Rival Gates's Blog, page 68

My New Interview

Today author Elizabeth McKenna was kind enough to interview me for her blog. There is a short biography on me as well as the interview and an exempt from Quest for the Red Sapphire. It also has links to my various sites as well as places to buy the book. The link to the interview is http://elizabethmckenna.com/2014/03/0... Let me take this moment to thank Elizabeth McKenna for giving me this wonderful opportunity and exposure.

Real Fat Tuesday

Today is Fat Tuesday for Roman Catholics. It is the day before the start of Lent when traditionally the sugar in the house was used before the fasting period. These days it’s an excuse to buy super fattening special doughnuts made for the occasion and eat what you want. So I decided to talk today about something Americans are obsessed with; fat. It was back probably around 2001 when I was watching Entertainment Tonight with my wife and they showed a poll of several thousand women. They asked them, “If you could have any star’s body, who’s would you choose?” At the time the overwhelming first choice was Britney Spears. As soon as they said that my wife said, “Ha, I bet she’s not happy with her body.” I was confused and asked why. She said, “No woman is 100% happy with her body.” That floored me. That can’t be true, I thought. My wife is perfect. So many women are absolutely beautiful. How could that be? Ever since then I have taken a non-scientific poll of female friends and asked them if they were happy with their body. Nearly every one of them told me they were too big here or too small there or there was too much fat in this area. I didn’t see what they were talking about. Then I started listening to my male friends and they were unhappy with their bodies too. They had the same list of complaints except in different areas. The biggest difference was that men were usually less inclined to do something about their weight. Our society condemns anyone overweight. Women are particularly held to an unfair higher standard, it would seem. They are expected to look like some size 0 supermodel. In the movie “The Devil Wears Prada” the main character is ridiculed for being a size 6 which I am told is not very big. I have always been heavy. When I was having a health screening for my insurance I was shown a chart stating just how obese I had become. As bad as I felt about the number, I looked at where I needed to be in order to be “Normal” on their list. At 6 feet tall I needed to weigh 135 pounds. When I was starving in college for lack of money I wasn’t even that light. The old excuse is that “I’m big-boned.” Well, I do have broad shoulders and a large frame. I am still way overweight right now but those tables they use to figure your weight do not reflect different body styles. It’s like saying, “Every vehicle should have a 4 cylinder engine for better gas mileage.” What about big sedans? What about SUVs? What about trucks? We can see the wisdom in that but are harshly judged by those tables. I think they are purposely adjusted to make people pay higher health insurance premiums and frighten them into losing weight so they won’t have as many trips to the doctor. Lighter people in good physical condition tend to lose fewer days of work. It’s not like I try to make poor choices when I eat but as many of you know, it is hard to eat healthy. In the morning I am usually in a rush and have a bagel on the go. Recently I saw that my innocent little bagel had 600 calories in it before I even put cream cheese on. That’s over a third of my daily allowance of calories in a few bites. I’ve tried cereal but I am usually hungry an hour or two later. The bagel seems to stick with me longer. Since restaurants are the places that display the calorie content, let’s stick with them for lunch. If I get a Jimmy John’s sub, it’s nearly 1000 calories. I might as well have gone to McDonald’s where I can buy my grand-daughter a Chicken McNugget Happy Meal with the same number of calories. I will work on my weight, but in the meantime I won’t look at the calorie content in restaurants. As I seem to enjoy saying, “Ignorance is bliss.”

