Owner: Riley Central URL:http://rileycentral.net/wordpress/ Join Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2006 23:09:20 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: The personal blog of Damien Riley: teacher, musician, dad, writer. Categories include:
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Jack Black Wraps up Christmas 2006-12-26 20:41:21 We arrived in San Clemente as the third push of our Christmas
Adventure! Just to recap: First, we watched our kids open presents at home. Second, the in-laws came over and we had CRAB (woo hoo! bought it at Stater Bros. and steamed it ourselves), Last, we went to my parents’ house in San Clemente to play guitar and watch the amazing . . . NACHO LIBRE!
Jack Black
made a cute little Nickleodeon movie there with a lotta laughs for all ages. Of course I think my son and I enjoyed it more than my wife, but whatever she will say, I caught her laughing a bunch of times.
It’s such bliss seeing my brother and sister’s families and all the kids. They were running around the house in between the ripped ribbons and wrapping papers. Mouths smeared with chocolate and laughing without a care in the world.
I played a little guitar as well, though not as much as my brother and uncle. They are the true die hard oldies jammers. At my uncle’s request, I led the tr
Woo Hoo I Got Sweaters 2006-12-25 21:56:52 Yesssss! I’ve had like one decent sweater this winter and my mom-in-law bought me 4 stylish Mossimo ones to finish out the winter. I might actually be understood as having some style or fashion sense!!! I am very grateful for this gift. I also got “The Wedding Singer” on DVD and a neon guitar wall clock (yeah baby!). The kids are making out like bandits and getting tons of great presents from their grandparents and their auntie. We’re gonna eat tacos soon and later after that we’re heading down the hill to San Clemente for Christmas with the previous generation Riley family. Isabella is in bliss. She’s got chocolate on her mouth and she’s surrounded by toys and her 3 cousins and 1 brother all playing on the floor. For a change, I don’t have to fight her away from playing with my laptop. Have you ever tried to write with a needly 2 year old in the room competing with your masterpiece??? Anyway, we are soon headed to S Read more:Sweaters
, Woo Hoo
The Passion of the Christmas 2006-12-25 18:18:27 It’s Christmas
and I have a few minutes to blog something while the wife is getting ready upstairs. We’ve already done the “kids-woke-us-up-and we-watched-them-open-presents-we-wrapped-dead-tired” thing. The kids loved their toys. Now it’s “clean-the-house-for-inlaws-visit” time. I better stop blogging . . . so much to do. Hope you’re havin a cruisin’ Christmas day . . . let it be. See you on the other side of the day.
Read more:Passion
Silver HTML's? 2006-12-24 21:08:06 We can do our banking online and order all our Christmas presents to be delivered on the doorstep. (City Sidewalks, Busy Sidewalks) There seems to be less and less we have to leave the house for. I noticed Papa John’s, Pizza Hut, and Domino’s now all offer online delivery service. I suppose the real trick will be when we can just beam the pizza over onto the kitchen table! The question to me is this: Have we increased our quality of life with the computer or have we just learned to do the same things with a new toy? Is the comp really a help to our human experience, or just a way to change the scenery along the same way? (Dressed in holiday style)
Instead of the town square creating the Christmas feelings, we now rely on TBS playing “A Christmas Story” 24 hrs. non-stop, which I am not complaining about I love that movie dearly. (In the air there’s a feeling of Christmas). Browsing http://technorati.com this morning for interesting blogs, I Read more:Silver
Boy on Bike 2006-12-23 19:59:09 Getting a bike at Christmas is a rush for a boy. Watching a boy get a bike for Christmas is a rush for a dad. When I was about 9 or 10, my parents responded to a request I made for a BMX bike. Now, before I continue, let me just assign a little bit of meaning to that adjective “BMX.” ALL the guys in 5th grade had BMX bikes. Some even raced at the track in some “far-off” fantasy place (I think now it was somewhere in Fountain Valley, California but back then it had a mystical netherworld quality whenever mentioned). My brother and I raced our outmoded “Schwinn’s” on a makeshift dirt-track. Watching the older, more serious BMX-ers use the “ski-jump,” as they called it, go around the “berms” (sp?), and race through the straight places made us fall victim to the BMX disease. A few features of the BMX bike back then were: 1) The HARO handbrake. I wonder if this is even still a company. 2) Alloy rims (the i
Back to Teaching Music for the Kids 2006-12-22 04:18:19 In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t played the SandBar or any other venue for several months. My last gig was a while back at the Ponderosa. I played for 20 minutes in front of an audience of 18-20 year olds. It was a good experience as playing live always is. I enjoy playing “Talk to Me,” “People,” “Rockin’ in the Free World,” “Angelyne,” “Day Tripper,” and all the usual set tunes. Since my last gig however I have been occupied with teaching and spending quality time with my two kids. In that time, as many already know, Sarah found out we are pregnant and so we have been doing our “think-tank” planning for when the baby comes in May.
