Aloha!

I’m quite a bit better. I’ve been set back by the flu for about two weeks. I’m slowly getting over a very rasping cough too, and that’s a little slower to leave. On the first day, I was so sore and so miserable, I tried to sit up in bed and Tamika gave me a small push and knocked me back down! For those of you who know me, I almost NEVER take a day off for being sick. I stayed in bed almost the entire day.

We went over to Jocelyn’s house on Friday for her birthday party. She wanted cookies for her party instead of a cake, so we brought over some cookie dough. 🙂 We played Settlers of Catan. I’m hooked on that game, I think it has become my new favourite. It’s built like an online multi-player strategy game where you take over a small island. My only problem is that (as is typical in settler-type games) the Natives of the island are non-existent. 😛

I went over to Paul B’s house on Saturday and helped him and Natasha lay tile in their kitchen floor. Tamika stayed home to rest and clean. Paul is taking me to start Martial Arts classes this evening. He took me to see some black belt tests a few weeks back, and taught me some stretches. He and his wife are both black belts; she being a 2nd level. Tamika used to compete when she was younger, and achieved brown belt. She was even on the news at one point, and competed in Budapest. You can still find some of her records online.
I’ve wanted to learn since I was a teenager.
I remember Sonny and Yan Vollant and I practicing moves we’d seen Jackie Chan and Jet Li do. We actually took the “theatrical martial arts” that you see in the movies; grabbing whatever was at hand and using it as a weapon, using whatever was available to vault oneself over opponents and along walls… and used them in real life. We often had trouble with bullies, and so these actually came in useful. The lockers in my high school still bear the scars of the battles we had.
Paul and Natalie had us come over after their kids went to bed, and we watched “The Departed“.
Whoa. What a ride that movie is. It’s a movie that really makes you think. It’s pretty gory, and shocking at times, but really really good. Apparently, my mom’s side of the family has some old ties in the Irish mob in Boston.

Nick Machlan and Tim Laux came over that afternoon; Nick is about to fly over to Kenya to marry his fiancee, Monika. He needed a place to store some of his stuff, so we offered up our basement and he cooked us some Ethiopian food (with real Injira bread!).

I finally finished “The Pursuit of Happyness“. Roland, my workplace’s president, lent it to me and I’d been reading it before I got to bed. It’s an interesting book, I’ll give it that. The movie sure isn’t true to it, and in some ways I like the story the movie tells better. I’m not sure how much of it Chris Gardener wrote himself, (as is always the question for me when someone has a well-known writer credited on the cover). Gardener was a bit graphic with his details and attitudes about women.

Tamika and I went for our first checkup for the new baby today. It was a strange experience. I was a little nervous about asking off, but Paul, my manager, very warmly encouraged me to take off, and even commented that he was glad I was going! After a year of working here, I feel like I’m starting to get to know him better.

The preliminary results seem good, though, and they even set us up to have the bloodwork done the same day. Sonogram will be in a week or two.

I may have a wedding to photograph soon; and so have my sights on a Canon 30D; a digital SLR. I did a lot of research on it, and I think this is the best camera out there for my money. If you have any desire to buy a digital camera anytime soon; read on.

Canon has 3 levels of Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras (DSLRs). An Single Lens Reflex camera is typically the kind of camera that you can change the lenses on, and has a small mirror in the body of the camera that flips up when you press the shutter, so that you can actually see through the lens you’re taking the picture through. DSLRs are just like these, except instead of film, they have an imaging chip that picks up the image behind the mirror. The benefit to having one is that all the lenses you use on your regular camera can be used on the digital one.

So, back to the levels. Level 1 cameras come in the 100’s, the past three cameras being the 300D, 350D and the newly released 400D. These are consumer cameras (and come under the name “Digital Rebels” after the Rebel SLR series); they have limited functions, but are often released before any of the other higher level ones are. So, you’ll often have a Level 1 camera that APPEARS to be better than a Level 2 because it has a higher megapixel rate. Level 1 cameras typically have slower processors and lower ISO ranges though, so they’re not as flexible.

