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Day Three Hundred and One: The Sweetest Sauce
Iris had never understood why first dates were dreaded the way they were. Her friends talked about them like they were some kind of combat ritual, some horror show that had to be endured so that they might enter the realms of the mighty who had boyfriends and girlfriends. They traded stories about they guys who were too clingy, the ones who were too rough, the girls who were too shy or too loud, and each and every one of them just reinforced their ideas that the world was full of miserable, deranged sociopaths who wanted nothing more than to destroy a lovely evening out.
All she knew at this point was that she wouldn't be able to tell stories about this date to her friends. "Yeah, he was really nice and we had a good time" would fall flat.
It was the truth, though. She'd met Lloyd at the post office, of all places, waiting in line behind an old woman who apparently wanted to send birthday cards to all of her grandchildren at once and with excruciating care. He and Iris had gotten to chatting about how this was such a first-world problem, and she told him about the time she had to wait a whole extra half hour at the DMV and he lamented about the cable company never coming when they promised, and they really hit it off. By the time they picked up their respective packages, he had her number, and called a couple of days later for a date.
They met at Javaville, because coffee shops were considered neutral ground, and talked about themselves over drinks. A few people waved at him when he came in, which was good. She got her coffee black, his was a soy milk latte, and she took a chance with some routine she'd heard from a comedian on TV a few years ago.
"You know that's not soy milk, right?" she said.
He lifted an eyebrow. It looked good on him.
"Milk," she went on, "has to come from a mammal, right? And last time I looked, soybeans didn't lactate."
He thought about this and nodded. "I suppose you're right," he said. "But then we'd have to call it 'soy juice,' and no one in their right mind would drink soy juice." He winked and sipped at his latte. Iris suspected he had seen the same comedian, because that was pretty much the punchline to the joke. If he had, though, he didn't call her on it.
They walked through the Hortus, the vast park in the center of the city. It was a lovely spring day and the water lilies were in bloom, making it almost tailor-made for a romantic first date. He walked close to her, but not too close, and talked about himself without seeming self-obsessed. In turn, Iris told stories about what she had done and where she had been, and didn't try to crib from comedians anymore.
It wasn't a date she could gripe about with her friends, but that was okay. She'd take this.
They ended the day at dinner, at a restaurant he promised was the best in the city. She stood in front of the chalkboard for a good minute and a half trying to work out the name of the place. Lloyd let her try it out a few times before he grinned and said, "It's 'Yggdrasillusions.'" He shrugged. "The owner has a thing for Norse mythology. Most of us just call it 'Iggy's' to keep things simple." He walked over and opened the door. "Ladies first?"
The restaurant was green. Really green. There were plants everywhere – hanging from the ceiling, growing in window boxes, and even vines crawling up the rough-hewn wooden walls. The restaurant smelled of heavy spices and loam, and light jazzy music piped in through speakers overhead. Young, pretty waitresses weaved through tables where couples and threesomes and foursomes were eating and chatting and laughing. Lloyd waved to a few people and patted some shoulders as they went to their table. Everyone seemed to know him, and they smiled when they saw him, all of which struck Iris as a good sign. Not how she was usually greeted when she walked into a place, but she'd take it.
The waitress was at their table as soon as they sat down. "Hi," she said. "I'm Emili, and our specials tonight are a raw Mediterranean pesto torta, portabello burgers, and the chef's special kale and spinach lasagna." She beamed. "It's really good, I had some for lunch today."
"Thanks, Emili," Lloyd said. "Give us a minute?"
Emili nodded and handed them menus before gliding off to help someone else. As Iris leafed through the menu, she felt her stomach grow cold. A sneaking suspicion was winding its way though her mind, and each dish she read off the menu seemed to confirm it. After a few minutes she looked up at Lloyd. "Is this a vegan restaurant?" she asked.
Lloyd smiled. "Best in the city," he said. His smile wavered. "Is… that is okay, isn't it?"
She wanted to tell him that it wasn't okay. It wasn't remotely okay. She wanted to tell him that an otherwise lovely first date had suddenly turned into the inevitable horrible endurance trial her friends talked about, where she could see if she could get through the next hour and a half without being sick. Or going mad.
But she didn't. "No," she said. "No, it's fine." She smiled back at him, but she suspected Lloyd knew something was wrong.
They started off with a mountain vegetable tempura, accompanied by two different dipping sauces – one a spicy chili and the other a sweet plum sauce. Lloyd raved about them and told her about the time he tried to get the recipe off the chef, and how that had led him to a whole weird series of bets and bargains. To Iris, they tasted like chalk. Bland, flavorless bits that vanished from her memory as soon as she swallowed them.
The main course was a spicy chana masala, one of several Indian dishes that were on the menu. Emili told them about how the restaurant owner had gotten that recipe from a man he met while backpacking in India and how they were the only restaurant in the city to serve it. Lloyd clearly loved it, barely stopping to talk as he ate. Emili brought over some lychee-soy milk drinks and said they were on the house.
Iris picked at her food until she realized she was picking at it. She didn't want to be That Date, the one he told stories about to his friends – Yeah, I brought her to my favorite place and she just nibbled at the food – so she scooped up spoonfuls and tried her best to look like she was enjoying herself. It went down like the flavorless pap they gave to babies and old people. There was no substance to it, no energy, and she wasn't even sure it reached her stomach. The only thing even remotely good was the wine, but she suspected it was made from organic grapes by the thinness and emptiness of its flavor.
After a dessert of non-dairy ice cream and some coffee, Lloyd sat back, looking full and happy. "This really is a great place," he said. "I'd come here every night if I could."
Iris forced herself to smile and hoped her stomach wouldn't growl. "Thanks for sharing it with me," she said. There was a moment of awkward silence. "I do need to know, though – do you come here because the food is good, or because you're vegan?"
He shrugged. "Any reason it can't be both?" he asked. "The food's great, and no animals died to get it to us. Win-win." He sipped at his coffee. "Thanks for having an open mind about this, by the way," he said. "I think you'll find that vegan food is better than anything else you've eaten, and you'll have a clean conscience in the end to boot."
Iris nodded, and knew that there would be no second date.
He paid for dinner, although she tried to go in for half. He walked with her to the subway station and took her hand as they waited for his train. He'd had a really good time, and he'd definitely call her again. Soon. He promised. Iris tried not to let the mask slip and just said, "That would be nice."
He waved to her as the subway pulled out. She waved back, once.
When the train was out of sight, she went back up aboveground and headed to the nearest SmackyBurger just a few blocks away.
The kid at the counter welcomed her to SmackyBurger, but she cut him off.
"Gimme a super-double burger with bacon." She took a twenty out of her wallet. "Throw a couple of extra patties on there and this is yours." The young man didn't even hesitate to take the money.
Three minutes and forty-five seconds later, Iris was sitting in a booth and took a great, jaw-cracking bite of her burger.
The cows that had been slaughtered to make this burger had lived short and uneventful lives. Memories of packed bodies and chemical-laden feed flooded over her tongue and almost made her moan. The darkness of the slaughterhouse, the smell of blood and that last moment of realization before oblivion all washed over her, and within moments, she was licking her fingers. She went back up and ordered a chicken filet sandwich. This one was better than the first. The birds had been raised in a battery farm, kept in cages only slightly bigger than they were. They knew only suffering until the last moment of their lives, and that suffering, that knowledge of horror was what filled Iris' stomach. The energy of fear and hopelessness and pain rushed through her. The world became vivid, alive.
No block of tofu had ever watched a farmer come at it with an axe. No carrot had ever smelled the blood of its brothers on the killing floor and been unable to run. No bean sprout had ever struggled for life, caged in with hundreds of competitors who wanted it dead.
Iris needed that suffering, that pain. She didn't know why, but she knew what she liked. And she was pretty sure Lloyd wouldn't understand.
She finished the chicken sandwich, wiped her hands on a napkin, and left the restaurant. She wasn't sure how she would spin this into a first date horror story, but she was sure it would be better than the truth.
Day One Hundred and Ninety-seven: The City of Trees
For the month of December, I'll be world-building. This means taking a look at the people, places, and institutions that I have created over the last six months and trying to figure out more about them. This will involve a look at the stories in which they've appeared, and then some speculation, stream-of-consciousness writing, and with any luck a few revelations. In addition, I may come back and add new material as the Elves in my unconscious ship out new ideas, so I'll be sure to link them up.
Your feedback as readers is, of course, more than welcome. There are probably questions that I'm forgetting to ask and holes that I need to fill.
Wish me luck!
Well, I was going to use my day off to carefully compile all possible information about Sylvania City today, but I chose to use my precious time off to nap and play Puzzle Pirates. [1] Still, even with that, I'm getting off to an earlier start than usual this evening, so let's see what we can come up with for our City of Trees!
Now there is a certain peril, in my mind, in building a city, and that is that I am not China Miéville. A lot of authors have come up with a lot of cities – the Wikipedia entry for Fictional Cities and Towns is a tour of some fantastic stories, but for pure detail and precision in construction, the gold has to go to Miéville. His city of New Crobuzon is the main character in his book, Perdido Street Station, no matter how many other walking cacti, bug-headed women, or dream-eating moths he puts into it. So that's pretty much my high bar right there. The downside, of course, is that he sometimes gets so immersed in his city that the story slows down to a crawl. Something to be wary of.
Here are the stories that either take place in or mention Sylvania City, and what they say about it:
45: Sleeper
- The Sylvania Hortus
- "It covered a thousand acres in the middle of the city and was home to every kind of growing thing that would survive there. There were lakes and ponds, rose gardens and wildflower hills and running tracks and vast lawns that were full of people on any halfway decent day. It was called The Green Heart of the City, and everyone who lived there said it was the biggest reason they stayed."
- a portal from the Hell Dimension opened up there at one point. Probably closed by the Custodes Omnium.
58: A New Order
- Sylvania University
- a few thousand students
- home to the Ordum Sylvanius, a secret student organization
125: Summoned
- Neil Tapscott resides at 454 Ingersoll Lane
- There is an Acton Informatics branch there
- or maybe even the headquarters?
135: Special Agent Khrys Ferro 3
- It has at least one "rich suburb," which was home to the leader of the Sons of Nazis, Dion Prospero.
- There's a branch office for the Department of National Security.
162: A Day Out
- It has a bus system that extends at least out into the suburbs of the city.
- Bemrich Circle is one of the more touristy areas of the city.
- "Sylvania wasn't the largest of cities – nothing like New York or Boston or Corsair – but it had an eclectic spirit all its own. The downtown was full of people and buses and cars, little bookstores and restaurants and huge national department stores."
- There's a coffee chain called Javaville. It has yet to appear in any other story, so it may be local. Or not, who knows?
- The Edles River
- new walking park built there the year before
- The Finamore Museum of Art
- was holding a Picasso exhibition in this story
- The Denton department store
- has a cafe on the top floor, overlooking the city.
- The Hortus
- a giant park in the center of the city
- museums along the sides
- it has a fountain that can serve as a landmark
169: Water Whispers
- The Edles River Aquanaut Museum
Okay, so that's all the factual information we have about Sylvania City, unless I missed something. Everything from this point out is whatever the Elves give me. God help us all.
I imagine the city being up in the Pacific Northwest, probably because of all the trees and greenery. One of the problems with fictional cities, of course, is where to put them, especially if you want to keep all the real cities around just in case. For example, DC Comics has New York City, in addition to two New York analogues – Gotham City and Metropolis. They just manage to avoid ever really pinning down exactly where they are, leaving the terms very general. Gotham is an East Cost city I believe, while Metropolis is in the Midwest (unless you watch the movie, in which case it's just replaced New York).
So where to put Sylvania? Looking at a map of Washington and Oregon, I need a place with a river and the potential for lots of trees. The best candidate (after a quick bit of Google mapping) is right about where Raymond, Washington is. Sorry, Raymondites, but you have what I need. Everyone out!
Now we run into our first real-world problem: space. The real Raymond, WA is a small town of less than 5 square miles, because it's built between the loving arms of the Willapa River. I imagine the Hortus itself being about twice the size of Central Park, which would pretty much eat up most of that space in which Raymond now sits. So we need to do a little editing and move some of those pesky mountains back a ways until we have enough land around the Willapa/Edles to have both a city and a giant park. Also, I want to clean up with Willapa tributary system a bit, as it makes the land a wee bit swampy.
In yesterday's post, I mentioned it "wasn't founded until just before the American Civil War." I have this image in my head that it was founded by an early Utopian community, which started to get rolling in the 1820s on the East Coast, so I figure it wasn't impossible for one to spring up on the West. What we have, then, is this community of Utopians who arrive in this nice, green place in the 1850s or so, look at all the rivers and trees and mountains and say, "We want to build a city here." And they do.
This is a nature-worshipping community, and its governing council declares that the city must have a park in its heart. They chose the area between the two major branches of the Edles and declared it to be the Sylvania Hortus, preserved in perpetuity for the people of Sylvania. The rest of the city was built across the river from it and eventually the city swallowed the park entirely. But the town founders' intent was honored, and the Hortus has remained a green sanctuary for its citizens for over a century and a half.
Of course, utoipias [2] don't tend to last long, and when that community finally realized that Mother Earth wasn't going to provide for them, a more sensible group of people took over. Sylvania became a logging center, acting as a key shipping port in the Northwest. Logging money brought more people and industry, especially when mines were opened up in the surrounding mountains that brought out copper, zinc, and especially the Finamore gold mines, which was one of the largest gold deposits in the state. That's in addition to other mineral deposits, such as schist, olivine and some marble. Between the earth and the trees, and a river that was rapidly engineered to make shipping easier, Sylvania soon became a large and wealthy city.
The Finamore-Denton Feud – Okay, wow, that just popped into my head. Thanks, Elves!
I mentioned the Finamore gold mines up above, and the wealth of that family allowed them to do a lot for the city, including found an art museum. The Denton department store was founded by another very rich family, but they were a later addition. They arrived about a generation after the Finamores struck it rich, and made their money mainly through the Denton Shipping Company. The Finamores had goods to send out, and the Dentons had the means to ship them. They should have been allies at the very least, and for a while they were. Until… something happened. It could be something as simple as an unintentional slight, or one family member bad-mouthing another. Feuds have started for stupider reasons than that.
What it meant for Sylvania was that it was the battleground for two very rich families at the end of the 19th century. Instead of shooting each other in the street, however, the two families moved to simply out-do each other in construction and renovations around the city. Something of that old utopian spirit must have remained, because the feud resulted in the museum, several department stores, modernization of the Hortus, a zoo, and the expansion of Sylvania University into one of the largest universities in the state. That's not including the general improvements to the city infrastructure, waterways, and the installation of the city's first power grid.
This is not to say that there wasn't violence. It was just done in a very gentlemanly manner and kept off the front pages of new newspapers, since each family owned at least one of them.
The feud ended during World War I. Both families lost sons to that war, and that seemed to have been a good tall glass of perspective for both of them. There was no ceremony or official exchange of hostages or anything. The feud just stopped. The modernization of the city slowed down some, but never really stopped. The modern feel of the city, mixed with its deep connection to the natural world, attracted artists, writers, and musicians. By the time of World War II, the city was a breeding ground for new music and art, and produced some of the most influential artists of its day.
In the twenty-first century, other cities have surpassed Sylvania as modern and forward-moving, but the city continues on at its own pace, with a population just over 500,000 people, and several suburbs that add another hundred thousand or so. The Denton and Finamore families still have homes there, and continue to reinvest vast amounts of their earnings – now turned more towards technology and investment – in the city itself.
Ideas for future stories:
- The Feud, of course. How did it start? Why didn't it take the path of bloodshed and horror? Whose idea was it to try and out-philanthropize the other family? What were the circumstances under which it ended, and how was the end brought about?
- The early utopians and the founding of the city.
- The height of Sylvania's cultural influence. What kind of music did it produce, what kind of art and books? How did Sylvania influence American culture in its heyday? What is it doing now?
- The Hortus is a really big place, and very important for the city. Why? Given that Earth Prime does have a supernatural element to it, is there anything spooky about the Hortus? A portal to the Hell Dimension opened up there, after all – how'd that happen?
- The Ordum Sylvanius – what are they? What is their purpose at Sylvania University? And why are they kind of morons when it comes to recruiting new members?
[1] Not at the same time.
[2] Utopiae?
Day One Hundred and Sixty-two: A Day Out
Lola stared at herself in the mirror and ran her fingers through her long auburn hair. "This is great," she said. "I mean really great!"
"I know," Marisse said, coming into view behind her. She spun Lola around and stooped to look into her sister's eyes. "Nice, nice," she said. "Green is good on you." She stood up straight and turned around to show off the short black dress she'd managed to squeeze into. "How's this look?" she asked.