KNOWING and BELIEVING

There are 2 states of mind humans have in relation to the world. There are the things you BELIEVE and the things you KNOW. Webster’s defines these terms as such: BELIEVE = “To accept something as true, genuine, or real.” KNOW = “To be aware of the truth or factuality of : be convinced or certain of.” Is it better to BELIEVE or to KNOW? Conventional wisdom would tell you that KNOWING is better than BELIEVING because it is something you are sure is so. Take a book for example. Before it is published you may BELIEVE that it will have broad appeal. Belief is good but it is much better when the book is published and sells well. Then you KNOW that it has broad appeal. Often times like the one just shown you must have BELIEF in order to KNOW. In another example, you may BELIEVE you are going to get a promotion at work. There is much less stress, however, after you KNOW that the job is yours. KNOWING sounds like the thing to have and that is often true when the result is positive. When you KNOW something good is about to happen or has happened it can bring joy and happiness. Prior to their transpiring, you are left with BELIEF which always leaves room for doubt. So KNOWING is better…End of blog. Now stop for a minute and consider a different point of view. It is said that “Ignorance is bliss.” How is that relevant, you may ask? What if the KNOWING is not a positive? Perhaps you BELIEVE you are sick and then you KNOW you have terminal cancer? Were you not happier before you KNEW the facts? What if that book comes out and is not well received? Weren’t you happier when you BELIEVED it would be well liked? Say you don’t get the promotion. Weren’t you more jubilant when you BELIEVED you would get it than once you KNOW you didn’t? There are many positives in this world and many negatives. BELIEVING and KNOWING trade places frequently in our delicate balance of happy and sad. You may BELIEVE you will live to be 90 but what if you KNEW you only had two weeks to live? Your perspective would be different. KNOWING is a great thing but it takes all the uncertainty and mystery out of a situation. There are things you need to know. Most of them are common sense things. KNOWING is often seen as good because of the lack of surprises. If we only went through life concentrating on things we KNOW, then change would be very rare. People inherently want to BELIEVE something. Often they want to BELIEVE something good like their favorite sports team will win their next game. KNOWING is good but it doesn’t see you through the tough times because the outcomes are not always positive. BELIEVING gives us what we need for those times. What is it that BELIEF gives us? Hope. BELIEF is the product of hope. In order to carry on through adversity, you need to BELIEVE that it will get better. That BELIEF comes from a deep hope for better times ahead with perhaps a touch of KNOWING thrown in for credibility. What is KNOWN is yesterday’s news. What is BELIEVED makes tomorrow’s headlines. In the end, the more you BELIEVE, the more you will KNOW.

Reality TV, Stop the Madness!

I think reality television is taking over the world. In the 1960s the shows were mostly situation comedies and spy dramas. That included everything from My Favorite Martian and Leave it to Beaver to the Avengers. In the 1970s and 1980s everyone seemed to be a private detective or police officer. We’re talking about shows like Charlie’s Angels, Canon, Columbo, The Rockford Files, Berretta, Hawaii 5/0, Hill Street Blues, Simon and Simon, Magnum P.I, T.J. Hooker, Miami Vice and the list continues. In my whole life I don’t think I have ever met a private investigator. Yet television had us believing every other person was one. There were also more comedies thrown in during that time like The Cosby Show, Family Ties, M.A.S.H., Happy Days, Cheers, Night Court and so on. The 1990’s were filled with dramas like 90210, Melrose Place, The X Files, ER and then something happened. An obscure show called “Survivor” appeared in the late 1990’s in which people were left out in the elements and forced to compete for a million dollar prize. Along the way they would lie and cheat and swindle one another while voting out members of the “Tribe”. I realize this show has been a huge success and some people may not like this opinion but I find the entire premise revolting. It is the ultimate example of the worst parts of human nature and makes our entire species look downright evil. Enough said on that point. Little did anyone know at the time that this was but the first volley in what would become a war of Reality Television. Moving into the new millennia, we soon had Big Brother and The Bachelor. The fledgling cable networks have recently become involved with multiple gold mining shows, fishing shows, military boot camp, pawn shops, auto restoration, singing shows, modeling shows, designer contests, cooking shows, decorator shows, home building or remodeling shows, matchmaker shows, oil drilling shows, moonshine shows, Amish Mafia shows, pregnant teen shows, eating shows, traveling shows, investor shows, garage sale shows, the Kardashians (Don’t get me started) and even one about a rock singer renovating RV’s. Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head. The basic premise behind all of these shows is that there is not a script. (Though I’m sure there is one.) Supposedly the people are just being natural while on film. This quickly reached the saturation level and has now reached flood proportions. It seems like every channel now has at least one reality show. I used to love watching the History Channel. There was always something on about some war or a historical event of some significance. The other night I turned it on and Pawn Stars was on. I scanned ahead on my cable box and saw that it was on for 3 hours and then 2 hours of American Pickers was coming on. What happened to programing? Are we destined to end up watching ordinary people wander around and do ordinary things? Worse yet, are we going to see poorly staged “real life” events that just so happen to transpire while the cameras are rolling? Television has hit an all-time low. Worse yet, other countries and cultures around the world will see our programing and think that’s what America is like. I can only hope it dies off sooner than later. Thank God for books!