In place of performing music, I have switched gears into teaching music at my school where I teach 3rd grade. I have a guitar class of 9 6th graders and several classes of grades 1-6 to whom I teach music history, theory, and lead in singing. It wa Read more:Music
The People From Whom I Learn the Most 2006-12-21 01:40:57 To live life without learning is foolishness. In a world full of preachers and teachers, who should we listen to? I thought about it for awhile and I came up with this for myself: I listen and learn from people who are determined, dependable, and compassionate. Those three adjectives can exist independent of one another in a person and in those cases, I am only 1/3 interested. It is the people who contain all 3 that fascinate and teach me the most in my life journey. Usually in my blog I like to post pictures to illustrate my point. In this case, instead, I can only write what each trait looks like since they are too abstract to produce picture results:
Determination looks like finishing a task before you start another. It’s the setting of short and long term goals and then determining to meet them whatever come what may. If set goals end up being too much, then you are at least closer than you started. “Aim for the moon, land among the stars.”
Dependa
"Don't Sweat the Small Stuff" Author Dies 2006-12-19 04:35:15 I read an article today that said Richard Carlson, author of the “Don’t Sweat
the Small
Stuff” books, died at age 45. This book had a dramatic impact on me in the late 90’s and I gained a lot of insight about life from reading it. The wisdom of the book is simply in its title. The tag to the title that you find in the book is: “. . .and it’s all small stuff.” I remember reading this book in Arizona while visiting my parents who lived there at the time in about 1997 and finding such a peace about things that were previously big issues and stressors in my life. He had a straightforward approach and made millions of dollars “sayin’ it like it is.” To have happened at 45, his death is a tragic loss to the literary and psychology community. You can read the article here:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/16246339.htm
Read more:Author
iPods: What's the big deal? 2006-12-17 22:55:24 iPods, what’s the big Deal?
There is always talk about “MAC or PC” in the tech world. All the talk for the past few years and still nowadays is about the iPod, a small wallet-sized device that holds and plays music-mp3 and video files.
Does anyone know there are other gadgets that do this? There are dozens of manufacturers that make mp3 players. there aren’t many that make handheld video players because the screens are too small, duhhhhh. Who wants to watch video that you have to strain your eyes to see? Furthermore, why would you take the time to watch video on your iPod when you have a TV or computer at home that can play it much larger? Who has time when one is out to watch handheld video? This is probably exciting for folks who buy the gadget because they can transfer their files into the device. That can be exciting, configuring and all. However, in reality and the time after configuring, do you really need to watch a mini TV set while you
Christmas 2006 2006-12-14 05:37:56 It’s beginning to feel a LOT like Christmas
for the Rileys. This picture is in front of the Disneyland tram in December 2006. We have passes and have enjoyed going as a family for several years. The highlight of our last trip was the “Aladdin” show at the California Adventure side. The blue genie gives Robin Williams a run for his money! Side-splittingly hilarious. Other highlights were Space Mountain, and of course, Pirates of the Carribean. As I am typing this, all about my family, my family just had a crisis: Isabella and Brandon were playing upstairs and Isabella hit her head on a corner. Ah, the terror of being a parent. I’m including that just to mirror the truth of family that the sweet is always part and parcel to the bitter.