"You look great," Lola said, and she actually meant it. Marisse was gorgeous – tall, with deep brown skin and hair that was nearly blue-black, even in the light of their bathroom. She stood like a supermodel, a hand on her hip and made a pouty face like the ones they'd seen in so many magazines. "Seriously," Lola said. "That is amazing."
"And thank you," Marisse said. She ran a finger down the lapel of the jacket Lola was wearing. "You don't look too bad yourself, my dear." She picked up Lola's pale hand and examined her nails. "Brava on your choice here, too."
Lola smiled and blushed. "It's the same blue as the suit," she said. "I can't believe I actually found it."
"Well, you did, and you look amazing." Marisse turned them around to look in the mirror. "We both look amazing. And you know what?" She put her arm around Lola, and Lola could practically feel the confidence welling over from her. "We are going to have an amazing Halloween this year." Marisse hugged her close. "Mark my words."
The morning sun was barely a hands-width over the treetops by the time they left their house and began the long walk to the bus stop. They tottered in their high heels and laughed about it as they walked, and they drew stares from everyone else who was waiting by the time they got there. Marisse made sure to stand next to a middle-aged businessman, and she tried flirting with him. She stood in the corner of his eye and smiled at him, and then looked away when he looked at her. A few more times, and he took out his phone and started frantically tapping away so that he didn't have to look at her. It was all Lola could do not to burst out laughing.
The bus ride into Sylvania City took about half an hour, and they were on the edges of their seats the whole time. Lola pointed out the things that had changed since the year before – a new strip mall, a restaurant that had gone under, a house that had gone somewhat overboard on the holiday decorations. When people got on the bus, they giggled and pointed, and more than once made people stand up and move to other seats. Among the morning commute crowd, they were by far having the most fun, and even on Halloween, that was strange.
They stepped down from the bus in Bemrich Circle, in the most touristy district of Sylvania City, and squinted in the bright sunlight. "Okay," Marisse said. "What time's sunset again?"
"5:05," Lola said. She'd had it up on notes around the house for a week, and made sure she remembered. "We have just a little over eight hours."
"Well, then, let's get to it!" Marisse gestured widely and grinned. "Where do you want to start?"
The choices were endless. Sylvania wasn't the largest of cities – nothing like New York or Boston or Corsair – but it had an eclectic spirit all its own. The downtown was full of people and buses and cars, little bookstores and restaurants and huge national department stores. There were museums along the Hortus and a new walking park that had been built along the Edles River last year. They could spend days here, if they wanted.
But they didn't have days.
Lola watched the people getting off the bus, tired and hurrying to catch taxis or run to their offices. "How about we get some coffee?" she said, pointing to a small shop on the corner that was doing brisk business with the commuter crowd. Marisse clapped her hands and they dashed across the busy street to join the line.
When they finally got to the counter, an exhausted barista greeted them with, "Welcome to Javaville, what'll you have?"
Lola and Marisse exchanged glances, and Marisse struggled to keep a straight face as she turned to the young man. "I would like," she said, over-enunciating each word, "one soy milk latte." Lola started to giggle and Marisse gave her a slight shove. "And a blueberry muffin." Lola started to laugh hard enough to attract the attention of the other customers, and the barista arched an eyebrow.
"Anything for your friend?" he asked.
Lola leapt to the counter. "Yes," she said, her voice taking on the sing-song quality that people use when they talk to children. "I'd like a mocha espresso, please. And one of your delicious scones." She smiled, showing as many teeth as she could, and the barista had to blink a few times before he rang them up.
They sat in the cafe and planned their day, occasionally glancing around at the crowd and watching the other customers as they came in. They would go to the Finamore Museum of Art first and see the traveling Picasso exhibition they were hosting. From there, they planned to hit some of the nicer boutiques in the heart of downtown and try on clothes. Not to buy, of course, but just for the fun of seeing themselves in something new and different. Marisse tried on the more risque outfits, doing her best to make even the saleslady have to blush and clear her throat and recommend that perhaps she would like to wear something a little more modest. Lola tended towards the more conservative, trying to imagine what she would look like at a fancy dinner party, or perhaps a wedding. She stood in front of the mirror and smoothed down the fabric and let the images form in her mind. No matter that they wouldn't happen, of course. It was Halloween, and if ever there was a time to play dress-up, it was now.
They had lunch at the top of the Denton department store and ate small pasta dishes while looking out at the city.
"I never get tired of this," Lola said. "I just wish we could do it more often."
Marisse took a sip of water. "Me too," she said. "Me too."
After lunch they went to a bookstore and browsed for a while, followed by a subway ride to the Hortus, the great park that defined the heart of Sylvania City. The sun was on its descent by now, and they only had a few more hours left to them. The red and gold leaves glimmered in the sunlight as they walked around the Great Pond, enjoying the brisk autumn air. Their spirits were more subdued now, but they still looked at the world around them with glee and astonishment from time to time.
"I think I need to sit down," Lola said after a while. She sat, took off a shoe and started to rub her foot. "You go ahead. I'll meet you by the fountain?"
"You sure?" Marisse asked. She glanced across the pond to the fountain and back again. "I can stay here."
Lola shook her head. "No, you go. I'll be right behind you." She smiled and shaded her eyes against the sun. "Don't worry." Marisse nodded, but still looked uneasy, glancing back a few more times as she walked away.
Alone, Lola closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out. She liked Marisse – loved her, even. They'd been together for ages and doing their Halloween excursions for as long as she could remember. But Marisse could be a little much sometimes.
Lola's thoughts were sharply interrupted by the barking of a dog. She opened her eyes to see a golden retriever straining at the end of a leash at her, growling and barking. The young man holding the leash pulled and yelled at his dog. "Rocky! Rocky, knock it off!" He gave the leash a sharp tug, and the dog stopped barking. He bent down to hold it and looked up at Lola. "Sorry," he said. "He's usually not like this." Rocky had gone quiet, but he was still staring at Lola with fear in his eyes.
"That's all right," she said. "Dogs don't usually like me very much."
The young man scratched Rocky's ears and smiled. "I can't imagine that," he said. He turned to Rocky. "You gonna be good?" he asked. He stood up and Rocky growled quietly. The young man nodded at Lola. "He'll be good." He stepped over to her and offered his hand. "I'm Shane," he said. "But you'll probably remember me as the guy with the dog."
Lola took his hand and smiled. "No," she said. "I'm pretty sure I'll remember you." She looked up at him and squinted. "I'm Lola," she said. The sun was behind him, making it hard to get a good look at his face. "Would you like to sit down?" she said. "It might save me some eyestrain."
Shane commanded Rocky to stay, and took a seat next to Lola. He looked out over the water with her for a while, and the sun dropped lower to the horizon. "It's my favorite place in the city," he said, not turning to her. "It's one of the biggest reasons I stay here."
She smiled. "I like it too. I just wish I could come more often."
"You're not from around here?" he asked.
Lola shook her head. "I live outside the city with a friend of mine. We… we don't get out a whole lot."
He nodded and leaned back against the bench, but didn't push the topic. Instead he asked about her favorite places to visit, and offered some suggestions of his own for the next time she and her friend managed to get into the city. She, in turn, asked about what he did and how he lived his life, and she found herself resisting the urge to dig into every detail. They talked well together, and she had a conversation unlike any she'd had in a long time. With Marisse, there was nothing new to talk about. They knew everything about each other, but here she was finally in new territory.
And he was good-looking, too. That certainly didn't hurt.
They talked for a long while, and only stopped when Lola finally heard Marisse calling to her as she ran along the path towards her.
"Lola!" she yelled. Marisse looked panicked, and she'd lost her shoes somewhere along the way. "Lola, the sun!" she flung out a hand across the pond. Lola looked, and to her horror realized that she'd let the sunset slip her mind. It was already dropping behind buildings, and she felt her insides go cold with panic.
"Oh, god," she said, and stood up quickly. Rocky jumped to his feet and started barking again, and Shane tried to calm him down. "Oh, god," she said again, "I'm so sorry…" She backed away from Shane and took Marisse's hand. "I really.. .I really have to go."
He looked up at her and glanced at Marisse. "Is everything okay?" he asked.
Lola surprised herself by smiling. "No," she said. "Not really." Marisse tugged at her, but Lola stood still. "I really wish I could stay, Shane," she said.
He stood up and put his hands in his jacket pockets. "I don't understand," he said. "What's -"
Lola's scream cut him off. It was high and keening and terrible, and she doubled over and dropped to the ground, followed quickly by Marisse. Shane tried to go to her, but Rocky positioned himself between them, growling and barking furiously. All Shane could do was watch as the shadows grasped at Lola and Marisse and they started to change.
Marisse shrank and withered, becoming a skeletal version of herself. Her eyes burst into flame and sat in her dessicated face like two hot coals. Her hair whipped up around her head in an unseen wind and waved about, dry and rasping. Her mouth opened, a black and toothless maw, and a howl that chilled Shane's blood filled the air.
Lola's back arched and lurched, and two great wings burst forth. They were long and spindly, and webbed with tattered skin that was nearly thin enough to see through. Her skin turned the dull gray of unpolished granite and cracked at the joints. A dull red glow came through the cracks, like molten stone, and when she moved there was a grating and crumbling sound. She stood on thin, insectile legs and turned to Shane, who was on the ground covering his eyes with his arm.
She looked at him, wishing her true face were capable of expressing something other than unholy rage. She wanted to explain, to say that she was sorry, but her mouth couldn't do that anymore. Her day as a human was done. From tonight, it would be another year of being the monster she'd always been.
Lola growled at Rocky, who whined and cowered behind Shane, who had finally managed to peek out from behind his arm. He was terrified, as he should have been, and Lola felt that strange ache in what used to be her heart. Other years had been fun. Little breaks from who she'd always been. But this was the first time she felt like there could have been more days, more time.
She ground her teeth and turned to pick up Marisse. Her friend was still groaning, and her groans lingered long. She held Marisse close to her and sprung into the air, her tattered wings somehow holding her aloft and giving her the lift to fly back to their house outside the city. It would be another year before she and her sister could venture out in daylight again, and she wasn't at all sure that was what she wanted anymore.
For the first time in a thousand years, there were tears in her eyes as she flew.
This is done not only for Halloween, but for the Worth1000 Halloween 2 contest. Of course, I'll have to trim it somewhat – maximum word count is 1,500 and I'm well above that….
Day Forty-five: Sleeper
Lucille carried Smokey's food over to his basket and set it down. He jumped up to the table, gave a final, grateful "meow," and started eating.
"Good boy, Smokey," she said, scratching between his ears. She went back to the kitchen, rinsed out the can and dropped it in the bag under the sink for the recyclers to take on Friday. The apartment was hot, but she didn't mind. At her age, she'd take hot over cold any day. At least her back was feeling better, and her hip wasn't twinging. That meant a couple of good days were in store. Maybe she'd go out to the supermarket.
She went back to her large, overstuffed chair and eased herself into it. In her younger days, she would have leaped in, curled a leg under herself and rested her head on the armrest. But these days, the best she could do was to be more or less comfortable when she sat down. She hit the remote and turned the volume back on.
"…in fourteen states and the District of Columbia. In local news, ten year-old high school freshman Paul Barbeau won the state science championship with his ingenious new printable circuitry. He says it will revolutionize the textile industry, allowing us to integrate our personal electronics into nearly every part of our lives. Barbeau – who is on track to become the youngest-ever graduate of Littleton High School – was unavailable for an interview this evening due to an incident involving a crashed-"
She muted the TV again at an insistent noise from Smokey. All cats are picky, she knew that. And any human who wants to live with one has to be willing to make concessions. In this case, he simply would not tolerate an empty food dish being left around when he was done. "Yes, yes, I know," she said, lifting herself out of the chair. She ran her fingers down his spine as she passed him, and he started to purr. "Your wish is my command." She took the bowl to the sink, gave it a quick rinse with soap and water and set it to dry.
Smokey came to sit by her feet, and made a small inquisitive noise. "You know, Smokey," she said. "If I hadn't found you all those years ago, you wouldn't be eating so well. You know that?" He blinked and started licking a paw. "A little gratitude is all I'm asking, you terrible, awful widdle kitty." She had long ago stopped hating herself for lapsing into baby-talk with the cat. It was another one of those inevitabilities of cat ownership. Besides, he just ate it up.
They said that living with a pet was a good way to live to a happy old age. She didn't know much about research and gerontology and all that kind of thing, but she knew she was doing better with Smokey than she'd done in those last years before Roy finally keeled over. As insistent as Smokey was, at least he never yelled at her for not cooking his food the way he wanted, never kicked her out of bed when he'd been drinking too much. Never called her a useless old bag…
Lucille's eyes misted up and this time she did hate herself a little. She had watched his coffin go into the ground with a sense of grim satisfaction that she'd have at least a little time on this planet to herself. But as bad as he was, as awful as he could be, the apartment still felt empty without him. She didn't believe in ghosts, but if pressed, she might say it was sort of the opposite. A tangible absence that just wouldn't go away.
She'd found Smokey a few weeks later, a little grey kitten hunting through her garbage. When she came out to drop off her trash, he looked up, meowed once, and ran to her feet. She, and everything she owned, was officially his from that moment on.
She settled back into her chair and Smokey took his place on her lap. He purred, rubbed his head against her hand a couple of times, and curled up to sleep. She petted him gently and turned the volume back on. The news anchor was reading from a piece of paper now and looking confused.
"…and experts are at a loss to explain what we're seeing here outside the studio." The anchor looked off-camera. "Jim, do we have someone outside? Yes?" He looked back out of the TV. "Ladies and gentlemen, we're now going live outside our main studio here in Sylvania City. Are we…? Okay."
The view cut to another camera, this one unsteady and noisy, which was overlooking something in the middle of the city. Lucille had been to Sylvania once, and like most visitors she best remembered its vast central gardens – The Sylvania Hortus. It covered a thousand acres in the middle of the city and was home to every kind of growing thing that would survive there. There were lakes and ponds, rose gardens and wildflower hills and running tracks and vast lawns that were full of people on any halfway decent day. It was called The Green Heart of the City, and everyone who lived there said it was the biggest reason they stayed.
But now, in the center of the gardens, there was a… Lucille didn't know what to call it. It looked like a crack in the world, bleeding out something that could have been light, but wasn't. Where the light touched, things turned dark and insubstantial. The trees cast bright shadows that trailed away from them, and the dark blight spread. The cameraman was talking, trying to fill airtime, and the anchor was asking stupid, meaningless questions, like "What is it?"
"I… I don't know, Leonard," the cameraman said, then quickly corrected himself. "Mister Reeves. All I know is that it hurts to look at, and that the air feels… it feels wrong. It feels… I don't know. Sharp."
The crack in the world pulsed, once, sending out a wave of darkness, and the camera's feed went dead. They switched back to the anchor, who looked like he wanted to throw up.
Lucille knew how he felt. She had a hand over her mouth, and her stomach tightened. Whatever it was, even over the TV it was horrible, and as the anchor went on, talking without knowing what he was talking about, Lucille could feel that nameless, unreasoning dread rise from the base of her spine.
"Damn," said a voice from her lap.
She looked down at Smokey. He stood up and stretched, arching his back. Then he looked up at her, and the intelligence in his eyes was vastly different from what she had always imagined she saw. He blinked, slowly. "I can't stay," he said, in a voice that had far too much bass in it for such a small, nasal creature. He looked back at the TV. "This is what I was sent here to do."
Lucille looked down at him. "S.. Smokey?"
He licked her hand once. "I know," he said. "I never meant for it to be this way. I didn't think this would go on as long as it did."
"What… what are you?"
He sat, his back straight and his head high. "I am one of the guardians of this reality, Lucille." Behind him, the TV let out a squawk of static and went blank. "I'd explain, but there really isn't time. That city is about to be devoured, and the world will go soon after if it isn't stopped."
He jumped down from her lap and sat in the middle of the room. "You should probably cover your eyes, Lucille. Just in case." His fur stood on end as he began to glow with a radiant blue light. Lucille squinted against the sudden brilliance and held up a hand against it. She could still see him, but he was changing, growing into something bigger. Human, but only in shape. Tall and dangerous, something that still carried the feline with it, but merged into something more.
When the light faded, it did so just enough to get a view of him for a moment. He was wrapped in the light, which spun and danced and spiraled around him, and he stood with that constant potential energy that all cats have. The light was his armor, and it shone in a thousand different shades of blue. "Thank you for all you've done, Lucille," he said. "I truly am grateful." She thought he smiled, but couldn't be sure. "I hope I can repay your kindness one day."
The light flared again, and she cried out. When it faded, he was gone.
"Smokey?" she whispered. She stood up slowly and looked out the window. Dark clouds were moving through the sky, against the wind that was blowing the tops of trees. The clouds were moving west. Towards Sylvania City.
She put her hands on the glass and her eyes filled again. The apartment was empty again, but this time it was so much worse.
The western horizon exploded in blue-white light, and she prayed that he was okay. And that he would come back.
Whatever he was.


