#also very proud of the fact that i was able to track that podcast down bc both scott and paul were convinced it was just lost media

[magentagalaxies]

also idk why that last post reminded me of one of my favorite bellini fun facts which he shared in the podcast he co-hosted with scott back in like 2013 which is that he never played "rock, paper, scissors" until he was in his late 40s??? like he'd never learned how to and he was like "if i saw someone doing that i would leave a room. i don't need an extra thing to learn today" honestly king behaviour

[rediscoveringmichelle]

An Apple a day keeps the cravings away

January 2021, back in London after spending Christmas at home in Ireland with my family. This time had been a very different experience to the last. Freer, both mentally and physically. The last time I had been home was at the beginning of the global pandemic, restricted to the 2km radius of my home in Clontarf, North Dublin. However, on this occasion not only had restrictions been lifted by the Taoiseach for the Christmas period, I had lifted my own restrictions too. The beginning of the pandemic was the turning point of my recovery and now, 9 months later, I was no longer limiting myself to 3 healthy meals per day, with no snacks and a strict schedule of two 10km runs per week and a minimum 2 and half hours of walking per day. I felt happier and healthier than I had been in years, able to relax and enjoy late night glasses of wine and mince pies with my parents, meals out with friends and the odd day of rest and relaxation with nothing but a few hours of TV to pass the day. It didn’t matter how much weight I had put on; I had gained my life and laugh back, and I would be forever grateful for the lesson I had learnt thanks to this awful pandemic. That making myself thinner and fitter, didn’t make me any happier. And that being physically healthy is nothing if you destroy your mental and social health too.

January 2018 was really where it all began. Recently single and having spent a lot of my newfound freedom on nights out, eating takeaways and drinking large volumes of alcohol, I had understandably put on a bit of weight. The guy I had been seeing, suddenly stopped texting me and I felt rejected. My parents were back to living their lives after their run-ins with poor health. Dad back to smothering his toast in thick layers of butter and Mum loving her newfound ‘real-Mum’ life of Pilates and coffee catch ups since selling her practice for good. I was no longer needed. Mum didn’t need me to drive her to chemo or cook my Dad his no red meat, no oil, no salt dinners. I felt anxious as they went back to living their lives. No longer able to control them, especially my dad. I couldn’t force him into living a by-the-book healthy lifestyle. But I figured what I could control was myself. I could be the healthiest person I could possibly be. And with the added benefit of making that guy wish he’d never let me go. My perfectionist self would ensure that I would be the perfect picture of health. No cheating, no dieting, just a new lifestyle. A new me. One I could love.

I scoured the internet for all the advice on changing your lifestyle, getting fit and losing weight. Running apparently boosted your metabolism and was an efficient way to burn calories and fat. So, I started by running 5km, three times a week. Weights would help then to reduce my body fat and tone up so I coupled the running with strength training in the gym, also three times a week. I pounded out Kelsey Wells workout routines, while listening to ‘This is me’ from The Greatest Showman, a song about not being afraid to show the world exactly who you are, as I was ironically punishing my body into a shape that was not naturally me. I strictly followed Dad’s cardiologist’s advice and cooked everything from scratch, substituting beef mince for turkey mince and not using oil, butter or salt in my cooking. I cut out all snacks and limited myself to three meals per day. Social Media became my home ground for weight loss advice. ‘You’re not hungry, you’re thirsty. Drink some water.’ ‘No pain, no gain.’ ‘Ignore your cravings and they will eventually go away.’ ‘Craving sugar? Have an apple instead’. Each day would end with eating an apple to stave off the cravings and to quieten the rumbles in my stomach.

I started weighing my food, tracking everything from litres of water drunk and then steps walked and active minutes of exercise. I upped my runs gradually to 10km, twice a week because social media told me that after running for 35 minutes, you no longer just burn calories, but also fat. And yes, I do realise that anyone who has a degree in anything science related would quickly realise these were all completely made up and not based on fact, but I guess I wanted to believe them. I would believe anything that forced me to push (or punish) myself more. I stopped going out for drinks or dinner with friends. Too many calories and too worried that I wouldn’t be able to get up and run in the morning, unable to flex from the specific days I went running, for fear I would never run again. When I moved to London, I spent my weekends walking 40 thousand steps so that I could then earn a slice of banana bread from Deliciously Ella’s Vegan & Gluten Free Deli. I felt a rush of joy wash over me each time I saw the number on the scales or the minutes of my 10km runs decline, but like a drug, the high didn’t last long. I was addicted. I had no trust in myself. ‘You’re so controlled’, they complimented me. But deep down, I felt like there was a lazy, sugar and fat loving girl inside me. An imposter in a gradually reducing body. Fearing that just one biscuit and I would be back as that unhappy and overweight rejected girl.