Level 2 Cameras come in the 10’s, the past three cameras being the 10D, 20D, and 30D. They are ALMOST top of the line (or “prosumer”), but not quite. They’re typically the best tested cameras because they’re by for the most widely used. Their prices are good too. Because most serious photographers buy them, you’ll often the older models in abundance, which is perfect for the photographer who wants a pro-grade camera for a good price. The much-anticipated 40D is supposed to come out soon, and will be just like the 400D (see the connection?) except with more features. I’m not going to buy one, though, I can wait just fine until the price drops.

Level 3 Cameras come in the 1’s, the past 3 have been the 1D, 1D Mark II, and 5D. These cameras are the truly professionals of the bunch, and typically run in the several thousand dollar range, have enormously wide settings, and the largest megapixel range of all. The largest market for these are scientific communities and photographers with a lot of money. 🙂 The good thing about these cameras is that sometimes when the price drops on them enough, they’re still the best cameras one can buy.

They’ve just released a new 400D Digital Rebel that has a slightly higher megapixel rate, but I think other factors (like the ISO rates) will make the 30D a more versatile camera. Canon will probably releasing a 40D soon, but if they do, I’ll only upgrade when the price drops some.

And now, to open up the floor for discussion. I’d like to start asking questions to you all (this is something I used to do in old journals on Deviant Art).

So, here’s the first.

Do you want to live in the United States?

Never mind if you currently do or don’t, I’m curious about your reasons. Tamika and I are here now, but don’t plan to stay here for an extended period of time, and have our sights set on Australia.

Peace, Love & Chocolate Chip Cookies,

~Benjamin

Aloha!

Tamika’s doing very well, thank you very much for all of your prayers! She’s been taking it easy. We’re hoping she’ll be able to go in sometime this week for a checkup.

We had a lot of fun this weekend. Jocelyn, my co-worker, held a surprise birthday party, for her husband Steve. She invited a bunch of their friends over and we watched a few episodes of “Arrested Development”, (funny show, I’d never seen it before), played games and had pizza & cake.

One of Jocelyn’s friends, Becca Rogers, I’d met before. I thought she had looked familiar when we arrived, and then realized the connection when I found out that she had worked in the Writing Center at Messiah College.

I had always been pretty good at writing term papers and essays in college, but my senior year I had Senior Seminar, a class taught by Ted Prescott that was basically a “last hurrah art class”. We were lectured on various important subjects, from Art Movements in History to what seemed like scare tactics on what we were going to do with our lives once we graduated. Most people agreed that the class was nearly universally a waste of time, but it didn’t meet too often and most tolerated it (though few did their homework). I found it entertaining, especially since most of the Art faculty had gained at least a mild distaste for me by this point, and many of them rotated in to give us lectures.

The curriculum was interesting to me. Most of my classmates talked like Modernism and Dadaism were things that they had learned in their Highschool AP classes, but it was all still new to me. I ate it up and devoured the recommended reading that Mr. Prescott prescribed, even though it became more and more obvious that he disapproved of how rebellious I tended to be.

Much to my dismay, the culmination of the class, the “Fusion Paper”, came along with the demand that we go down to the Writing Center for help on our paper.
At that point, I had a general dislike for the entire English department. I had originally tried to make a minor out of it, but was turned down by professors when I tried to take writing and literature classes (they gave preference to “serious students”; not “moonlighting engineers” like me). The one literature class I did get into; African American Literature before (a certain period I can’t remember) was so badly taught by one Peter Powers that I nearly gave up going to the class altogether. He was smart, very smart, but barely knew the subject matter beyond the pre-written curriculum that he later admitted to following (a part of the college’s effort to promote multiculturalism).

I had gone down to the writing center once before, but the English majors hired there seemed more interested in talking amongst themselves about various cult classics they had watched than working on me with my paper, and treated me like I was an intrusion.
So, with a heavy heart, I trudged down to the Library, with my Fusion Paper and a form to be signed by an English major.

There, I met one Becca Rogers. She read my paper several times, made three or four minor marks on it, asked me why the heck I wasn’t an English major, and requested a copy of the paper so she could read it again later. 🙂 The nicest English major I had ever met. 🙂 She lives just (North?) of Baltimore, where she has the enviable job of working with writers to create the content for textbooks. Her dream job. 🙂

At the party, we also met Mel & Donny, two friends of Jocelyn & Steve that we had been encouraged to meet for a long time. Very cool people.