text:
BERWICK, Maine — A group of residents attempting to recall three members of the Board of Selectmen, including the chairman and vice chair, appears to have the required number of signatures.
According to former selectman and one of the spear-headers of the movement, Peg Wheeler, after talking with several residents collecting signatures for the three petitions, said she determined the group has the required number of signatures for the recalls.
However, Wheeler also said the group of residents collecting the signatures wants to collect as many signatures as possible to "pad" the recall petitions before turning them into the town clerk's office to be verified.
According to the town's newly approved recall ordinance, a petition containing at least 10 percent of the number of votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, approximately 235 signatures, is needed to recall an elected official.
Along with a required number of signatures, a petition must contain a general statement as to why a recall is being asked for. According to Wheeler, all three petitions contain the same general statement or set of points as to why the recall is being submitted. The reasons are as follows:
- "Procedure, pursuit, participation and purchase of the Tax Sale property located at 9 Rochester Street in Berwick, Maine in June of 2011."
- "Failure of his/her fiduciary duty to act first in the best interest of the Town of Berwick."
- "Further, by not exercising their authority of refund of this bid which was clearly not in the best interest of Berwick as allowed."
-"And finally, ultimately failing to do the will of the people as evidence by the overwhelming majority vote for this Recall Ordinance."
Each petition contains the name and address of each selectman involved in the recall. According to the ordinance, which was passed in the Nov. 8 election by a 913-518 vote, the petitions will then be filed Town Clerk Judith Buckman's office where they have 10 days to verify all the names on the petition. After verifying the names, if they are all able, Buckman will present the petitions to the Board of Selectmen and notify the elected officials mentioned in the petitions.
Once notified, the board has 10 days to schedule an election by secret ballot — held 45 days after the setting of the date of the election.
The decision of the election, either to recall or not, takes effect immediately. If there are vacancies within the board, they will be filled in accordance with Maine law.
Petition may have enough signatures to force recall election of Berwick selectmen
BERWICK, Maine — A group of residents attempting to recall three members of the Board of Selectmen, including the chairman and vice chair, appears to have the required number of signatures.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
How do I sign up for Masterpass during checkout if I don't have one already?
Frequently Asked Question
Click or tap the Masterpass button on the Masterpass checkout site. Enter your email address or phone number and select Sign Up, when available. You will be prompted to enter your card details and profile information to create your new Masterpass wallet and complete your purchase.
You can continue to use your Masterpass to make purchases wherever you see the Masterpass button during checkout.