I really believed that being thinner and looking like those girls I idolised on Instagram would make me happier. They were all smiling, surely that meant they were happy? As the compliments turned to concern, I felt that surely people were just jealous of how much weight I had managed to lose. Weight loss was something to be proud of, wasn’t it? The truth of it all didn’t hit me until the pandemic. As I sat up in my bed struggling to breathe on the night of the Taoiseach’s first lockdown announcement, I started to wonder what I was really fearing. During a time when people were dying, all I could fear was not being able to exercise enough and being locked up in a house full of food. I feared putting on weight and relinquishing control. I felt trapped with nothing to look forward to. Holidays cancelled and my boyfriend of two months at home with his family 167km away in Belfast. That was my rock bottom.

In an effort to cheer myself up I started to make a list of all the things I wanted to do post lockdown. Have date nights in with my boyfriend, making pizzas, ordering takeaways and eating breakfast in bed. Then the excitement of getting to do these things started to dwindle as the anxiety crept in, as I tried to count up how much exercise I would need to do in order to earn those nights. A day in bed with no exercise? Nope, that’s a no go. And that’s when it hit me. I had made myself thin, with the thought that then I would be lovable and that then I could enjoy my life. But I was thinner, thinner than I’d been since I was a preteen and I still wouldn’t let myself go enough to do the things I deeply wanted to do. To let myself enjoy life. How freeing it would be to just, let go!

My love for learning kicked in and I made the decision to start reading up and educating myself. I came across a book my mum had not so subtly left lying around the house. ‘Just Eat it – How Intuitive eating can help you get your shit together around food’ by Laura Thomas. I didn’t believe I had an eating disorder until I started reading her book. As she listed off the disorders, she then came to Orthorexia – defined as an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating or over exercising. ‘When was the last time you even asked yourself what you’d like instead of what you ‘can’ or ‘should’ eat?’ she queried. The sad reality was that I couldn’t remember. ‘We trust our phones more than we trust our bodies’. Well that was certainly true for me. She used science, showing that weight was in fact not a determinant of health but that by exercising, eating healthy and not smoking we could be healthy, regardless of our size. That eating a donut didn’t in fact negate the nutrients of the carrot we ate earlier. And that white flour was actually infused with calcium and that those carbs are what give us energy to move and enjoy life. My eyes gradually opened to all the lies diet culture had taught me and I felt empowered.

I moved on to more books and podcasts and started culling my social media feed of anyone that didn’t make me feel good. I started following intuitive eating dietitians and anti-diet advocates. Following people of all shapes and sizes and realising how biased our society is towards people in smaller bodies. Not just the size of airplane seats but assuming that all health issues experienced by fat people can be solved by weight loss. I learnt that the night sweats I had been experiencing, the pretty much non-existent sex drive and the inability to maintain body heat for any length of time were in fact all side effects of the restricted eating and over-exercising. Half the time I didn’t even look as thin as I had become because I was wearing so many layers of clothes in order to keep warm. Walking around the house with a hot water bottle strapped to my waist and wearing a fur coat indoors while out for dinner with friends. Only now can I laugh at the image of it. I started to make a list of all the things I would gain through gaining weight and glancing back over it now, I have gained all of these and more. My headspace, my laughter, my body heat and a fantastic relationship that I thankfully didn’t destroy because of my restrictive, anxious mind-set.

My recovery hasn’t been easy. The steps toward eating intuitively start with banishing your food rules and allowing yourself to eat what you want. A process that takes time before you can start tuning into your hunger and fullness cues again and introducing gentle nutrition. It involved allowing myself to devour entire tubs of Oatly chocolate fudge ice-cream, multiple evenings per week. Making my way through all the delicious Deliveroo takeaway options London had to offer – Honest Burgers red meat beef burgers with rosemary salted fries, Franco Manca pizzas, with all the toppings, and Kin & Deum Thai curries, with full fat coconut milk. Gradually I started being able to listen to my body and trust it. Whether it hungered for a salmon stir-fry or was seeking out a slice of chocolate cake. The interesting thing being, that months later it now craves nutritious food the majority of the time. And that by allowing it to have higher sugar or fat containing foods whenever it wants, I no longer feel out of control around them. I no longer find myself devouring three large sized bags of crisps in one sitting, overtaken by the fear that I will never let myself eat them again.

I have days where I find myself critiquing my larger thighs in the mirror but instead of allowing the thoughts consume me, I allow them float by with curiosity and continue about my day knowing that the way I look doesn’t define me and that the greatest things about me have nothing to do with my body shape or size. I am a thoughtful friend, who prides herself at remembering important moments in friends’ lives. A courageous girl who isn’t afraid to try new things, whether that be travelling solo across Vietnam or signing up to a surf and yoga retreat in Cornwall. A creative person who loves to draw and a lifelong learner that is open to new ideas and wants to challenge her way of thinking. My body will change a lot over the next 50 plus years of my life, but the great thing is that thanks to freeing myself from the disease, I get to look forward to the possibility of being alive for that long and to enjoying every waking moment, no longer postponing life for when I look or am a certain way.

© Michelle McCarthy January 2021

[niel-trbl]

TOP 20 OF 2019

Here we are, first day of 2020! Can’t believe it’s been a year since the Top 20 of 2018 list. 2019 has been a year full of ups and downs, but it’s also the year of amazing music releases. So without further ado, here’s my top 20* of 2019! (*songs are listed in chronological order)

Sleepless in __________ // Epik High

Epik High back at it again with yet another amazing album, packed with amazing featurings. I managed to catch them live during their tour and WOW I still can’t believe I saw them IRL for the second time. If you ever get the chance to see them live, I would definitely recommend it!

