was extraordinarly shallow and lacked the depth that The Rainbow had in great amounts. I still think The Rainbow is his finest work only equaled by Women in Love. Sons and Lovers was very good but it was not of the same caliber as The Rainbow. Any opinions or thoughts?

The only other thing that I have been doing is creating new and unusual beads and strange art with polymer clay. I will have to post some of the things that I have been creating. I am thinking about getting into making stained glass. I talked with a stained glass artist and he passed along some suppliers and other people to talk to about it. It seems like it would be very interesting. Unfortunately, I don’t have a kiln so I would not be able to do some of the things I would want to do. I might think about getting into using a torch. We shall see!

I did have to check myself into the hospital last week for some tests.  That was a thrill.  I was having some gall bladder pain (definitely not the first time) and went to the doctor to chat about it.  They did a ton of blood work and sent me to get an ultrasound of my gall bladder.  That was a total waste of time.  The idiotic technician at the hospital spent an hour and a half probing my abdomen and she couldn’t locate my gall bladder!  She found my liver, spleen, kidneys, and stomach.  She even built a 3d model of my internal organs but she could not locate my gall bladder.  She asked me twice if I was there because I had it removed!  She also lost my file and had to go search for it.  She did the ultrasound in some hallway with a half curtain - I had to get undressed in front of people!  It was my first time at the delightful Hilo hospital and hopefully my last time.  When she finished the ultrasound she did not know what she was supposed to do with me.  She said she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to take me to the surgeon for a consultation or if she was supposed to release me.  She decided to release me since she couldn’t find my gall bladder and therefore it must not be a problem!  That place is a hell hole.  Anyway, I did all of my labs and I am waiting for the surgeon to call me and setup an appointment.  Of course, I will never let anyone cut me open on this island for any reason.  They would kill me.  In the mean time, the doctor said I could develop gangrene of my gall bladder from the chronic swelling and infection.  Or I might already have it…  Good times!

Anyone else taking up any new and fun hobbies? Anything exciting going on? Any interesting politics, books, or information to discuss?

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The Latin translations of the Harry Potter books (Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets) Harrius Potter Et Philosophi Lapis and Harrius Potter Et Camera Secretorum do indeed exist. Brian actually gave me both of them as a gift for my Adoption Day and for my company launch this weekend. I will be adding both books to my current bedside reading pile which is about three feet tall right now.  I also happen to know that I will be getting the authoritative Viking history book I have been waiting for since July when Brian bought it for the other part of my Adoption Day gift.  I am quite excited about reading that…

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I started reading Loop Group by Larry McMurtry and I am nearly finished with the book.  I picked it up for $1 at the Borders Clearance Sale and since I have enjoyed Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo, Terms of Endearment, Boone’s Lick, Buffalo Girls, Comanche Moon, and Dead Man’s Walk I thought that chances were good that I would like this book.  The answer is an overwhelming no.  This is another book from the female perspective (like Terms of Endearment) but he does an absolutely terrible job.  Essentially, the book is about a 60 year old sex-crazed woman who lives in Hollywood and runs a loop group full of drug addicts.  She has three bratty and selfish daughters all over 30 and they have all have very shallow relationships with each other.  None of these women can have a normal relationship and the men they are married to are all idiots.  Also, all the women in the story seem to be sex-crazed.  The 60 year old “protagonist” has the hots for her 80+ year old psychiatrist who is apparently into S&M - complete with descriptions which I could have gone my whole life without reading.  I can only surmise that this book is the writing of a man who overdosed on Viagra because I can come up with no other reason why McMurtry would have written this horrible book.

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I am thinking of beginning to study Finnegans Wake again but this time I shall use the Annotations to Finnegans Wake  to provide the sort of information one might gain from reading the book with a Joyce scholar or a large group.  It should prove to be interesting.  In the interim I am continuing to read the rest of Lawrence and Joyce’s works.

More later - I am busy.

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After reading Volume I of the Sherlock Holmes tales I moved onto Volume II and began the ever popular Hound of the Baskervilles.  It is probably my least favorite novella of the series since Dr. Watson is really the main character.  I could see the appeal for most people since Dr. Watson (ISFJ) is far more approachable than Holmes (INTJ).  It is really not until the end that Holmes makes an official appearance and then it is only to explain the who, what, when & where to all parties involved.  I prefer the tales of Holmes and Moriarty to these silly stories though.

I seem to be strangely sleepy today.  More sleep is required.  More later…

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We are all INTJs, that is what.