text:
Mapping pre-Vista Security Event IDs to Security Event IDs in Vista+
I've written twice (here and here) about the relationship between the "old" event IDs (5xx-6xx) in WS03 and earlier versions of Windows, and between the "new" security event IDs (4xxx-5xxx) in Vista and beyond.
In short, EventID(WS03) + 4096 = EventID(WS08) for almost all security events in WS03.
The exceptions are the logon events. The logon success events (540, 528) were collapsed into a single event 4624 (=528 + 4096). The logon failure events (529-537, 539) were collapsed into a single event 4625 (=529+4096).
Other than that, there are cases where old events were deprecated (IPsec IIRC), and there are cases where new events were added (DS Change). These are all new instrumentation and there is no "mapping" possible- e.g. the new DS Change audit events are complementary to the old DS Access events; they record something different than the old events so you can't say that the old event xxx = the new event yyy because they aren't equivalent. The old event means one thing and the new event means another thing; they represent different points of instrumentation in the OS, not just formatting changes in the event representation in the log.
Of course I explained earlier why we renumbered the events, and (in the same place) why the difference is "+4096" instead of something more human-friendly like "+1000". The bottom line is that the event schema is different, so by changing the event IDs (and not re-using any), we force existing automation to be updated rather than just misinterpreting events when the automation doesn't know the version of Windows that produced the event. We realized it would be painful but it is nowhere near as painful as if every event consumer had to be aware of, and have special casing for, pre-Vista events and post-Vista events with the same IDs but different schema.
So if you happen to know the pre-Vista security events, then you can quickly translate your existing knowledge to Vista by adding 4000, adding 100, and subtracting 4. You can do this in your head.
However if you're trying to implement some automation, you should avoid trying to make a chart with "<Vista" and ">=Vista" columns of event ID numbers, because this will likely result in mis-parsing one set of events, and because you'll find it frustrating that there is not a 1:1 mapping (and in some cases no mapping at all).