On Saturday, we hung out with Chad and Mati, who came down from Harrisburg to meet us. I was feeling a little under the weather, and lay down for a bit. Later that evening, we went out to the Cheesecake Factory on the Inner Harbour. We waited for nearly THREE HOURS to get in. I won’t list the price here, but th’ food wadn’t cheap, y’all. We had a nice time, though, and it was good to just hang out with friends. Chad came up to the office with his laptop, and I gave him a few Photoshop lessons. He played some of his music for me; he’s a DJ and can really produce some beautiful scratching! I was very impressed with his skill.

Sunday morning, we met up with with my coworker Paul and his wife Natasha for church. They’re Catholics, which actually made me feel very much at home. We went down to St. Augustine’s in Washington DC. THAT is a beautiful church. It’s at least 6 or 7 stories high in the main sanctuary, with tonnes of ornate gold-painted wood carving. All the pews were the creaky comfortable kinds that felt like they were hewn by hand. And it was full! Very little space was left; there must have been at least 200 people there, of all shades and colours. The crowd was a majority African American, but behind us stood some Islanders, to the left an elderly Caribbean gentleman, and a smattering of European Americans in the front of us.
The service itself is what reminded me of home; the tiny Anglican church on the reservation was often headed by a Catholic priest, and even so, Anglican services are very similar to Catholic. I was confirmed and baptized by a Catholic priest (though I have always practiced being non-denominational). The service was beautiful. The priest there is a strong, quiet speaker.

We went to Wendy’s for lunch after church, and then went to visit at their house.
Their house is amazing. They’re doing the kind fo work my dad did to our house back home. My father bought our house for about $300, a tiny house that was set to be demolished. With the help of people from my parents home church we busted a porch out the back, built a greenhouse around it, raised a master bed and bath above the church, added a bay window in the kitchen, shuffled around a couple walls, and added three dormers on the front.
Paul and Natasha are doing similar work, and have added huge amounts of space onto their house. We lounged around with them for a while, and then Paul, Tamika and I went down to their basement for our first Karate lesson. We’re hoping to begin going there almost every week; with lessons in return for housework. 🙂

Things are definitely shifting around at work. Pray for Tamika, Jocelyn and I, we’re having a difficult time there. It’s been difficult to determine the expectations of our managers, and becoming more and more difficult to make them happy while still being effective workers. Tamika and I are seriously seeking God’s guidance with what we should be doing in this time.

Thank you so much for all your emails to Tamika and I about the baby! I’ve been reading them and sharing them with her, and I will be replying to them all. Thank you so much for all your love and support. 🙂

Peace, love & chocolate-chip cookies…
~Benjamin

It with pure happiness that I announce to you that I will soon be a “Nuuta” (pronounced noo-ta; it means “Father” in my home language, Naskapi)!

Most people wait, I guess, to announce these things, but I figure the more people we have praying for this little being that is now growing, the better.
We went online to see pictures of what it would look like. Tamika thinks it looks like a little dinosaur. 🙂 I can remember seeing pictures in National Geographic not to long ago that showed the fetuses (fetii?) of various different animals and how at this stage they very much look the same. It’s so amazing to me that I was once that small. It makes me wonder what my parents thought at that time. We’re already looking for names and stuff 🙂

It snowed yesterday. Ever since this weekend I’ve been wearing my mukluks. It’s been bitterly cold here, freezing Tamika’s coffee cup when she accidentally leaves it in the car. 🙂 It’s cold enough to wear them; probably the only time this winter that it is. It has to be extremely cold to wear mukluks, because they’ll get destroyed if there’s any water around. Wet weather requires seal-skin mukluks, and I have a pair made with caribou hide.

Tamika is still excited to journey to Canada this fall, though my parents are unsure if she should go. My dad is unveiling the culmination of about 20 years of work; the Naskapi New Testament. It’s getting printed, and there’s going to be a huge release party. It will not only be the first time a significant work is published entirely in Naskapi, but also the first time the Naskapi people will have the Bible written in their own language.
I’m going to leave it up to Tamika. I don’t want anything to keep her from being comfortable. I know she’s strong, but we’ll wait until it’s closer to that time.