Other Recommendations: Eternal Sunshine, No Different, The Tablo Podcast

HALO // pH-1

I LOVE THIS ALBUM CONCEPT SO MUCH! Home Alone Lights Out - hello, this is the most ideal scenario for a homebody like me. And I love the album so much that I bought myself a physical copy. Also, the transitions between the songs are amazing.

Other Recommendations: Rain Man, Olaf, Dirty Nikes

Too Much // BIGONE (feat. PENOMECO)

Well, I checked out this song coz first - Penomeco’s doing the featuring. I’m so surprised by how much I love this album. It’s so good!!! I also love the overall aesthetic of the music video.

Other Recommendations: Imgonnaparty, One Step Closer

Movie // PENOMECO

There’s gonna be whole lot of Penomeco in this list and I’m not one bit sorry about it. Anyway, back to the song - it’s so nice to be able to hear him sing a full song. Number 1 fan of Peno’s singing voice here!! When he sang it live on Sketchbook, sobs I love it so much.

Other Recommendations: Movie live on Sketchbook, Two Melodies live cover on Sketchbook

Is it Love // Sik-K (feat. MOON) (Prod. GXXD)

HELLO I LOVE YOU MISS MOON!!! She sounds so damn amazing all the time like how do you even do that......... I really do hope she releases more music projects this year!

Other Recommendations: Day n Nite, XIBAL

Beer // Ambition Musik

This is the song that ‘properly’ got me into Ambition Musik. And their series with Dingo! They’re honestly just hilarious and amazing musically. 10/10 would recommend.

Other Recommendations: Ambition Musik Dingo series, AMBITION (With Leellamarz’s changmo hook)

The Voyager 737 // DPR Cream

DPR back at it again with the most visually appealing music video and concept ever. DPR Cream’s music style is definitely one of my favourites and can’t wait to hear more from him. And also, I hope I get to witness him perform his songs live at least once please.

Other Recommendations: Gravity

Time of Our Life // DAY6

Day6 really be out here, releasing the most incredible musical piece. This time I actually went to catch them live during their tour and can I just say, I’m 100% sure they eat their albums for breakfast. They’re also super encouraging and sweet boys - I actually cried during their ending ment. That’s emotional it was.

Other Recommendations: Emergency, 365247, OUCH

FACE // Woosung

This one!!! I can safely say that this music video is easily one of my top favourites from last year. Honestly, I just love Woosung’s voice so much that I had this song on repeat for a week when I was working.

Tempo // PENOMECO (feat. Sik-K)

This song is beautiful. Nuff said.

Other Recommendations: PLAY ME

WATER // Sik-k (feat. Woodie Gochild, pH-1, HAON, Jay Park)

THIS IS THAT SUMMER SONG!!!!! I remember when Sik K and Woodie performed during the FL1P tour, it was so turn up!! I think no one expected them to perform it and GIDDY UP so when they did, everyone LOST IT. So that was nice.

Other Recommendations: GIDDY UP

Blue // Dynamic Duo (feat. Crush, SOLE)

Came across this song in my Spotify playlist radio and I just went !!! First, coz I love the colour blue. Second, coz this song is filled with my favourites. Can’t believe it took me so long to actually listen to the song and watch the mv.

Other Recommendations: MSG (feat. PENOMECO), Career High (Paloalto, Nafla, Chancellor)

‘Y’ // FANXY CHILD

This music video and the concept behind each member and the hidden things that represented each member. They’re so beautifully shot and well thought through. I cried watching their live performance video. sobs a lot of the music released last year made me emotional

Other Recommendations: ‘Y’ live performance

Room Service // Leellamarz, Groovy Room

When I found out that Leellamarz was doing a collaboration album with Groovy Room, I was soooooo excited. I’m seriously impressed by their attention to detail for the physical album. It really looked like a hotel room service menu!! I appreciate this little details.

Other Recommendations: Pick Up Your Phone (feat. MOON), When You Are Alone (feat. Changmo, ASH ISLAND)

SOS // Sik-K, Coogie

This was like part two of their SMTM777 performance. And I didn’t realised that I listened to the title track that often till it came up in my Spotify top songs 2019 playlist. But overall, this did satisfy my hopes of them collaborating again.

Other Recommendations: Watch Me Ballin’

Honey Bee // sogumm, dress (feat. PENOMECO)

Another one of my favourites for this year!!! I definitely feel that this is a spring-summer song. It makes me feel pretty lighthearted and happy - just overall very positive feelings. And can we also celebrate the fact that sogumm is a part of AOMG as well!!! Can’t wait to hear more things from her!

Other Recommendations: baby // dress (feat. sogumm, PENOMECO)

Departure // Hoody

SOBS I LOVE HOODY! And this album drop really didn’t disappoint!! Especially the title track, Adios. I was going through some things at the point of time. When the title track dropped, I knew it was what I needed. Also, I never knew I needed a bad-ass, superhero, ass-kicking Hoody in my life.