text:
There are two basic things to know about Jeff Sweet: One, he tells great stories, so be prepared to laugh. A lot. And two, the man does more in one day than most of us do in a month. As an early pioneer of stand up paddle boarding with Laird, Jeff is a legend in the field. We spoke with him while he was driving down PCH to give a surf lesson.
XPT: What's a typical day in the life of Jeff Sweet?
JS: It's impossible to tell you what a day in the life of Jeff Sweet is like. Impossible. You don't have time!
XPT: We're all ears.
JS: Well, I have a day job. I've been a Deputy Sheriff for Los Angeles County for twenty-seven years. Typically, I'll be at work at 5:30 in the morning and then head to the beach after work and give lessons. Some days it can be three or four lessons. Paddle surfing as well as distance paddling. Then I run to one of my three children's water polo games that I don't miss. I just fit it all in. Let's take this past Saturday to Sunday, for example. Saturday started with a surf lesson for a family in Ventura. From Ventura, I shot back down to Malibu for three surf lessons in the afternoon. Sunday I worked a private celebrity party until 1:30PM then I flew down to Cardiff to meet Chuck Glenn where I returned from my four-year hiatus from foil boarding.
XPT: Why was there a hiatus?
JS: Because Laird broke my leg in thirteen places – and you can print that! It was all his fault. But that's a story for another time.
XPT: I'm not letting you off the hook so easily on that one. We'll come back to it. But let's start from the beginning. How did you and Laird first meet?
JS: I met Gabby first. I was working for Kobe Bryant and Gabby attended an event and brought Laird. Their friend Nancy also showed up with a surfboard in the back of her truck. I just took it upon myself to walk out there and take her board and put it away. Otherwise, that board would've disappeared. And because of that, Laird and I had a conversation and he invited me to go for a surf the next day, and the rest is history. This was about 1998 or 1999.
Don Wildman, Jake Chelios, Chris Chelios, Laird Hamilton, Jeff Sweet, Nate Heydari circa 1999
XPT: How did surfing together evolve into paddling? When did that first come into the picture?
Laird and I surfed together for a while. He had a big tandem board made by his dad, Billy Hamilton. We took an old kayak paddle, cut the end off it, put a t-handle on it and taped it all together. I actually still have that paddle. I think it's probably the first stand-up paddle that was ever made. We made it right there on the beach at Don Wildman's place.
So, Laird would paddle up to Little Dune (in Malibu) and I would paddle on my stomach. It's a long paddle to the Point. We made another paddle and I started paddling over with him. At first it was just who could make it to the Pier without falling off. It only took a few shots until we could actually make it. We were paddling these giant twelve-foot, big, heavy boards at the time. Gerry Lopez turned Laird on to Ron House who shaped our first boards down in San Clemente. So, I drove down to San Clemente and picked up the very first batch of stand up paddleboards. All twelve feet. Six of them stacked in the back of my truck, all with a Gerry Lopez logo.
For about five years, it was pretty much just Laird and myself and Sam George out at the Point stand up paddling. Nobody else was paddling. For the longest time it was just our group of friends. Nate Heydari and Todd Thompson. And (NHL hall of famer) Chris Chelios, too. To this day, Chris has evolved into a surfer. He still surfs the same as he did ten or twelve years ago. I love surfing with Chris. He totally cracks me up. He's the most stoked Hall of Fame professional athlete on the planet to surf. There's nobody else who surfs like this guy. Nobody.
XPT: So, that's how it all started?
JS: That's it. The beginning of stand-up paddling. Then, gradually, we would go places, like San Onofre, with Ron House and there'd be maybe one other guy stand up paddling.
XPT: How did it evolve from there?
JS: Slowly. We'd be out there every day at Don Wildman's and then on the weekends other friends would show up and they'd try to paddle. It was really born right there at the beach at Wildman's place.
At the beginning, we kept breaking paddles. Of course, nobody was making a stand-up specific paddle then. It took years of trial and error to develop them.
XPT: I saw that Laird gave you a nice shout out in Stand Up Paddle magazine last month…
JS: I was honored to be mentioned in the last sentence of a four-page interview! That's the props I get for the shit that I do. (Laughs)
XPT: So, when people go to an XPT Experience the team that's there is incredible. Tell me about that.
JS: Yeah, it's an insane group. There's so much talent in the team that I assemble for XPT. People are paddling all over the world and unfortunately we see them with sub-par instruction. If you're going to come to an XPT Experience you should have the very best instruction. All the guys that we bring are at the very top of the sport. Gene Smith has been paddling since the beginning, he even opened his own shop down in Redondo Beach. He's such a great ambassador for the sport. Obviously, Chuck Glenn, who is one of the top paddlers in the world. I call him Inspector Gadget. That guy can fix anything. At the XPT Experience in Punta Mita, Mexico, Fernando Stalha, who is also a top world-class paddler, took the lead. I'm stoked for him to be involved. He's a great asset.
Chuck Glenn, Steve Crane, Gene Smith & Jeff Sweet ready XPT Experience participants for the SUP session
Most people who come to XPT have never paddled. Paddling is only a part of the whole XPT Experience but I think it's the most fun part. People come from all over the world and some of them are afraid of the ocean. We get them comfortable and get them past their fears.
I was out the other day with a student of mine, and two grey whales passed within five feet. She said it was the most amazing experience of her lifetime. To me, that's pretty cool. I've had people paddling with me when we've been surrounded by a pod of dolphins. One of the women just sat down on her board and started crying. She'd never seen anything like it. Another student had tried to surf for a couple of years. Traditional lay down, prone surfing but it just wasn't clicking. He came to me and said, 'Surfing isn't working I want to try stand up paddling. I see guys catching waves and I really want to try.' Immediately, he's catching waves. Immediately. And he's hooked. Now he is a surfer. This is a guy has spent most his life at country clubs playing golf and never really stepped out into action sports and he travels with me every year to Fiji to paddle surf. He sent me an email and he said in the last line, 'You've changed my life.' To me, that's enough. I'm not setting out to do that, but if that happens it's pretty cool.
XPT: While we're talking Hawaii, talk to us about that time you biked and paddled across the entire state? How do you get ready for something like that in terms of training?
JS: If you ask Laird, he'd say you don't get ready for something like that. I'd say shouldn't we go on a bike ride? And he says we're going to bike plenty on that ride so no. But he forgets that not everybody's super human like he is so I'd go and bike secretly on the side.
We did the Paddle and Pedal Across Hawaii in 2007 to raise money for our friend Don King and his documentary titled "A Beautiful Son" about autism awareness. We started on the south end of the Big Island and we pedaled 116 miles and then paddled from the Big Island to Maui across the Alenuihaha Channel, it's one of the most dangerous in the world, for forty-three miles.
From there, we biked across Maui to the North side, which is about fifty-miles and then paddled to Molokai. That's about eleven miles. Then pedaled Molokai (30 miles).
Jeff & Laird heading out in Malibu, CA
XPT: In one day?
JS: In one day. Paddling across to Molokai was the only paddle-leg during the whole trip when the wind did help us. Don Shear was filming us from a helicopter. A mile out, Laird makes a right hand turn and then I lost him. He just disappeared. I see Dave Kalama who was paddling with us. So, I just kept paddling and our friend Brett Lickle jet skiied out and told me that Laird had to go film something and that I should keep paddling straight across. So, there I was paddling completely by myself. This fishing boat comes along with these three big Hawaiians. They stopped and ask if I was okay and if I needed anything. I said I was fine and then they handed me a McDonald's cheeseburger and left.
Laird is a masochist. I'm telling you, Laird is not human.
About dusk he finally arrives on Molokai and I thought we were done for the day but he wanted to keep going. In that one day, we pedaled the Big Island, paddled to Maui, peddled across Maui, paddled to Molokai and then pedaled across Molokai. It was nuts.
XPT: How many miles is that?
JS: Too many. We arrived at our meeting point at about ten o'clock at night and we're starving. So, so hungry. Have you ever eaten around Laird? Food is like an Olympic sport to him. We can all put it away but he can eat mounds. So, we get to the end of our ride on Molokai and there's nothing to eat. No food. They weren't expecting us until the next morning. So, I take one of cars from the team and go looking for something to eat. If you have ever been to Molokai then you know that there's a lot of nothing and what is there is closed. But I finally come across this mom and pop Italian place. There are fifteen of us: Laird, myself, the rest of the guys and the film crew. I need food to go for fifteen people. The guy looks at me and with a totally straight face, tells me he only has enough for four people. I couldn't believe it. He had no more food. By the time the night was over I think I had a meatball and three stands of spaghetti. I swear.
The next morning we went to a hotel for a huge breakfast. Someone brought us all of these breakfast burritos to put on the boat for the paddle across to Oahu, which is thirty-two miles. Everybody heads out. We take off, paddled away and somebody left all the food on the beach. Another food disaster.
So, we get to Oahu and we spend the night. The next morning we head out to Kaena Point pedaling from Sandy Beach fifty-something miles across and we're ahead of schedule. So, we need to wait a whole day for the full moon. When we get to dinner, Laird is quiet. I see the wheels turning in his head. I know something is coming. Everyone is eating tons of food, steak, everything and one of the guys asks when we'll be leaving the next day. Laird looks up and says, 'We're leaving now. Lets go.' And before I know it, it's 10pm and we're paddling out of the harbor into a fifteen-foot open ocean swell. That's Laird.
We paddled into the wind and in the rain to Kauai. We arrived there as it was getting dark the next day. It took twenty-two hours to paddle from Oahu to Kauai. The next morning we pedaled to the Kilauea lighthouse and we were done. That was it.
XPT: And you guys did the Race Across America some time after that?
JS: Yes. In 2009. I was the chief of a crew of four guys. Laird didn't think biking across America was enough and he wanted to add a paddling leg. So, we paddled from Don Wildman's house in Malibu all the way to Oceanside (120 miles). We left at 8AM and arrived in Oceanside harbor about four in the morning. We started with ten guys. By about midnight there were four of us left–Laird, myself, Chuck Glenn and Gene Smith. Then we started the Ride Across America. Sadly, we only made it to Herman, Missouri. One of our riders got run over by a support vehicle. Jason Wynn. It's a small town. You couldn't get into a traffic accident if you tried. Laird and I were riding in our support vehicle and another team pulled around us and hit Jason. The good thing that came from that story is that Laird and Gabby's nanny Jess felt badly for Jason, and while he was recuperating he fell for her and now they're married with three kids.
XPT: What's your regular training like?
JS: I circuit train. I mountain bike. Unfortunately, in the last four years I've broken my leg twice. Once on Kauai with Laird.
XPT: Lets hear it.
JS: We went out to foil surf. I had been foiling for about ten years so I'm pretty experienced. But the board wasn't set up for me. It was nobody's fault but mine. I had a bad fall and broke my leg in thirteen places.
The guys take me back to Laird's dock and I'm sitting there on the dock and with four guys looking at me wondering if they should take the boot off (you use a snowboarding boot for foiling).
I guess I was in shock because the pain hadn't really kicked in yet. Laird immediately switches gears. He's great in an emergency situation. With what we do, we have to be. You never know what's going to happen. He's thinking miles and miles down the road. He says, take the boot off and we have to get you into dry clothes because you're going to be sitting in the hospital in wet clothes. They take my clothes off and I'm lying there naked and then they put on a pair of shorts and t-shirt. Even being in shock, it was still funny as hell. But I lost my favorite board shorts that day. Never saw them again.
They put me in Laird's truck and off we go. Then the pain kicked in. And it's bad. I'm in a lot of pain. I have no control of my leg. Every time Laird hits the breaks my leg falls to the other side. We're in front of the hospital and instead of turning into the hospital; he turns in the opposite direction. And I'm yelling, 'WHERE ARE YOU GOING, WE'RE HERE?!?' And he says he wants to get some food for me because we'll be in the emergency room for a while and there's no food. We finally get to the hospital and I'm being wheeled in with my plate lunch on my lap.
They x-ray my leg. The emergency room doctor comes in and looks at the x-ray. He can't even tell what he's looking at. That's how bad it was. Laird spent the rest of the afternoon with me in hospital.
XPT: Talk to us about XPT.
JS: I love seeing people get out of their comfort zone and being vulnerable to change, and that happens at an Experience. Most people have their gym routine or their cycling routine or whatever their routine may be. They come to XPT and they're getting into the pool and they're not always comfortable with that. They're doing exercises underwater that they are really not comfortable with and then they are getting in the ice tub – it's just a whole other realm for most people. When it's over, they can't believe all that they've accomplished.
Like Chris and Paula Murphy. They are awesome. They are such cool people. They moved out here from Chicago and they cycled, did Pilates and yoga but because of XPT they've become surfers. I mean, real surfers. I see them out there at least three times a week. XPT exposed them to things they never really considered. They are textbook people that went through the XPT Experience and it really changed parts of their lives. Now their kids are surfing, too.
And then there's (Director/TV Producer) Gary Fleder who told me how much he loved XPT. He said, 'I'm in the ice tub, I go under and then come up and there's Laird Hamilton. I mean, he's right there! Right in front of me, coaching me. It was so inspiring!' And that's it for me. Breaking people out of their routines and getting them out of their comfort zones. You never know where it might lead.
Want to paddle with the legendary Jeff Sweet? Come and get out of your own comfort zone. Join us for a transformative journey at the XPT Experience. For the full list of upcoming Experiences click here.