My review went pretty well. Thanks so much for all your prayers, I really appreciate it. I was really nervous going in, but my boss put me at ease. It was really tough for me, however, because I really wasn’t sure what the expectations of me were when I first got hired, and had been looking for as much direction as I could. It’s very tough to live up to expectations when you aren’t very clear on them…
Good things came out of the review, though… I’m going to start regular meetings with my boss (probably once a month) so that I can make sure I’m doing what he wants.
Over the past couple months, I’ve found out that this job is a lot more than just a graphic design job; and I am often the sole drive behind many of our projects here. That is no problem for me, if that’s what I’m required to do. I’ve had positions like that before.

Tamika’s “sister”, Katrina, went off to Iraq a little while ago. We went up to Scranton to see her before she goes. She stayed over at Tamika’s house when she was younger, and Tamika’a mom treated her like her she was her own (and still does). We got to hang out with her family for a bit, and we all went to some outlets to go shopping. I was struck at how peaceful Katrina was, and how much she had peace with going over. You could see that the Army had really done some good things for her. She talked about all her friends there. She understood that she was there because she chose to be, not out of anyone’s decision but her own. She mentioned that some people’s attitude and personality changed after they’ve been in there for a while, but she said that she felt obligation to serve out what she had signed up for. I found that admirable.
She’s going over as a linguist, actually, so she’s thinking she’ll be pretty safe. I kind of wish that the Military would publish things like that more. I’ve heard some complain about how we’re “going over there without knowing anything about the culture, etc etc etc”.
Well, it looks like they’re trying… Katrina speaks Arabic fluently. As in, she can watch television and listen to songs from Iraq and understand them. AND, she’s well read on what’s going on over there. She gave us a mini-class on the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and knew the roots of what is going on over there.
Needless to say, I’m very impressed.

At Zerflin, I’ve got a couple website projects coming up, and perhaps a few business cards as well. I’m working on planning out some weddings as well. I’ve finally put up my photography packages in the services section, so if you need me for portraits, weddings, or just to come to something to take pictures, let me know.
I’m hoping to implement my commissions system soon; I’ve had Tamika working on it for me, and she had it almost done.

TTFN,
~Benjamin

Ron J. Clark’s website is officially launched! Everything is done in terms of the design of the website. There is still an extra domain name that they have bought that they would like hooked up to the site as well, and I’ll get that done this week.
To be frank, I love the way this site looks. It has slight undertone reflections of my own site and Khora-Direct, I think, but is definitely it’s own animal.
They had me add a contact form on there as well, which I’m happy with how simple it works.

I’m also finishing up a project with my Dad and Tamika for a poster for a school run by my parent’s home Church in Norwich, CT. Wildwood Christian School is doing a benefit concert. My Dad designed their logo a long time ago, so he drew an adaptation of their logo to serve as a backdrop for the poster and Tamika and I drew the rest around it. It’s coming out very nicely, I think. I’ll put it up when it’s done.

I’m entering into several website contracts soon, I’ll have more on those when they’re finalized.

This week has been pretty busy. I’m finishing up a new “download center” for work; it’s a sort of a page similar to what iTunes has when you download it’s software. It’s a pretty nifty hunk of code, and we’re going to apply it to PDFs and other things people download from the site so we can keep an eye out who’s interested in what.

Pray for me this week if you get the chance. I’m having an evaluation for my work at my job. I’m a little uneasy about it, to be honest. Everyone’s telling me not to worry, but it’s hard. My manager and I haven’t always seen eye to eye, and it bothers me a bit. I’ve overheard some conversations on occasion and sometimes he says things that make me feel I’m not up to standard.
I do feel like our relationship has improved in recent months, though, and have felt him warming to me. He’s been trusting me with more projects to do on my own, and seems impressed with some of the things I’ve worked on as of late. I’m not sure if that’s enough to secure me a good review, though.
Tamika has been a very strong encouragement to me, and has kept me strong in the face of this doubt.

I have a new bag! I have retired the old black & blue Targus video camera bag I used to carry everything in. Tamika modified a messenger bag she found at a thrift store and gave it to me. It even has the Zerflin logo on the front, which she iron-transfered on! It’s the coolest bag I’ve ever had, and now I can finally carry around large-format hardcover sketchbooks. I’m going to build a foam nest for my camera in the largest pocket. She even bought me a (very expensive) leather guitar strap to go with it. I’ve been carrying it around everywhere since she gave it to me on Saturday. She is special. 🙂

Well, I’ve got to go to bed.
Peace,

~Benjamin

Aloha!