Young Readers

Tonight at my youngest daughter’s middle school they were having a Science Fair/Author Expo. Starting with the science side, I must say I was impressed. There were no baking soda volcanos like when I was that age. They had a vast array of experiments. There were: “Does Color Seen Impact Memory”, “Does Barrel Length Effect Impacts of Guns”, “Do Pills or Capsules Deliver Medicine More Efficiently”, “Which Teeth Whitener Works Best”, “What Beverages Cause the Greatest Tooth Decay” and my favorite, “Which Energy Drink Makes Plants Grow Best” (the winner far and away was Red Bull, in case you wondered.) Presentations have come a long way since I colored on Bristol board with pencil crayons. Photos and graphs abounded while some set up laptops running a film of their experiment in progress. Science is well and good but I wanted to see the booths about the authors. Part of the reason was that my daughter was there but I also wanted to see what tomorrow’s leaders were reading. You can imagine my delight when I saw that close to ¾ of the writers chosen were in some form of Fantasy genre. My own daughter chose J.K. Rowling. Others chose writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, Suzanne Collins and Stephenie Meyer. They were represented by multiple students as well. As part of the display, the student would dress up as a character from the book. My daughter was dressed as a Hogwarts student but I was pleased to see a number of characters with fake swords and some form of magic. Fantasy is alive and well. I have always contended that Fantasy will always have a place in literature. People want to escape to another world where their troubles don’t exist. Fantasy is a great place to just that. It was nice to see the different subsections of the genre such as Urban, Paranormal and Epic all displayed with pride by their student representatives. These are tomorrow’s Young Adult and the future Adult readers. They are setting their foundation in the worlds of make believe. I have said many times that Fantasy is for the dreamers out there. We can learn something from these students. Imagination is the first step to invention or “Thinking outside the box” as it were. By honing their minds now we will have the future inventors of the world. All their imaginative creations can be traced back to their readings in these formative years. It makes me proud to be a Fantasy writer. Dream big, students. Dream big.

Fixing the Garage Door

If you read yesterday’s blog you’ll see that my garage door opener stopped working and an electrician said the wiring was not the problem. Today the garage door repair person came. I told him the opener would trip a breaker if plugged in but he had to see for himself. He didn’t test it on the plug I had checked out. He tried it on the plug in the garage where my freezer is plugged in. It tripped the GFI on that unit as well. There was just one small problem. That unit did not have a reset button! I went downstairs and checked the breaker box but nothing was tripped. I returned to the garage and searched in vain for a reset. In texting my wife, she insisted that there was one. I am actually hoping to be wrong on this one and have her come home and just point it out. It is better to look like a fool than to pay for a new outlet. Meanwhile the garage door repairman was having trouble figuring out the problem with the opener. He said to me, “The problem seems to be when you plug it in, the power shuts off.” Really? After an hour that’s what you’ve come up with so far? I knew that when I was dangling from the ladder yesterday! I told you that before you popped the outlet on my freezer! So he went to his truck and called his office. Their solution was to change out all the electrical components of the opener. Dollar signs flashed in my head. Then I thought about it. What choice was there? I needed it fixed and I certainly had no solution to the problem. I’m just thanking God that it is bitterly cold out and the freezer won’t thaw during the day. So I told him to fix it. After a while he came in and said everything was changed out and working fine. He showed me how to resent my remotes and open the door manually in the future. (It worked the opposite way of my garage door at my old house. That was the reason it would not work when I was pulling the cord. It’s a good thing I waited too because the cord was attached to a little piece of plastic which I would surely have broken by pulling too hard.) Then it came time for the bill. I had purposely called this company because they installed the unit when the house was built. The service man asked, “How long have you lived here?” I answered, “2 ½ years.” He looked at his sheet and said, “The parts have a 3 year warranty so all the electrical was free. It will just cost $65 for the labor.” My first good news. The crescendo of the “1812 Overture” was playing in my head as victory was finally mine. I wrote the check with the bells of triumph still ringing in my ears. He would have to leave before something happened like his dispatcher saying they were wrong about the warranty. I handed him the check and he left. Now if only I could reset the blasted freezer.