Other Recommendations: Love Again, What Shall I Do

ODD // ELO, PENOMECO

OKAY so I may have too many favourites this year but this album is definitely ranked pretty high on my list. They’ve teasing about this collab for SO LONG and when it finally came out, I just felt so happy. I also like that the songs were arranged in a ‘storyline’ manner? Not sure if it’s done on purpose but I felt like it made sense to me.

Other Recommendations: View the whole album tbh

Boyhood // Changmo

We are finally at the last one and this one - I would definitely say it’s a new re-discovery for me. This is just an amazing album. Changmo really outdid himself and served this masterpiece! He even made it to the top of the charts like YOU REALLY DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!! SOBS I’m so proud of him.

Other Recommendations: REMEDY, meet me in Toronto, Hotel Walkerhill

Hate Everything // Golden

Our Golden boy is back (no pun intended)!!!!! I had to re-edit this list just to add this album to this list. I love his songs so much and HIS VOICE - my goodness, so beautiful...

Other Recommendations: Broken Record, Confidence, Dingo Killing Voice

Honourable Mentions: Stray Kids, CL, BiBi, SAAY, Crush, punchnello

That’s it for my Top Songs of 2019! Was any of your favourites in my list? Let me know!

[fmddevin]

tongue-tied: daein’s relationship with language.

scenario: daein...speaks languages! and those languages....are important! word count: 1,469 notes: this is pretty random but pretty important to him as a muse?? and i have inspo & energy to write at the same time?? who would’ve thought!

daein’s relationship with language is...a complicated one, like most things in his life. but for a while, things were pretty simple. as a kid up until around middle school, he only spoke english. when he was younger, he was doing a pretty good job at learning korean, though. he wasn’t headed towards fluency, but paid attention when his parents tried to teach him words. so he had the basic phrases to survive down, but not much more.

flash forward to middle school, though. when kids began to become more ruthless and criticize him for cultural differences, everything changed. he stopped trying, and consequently, began to forget fragments of the language. since there really were no koreans around aside from his own parents, there was no one else to practice with, and once he stopped learning with them he was right back to square one.

but in middle school he also discovered a love for a new language he didn’t know he would ever be interested in. when he joined his first competition dance team, their competitions were based in miami (yes - he hated the four hour bus rides) so he spent a lot of time there. aside from competitions, daein’s parents encouraged him to join a lot of extracurriculars and such so he always had friends all over. a large portion of his friends from southern florida were hispanic, and naturally, since the drive was so far back home he’d often spend the night. being a minority surrounded by the majority anyways, he was aware of lingustic, food, and practice differences among different cultures. but actually being around a new one really opened up his realm for inclusivity.

being the whiny boy he was and still is, daein would sometimes feel excluded when his friends would be speaking spanish and he couldn’t understand a lick of what they were saying. so one day, he asked in the middle of their conversation if he could learn. they all laughed, thinking the boy was just on one of his whining fits again. but it was after the constant days and weeks of asking, of showing a true desire that they began to show him the ropes.

all their moms were ecstatic to teach him. young daein was some sort of mom magnet anyways, and all his friends would roll his eyes at how good of an impression he tried to make on them. but once he realized that he was interested in learning their native tongue, their eyes lit with excitement. one of his friends in particular had a teacher for a mom, so she would always put in the most effort. from little quizzes of vocabulary around the house to seeing how long he could go speaking in pure spanish, she really went the extra mile to help him learn. and it really paid off - he went from understanding a few words out their conversations to being able to interpret and respond in simple sentences within months. by the time the new year had started he added onto his studies by joining the available spanish course at his school, keeping him on his toes when he wasn’t around them. of course, it was weird to see for some - one of the only asian kids in school breaking out into a language totally unexpected of him. but in a way, it was the shock factor he enjoyed, feeling proud he could break the stigma. 

though in high school he was kicked off the team, he still hung with a few of his friends, and from time to time would travel back. he lost a few of his skills without the constant cycle of studying, but what he lost would be gained back after strenuous language studying following his departure from america. 

but see, the main reason daein wanted to learn spanish was that he associated it with collectiveness - he thought it would bring him and his friends closer, to take away the divide. this would transcend into his desire to learn his own culture’s language once he moved to korea. now, he felt as if language was a part of one’s identity, brought you closer to the people you speak it with.  and if anything, that was what he needed most in a foreign country where he looked like he belonged but couldn’t feel any more different. 

so for the first time in over a decade, daein had a genuine desire to learn korean. learning spanish at a rather old age had taught him the skills needed to pick up on a third quicker, so he used it to his advantage. in fact, korean was easier to learn because he had such a large pool to practice in at his fingertips at any given moment. when he first arrived in the country, it hadn’t been his first intention to become fluent. but as he got enveloped in a land he found himself falling in love with, he knew it was something he had to do. he started small, with language podcasts, kdramas, books - all the things most people who self-study to. he was also assigned a language tutor from the company, but his motivation to learn something always drops when he’s made to do it, so it wasn’t quite as effective. instead, he spent the majority of his energy on things he wanted to learn - the curse words (obviously), then the common phrases, then slang.