My sister, Beth , is gone.

She had come to stay with Tamika and I for about 2 weeks, and she left on Wednesday.
She was planning to go to MICA, but it didn’t work out. They wanted her to re-take a whole bunch of her art classes, and said she’d have to load up on Gen Eds too. She’d only be able to take 2 Art classes a semester! She thought perhaps they would be a good school to go to, but that’s unfortunate.

Plus, I don’t know if she really like it here. She has a bit of a run in with some guy who was trying to pick her up. She had gone out alone around the neighborhood and through a neighboring cemetery to take pictures, and had gotten confronted by a group of guys. Pretty scary. She was stronger than I thought, though… she said that she wouldn’t leave because of that, but only if she felt MICA wasn’t going to work.

We had cleaned out our guest room and set up our old futon for her.
It was kind of nice to have her around. We got to play games together, and I know Tamika liked hanging out with her.

I really started to feel like I was beginning to regain a connection with her, even in the short time that she was here. Since I had left for college when I was 16, I feel like we didn’t get a chance to really know each other much.

Even though my father, mother, sister and brother are all both artists and musicians, none of us ever do anything cooperatively with one another. It’s a very odd thing. I’m working on the first graphics job I’ve ever done for my father this month (and I’ll put it up later).
I’m not sure if it’s just me, or if it’s the whole family. It’s not like we’re distant with one another or anything like that, it’s just something we don’t do. Odd.

I’m happy to announce that Ron J Clark‘s website is live!
I’ll be putting it in my website portfolio soon.
You can check it out here.
It’s pretty spiffy, I think compared to what he had before.
It’s a fairly simple site; and it makes me happy. 🙂
He hired me to do a e-mail submission form too, so I’ll be doing that next.

I’ve just embarked on an ambitious menu change for the CCFOF.
I designed their website for them back in October, and now that they’re growing at an accelerated pace; they need their menu to change. I just finished translating their email Newsletter layout into French as well, and it looks like they’ve got a couple other projects ready for me. I won’t be putting up the email in my portfolio, as it was a design created by HelloJo Studio that I just edited.
It’s a lot of work, but it’s also steady work and they’re a very good client to work for. Always full of new ideas on how to improve themselves, which is always a good thing.

As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been heavily editing the Journal.

I’ve added Threaded Comments so that I can reply to you all, a post abbreviating system so you don’t get overwhelmed when you visit the page, and several cross-posting systems so that these journals show up on Friendster, Xanga, Windows Live Spaces, LiveJournal, and Zaadz. I’m working on a few more.

If there’s any more functionality that you think would be useful, let me know.

I’m also working with a friend of mine to get commenting ability in the galleries, so look out for that!

G’night, I’m off to bed. 🙂

~Benjamin

A few updates, to start…

Just finished a project for Chris McGraw, an aspiring actor and a member of my church. He’s got the idea to build a mobile restaurant on the abandoned railroad bridge that hops (but does not stop) at City Island in Harrisburg. He commissioned two drawings of what his project would look like when completed. I didn’t have a whole lot to use as reference save for my own memory, a rough sketch by him, and some pictures taken with a disposable camera.

This is what I came up with.

Also just finished up an update to my friend Timothy Laux’s pamphlet… He’s “running” a community outreach project in Harrisburg. No thumbnails of that yet, but perhaps soon.

Also am just about to launch www.ronclark.org
I’m finishing up the Beta version. I’ll let you know when I make it live with my new design.
I also worked on a logo for him, and have those up in the logo gallery now.

Work is tough. It isn’t fun all the time anymore like it was back when I was a Porter at the Groton Super Stop & Shop. It’s tedious.
While I’m at work, I wish I was at home. While I’m at work, I feel the drive to get to work.
People on my job try my patience. They rub me the wrong way, step on my toes, crowd my space, belittle my points of view, and overload me beyond capacity.

But what I realized today is that my job is a blessing I should praise God for. I was reminded at church about Disciples of Jesus who were praising God in jail. Wrongfully imprisoned for helping people and talking about Jesus, surrounded by filth, grim, human sewage, in complete darkness, death all around them…

They praised God.