I have had a growing interest in Sherlock Holmes (as I have mentioned in a previous post) and I have been reading all of the short stories and novellas written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Brian and I have also watched The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 5 DVD set and it is quite excellent.  I have much enjoyed reading the stories and then see them play out on film.  In some ways the film version is entirely different because it is not so much from the perspective of Watson like the books are - this does give the watcher an advantage in being able to more closely follow along in the story and it provides more clues earlier on in the story.

I also happened upon  a discussion thread on how most villains in stories seem to be INTJs while the hero tends to be ISTJ or INTP.   I found this to be  a bit of interesting speculation.  Brian and I were just discussing how it is interesting that both Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty are both INTJs who have profound respect for the other’s intellect but at the same time they are both the other’s arch nemesis.  It is clear that one has chosen ‘good’ and the other ‘evil’ and they fight it out at Riechenbach Falls.  As I mentioned to Brian - INTJs seem to fight it out amongst one another but assert dominance over other types.  Really, this is the reason I stay away from INTJ message boards and discussion groups.  This is really the sort of thing I would like to have a conversation with another INTJ about but INTJs almost as a rule seem to hate each other and are almost unable to have a cohesive and useful conversation with one another.

I also find this sort of thing interesting because I (and Brian too) are interested in INTP and INTJ interactions since almost nothing exists about how these two types function together.  I think at one time we had discussed making a profile of INTP and INTJ interactions…

More later, on some topics…

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Yesterday, while we were in Kona I bought a book called “The Sexual Politics of Meat” by Carol J. Adams.  She has a very interesting viewpoint on vegetarianism and feminism.  She basically thinks that one theory cannot exist without the other (successfully).  She was the winner of the Continuum Women’s Studies Award for this book.  I have only read a small portion of the book thus far but some of her arguments seem a bit far-fetched to me.  I hardly think using the book “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott and referring to the father character justifies her argument.  Namely, that the father was a vegetarian and did not wish to enslave animals to do work so he made the family move to a communal farm to do work but he did not quite have the desire to actually do manual labor so he left the women to do the work - in a sense enslaving them.  However, this is fiction!  I can see her point about feminism and vegetarianism going hand in hand in many ways.  Vegetarianism is inherently anti-patriarchal because of associations with men/meat/hunters and women/vegetables/gatherers.  However, I think these notions are absurd for society today.

I doubt every feminist cares about animals and I doubt that every animal rights activist cares about feminism and most would not see the other group as being vital to their cause.  This is really the same issue with First Wave Feminism and the abolitionist movement.  Initially, it was a fine pairing until it all went sour out of anger and jealousy.  Will the same thing not occur if animals are “liberated” while so many women are not?  I suppose a bigger question to ask is who should be liberated first:  women or animals?  And what is animal liberation?  Does that mean everyone is vegan and bears run through our living room and the family dog is set free?

Just random thoughts on random topics…

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Brian and I have just started to read/decipher Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. It is most interesting and we are going to work on it one page at a time so we can chronicle our thoughts, findings, and summaries in a journal. We are also still discussing the Voynich Manuscript around here. It seems that things have taken a turn towards the more esoteric around here…

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I have been reading an interesting book called, “Who Stole Feminism?” by Christina Hoff Sommers. It is interesting because she claims to promote gender equality rather than gender inequality and female superiority. Sadly, it seems as though the women’s movement has taken a more disturbing turn in the last forty years since Second Wave Feminism began…

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Today I spent most of the day “celebrating” my birthday with my lovely family. Since I’m adopted I have two birthdays, one in June and another in September, which is my adoption day. Today, I went to the melting pot for dinner and now I’m cleaning my office. Of all the things I could be doing, I’m doing that. I was reading a good bit of Sartre today, it’s his fiction novel, “Nausea.” It’s a great read, I highly suggest it, I’ll be posting an opinion and synopsis in my reading section soon along with the other books I choose to post. Since I am cleaning so much this will leave me a great deal of time to work and update the site as well. I know I’ve been procrastinating about it a great deal but I am going to upload all the things I worked on while on my trip.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Today I spent most of the day “celebrating” my birthday with my lovely family. Since I’m adopted I have two birthdays, one in June and another in September, which is my adoption day. Today, I went to the melting pot for dinner and now I’m cleaning my office. Of all the things I could be doing, I’m doing that. I was reading a good bit of Sartre today, it’s his fiction novel, “Nausea.” It’s a great read, I highly suggest it, I’ll be posting an opinion and synopsis in my reading section soon along with the other books I choose to post. Since I am cleaning so much this will leave me a great deal of time to work and update the site as well. I know I’ve been procrastinating about it a great deal but I am going to upload all the things I worked on while on my trip.

Popularity: 10% [?]