We have a colorful tree and we’ve almost finished all our shopping. Thank goodness for Sarah for doing all the budgeting and nearly all of the buying! I got my present early. My lovely wife bought me a
The Underdog Blog 2006-12-27 07:31:25 I’ve always favored things “underdoggish.” They’re cooler than mainstream stuff. When REM sold out to Warner Brothers, I was bummed. I’ve attended little churches and when they started to fill up (Like Saddleback Church), they lost their appeal - in a sense -. Now that I have discovered the tools for blogging (I’ve really been putting blogs as what I’ve called “ecolumns” on the web since 1997) I am learning that this once sectarian hobby has become a 55 million counted pastime/occupation for Americans. The slogan at technorati.com is “With 55 million blogs, some have gotta be good.” I agree. The problem is this: all the search engines only show you the big hit sites. I’m interested in the guy or girl in like Missississipi or Rhode Island or (random state here) who sits at their laptop assembling images and uploading them to a server as they form words from ideas that make their life interesting. Read more:Underdog
What Happens In One Year? 2006-12-27 19:47:46 Well, it’s a new year 2007. Everyone agrees 2006 went by fast. We always ask ourselves: “What did I accomplish last year?” and then we judge our accomplishments. But what happens around us in a year? How much progress, or action occurs within the span of 365 days? If we knew some of these things, then maybe we wouldn’t be so hard on ourselves . . . well, at least we would have some sort of abstract measuring stick to weigh our progress. Some Yahoo! searches brought me these factoids to paint the background of what happens in one year:
10,000,000 skateboards were sold
Ranchers mate their cows with their bulls and start a new calving season, among other interesting chores
Public School Children attend grade level classes for 185 days.
One person becomes TIME Magazine’s “Person on the Year.”
In 2005, the National Average Wage index according to the Social Security Administration was 36,952.94.
The average person consumes about 18 st
13 things I want to do in the next 2 weeks 2006-12-28 03:40:23 The 13 things
I’d like to do before I go back to work January 8th . . .
1. Get my short story critiqued.
2. Do all the laundry piled up.
3. Plan my music classes/Pick folk songs to teach
4. Contact literary agents about my book idea.
5. Play with my daughter and her new toys.
6. Walk every day.
7. Play guitar a little.
8. Explore the blogosphere some more.
9. blog each day or more.
10. Write more of my book.
11. Clean my leather jacket.
12. Call my parents.
13. Email some friends I haven’t contacted for a while
The Library - Browsing Humanity 2006-12-28 17:18:16 I went to the library yesterday. There is a book there called “The Writer’s Market” that I needed some info from. I wasn’t sure if it would be there since I live in a 1/2 rural area of California(compared to Orange County where I grew up). As I asked the librarian for help, i was struck by her eagerness to offer it. Not only did she find me the book I needed, but she recommended a book to me as well that I read while there and it was VERY helpful.
I’m working on a book. It’s non-fiction and I really think it has some potential. Unfortunately, the process of writing it is inevitably taking my perfect idea and ripping it to shreds. My goal is to hold some semblage of the idea together to the end of the journey!
While in the library I saw a heavy kid in a T-Shirt reading “The Big Money” and I was blown away. Here was a kid reading a book I read (and loved) in college. And in Hesperia of all places!!! It reminded me that Read more:Library
, Browsing
My Side of the Fence 2006-12-29 21:17:19 I try to walk every day. The walk I take is a big circle through High Desert Suburbia. Our neighborhood is about as plain as it gets, which leaves the mind open to wander and imagine all sorts of off-beat things. Such as: “Why is ‘Murder She Wrote’ always playing on the Biography Channel?” But something I noticed today was the fences I walked by; they vary quite a bit. Seems like the worst fences are the ones with barking dogs. They snarl and it scares me out of my shoes every time. I guess that’s their purpose, to protect the home. There are cement fences, brick fences, even plastic fences. Some appear stock, like they came with the home new while others look like they were made afger a few trips to Lowe’s. Robert Frost wrote in his poem ‘Mending Wall,’
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps
Stages of Change 2006-12-30 06:45:14 Everybody I know makes New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t. I used to. It’s kind of like, for me, going to the mountaintop church camp and having a religious repentance experience and then, because you based that in emotion, you come down off the mountain (metaphorically and literally) and fall back into your old stuff you wanted to leave behind.