Broken Garage Door Opener

So today my garage door opener decided to stop working. I reset the breakers in my basement and nothing changed. Next I inspected the garage door opener and saw that it was not receiving power. Following the cord back to the GFI plug I saw that it had tripped. The plug is in the ceiling of my garage and it is about 12 feet high. I used various poking devices to try to reset the GFI but it was no use. That led to the part I feared and dreaded. I would have to go on a ladder to get at it. Ladders themselves do not scare me. I happen to have a problem with vertigo and my balance is not good at all. So the little orange light stayed on, as if it was laughing at me way down on the ground. Finally I mustered up my courage and brought out the ladder. The next problem was that the car was parked under the plug. I tried to manually release the garage door in order to open it. It would not budge. The best I could do was place the ladder next to the car and reach over. To complicate matters, the closest point to place the ladder was directly beneath the garage door opener. I climbed the ladder and bent my body between the car and the opener. It quickly became apparent that I would need to go to the top of the ladder to reach the plug. That was right next to the opener and impossible to stand on. The plug was also several feet over above the car. So I had to put one foot on the ladder and one knee on the top of the car to get under the plug. The ladder began to slide as I shifted my weight toward the car. At last I was in position. Then my vertigo started making everything move around. I wasted no time. I reached up and reset the GFI. At least I tried to. I pressed the button and nothing happened. Again and again I pressed it to no avail. Then I unplugged the garage door opener and tried it. The GFI reset perfectly. Then I plugged the opener back in and it tripped again. I inspected the wires as best I could and they looked fine. So I tried it one more time and the GFI still tripped. Then I lost my balance and hung onto the car for dear life. I don’t know if the ladder wobbled or I did but there was movement. I contorted my body and managed to slide down the ladder, collapsing on the ground with the world spinning around me. When I made it to my feet I called the electrician who did our wiring on our 2 ½ year old house. He said he would be over. After arriving he told me that my wiring was fine and that I needed to contact the company who installed the opener. After calling my builder I was given the number of the contractor. Upon calling him I found he only supplied the parts and I needed to call the service department. By the time I was able to contact them they said it was too late in the day to come out. So after all that I have an appointment for tomorrow morning. And the story continues…

Italian Food

I had some relatives over tonight somewhat unexpectedly. It was great to
see them but the first thought that came to my mind was that it was close to
dinner time and I had nothing defrosted to feed the number of people I had
over. My solution was not so different than the one many of you would
reach. Pizza. Ah, what a glorious invention pizza is. You have
an entire meal in the palm of your hand. You have your bread, vegetable,
meat and dairy in a neatly sliced circle of heaven. Unless you are cooking
it is usually the cheapest way to feed a good number of people. A five
minute car ride to our local pizza place and dinner was ready. As I ate I
couldn’t help but wonder what people did before there was pizza? A quick
look on line showed that the term has been around since the year 997 A.D. in
Italy. The item itself has various origins but seems to be credited to the
Italians for the most part. So let’s just say for convenience that pizza
came about at that time. Since then it has grown into a staple, a comfort
food and a delicacy. Italian immigrants brought the sensation to the new
world and it exploded into our culture. Few foods have had the impact of
pizza. Still, there’s a lot off history before 997 A.D. What did
people feed to houseguests before that? It looks like the Italians come to
the rescue again with pasta dishes like spaghetti, ravioli and lasagna.
While many Italian dishes take considerable time to prepare, a humble pasta and
sauce is an inexpensive relatively easy meal to make on short notice. It
simply involves boiling some water and tomato sauce. Italian food has
become a mainstay in American culture. Different ethnic foods have
niches. There is Chinese (Americanized) Food, Mexican (Americanized),
Indian, Tia, Vietnamese, French, German and the list goes on. They all
represent different tastes many people sample from time to time. With the
exception of Mexican food, none of them are staples of weekly life in America
the way Italian food is. Perhaps it’s the tomato sauce? Perhaps it’s
the cheese? Maybe we just like dough in some form and people wanted more
than plain bread. Whatever the reason, people love Italian food.
They especially appreciate it when they have many mouths to feed. So sit
back and have a slice of pizza, a piece of lasagna or a bowl of pasta with some
friends or family. Italian has become a big part of the new American
Cuisine.

A New Interview

The Page Walker blog has done me the honor of performing and posting an interview with me. There are some questions here that I do not usually get asked. http://t.co/EEPwcRLSez Take a few moments to read it and I think you’ll find it most interesting.

My Guest Post

The good folks at “Mama Knows Books” blog were kind enough to do a piece on me. There is a blurb about the book but also the story of bringing “Quest for the Red Sapphire” to press. There is a never before posted excerpt from the book as well. You can read it at this link: http://mamaknowsbooks.blogspot.com/20...
Sandy Sanford did a marvelous job and I hope you enjoy the piece