to him, learning korean was different. he hadn’t really sought it out, he just...became comfortable living in the language. it wasn’t until a year or so ago that he actually began to think in the language, but more than anything it comes in the form of konglish. it may have to do with the large number of americans he surrounds himself with or just a habit to revert to it, but english is the majority of what his brain consists of. it’s what he’s most comfortable in, but he has learned to expand his knowledge to the other two as well.

truthfully, he’s not on a native level yet, and it’s pretty obvious when speaking to him that it’s not his first language. it’s probably one of the things he’s most self-conscious about, especially since he’s quite the target for mcs to pick on when it comes to his mispronunciations or not understanding something said amidst the quick-paced conversations. honestly he reminds me a lot of mark tuan / woosung in this way because at the same time, his english is starting to deteriorate. this could be taken with a grain of salt, since he does still have english-speaking friends now. but it was a lot easier in the past when he still was very close with his friends back home, and he was in florida with his parents to talk to on a much more regular basis. now, he’s fallen off with a lot of his old friends, and his parents are so proud of his korean that they always try to revert to it when they facetime together. not to mention the entire basis of his career involves speaking the language, so he doesn’t really get a break from brushing up on his skills. so while he isn’t speaking solely korean, he’s a lot more dependent on it than he used to be and uses english far more. 

in terms of his spanish nowadays...phew, it’s kind of rough. he’s become a little less well-versed than he was in the past due to his change in lifestyle, but he honestly works the hardest to do well at spanish. he doesn’t really have to “practice” the others per se - even korean comes pretty naturally and is used every day now. spanish, however, requires the most self-motivation out of all of them. while he was slacking in the years following his debut. now things have calmed down a little and he’s had time to focus on more leisurely things. lullaby’s spanish version really reminded him to get back on track, and if you ask him he’ll brag about his pronounciation. so i think that while he probably was doing better prior to becoming an idol, he’s kept the same love and is working to retain his skills.

for daein, i think language has become a far more important thing than it had been. he’s learned to use it to identify, to connect, to thrive. each has it’s own perk, a little fragment of himself. english reminds him of his family, spanish of his friends, and korean of his fame. i think it’s a really big part of him since these all make up a lot of his character. will daein attempt to learn new languages in the future? who knows. but these have the most special place in his heart.

[doomedandstoned]

Candlemass: 35 Years A Band

  ~A Doomed & Stoned Double Feature~  

Dare To Knock On   The Door To Doom

By Magnus Tannergren  

I don't know how well known it is that CANDLEMASS hails from the same hoods in the Upplands Väsby right outside Stockholm as both Yngwie Malmsteen and Europe. And it is a fact that Candlemass debut album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus was released just two weeks after Europe's smash hit album The Final Countdown. We all know that that album earned Europe worldwide fame. Candlemass, on the other hand, remained an underground affair for decades.

Yet the legacy of Candlemass cannot be underestimated in anyway when it comes to heavy music. Their slow, heavy Sabbath worship paved the way for a whole genre inspired by the heavy rock and proto-metal of the ‘70s that we call, up until this present day, doom metal. Ironically, Europe now days have returned to their roots and sound more like Deep Purple or Rainbow than anything else. The circle is complete.

Anyway, this is a review of the new Candlemass album 'The Door To Doom' (2019 - Napalm Records) and not a study of when two parallel universes collide. This album also completes a full circle for Candlemass in many ways, too. It sees the return of the mystery man who did the vocals on that legendary debut album that arrived more than three decades ago. It was shocking news when Johan Längquist was announced as the vocalist on the new album -- an album that was already done with vocals by longtime singer Mats Levén (Therion, Krux). Oh the drama...

But maybe this is exactly what Candlemass needed to get back on track. The band has not been able to really deliver the goods these past ten years or so, in my opinion. Maybe it's because of the lead singer issues that have been tormenting Candlemass for ages. The reunion with Messiah Marcolin back in 2004 went south, Rob Lowe had a great voice but didn't work out as a touring member, and so on. Add main songwriter Leif Edling’s struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome and it is easy to understand that this doomsday machine has not been firing on all its cylinders for a while.

Yet here we are now. The new album is out and it is a grand return to epic doom metal as we know it should be done by Candlemass. I am the first to admit that I was skeptical, as I always am, to these kinds of albums that try to summon the glory of the past by reuniting with old members. But I am also the first one to admit when I am wrong. This is a fantastic Candlemass album.

The Door To Doom by CANDLEMASS

The voice of Längquist has matured as a good wine. It depth and grandeur coupled with attitude and experience. The vocals add that extra drama to tracks like "Splendor Demon Majesty" and "Astorolus – the Great Octopus" (yes, there is a solo by Tony Iommi on this, so another completed circle), but there is also beauty to be had, such as in the epic ballad "Bridge of the Blind" with its echoes of the great old ones, like Dio. I'm glad Johan Längquist is back. His silence has been a waste.