text:
For further questions, post a comment and I will answer.
The Squire class
Is a tanky damager class, rushing into battle with their shield they can lay waste to everything they come in contact with. Having extremely quick weapons and high amounts of block gives them the offense and defense they need to win any fight. Their only weakness is their low range and area attacks.
Area of Effect Damage: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Defense: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
Movement: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Difficulty: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
Speciality: Single Target Damage, Defense and Speed
- High amounts of single target damage
- Annihilates any mob with ease
- Blocking is the best source of damage reduction in the game
- Top damager in PvP
- Extremely hard to kill
- Low amounts of area of effect damage
- Utility skills are somewhat annoying and buggy to use
- Little to no variety in builds
- A shit ton of useless skills
- Somewhat useless transformation (For now)
A squire excels in melee combat, so walking up to a target a slashing them is the best way to kill something.
Dance of Illusion is your main damager skill and should be maxed for killing speed.
Sudden Strike is a very good CP gainer and also ignores the targets avoidance from items.
Shield of Magical Protection is by far the best shield skill in the game, with the insanely high cap at 85% this skill will reduce the damage you take by very high amounts.
Mighty Will is a very good activation skill that will give you free abnormal resistance.
Vision Protective Goggle is a good skill for PvP that will reduce targets avoidance and damage output.
Twirling Protector is a good knowledge skill that sends out a twister that will damage targets in an AoE, good for grinding.
War Cry is good for stunning targets or simply doing AoE knowledge damage.
Rush of Steel can be used if you're not using Shield of Magical Protection, it's a charge skill that will take you to your targets even if your movement is impaired.
Berserk Rampage can be used with Shield of Magical Protection and also has a much higher range than Rush of Steel. Can also be used even if movement is impaired.
Wild Dance can be used as a power AoE skills, though not very good it is the only one a squire have.
The squire is a monster in PvP, their damage is huge and can be too much to handle for some.
Rushing into targets with Berserk Rampage and then annihilating them with Dance of Illusion is the best way to kill enemies in PvP.
Squire has a very low base attack speed on their eternals, use this to your advantage.
Even if charge skills can be buggy sometimes they will still take you to the place you click even if you dont see it on your screen.
Remember to always have Shield of Magical Protection up.
Requirements should be acquired regardless of build
- Health - Is is needed to survive attacks.
- Alacrity - Is needed to for accuracy and avoidance.
- Luck - Is needed for accuracy and avoidance.
- Knowledge - Is squires main source of magic damage.
- Charisma - Is not needed by squires.
- Wisdom - Is not needed by squires.
1# Knight
- Power - 1 each level
- Health - 1 each level until 300 then Luck.
- Alacrity - 1 each level
- Luck - 1 each level
2# Tempest
- Knowledge - 2 each level
- Health - 2 each level until 800 then Knowledge.
(Eternal, Irregular Arian, Legendary Sword)
- Attack Speed
- Damage
(Safe Cage, Drake Plume, Soldier of War Drum, Mistral Loon, Reflection Coating)
- Health Points (%)
- Defensive Capability (%)
Class Armor
(Buddy Trust, Karls Padding)
- Skill Level
- Attack Speed
(Trap Revealer, Big Burglar Shoes, Statue Boots)
- Luck
- Alacrity
- Movement Speed (%)
(Form Guard, Hands of Adversary, Butterfly Sting, Hands of Father, Massgrip, Schildheim, Sturmwind)
- Attack Speed
(Anti Charger, Chain Square, Curse of Sig, Frozencoil, Twin Carl, Knights Belt)
- Luck
- Health
(Stray Stalker, Phoenix Necklace)
- Luck
- Health Points (%)
- Skill Level
Circlet and Helmet
(Florence Circlet, Dark Visor, Ground Amplifier)
- Luck
- Health Points (%)
- Skill Level
- Knowledge
(White Aura, Heros Proof)
- Health Points
(Hard Fist, Warm Breeze, Mustasche of Nimressad, Shark Fin, Rebirth Rings)
- All abnormal resistances
- Fatal blow resistance
- Abnormal resistance
- Dropped system resistance
- Decisive blow resistance
- Curse resistance
(Sword Blocker, Divine Fortress, MPDF)
- Attack speed
- Skill Level
- All skills are based of skill level 50
- Bold text shows scaling
- Scaling is based of 1 skill level
Descending Slice
Strike your target, dealing 100% physical damage with 25%(+0.5%) increased attack speed and -1% accuracy.
Swing at your target, dealing 100% physical damage with 5%(+0.1%) increased accuracy.
Angled Slice
Slash your target, dealing 210% physical damage with 25%(+0.5%) increased chance to critically hit.
Stabbing Attack
Stab your target, dealing 160% physical damage with 10%(+0.2%) increased accuracy.
Wild Dance
Swing your sword in a circle around you, dealing 200% physical damage with 6%(+0.15%) increased accuracy to all targets caught the swing.
- Very low range.
Improved Defenses
Activation skill, sets your base chance to block at 35%(+0.7%).
- Does not stack with other base block chance.
- Very slow blocking speed.
Shield of Thorns
Activation skill, whenever you take physical damage in melee range, immediately counter attack the attacker dealing 150% physical damage.
Solid Defenses
Turn on skill, when activated increases your defense capability by 100%(+2%), defense by 5, increases the max chance to block by 10%(+0.2%) and sets your base block chance at 60%(+1%).
- If you attack while this skill is active it will turn off immediately and have to be reapplied.
Dance of Shield Defense
Activation skill, sets your base chance to block at 30%(+0.5%).
- Does not stack with other base block chance.
- Very fast blocking speed.
Shield of Magical Protection
Buffs an allied target or yourself with your shield, sets their base chance to block at 40%(+0.8) for 555(+10) seconds.
- Does not stack with other base block chance.
- Completely ignores blocking speed.
- Sacrifices your shield, you will not be able to use skills that requires a shield.
- Can be used on oneself or allies.
Forceful Slam
Knock your target with your shield, dealing 24-64 physical damage and have a 58%(+0.2%) chance to knock them back.
- Has a very slow attack speed.
- Knockback range: 2.3m(+0.1)
Shield of Bitterness
Knock your target with your shield, dealing 55-105 physical damage aswell as having a 50%(+0.2%) chance to stun the target for 1.81 seconds(+0.021) and also has a 58%(+0.2%) chance to knock them back.
- Has a very slow attack speed.
- Knockback range: 1.5m(+0.02)
Rush of Steel
Charges to the target location, dealing 225% physical damage on impact with an enemy. Also increases your defense by 25(+0.2) for 1.5 seconds.
- Range: 1.5m
Shield Throw
Throws your shield like a boomerang at a target, dealing 90-290 physical damage.
- Sacrifices your shield, you will not be able to use your shield until the shield returns.
Twirling Protector
Summon a whirling twister that slowly moves to the target location, dealing 165-315 wind damage to all targets caught in it. Has a 75% chance to stun targets for 3 seconds.
Mighty Will
Activation skill, have a 85%(+1%) chance to go into a defensive mode whenever you're struck increasing defense by 42(+1), stun resistance by 100% and abnormal resistance by 75%(+1.5%) versus that attack.
Blinding Steel
Throws your sword at the target, dealing 600% physical damage with 100% accuracy and 5%(+0.1%) chance to crush while also replaces your sword with your blade for 20(-0.6) seconds or until you pick it up again.
- Your blade replaces your sword.
- Your sword can be picked up.
- With enough skill level this skill can be used over and over.
Vision Protecetive Goggle
Has a 95% chance to challenge the target to a duel, decreasing their avoidance by 7%(+0.1%) for 40 seconds.
- Also decreases the targets damage by a huge amount for a small period of time.
Giant's Strength
Flex your muscles over 1.88 seocnds, increases CP by 80(+1.5), damage by 7%(+0.1), movement speed by 15% for 15(+0.2) seconds.
War Cry
Let out a powerful roar, dealing 225-425 wind damage to targets within range with a 100% chance to stun them for 7(+0.1) seconds.
- Range: 4m(+0.3)
Sudden Strike
Strike your target with sudden movement, dealing 215% physical damage with 5% accuracy while ignoring their avoidance from items.
- Ignores the avoidance(%) from items.
Scything Blade
Spin around your target striking them 4 times, dealing 175% physical damage with 20%(+0.4%) increased avoidance for 2 seconds.
Blade Fury
Continuously strike the target 8 times, dealing 133% physical damage with each hit.
Dance of Illusion
Summon 7 illusions to strike the target, dealing 250% physical damage with each hit.
Berserk Rampage
Charges to the target location, dealing 700% physical damage and 205-235 fire damage with 10%(+0.2) increased accuracy on impact with an enemy.
- Range: 2 to 5m.
1# Knight
1. Sudden Strike [50]
2. Dance of Illusion [50]
3. Shield of Magical Protection[50]
4. Mighty Will [50]
5. War Cry [50]
6. Vision Protective Goggle [50]
2# Tempest
1. Twirling Protector [50]
2. Shield of Magical Protection [50]
3. Mighty Will [50]
4. War Cry [50]
Feel free to give me constructive feedback on how I can improve my guides. Just leave a comment down below.


