Hey Dan

I had an interesting thing happen Sunday. A friend saw my name in the coverage of Olympic hockey. My name is Daniel Grandquist. This name is not exactly David Jones, who I went to high school with by the way, if you know him. So, I check Torino Olympic Athletes site and could not find a me.

What I think they saw was Daniel Granqvist or Grandquist. The original family name was Gronkvist. This Daniel Granqvist is a Swedish born hockey player. He is a defender in Danish League, a good one by looking over his stats. I have known about him for a while. His name sometimes comes up on vanity searches.

I have a strange fondness for him. Like a strange type of twin. Two men with the same name. This may be more common for most of you. However, my name is Grandquist. There is a Grandquist lake and a gospel singer, Nancy Grandquist. Other then that it is me and the handful of people related to me and now a Danish Hockey player.

Well if he every looks his name up on Google, I would like to say hi and good luck. If you are every in Texas we can go to a Stars game. If you ever play in a Stars game I will show up and cheer.

Posted by Dan at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Other then a couple of very small glitches, this was a really good weekend at workshops. Thanks everyone.

Posted by Dan at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I got the grades for my mid-terms last night. Turns out, I am good. The English mid-term was an A- and Government was an A+. So far it seems I am doing ok. Even with that, I am still worried. Part of it is going back to school at 37 years old. The other part is the people who support me; I do not want to let them down.

Getting my degree will take a while. As I figure it, it will take about 3 years to get my associates taking 2-3 classes every semester. After that I want to start on my bachelors. Daydreaming while I walked down the hall last night, I tried to think of things I could do if education was not an issue. I could teach or start a business or get a job as a CTO. Any of these things become possible.

In my Peter Pan way of doing things, it is fitting to have these dreams now. Maybe I am not going to be a lost boy forever… no, I am going to be a lost boy forever.

Posted by Dan at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For those of you who wonder if K and i are still in love....





thanks shaggy.

Posted by Dan at 10:22 PM | Permalink

Last night I took my first mid-term in like 20 years. The mid-term was for my government class and tonight is my english mid-term. The government was much more stressful then I thought it would be when I started this whole back to school thing.

Tuesday night, I was studying the review sheet before I went to bed and I found the most horrible thing. It was a term that I could not find in my book or my notes from class. I must have dreamed about the term all night and spent a good deal of yesterday worrying about it. It was just one term and I knew what the term meant and how it would apply to the subject of the test. What I didn’t have was a note/book/sign from God about what the correct answer on the test was.

Now, I know I have studied harder for these two classes then I ever did for any others. To my credit, it seems I am doing well. For me, studying is kind of a regressive activity. The more I study the more I worry and the more I worry the more I study.

Posted by Dan at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am going blind and not for the reason they always said I would. Over the last couple years or so I have noticed things getting fuzzy. This happens mostly when my eyes are tired. I have noticed that I was tilting my head to read small print as well. All of this added up to one thing, I am going blind.

Well that may be a bit too dramatic. What I needed was to have my eyes checked. That is what I did yesterday. I had my first ever eye exam. Turns out my eyes are healthily and my vision is a little off. As I age I am getting slightly near and slightly far sighted. Currently I see about 20-15. What the means is if I trying to read stuff 20 feet away I should be wearing glasses. I also need them when I read close up.

I was amazed about how fuzzy things had gotten. Lines are more defined and those street signs are much easier to see now. I knew this was going to happen a t some point. Both of my parents and my brother wore glasses by the time they hit 30. Add to that the fact I work on a computer 6-12 hours a day average. So this is not really that much of a surprise.

The vanity of glasses doesn’t really worry me. K says they look good on me. Most of the guys I know find girls who wear glasses hot, why would the girls I know be any different? Besides they make me look Clark Kent. I have a mild mannered alter ego… how cool is that?

Posted by Dan at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I wonder why no one is screaming to keep the Saint in Valentines Day?

It is Saint Valentines Day. While you may be expecting a sappy sweet post about how much I love my wife, you will have to wait a dozen lines.