Musically, Candlemass delivers an album that stands proud besides the classic first four albums Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Nightfall, Ancient Dreams, and Tales of Creation. It measures up to the challenge to invoke the gods of doom in a way that sometimes sends shivers down my spine, as I recall the greatness of this band's early years. It bares the mark of true doom and the spirits of the old classics possess this album. The guitar works by Mappe Björkman and Lasse Johansson are stellar and the thunder of Edling’s bass and Jan Lindh’s drumming is spectacular.

The music bares all the marks that makes up the legend of Candlemass. It is, in the words of the band itself, “the sound of 666.” I already mentioned some of the highlights on the album, but I must also say The Door To Doom doesn't really have any weak spots. All the songs are very strong and the riffing is epic. Despite my skepticism, I got bewitched again.

A great doom metal record, indeed, executed with precision and power. I fully believe this material has focus to make Candlemass relevant as a scene-anchoring act in metal once again and I hope they succeed, because the world needs this band. On the other hand, if this turns out to be the last album by this legendary Swedish doomers, The Door To Doom will also serve as a fitting final chapter in the Book of Candlemass. I honestly hope it’s not.

Magnus is the founder and host of Into The Void Podcast. He is also a senior staff writer at Slavestate.se, one of Sweden's oldest and most important online zines about heavy and extreme music.

☠

An Interview with

Candlemass Co-Founder

  Leif Edling

By Willem Verhappen  

I must say I was very surprised when the new record was announced, since at the time of its release, you said 'Psalms for the Dead' would be the final Candlemass full-length record. What made you change your mind? >

The "House of Doom" single. It was great fun to write it! Also working with producer Marcus Jidell was fantastic. We're quite a team, I must say. There I got the inspiration back for an entire album. We had a couple of band meetings about it and it was very clear that the band shared the enthusiasm for a new record. They had been playing live without me for a couple of years, with good response, but without an album it is easy for you to become a retro band pretty quick. Don't want that to happen to Candlemass.

I see what you mean. It's quite a challenge to stay relevant as an "older" band, especially in this day and age, when everything retro seems to be cool. On one hand you have bands like Priest and Saxon, who are still releasing decent records, and on the other hand there's bands who've been past their expiration date for decades. Do you prefer to see a band over their top or just remember them as they were?

That one’s easy. Remember them as they were. But having said that, it is a joy to see bands like Angel Witch, Manilla Road, Pries, and Saxon today, because they can still deliver. When you can’t deliver the goods anymore, maybe stay at home instead. Hope somebody will tap me on the shoulder one day and say “Leif...It’s time.” (laughs)

"Too many discussions & arguments over the years. Maybe some heart was missing in it all."

Just before the Christmas of 2013, you had a bout with burnout and stepped away from live performances for a while. What made you realize you needed to take a break? How did you get the “fire” back again?

A bit better, but not 100%. I'm still struggling with it. I hope I can do the rest of 2019's shows without too many problems. Have to look after myself, rest as much as I can, eat regularly, not party too much. Well, this is very "rock 'n' roll" to say, but it is great to be back. You have to listen to your body. If it says "rest," you have to step back. If it says, “Go, you can do it,” I hope I can!

I hope so. too. As a diabetic. I know it's sometimes difficult to listen to your body and not get drawn into the excitement of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Is it difficult for you? What do you do in these moments?

On the Candlemass tour with Ghost, there was lots of partying on the bus after the shows. I was there, but took it quite easy. Went to bed early, but still I felt tired in the morning. So if we go on another tour, I might have to stop drinking totally, to pull it off. Playing live almost every night takes its toll. I’m 50-plus, struggling with fatigue syndrome, on a tour bus to hell -- talk about the wrong man in the wrong place! (laughs) Said "yes" to it instantly, of course.

In 2015, you released Avatarium’s second album, 'The Girl With The Raven Mask.' Was it difficult for you to pick up writing again?

Yes, it was. Well, not super hard. The burnout gave me the time to rest and get new inspirado for songs. In a way, I’m glad that it happened. Think many people just go on and on without taking a break. They just keep on going and get themselves an aneurysm or something. I quit before that happened. Got lots of time to think about future and what to do with it. Songwriting is one part. That Avatarium album is pretty good, I think.

I agree. It's my favorite Avatarium record. But you're saying this like you're not as happy with the other two records. Is that the case?

No. I love all three of them, but the second is the best.

We spoke briefly at Roadburn 2017 and I don’t know who was more nervous, me for meeting you or you for getting back on stage, playing the first ever live show with The Doomsday Kingdom. I remember that you were afraid no one would show up. Luckily, the place was pretty crowded and you guys gave an amazing show. I still get goosebumps when I think of your emotional performance of "The God Particle." How do you remember your return to the big stage?

The stage wasn’t that big (laughs), but it felt rather good. I could have played better, plus it's true I was quite nervous. It was the first small step to a full return, I would say.

In September of 2017, I spoke to Markus Jidell at an Avatarium show and he told me you were working on something very special. This was shortly before the 'House of Doom' EP was announced, so I assumed he was talking about that. Was he or were you already working on 'The Door To Doom'?

We worked on the House of Doom for about six months before we started on the full-length album. If I remember correctly, we started the demoing of the new songs on November 1st. The full album took exactly one year to make. Too long! Next time, I hope I’m better, then I hope we can deliver an album in three to six months. Shouldn’t take more time than that.