For me, change should come as a calm cool decision made over time. Once you make that decision, there are steps you take. I got a helpful list of them at the about.com website. They are called the classic “Stages
of Change
:”
Stage 1 - Precontemplation
Stage 2 - Contemplation
Stage 3 - Preparation
Stage 4 - Action
Stage 5 - Maintenance
Stage 6 - Relapse
I haven’t thought much about what my New Year’s resolutions would be this year. Maybe you have yours. It would be great to hear some out there so I can get some ideas. I have started a lot of “change” in the positive direct
Post Saddam Thought 2006-12-30 22:48:56 Do you ever stop and think how damn lucky we are to live here in America? I woke up this morning and dragged the cans in to find my neighbors’ trees out for recycling. It seems like yesterday we were tying ours to the roof of our Jeep Liberty and decorating it at home. I think I’ll leave ours up a bit longer. We have so many freedoms here. We can pick a career, go to college and pursue our dreams. We can get married, raise a family, go to church and do what we want. I wonder how long until Iraq is like that? The execution of Saddam
Hussein is a very meaningful symbol in the direction toward that freedom. Soon, there’ll be Starbucks, and Pizza Huts, and Wal-Marts, and thriving Universities over there. I don’t mean to come off sounding like Dick Cheney’s hunting partner, I am quite liberal in my politics. Having said that, I feel such exuberance about the USA and wanted to blog about it. As I plunk around on the laptop today, I also c
Bleak TV Choices 2006-12-31 04:57:03 Is it just me, or does every choice on TV nowadays pretty much suck? We have Direct TV and rarely lately has a show been on that caught my attention. Most the time we tough it out through shows that “suck the least.” I thought I’d take a humorous poke at the listings on Sattelite for 8pm at 8 o’clock on December 30, 2006:
Channel 2: CSI NY, This is an awesome show. It has been our mainstay keeping our faith in TV shows alive. However, when you TIVO every episode, you kind of get burned out on seeing dead bodies and stuff done to them over and over again. My favorite episode is the maggots one . . . I’ll spare you the details, but see it, it’s great.
Channel 4: Top Chef, Haven’t seen this reality show, no interest, though reailty shows are usually cool.
Channel 5: American Idol Rewind, we watched this through the season. It was cool, but again, I was feeling as if I was watching what the media had to give: that which sucked the l Read more:Bleak
Hey, What Ruled in 2006? 2007-01-01 02:33:37 I think it’s safe to say that, in comparison to the blogger of “Culture Popped,” I don’t get out much. Having admitted that, his post today inspired me to make a list of Riley “bests” of 2006.Â
2007 should be awesome in all ways: enetrtainment and technology (those being “all” to me hee hee), but I’ll give you the best of my 2006 which was a great year for both. Perhaps you’ll agree or take a recommendation to check these out:
Best Song of 2006: Nickleback’s Far Away
When I heard this song, I was driving to the bank on a Saturday. I was so moved by it — the sonics, the words — that I called wife unit and told her to look it up online. She listened to it and admitted to me later she cried listening to it. GREAT TUNE, it deserves #1 of 2006.
Best Movie of 2006: Mark Wahlberg’s Invincible
When we went and saw this movie I was bummed. We were desperate for a get-away-from-the-kids date, and (as
Blogging is a Fad. Good Writing Isn't. 2007-01-02 01:43:23 The blogger over at Writing Aspirations makes some hefty points about blogging in 2007. Some I agree with, and some I am on the fence about. At any rate, it inspired me to share my history with the internet and writing, it’s been a long road that some bloggers might find helpful, if not interesting. Here we go:
I started writing on a personal website in 1995. I started it free at Geocities, and I didn’t even have my own computer. I accessed the page through California State University Fullerton’s computer lab. As I recall they had MAC’s. I’ve since become a PC guy. Geocities separated sites into categories based on broader interests. Because mine was literature and writing (I was an English major in my last semester at the time), they gave me an “Athens” addy. I remember advancing through the other websites and finding sites ranging from highly busy with too many graphics moving to standard written sites where the personal Read more:Blogging
Patch of Orange Groves 2007-01-03 06:25:05
A personal blog thrown into the mix here . . . written quickly without revision . . . apologies in advance:
I left the High Desert for a while today. Wife and I took the kids to Disneyland and it was really great. The main point of this trip was to get my son on a scary roller coaster (California Screamin’). He’s 8 going on 30 and walks around acting like he’s the smartest, toughest kid around. That’s why I was astonished that he refused to go on it.Â
We spent time on kiddie rides, and even Space Mountain (which I coaxed him kicking and screaming to go on last trip) but he maintained a nervousness about that white roller coaster over at California Adventure.
