"Poppie, Poppie, look here at me!
I have a magic boat!
It’s free to ride, so come inside!
And watch it! Watch it float!"

"That’s good, my boy, now take your toy
and hurry off to bed
with Mother’s song, where dreams belong,
God rest your little head.

"Now when you wake, make no mistake
in darkness, dreams will stay.
Your dreams will fade as summer shade
beneath the light of day.

"You’ll realize dreams are foolish lies
to comfort little boys
And later when boys turn to men
you’ll find no simple joys.

"Hard work and sweat to pay your debt;
the meaning of a man.
You do not do what you want to,
you just do what you can.

"And then some day, when old and grey
you’ll look back on your life
and sigh relief in disbelief,
then lay down with your wife.

"You see, your play can’t take away
the need to do your chores.
Through sun or rain, or health or pain,
they cannot be ignored.

"But when complete, naught can compete
with that accomplishment.
So now, my son, I pray you’re done
with wasteful merriment.

"Be not confused, you’re not abused
I do this for your good.
You must prepare and be aware,
as every young man should."

"But father why is it that I
must toil till old age?
What’s wrong with fun while work gets done –
so long’s I earn my wage?

"Is it so wrong to sing a song
whilst I trim the yard?
Where comes this thought? Have we been taught
that all that’s good is hard?

"Can not the simple things in life
be purchased without strife?

"Don’t misconstrue, I still love you
and all that you have done.
But were I you, and you were me, I’d tell it differently.
I’d tell my son to go have fun
For not all dreams are free."
 

This poem was originally about a boy offering pumpkin seeds to a baker, who brushes him off.  The idea was to have the boy return later with pumpkins which were in demand.  But it was kind of corny… and I really liked two of the stanzas I had, so I kept them and rewrote the rest.  The result is an old man lecturing a small boy.  The idea is that the grown man sees no use in playing, and that life is about hard work and the rewards.  But the old man paints such a grey picture, and the boys world is so bright, that it’s obvious that you can’t neglect your dreams.  It’s not very deep, and doesn’t really need an explanation, but you’re getting one anyway!

I’m not sure I like it, but It’s complete enough to post.  I broke my structure in several places, but I think it kind of works…  I don’t know.  I’m tired, and this is my first forray back into poetry in ages, so it’s bound to be sloppy.

So, Jess and I are INCREDIBLY excited for a game called Spore.  If you haven’t heard of it yet, perhaps you need to crawl out from the primordial soup and evolve a pair of ocular sacs.  

Why the geek-talk?  Spore is a game where you start by controlling a single-celled organism in a pacman-esque game of eat and run, with the added depth of evolution and of course, graphics.  You evolve different weapons and modes of transportation until, eventually, you make landfall and grow legs.

After that, you’re on a predator/prey mission.  The game is balanced so that you’re never really at the top, but never at the bottom either.  Other creatures are created using content from other users.  You’re not actively playing against other players, but the game uses their content, so you still get to see some of what other people are doing, which is pretty cool.

From there the evolution continues, but on a more macro-scale of limbs and organs.  Once your creature reaches the "Technology" stage, the game morphs to more of a sim-city or civilization feel.  From there your evolve your technology until you eventually travel the universe in search of new worlds to populate!

Currently, Maxis has only released the creature creator, which allows you to mess with some of the possible combinations of your higher-level life forms.  The results can range from humorous to mundane, to downright deranged.  Needless to say, it’s provided us with plenty of mindless entertainment.

I’d post a few of my creatures up here, but I can’t find where the files are stored!  But one cool feature I’ve read, but haven’t tried, is that you can import someone else’s creature, but the creatures are just saved as a normal PNG file, and the layers store all the data…  I’m not big on file formats, so I don’t know as much about is as I should, but it’s an awesome way to do it.

Anyways, our little macbook will barely run Spore, but we’re still going to buy it when it comes out in September.  We’ll have to download it from the states, though, since buying it here in Poland might not work the way we’d want it to.

Today was probably the first "normal" day we’ve had so far.  

Jess had a full day of work with no special activities afterwards, and without me coming to the school as well.  They still had meetings and meet-and-greet activities, but for the most part, they worked.  Still just in preparation, and not actually in the swing of regular class schedules yet, but normal enough to know what to anticipate.

I rolled out of bed around 7am and cleaned up quickly.  Then I went to my desk in the spare room with my bowl of cereal and started checking e-mail.  There wasn’t much, since I had checked over the weekend (a danger of having work only one room away).  I started by picking off the small, easy tasks, then settled into the large, lengthy work I had lined up for myself.  Since I still hadn’t had any word back from several of my other, large projects, I have created some work myself to keep the website back-ends up and running smoothly, as well as providing some interface updates.

But, boring stuff aside, I got in about 10 hours, then we biked over for some pizza with a few of the other teachers.  Jess had tomatoes and mozzarella, so she was still hungry when we got back, and after she did some work, she made herself some pasta.

One of the things I did today to break up the work was to look more into the tension between the US and Russia, due to the missile defense deal.  Anyone who knows me knows that I despise weapons technology as much as I’m fascinated by it.  The parts I don’t like are the obvious killing aspect, and the less obvious business aspect.  Having worked for a defense contractor, I know that these guys lobby for legislation similar to the missile defense system.  Granted, these types of things are always well justified, but at the same time, the companies that make this stuff are whispering in the politicians ears.  Something about that raises the hairs on my neck.

But, politics aside, today was a pretty calm, normal day.  It’s interesting to be in a place so foreign, yet to do all of the normal things, like go to work.  One thing I did learn today, is that weekdays will be pretty exhausting, and weekends we will need to rally up our energy and go exploring!

Oh, one other thing before I forget…  I had an idea to write a story where the English words are slowly replaced with foreign words.  It would be a way of learning a language almost without noticing.  I’m not sure how well it would work, but it was something I was thinking of…  Maybe I’ll test it out in my blog!!  You may be a guinea pig, and not even know it…  mwahahaha