Does that mean there will be more Candlemass music coming our way?

Well, eventually. Hopefully!

The only surprise bigger than a new record was the return of Johan Längquist. How did that come about?

During the recording, we felt something was missing. We had too many discussions and arguments over the years -- all of us. Maybe some heart was missing in it all. I'd worked my ass off for this record, but was struggling with my health. Too much work, too much business, too many arguments, too much bull! In the end, we took a band decision to bring in Johan again -- go back to the "ground zero" of Doom, so to speak. Mats had done a great job, but we needed to do something in C-mass to find the spark again and Johan was the answer. Now we focus on having fun, not letting any business take over. I have no clue if it will last a year or two. At least we will enjoy the time left.

Lyrically, as well as musically, I think ‘The Door To Doom’ feels like a very dark record. What were your inspirations while writing this album?

It’s a good thing that people see the albums music and lyrics in different ways. I don’t think it is that dark. We have done darker things in C-mass, definitely. The songs are about the state of the world, how I feel myself during the burnout process, sea monsters, and reflections upon life in general. This time around, I’m pretty satisfied with the lyrics.

"I have no clue if it will last a year or two. At least we will enjoy the time left."

It's no secret that you’re a massive Black Sabbath fan, owning over half a meter worth of vinyl of their debut alone. I can only imagine how special it must have been for Tony Iommi to play on your record. How did that come about and what was it like working with Tony?

We just asked him. Seriously. We asked and got a "yes!" Our manager emailed his personal manager. Couldn’t believe it when we had the positive answer back. I was over the moon. Tony Iommi will play on my song! Hardest thing was to keep my mouth shut for three months. (laughs) But, you know, if you aim for the stars, you might succeed. He sent us the solo after a while and it was absolutely great! A dream came true.

Amazing how easily these things can happen.

Yes, Dio said once in an interview that he would have loved to guest sing on records but he never had the question put to him.

You’re currently on tour, opening for Ghost. When I went to see your show in Amsterdam, I noticed their audience is turning more mainstream. For instance, before your show, I heard someone say: “I looked up Candlemass online. They sound kind of like AC/DC.” Do you recognise this and how have the reactions been so far?

I have heard that we sound like Iron Maiden and Motörhead, to mention a couple. AC/DC? That’s a first. But the crowd reaction for our short set during the Ghost tour has been really good, actually. Better than we expected, so we must have done something right. The reactions for the album have been fantastic. Super great criticism from all over the world. And the Cardinal said to us, “You are special guest on this tour. You’re not the support act.”

With a band like Ghost, I can imagine the touring life is quite the experience. Did you have a chance to interact with those guys much beyond the stage?

Not really, they play a nearly three-hour long set and they take it seriously, as you should. We did have a couple of record hunting trips with the Cardinal that were very pleasant. He is a real vinyl buff, so we raided some shops here and there.

I can only imagine how these raids go about. What's your best find this tour?

The first Steamhammer record. First press on Brain €50. I gave it to the Cardinal after the last show, since we really wanted it, too. He got it as a gift from me, saying thanks for a great tour.

Since you’re a record collector and a fan of old school metal, are there any new bands you’re into that you think everyone should check out?

I haven’t bought a record with a new band for several years. I have no clue what’s going on in the metal world anymore. I just buy old albums. Seems like they knew how to write songs back then. Lost art, unfortunately. Is Blood Ceremony considered to be a “new” band? They are pretty good, I think.

Do you have future plans for the band or will you be shifting focus to side projects like Doomsday Kingdom, Krux, or others?

We just released a new Candlemass album and the schedule for this year is already full, so I won’t have any time, this year anyway, to do anything other than C-mass.

True, your calendar is swelling with the Ghost tour and some festival appearances in the summer. Are there any shows you’re especially looking forward to?

Yes: Sweden Rock, Hellfest, Wacken and, well, all of them! (laughs)

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[arreumddawo]

27/3/21

HIIIIIIIIII, i’ve only blinked and its already MARCH. this time last year, what was i doing? i think i’ve already went for this current job interview and then a while later, the lockdown was announced~ but wow, time really flies huh. *cues the angmoh man blinking gif*

for the most part, i really want to write down the feelings i’ve been feeling (melancholy and loneliness) for the past few days and how i’ve sorted them out internally AND how i just want the future nabilah to just READ this and REMIND HERSELF that everything will be okay. it will be okay you dramatic, overreacting bitch! it will be okay. haha okay lets starteu~

#/melancholy 

i’ve been feeling downcast the past few days. i dont even know where to begin. melancholy as well as feelings of sadness and depression have always been a part of me since 2017 im not gonna lie but lately, these episodes got a little bad despite me trying to keep myself occupied hahah. for the most part, i am just really really afraid of getting older. i really am. its not so much of the “getting older part” which gets to me i guess but its more of how lately, i just want to turn the hands of time and go back to my past when i was 16 in secondary school (heck even primary school) and just live a life where i didnt have to worry about anything except for studying you know? where times were simpler and i was (definitely) happier. i miss wearing a school uniform, i miss only having to worry about my studies, i miss being at home at noon and watching disney channel until i accidentally nap and not understanding trig/physics/chem. oh- what id give to be in my youth again. id do anything. i would study harder and change my whole course of life and hope that i could be someone im proud of. im desperately clinging on to good memories. i terribly miss being young. i really do.