I finally forced him to go on it, and now of course . . . it’s his favorite ride in the world!
My baby girl loved “A Bug’s Life” and “Snow White.” Because we have annual passes, we didn’t stay that long. It was WICKEDLY crowded. If you know what fast Read more:Patch
, Orange
A Proud Moment for Damien 2007-01-04 18:28:09 Driving to Pasadena there is a Damien
Avenue. As a kid growing up I was repeatedly disappointed in the absence of bicycle license plates with my name on them. Besides that, fridge magnets, personalized caps, souvenirs of all types and the like. It must have been a scant choice for young women naming babies in and around 1969. My mom thought it a clever, intelligent choice to name me Damien because I think Arlo Guthrie’s son was name that or something Bohemian like that. The truth is, I’ve always liked my name. My folks never would have dreamt that Gregory Peck later in the 70’s would star in a world-rocking thriller called “The Omen” that would forever alter the social life of all boys (now in their 30’s) BLESSED with our wonderful name. I tried to change it to my middle name in 3rd grade but found I missed my nominal identity, so . . . I kept it and now it stays.
Sometimes I feel like a needle in a haystack, and my name sets me apart. Read more:Proud
, Moment
The Resting Jack 2007-01-05 06:33:42 Time off from work, or whatever you do that resembles work, is crucial to writing. When stress reigns and you can’t get up from it, you’re stuck.
It’s easy to say, “I can take time off when I want to,” and it’s another thing entirely to DO IT.
This slogan on a mug is hilarious to me because it has such attitude. We need that attitude every once in a while.Â
Not using our sick days will wind us up dead. And if not dead physically, then worse: ALIVE AND UNINSPIRED.
You may not have sick days, or you may seriously not be able to use them . . . to you I say: “Find a way to recreate!” Meditate about your favorite places on your lunch hour, listen to headphones in your MP3 player, get outside of the realities that bring you down and stress you out. Find away to somehow separate youself from the rest of the world, for a time. When you return, you’ll bring something back, inevitably something valuable.
Reading helps me cope wi
Writing with 2 kids 2007-01-06 06:39:23 To the reader: note the category this post is filed under: “rants” It’s been a long day.
Writing at home can sound like a luxury, but it’s more of a killjoy. There are facets of the home that can help the writer, but the distractions far outweigh the inspirations. I have an 8 year old son and his favorite channel is Nickelodeon. Now if you have ever watched this channel you know what kind of idiotic programming it emits 24/7. Of course, my son’s favorite is “Spongebob,” second only to “Jimmy Neutron.” When he’s played his Nintendo to the last level, skateboarded with his friend ’til the street-lights have come on, and done all his chores, I often find it cruel to subject him to the boring grown-up television that I enjoy so much, such as CSI or Larry King Live. In those moments, I hesitatingly suggest to him that he may watch “his shows” for a bit. When that happens, I start to develop a sort o
A New Approach to MySpace 2007-01-06 20:36:29 I’ve been through the ringer for a clue as to how MySpace
is designed to work. I joined it as a way to network my music with other musicians and fans throughout the world. What I ended up with was messages from promoters offering me gigs in local bars and random spammers claiming they wanted to be my “friend.” I tried starting a blog there a year or so ago and found that it is not as promoted as one say at blogger.com or wordpress. In fact, MySpace (for me anyway) hasn’t really been much of a blog network at all. If you know different, please tell me and promote some MySpace blogs here.After a couple years, I had over 200 friends added to my list because I pretty much added anybody who asked to my friends list. The other day, I went back (I don’t frequent it much) and looked through some of my friends and realized there were really only a small amount there that I even knew much about. I decided to start whittling. When I was done, I had
The Wintrified World of Writing 2007-01-07 19:30:16 I wonder how it is for those out there living in snowy conditions. After all, I am in Southern California so it’s really not THAT cold. Nonetheless, it’s cold to me and I don’t like it!