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In order for Camelback Church of Christ to provide transportation for a minor(s). We require a Youth Trip Release form to be on file 24 hours prior to transportation date. (One form per child)
(If you do not have Adobe Reader installed on your computer, click here for a free download.)
Click here to download, then complete & sign form
- Complete & Sign form
- Ways to return form:
- Give to your event leader (if accepting them)
- E-mail: email@example.com
- Fax: 602-388-1310
- Drop off at Church office
- Mail to church –
- Camelback Church of Christ
- 5225 E. Camelback Rd
- Phoenix, AZ 85018
For question, please call the Church office 602-840-2661.


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At its core, digital is an enabler. Digital can change business models, streamline value chains, and reach new markets. The city's Digital Brisbane 2.0 strategy aims to make life easier in Brisbane.
Check out our infographic to see how Digital Brisbane is supporting the small business sector and the innovation ecosystem plus some of the programs and initiatives Digital Brisbane 2.0 will deliver.


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view the conference agenda and presentation slides »
Julie Stackhouse, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (4:20)
Rohit Chopra, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (30:08)
Keynote Q&A (8:06)
Interview with Rohit Chopra (6:40)
Resources for Managing Student Loans
Introductions (2:12)
Paul Combe, American Student Assistance (7:02)
Interview with Paul Combe (12:58)
Vicki Jacobson, Center for Excellence in Financial Counseling (5:46)
Marilyn Landrum, Missouri Department of Higher Education (3:58)
Resources for Economics and Personal Finance
Mary C. Suiter, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (3:10)
Research Panel:
What We Know About Student Loans in the Eighth District and Nationwide
MODERATOR: William R. Emmons, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (4:14)
Bryan J. Noeth, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (13:53)
Kelly D. Edmiston, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (9:17)
Caroline Ratcliffe, Urban Institute (14:22)
Research Panel Discussion (35:46)
The Future of Student Loans and Financing Higher Education
MODERATOR: Ray Boshara, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (7:32)
Sandy Baum, Urban Institute and George Washington University (11:06)
Interview with Sandy Baum (7:23)
William Elliott III, University of Kansas (13:12)
Jen Mishory, Young Invincibles (8:37)
Interview with Jen Mishory (8:01)
Gary A. Ransdell, Western Kentucky University (11:35)
Roundtable Discussion (40:21)
Below is a full transcript of this video presentation. It has not been edited or reviewed for accuracy or readability.
Kelly Edmiston: All right. My name is Kelly Edmiston with the Kansas City Fed. And I've been working on some research with my colleague, Lynn Waston (phonetic 00:20:8) from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. We've got a, it's actually a very preliminary analysis of ... we've noticed that there's quite a bit of variation in the average amount of debt that's being held and in delinquency rates across states. And so, the goal of the paper is to seek out, to find out why that is the case. Why is it that in some states the average person holds less debt than in other states, or why these delinquency rates vary so much. And that's useful for a couple reasons: one is, it's very difficult to have any individual data that you can compile a large amount of data to do an analysis at the individual level. So, our hope is that this might at least shed a little insight about individual behavior. And then also it could help to influence policy. And the usual disclaimer applies. We're not speaking for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City or Dallas or the Federal Reserve System.
What I want to do is .. and, again, this is a very preliminary analysis. We're ... Lynn Waston, I'm going to leave that for her to talk about, but for the most part, we've still got some data we need to collect, some better data and some more ... to think a little bit more about the methodology.
But before I turn it over to her, I want to give just a little bit of motivation, just a snapshot of a national analysis, and then just to show some of the variation that there is across states.
(Unintelligible 01:52:4) this is for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. This is outstanding student loan debt. I don't have to explain to anyone here that it's been growing rather dramatically over the last several years. So, one of the motivating factors is the huge increases in the amount of debt that's ... the accumulation of debt over time. The second major motivating factor is the delinquencies on student loan debts. This is the percentage of balances 90 or more days past due by loan type. If you look at the light blue line there, it's now the highest, in terms of 90-plus day delinquencies surpassing credit cards most recently.
So, that's the motivation. Just from a national perspective, federal student loans make up about 41 percent of all student financial aid, at least in school academic year 2012-2013. About 3.6 percent were nonfederal loans. And these are ... it could be loans from commercial banks or other financial institutions, but it also could be loans from the schools, themselves, or loans from the state. So it's anything other than a federal loan. The federal loan would include Stafford and also Perkins.
This is per year lending, rather than the accumulation of debt that I showed you earlier. And what's interesting here, first of all, the drop-off in the pink line in the nonfederal debt, during the financial crisis with the interest loan caps, the financial institutions found it unprofitable to make student loans, so they stopped ... a lot of them stopped doing it. In recent years there's been a bit of a deceleration, I would say, in the amount of student loan debt that's been issued. And there's been an increase in unsubsidized Stafford loans, but a decrease in subsidized Stafford loans.
In terms of the outstanding student loan debt, there's a lot of factors that come into play. One is that you don't hear talked about very much is that it's driven in significant part by enrollments. So, part of that, the fact that the debt's been getting big so fast is because there's more people going to college. And if there's more people going to college, there's more people borrowing money.
There has been a moderate increase in the share of people who go to college that borrow. So that's part of a factor. And then, at least until recently, average debt per student has been increasing about 6 1/2 percent per year; that's in nominal terms. The inflation rate's been about 2% over that period. But in the most recent year, average student loan debt only increased at the rate of inflation, so that's down a little bit.
Just a little bit of snapshot national figures. This is using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Consumer Credit Panel, which is basically data from Equifax credit reports. That's all been cleaned and sanitized, so we can't tell who anybody is, or anything of that nature. And it's invaluable for providing this kind of information. And we hear a lot about average amounts of debt, but very rarely do we hear anybody talk about the median amount of debt. And the median amount of debt, at least as I've calculated it, as we've calculated it, is under $14,000, which means that about half of people who owe student loan debt owe less than $14,000.
There's a big skew, the average is so much higher than the median. I think the main reason for that is that there's a small share of people with enormous amounts of consumer ... of student loan debt. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, about 4 percent have debt over $100,000, and about .6 percent have debt over $200,000.
I looked a little bit about payments. The median payment is about $200, so half of people pay less than 200, half pay more. 25 percent of people pay under $100, but 25 percent also pay over $400 a month in a minimum payment on their student loans. And when you think about what someone just coming out of college makes, that's a big burden. And then there's a huge difference in ... I'm not going to report on it here, but in the delinquency rates between people who finish college and people who don't. And I think that's not real surprising. So, if you haven't finished college and you're paying $400 a month, then that's quite burdensome.
This is a New York Fed number. Lynn Waston and I have talked about doing an age-based analysis, but we haven't gotten to it yet. A third of the borrowers, people who hold student loan debt are actually over 40 years old, so there's quite an age distribution that might be surprising to some.
Delinquency measures ... we can do it in a number of ways. We can say, what percentage of the loans are outstanding or delinquent? What percent of the balance is delinquent? Or what percent of the borrowers are in delinquency? So there's a lot of ways we can do that. And then there's two ways we can think about ... we might want to think about only people who are in repayment. Okay. And then we can look at ones with nonzero minimum monthly payments or we can look at those who have non-declining balances that are not delinquent and throw all those people out. And that would get people only in repayment. When we do that ... I'm going to skip over that. I'm going to skip over ...
Let me just briefly mention the fiscal impact. By the government's own accounting these on accrual base method, in the year the loan is disbursed, they include the disbursement in the budget, plus the net present value of all the future stream of payments in return, and they make account for delinquency. By their own standards, they profit from the student loan program. By fair value accounting standards, it's about .4 percent of the U.S. budget.
I wanted to point out the great variation. In Wyoming you can see that there's about $21,000 in average student loan debt, whereas in Maryland it's close to $30,000. And you can just see from the map there's quite a bit of variation. I'm not going to go into detail. I need to leave Lynn Waston some time.
There's overall student delinquency rates, the highest ones are, you know, 15, 16 percent, but these also include loans that are in forbearance or deferment. So that gives ... is a little bit of a misleading number. So what we wanted to do, we think is a better number is to look at people who are actually in repayment. And when we do that, one way is to look at those who have nonzero payments, then we have some states in red where more than 35 percent of people in repayment are delinquent on their loans. This method, too, is if we throw out all those people with non-decreasing balances and no delinquencies, and again, we get the same thing. In some of these orange and red states we have delinquencies of 30 and 40 percent, whereas on the other states the delinquency rates are as low as 13 percent. So there's a significant, very significant amount of variation in average debt and delinquency over ... across states.
I'll turn it over to Lynn now.