First I am going to tell you about my feeling about this the only holiday I have openly dreaded. First the obvious, being single during mid-February is not much of a joy. The world seems to muck you at every turn. The second is having a Valentine is not all that much better. I remember the first year I was actually dating someone on the 14th of February. The pressure of having to think up, plan and execute a unique and touching way to say something I was really bad at saying without time crunch was a total disaster. The result of that night made me wish I was single just for that night.

The holiday was once a day to foster new love. The Roman picked Valentines by lottery and the man had a week to court the woman. In that time people helped him alone by giving him advice or introducing him to the young lady. While the whole lottery idea sounds like a recipe for disaster and insecurity, I like the idea of a holiday to help men be better romantics.

So here is my theory, from now on lets make Valentines Day a day where we try to foster love, not celebrate it. Think about it, we could help each other out. I know how to say things from the heart. Like those people who wrap presents at store during Christmas, I could help guys sign Valentines Day Cards. Someone out there knows how to plan a romantic evening, boy I could use their help. It would be great.

Let’s return the spirit back to in Saint Valentines Day. Like Chauce wrote in Parliament of Foules:

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne's day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

Chauce never could spell…. Now about my wife…

I married for Love and got so much more. Strength is her gift to me everyday, she is a fearsome woman. She lives as if it were a sport. Like people who run for the love of running. She gets out of bed in the morning for the love of being alive. Her laughter decorates my world. I could listen to her laugh forever. It is warn and soft. Just thinking of it makes me weepy. Beauty radiates from her. It is contagious. As she walks though her day everything she touches is a little better. This is my wife, and she ended up with me.

BTW… before you think “he so sweet” you should know that tonight we are celebrating Saint Valentines Day with something impromptu after I get out of class about 8:30pm... Sometime she is too good for me.

Posted by Dan at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As some of you have noticed (Nanook of the north, Shaggy, Super AD, K, Dean and more I am sure) heydan has been on vacation. It is not that I have not wanted to write, it is that I have not had time. With work, school, Faire and film stuff, I have been literally to busy to sit down to write. For example I am at work right now eating lunch. Because I do love all of you, here is everything I can think of in 10 mins that I have wanted to write in the past month and a half.

My Life
Zoo tour was both a big hit and popular (20-30 people showed), I started class for the spring, taking government (I hear we had a cool one once) with a teacher that rocks, taking rhetoric II the class with more homework then you can imagine (it is working out to a 2 page paper every class, 16-20 pages of lab work, plus 2 research papers, quizzes and tests), Started programming java at work (well make that Java, JavaScript, Java Beans, PSQL, CSS, Java Server Pages and HTML), Faire started (weekend disappear very soon), K and I got a finical planner (budgets and saving plans forthcoming), I am on a diet and working out 3 morning a week (getting up at 6:30 after doing homework until 12, sucks), I have lost 4lbs and a little over 2% body fat in the last month, Raptis and Crane video in the works (I get to direct!) and K and I cleaned house (once).

Politics
The 5th estate is in default, Bush claims he would be a uniter not a divider if only the people who opposed his point of view would support it (BTW uniter, still not a word), Pat Robert still proving our religious leader are a violent as anyone’s, the supreme court took a right turn (the same day 4 state move to outlaw abortion, duh), tapping everyone’s phone is now ok as long as you don’t tell anyone and in Alabama, 6 black churches are set on fire in a span 3 hours, the sheriff is investigating if the fire were set deliberately (ahhh… ya).

Zen
Henry Rollin still rocks (I have a great respect for his ability to think things though), I have this amazing talent for teaching/encouraging people but sometimes I don’t see the good in myself, If you have a chance to see Cirque Éloize Rain do it (travel if you have to) it is worth it, I still have a very west coast point of view about everything, I have this belief that people have super power but can’t think of what mine is, and it is hard to blog when I am inside my head, but it is very easy to do homework (why is that?).

The choice is fish, be drinkable.

Posted by Dan at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)