What is it about the cold that makes the little things so cumbersome. We have a two-story house with a really poorly designed heating vent system. The thermostat is downstairs and if you set it at say 65, then the upstairs gets ALL the heat and then some. The downstairs meanwhile stays the same temperature keeping the heat pumping upstairs. Besides that, heat rises. End result? We wear extra clothes when downstairs and don’t run the heater much.
With both my kids bundled up ready to help yesterday, we did the dreaded “take the tree down” deed. The tree was really dry so pine needles stuck in my sweater, and were scatterred everywhere all over the floor. As we struggled to get the windy garlands and lights off the tree, I felt that sense of nagging Read more:World
The Most Wonderful Thing About Tiggers . . . 2007-01-08 06:07:55 Stories like this I must share.  I just read a story at Yahoo! News telling that a park employee dressed as Tigger hit a boy in the face . . . yes, on purpose. Apparently the whole thing was caught on tape and and you can view it at the link.
Wonder if the heat of the suit got to him? When I have worn our mascot suit at my school, I’ve experienced very uncomfortable heat. I can’t imagine what was going through his mind though to hit a child. If he did it (and the video appears that he did) I hope he gets a hefty fine, and maybe he’ll be sued by the family. That won’t be damaging or anything to the child . . . just a left hook from Tigger . . . he’ll get over it . . . not . . . SHEESH!Â
Tags: Tigger, Disney World, Hit, Child, Investigation Read more:Wonderful
, Thing
How to Save an Inner City Child 2007-01-10 18:43:05 Working in an inner-city demographic as a teacher, I encounter students ranging from middle income down to impoverished. Having been working in this environment for about 7 years now, I know some of the methodology on how to “do your part” and help these kids up in life.
1. Find out where they are: Give them initial assessments. Not only of academics, but take the time to get to know them. What kind of ice cream they like, what their favorite “Nickelodeon” TV show etc. This will help you immensely in know what to offer them academically as well as relationally to bring their scores up.
2. Connect at least 3 times daily: Make sure you ask each child how they are doing in the day, especially the ones you see as troubled. This will let them know you care and that they are worthy of someone asking. I try to do three things (if not more) to ocnnect every day: 1) Say good morning, ask how they are; 2) Call on them at least once in the day; and 3) Give the
Make It, Break it Down 2007-01-10 06:54:10 It rained a little tonight and as I watched the windshield wipers, I saw a poem. The left one would leave an arc of water and the right would squeegee it off . . . over and over and over.
I thought of how our lives are like that. We build things and then break them. A never-ending yet wonderful cycle. At the end of our life, nothing will remain except the memory of the process. We are in that process now: building, breaking down, building up again.
Like the “38 Special” song goes: “Hold on loosely, but don’t let it go.” Just a thought I had . . . stream of consciousness, on the road . . . in the rain . . . tonight.
Tags: Rain, windshield wipers, poetry, life Read more:Break
Nacho Libre Quotations 2007-01-09 23:00:10 “I fought some bulls, I ate some grass. I used my hand to wipe my tears.”
Nacho
: “We probably lose because you don’t believe in God!”
Skelet: “We lose because you are fat.”
“They say I don’t know nothing about God but I doooooo!”
“Sometimes grownup men wear stretchy pants in their room, it’s for fun.”
“I’m sick and tired of getting paid to lose, I wanna winnn!”
Father: “There are no spices, where are the chips?”
Nacho: “They were stolen.”
Father: “Did you tell them they were the Lord’s chips?”
Nacho: “I was trying to . . .”
“Oh my god, I like all those things too every day.”
“Get that corn away from me!”
“I don’t believe in God, I only believe in science.”
“I hate all the orphans of the world.”
Tags: Nacho Libre
, Jack Black, quotations, quotes, lines Read more:Quotations
, Nacho Libre
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