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I've always liked to play games with mommy at night.
When I was really little I had reflux which flared at night. Mommy was beside herself trying to figure out why I turned into crazy baby at night. Then she figured it out and I got meds and gremlin me went away. For a moment.
At 4 1/2 months I slept through the night. It was Easter, and mommy thought it was the best Easter present ever. I slept through the night for the whole week. Yep, that's it. One week. Then I got a tooth. Yes. A tooth. The first of many. I teethed from then until I was 1 at which point I had all of my baby teeth. I kept mommy on her toes because her boobies made me happy and sleepy. I love boobies.
After mommy reclaimed her boobs, I started sleeping through the night again. Mostly.
Sometimes it's fun to play games with mommy. Especially on nights when she thinks she'll have "free time" and that she'll be able to "relax". She's so silly that mommy of mine. On these nights I like to do all kinds of fun things like:
- Claim to have to poop
- Claim to have to pee
- Ask for "two" cookies
- Ask for more ice in my water
- Demand to read my own bedtime stories extra slllllllllooooooowwwwwwllllllyyyyyyyy
- Request to change the stuffed animal in bed with me eleventeen times
- Talk in my sleep and say MOMMY?!?!?!? and I GOTTA GO POTTY!!!!!!!! So mommy jumps up and nothing! Hahaha!!! Suckerrrrr
- Wake up at 4 am, declare it "time to wake up" and demand food.
- Wake up to go potty then ask for bedtime stories (notice the plural)
|This is the part where I read my own story. Then demand another story. And another story... and another one.... I'm never going to sleep. Sleep is for suckas. And old people. But not mommy. No sleep for mommy.


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AP Photo/The Herald
His life burned as brightly as the "inferno" he and his bandmates left on the dance floor.
Jimmy Ellis, lead singer for the Trammps—the Philadelphia band that helped fuel the disco revolution with their classic anthem "Disco Inferno"—died Thursday in a South Carolina nursing home. He was 74.
Ellis' daughter, Erika Stinson, told the New York Times the cause of death was complications of Alzheimer's disease.


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Discovery Microscope Replaced
Microscope design has advanced rapidly in recent years. In order to stay at the forefront of modern video microscopy, Information in Images has discontinued sales of the Discovery microscope and updated the range of microscopes that it offers.
Advanced Video Microscope
Video Microscope
with Glide Stage
Integrated Video Microscope
Budget restraints and versatility have been recognised within the new range, as contemporary mechnical design, LED and digital technologies are employed to deliver High Quality Imaging at Lower Costs.
With such a range of amazing video microscopes, it's important to select the most appropriate display for your system.
Public Engagement, Museum and Educational Clients are already enjoying the new capabilities delivered by the revised range and praising their selection.
Details of the new range of video microscopes are on the www.info-in-images.com website.
Information in Images is committed to update and improve its range of imaging systems.
Keep watching for more annoucements.


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A husband and wife – who are the world's oldest married couple – have celebrated their joint birthdays.
Karam Chand, aged 109, and his wife Kartari, 102, were both born in November and have a combined age of 211.
They celebrated with four generations of their family at their home in Bradford on Sunday.
The couple tied the knot 88 years and 349 days ago on December 11 1925 after meeting in India as teenagers.
They married the same year Margaret Thatcher was born and Stanley Baldwin was British prime minister.
Kartari said: 'We have always eaten good wholesome food, there's nothing artificial in our diet, things like butter, milk and yoghurt are what we like.
'We just get along with each other and we are family focused, its simple.'
Their son Paul, one of eight children, said: 'People are so impressed by my parents. They always ask me: "What do you eat? What are you feeding them and how do they stay so healthy?"
'I tell them: "If I knew that I would be eating the same thing myself".'


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Mary was brought up in Gloucestershire, but moved to Suffolk when she met her husband and is married and mother of two grown-up boys. Both boys have strong design and entrepreneurial skills. Her husband John, who is a serial entrepreneur, has been the backbone of the family – urging them all to create new ideas and giving them confidence to push their ideas through - with the end goal of achieving a viable and commercial business.
Mary Jardine's background was in the modelling world of organising photoshoots, fashion shows, advertising and marketing. For several years Mary ran her own regional modelling agency whilst also scouting on behalf of Models 1 on a 'mother agency' basis. At that time, Mary dealt with the highly respected talent scout Fiona Ellis at Models 1 – Fiona was responsible for discovering the likes of
Erin O'Connor, Karen Elson and Alek Wek.
Mary has always loved handbags – what girl doesn't. One of her dreams was to have her own brand luxury handbag business and finally has realised her dream. My inspiration for the gold star used in her brand name comes from the Jardine Star Brooch which was left to Queen Elizabeth II in 1981 by Lady Jardine. The brooch has eight points and a diamond is placed on a knife-wire between each point.
Mary is passionate and proud that her bags are made in Britain. Mary has sourced the highest quality soft calf leather which gives the bags their luxurious feel. All the materials used are of a very high quality. Her inspiration for her first collection came from childhood memories of her leather music case – hence the music bar detail. She always wondered what it would be like to have something incredibly chic with lovely clean lines incorporating the bar but at the same time being practical. Mary feels she has achieved it with the Jardine of London 'City' Bag.


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Energy Balance: What is It and Do You Have It?
When it comes to getting and staying fit, you need a consistent balance of exercise and nutrition in order to be successful. However, that is easier said than done because achieving that balance has proved to be very difficult for many people. A study just released in the July 2014 edition of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise® and in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics highlights that future success with regard to weight loss, overall fitness and health will require people to understand, implement and maintain what is called "energy balance."
Quite simply, energy balance is achieved when the amount of calories you burn is higher than the amount of calories you consume. It all sounds so simple, but with diverse lifestyles, tight schedules and so many trends to choose from, people tend to become too narrowly focused on either nutrition or exercise without creating a balance of both. The authors of the study sent out a call to action to health, nutrition and medical professionals to start working together to make sure that all the latest nutrition and exercise information and practices are presented to the general public. The goal is to have both professionals and the general public focused on diet and exercise, not just one or the other.
What does all of this mean for you? Well, it means that the process of all of these professionals defining and presenting the general public with information on energy balance is finally starting to happen. More importantly, this means that information on "how" to actually create and maintain a healthy lifestyle will start to become more standard and consistent. Does this mean that you now have to eat all of your meals while you're jogging or on a bike ride? No, but rather start out by being aware of and focusing on having a consistent balance of healthy foods and exercise daily, weekly, monthly and yearly!
At the basic level, here are 5 things you can do to develop your own personal level of Energy Balance:
- Perception. Start by perceiving Nutrition and Exercise as one system and work to ensure that you are eating healthfully and exercising on a consistent basis. This can be as simple as cutting out fast/junk food and walking 3-4 times per week for 20 minutes!
- Don't over-complicate things. If a 20-30 minute walk, jog or bike ride is all that you can do, that is fine, but stay consistent and understand that you don't have to exercise at high intensities or break world records to get great results. Keep moving and do it consistently!
- Choice & variation. Find 1-3 activities that you enjoy, and rotate them to avoid boredom: There are countless forms of physical activity to choose from, so take the time to step out of your comfort zones and try new things.
- Don't follow trends. As long as you are performing physical activity for sustained periods of time (20 or more minutes), you'll be just fine. If you want to ride around town on a unicycle while juggling, go for it! As long as you're moving and enjoying yourself, that is what matters.
- Ask for help. If you don't know where or how to start, go to a local fitness facility and have a professional map out a simple plan of action that is specific to your needs. Often, this will be free or at a very low cost. A few sessions with a trainer to kick-start a basic program for you is very inexpensive and worth every penny. If you don't ask for help, you won't receive it.
Balance and consistency are the key!
To read the full study, click here.


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ANDERSON, Calif., Dec. 11 (UPI) -- Three Kentucky Fried Chicken workers in California have been fired after being accused of using a restaurant sink as a bathtub, a company spokesman said.
KFC spokesman Rick Maynard said the three unidentified female employees were initially suspended for allegedly bathing in a dishwashing sink in Anderson, Calif., but were later fired over the incident, the (Redding, Calif.) Record Searchlight said Thursday.
"KFC has zero tolerance for violations of our operating standards, and our franchisee has taken immediate action by terminating the employees who were involved," Maynard said in an e-mail.
The incident came to light after photographs of the female workers that allegedly show them bathing in the sink were posted on a MySpace profile.
The suspected bathing incident at the fast food restaurant could have significant repercussions for the Anderson eatery as well, senior environmental health specialist Fern Hastings of Shasta County's Environmental Health said.
Hastings told the Record Searchlight the photos appear to indicate the employees allegedly wore only swimsuits or underwear while bathing, a violation of a clean employee clothing state regulation.


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Last Night's Californication Hank's Letter To Becca VIDEO
On last night's Californication…. 1/16/11
Hank is having a hard time with life. Isn't he always? But most of all, he misses his daughter Becca. To put it short
"She hates me"
And he's right. Hank has been a poor father, and example of men for Becca for years now. It is true that he loves her, but rarely has he ever put Becca before his fleeting desires. How many times have we heard Becca say "Why is there a naked woman in my bedroom"???
So, after realizing he has become the problem for Becca, and not the hero he so wants to be, Hank sat down to write a litter to his daughter. Fueled with alcohol and pills. While hearing his "write" his love for his daughter broke my heart, I have to say "Sorry, Hank, but it doesn't count unless you can to it sober. "
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