Here I am, in a comparatively luxurious office, doing something I love to do, getting paid an adequate amount…
And I’m doing what? Complaining? Gossiping? Over what? Difficult superiors? Overzealous expectations?

So WHAT? God provided for me in so many ways. He’s the one who gave me this job, no question about it. So what do I have to worry about? I’m here to do the best I can do with what God gave me. If God decides I’ve been at this job long enough, who am I to stress and pine over it?

God has provided for me in so many ways. I’ve got a beautiful house, with a beautiful yard and woods behind it, that I can come home and rest in every day.
A nice car to ride home in style.
And a beautiful wife who loves me and supports everything I do.

Bless the Lord. The Joy of the Lord is my Strength.

~Benjamin Jancewicz

Aloha.

Happy New Year!

First off, I wanted to tell you all the wedding pictures are now up! You can check them by clicking the link on the left.

This will be my first post on my own site on my own Journal. I’m still filling in the old journals from DeviantArt. I have stuff dating back to 2003! If you’re viewing this through any other feed; the real source is www.zerflin.com/Benjamin/YoungSavage

Pretty soon I’ll have a subscription service you’ll be able to sign up for up here; using Blogarithm. In the mean time you can check out www.blogarithm.com.

I’ll also have a journal up on the front page too; for the business alone. This spot is for ME.

Married life is good. God has been providing for us in so many ways; sometime I wonder why we doubt him at all. I won’t lie; being married isn’t easy. It takes a lot of effort just to get along with a person you see 24/7. And we do. We’re working together at the National Fatherhood Initiative. I work on the website (www.fatherhood.org) and she works in the Resource center. She handles all the sales and transactions of the store (www.fathersource.org).

But like I said, God’s been watching out for us. He’s been diffusing situations that could have broken us.

I’m still trying to get back into a regular pattern of this new life. I’m still running a little ragged; not getting enough sleep and such. I need to do two things this new year, though… make sure I have regular time alone with God and to exercise more.

I’m getting pretty content, and the scale shows it! 208. 208! I checked it when we stayed over her grandmother’s house the day after Christmas. I haven’t weighed that much since highschool.

We went to Philadelphia for Christmas. We had gone to my parents for Thanksgiving, so it was their turn. Her mom’s side of the family came over. It’s rare that they get together at all, so it was good to hang out with them. Christmas was pretty uneventful; we just chilled and relaxed for the most part.

Tamika got me a whole much of cool things. She got me the new Common CD “Be”, Jimmy Smith’s “Cool Blues” and the new Cut Chemist album (he’s the DJ off Jurassic 5).

We came up to Harrisburg for the New Years. We came up Saturday night. Tamika’s Aunt Cookie had given us a freezer, so her Dad came down with the minivan Saturday afternoon to deliver it for us. We spent the whole day cleaning in preparation for the After After New Years Party.

We came up to Aebony and Derek Mitchell’s house late Saturday night.

We just got back from the New Years service at Harambee. It was amazing. I have never seen so much positive excitement over New Years. I mean, Dick Clark on TV; in Times Square… everybody yelling… what are they yelling for? Yeah, they’re excited; but for what? Why not get excited over something worth while; like truly working to be a better person?

Mood: Lonely .: Holes Inside :.
Listening to: .: Linkin Park – Session :.
Reading: .: Indians are Us? :.
Watching: .: One Day in September :.

Aloha

The revolution has begun. Visit zerflin.com/ethnic and log on.

I’m healing from the crash, my knee is almost all better.

I feel completely unbalanced. I feel so empty all the time, and out of touch. I fumed yesterday when I found out I wasn’t told about a chapel on campus about the movie Sarafina; even though some of my closest friends had gone.

I left the headlight of my bike on again, and the battery died.

I don’t know, I just don’t feel myself. Or very happy. But those are related.
I’m feeling taller, I wonder if I’ve grown again. My voice is cracking a lot, I think I strained it when I sang in Gospel Choir.
I have band practice at 6, and I don’t entirely feel like going.
I went to the loan exit session. I owe a lot of money. I don’t know how I’m going to do it all with only making 200$ a month.

I DON’T want sleep, I get too much of that. I just want to feel awake. I want to feel alive.

I need to spend some time alone with God.

As soon as I eat this cookie, I’ll feel right as rain.