and recently, i feel like im expiring, i feel old (really old) which is funny cos ive only turned 23 BUT the fact will always be that im turning 24 this year (2021) AND its when the bone-crushing realisation of getting old really sinks in (for me). i find myself looking back at my accomplishments (which trust me is little to none) and i just feel like people are accomplishing great things (even at such a young age). there’s nothing in my life where i can truly be proud of. what have you done with your life, nabilah? questions i ask myself everyday. but then again, people would say the past experiences have shaped who i am today and without them, i would’ve been a completely different person WHICH brings me back to the next point. the current me right now who is writing this post is not someone im all that proud of either. i feel like- i feel like im struggling (keyword: struggling) to achieve great things before i turn 30 (and trust me when i say i dont even want to live that long of a life). i’m tired of adulting, of getting old, of having to worry about financial issues, of having to worry about whether i’m at that milestone where everyone expects me to be, of wondering whether im really suited for this field im currently working in. im aware that it may be very shallow of me to think this way considering that there are some people in their 30s who will probably read this, laugh at me and say “you’re still young + you still have a long way + you still have time to figure out your life” but the FACT is THAT im NOT young! i still have a long time to figure out my life? yeah that is if i plan to live way over my 30s (which i DONT). side note, my biggest fear is actually living a long life. so.. like.. what now?  

#/loneliness

this is a very touchy topic for me considering that i am planning to devote myself to the single life and dying a virgin because i really dont think (keyword: really, really) there’s a man good enough for me out there. even if there is, he lives only in my imagination. and yes, as embarrassed as i am to admit it, YES i do feel lonely at times. honestly, i really thought that loneliness is something im able to handle really well considering that ive been single.. what? my whole life? LOL HAHAHAH (its true. sucks to be ugly.) but yeahhhh as of late, during times when things get hard at work and i start tearing up in public transport on the way home, when home doesnt feel like home anymore, when the world conspires against me... i look up and wonder @God, “don’t i deserve someone who i can talk to, who loves me for who i am, who doesnt mind the mess i am?” ok that was abit cringey but yeah i used to be ashamed of secretly wanting someone special despite swearing to the single life BUT thats just how it is! and honestly i feel that humans are not psychologically meant to be lonely, that is why we’ll always crave for a partner (even if we dont need one). but all that aside, its not like im going to even try and find one (like i said, there is no one good enough for me out there) and i absolutely detest the idea of getting married and having kids so i will have to suck this lonely feeling up and just live. for the most part, i just wanted to point out how lonely this adult life can be.

side note: its really great that i have a really good support system (my siblings and friends), so yeah.. i’m really grateful for that<3.

things i want the future nabilah to read (now that i have come to terms with these feelings):

phew that was a rollercoaster now wasnt it. now that you’ve typed all that and acknowledged what you feel, i have a few things to say to you.

i just want you to know that you are (as much as you dont want to hear this or dont believe in this), you are doing well (at least the future you reading this wont look back and be embarrassed of who you were). you may not have done well for o’s, may have slacked a bit during poly and uni and regret everything academic wise (and yes personality wise) but always remember that, these things do not define the authentic real you. not getting into a local university and not achieving greater things in life during your youth, these are trifle things that you shouldnt be ashamed of or even beat yourself up about. after all, they dont matter in the afterlife?? so like, stop it. its not like you can go back to the past and change it, you only have control of the present and thats WHAT you have to work on. as tough as it may be, as much as you refuse to get old, the harsh reality is that you have to and you will. you have a degree and you’re getting experience working in the field you have always been curious about and you’re on your way to get a another diploma under your belt. you’re really doing the most if i must say??. and you’re so lucky to be able to love what you studied and do what you like. off track and a side note, i wanted to tell you that i woke up today feeling a tremendous shift in me (and i really honestly think its because of the conversations i had with zim, bff and syiqs the past consecutive days). but i honestly woke up feeling excited at what i have to offer the world. you may not be the prettiest and the smartest but the amount of love you have (and willing to give) in your heart, the feelings of empathy you’re capable of and the change you want to make in lives.. these are things that define you and you can do just that. there are times where you will definitely feel afraid and wonder if you’re doing the right thing but as long as you keep reminding yourself of your morals and values, i think you’re pretty much on the right track. 

and i know, i know you hate yourself more than anything else in this world. the face you see in the mirror and the horrible things you feel inside you, your dumb thoughts and all that but i really pray that in the years to come, you’ll grow to be kinder to yourself (and definitely the people around you). be kinder to yourself and have courage to face your flaws and work towards being a better person everyday. be kind to everyone (especially your parents) and just have a little faith that you can go through many hurdles in your life. you cannot do everything but you can do some great things and that is enough. i dont have to remind you that everything here and now in this world is just temporary right? remember the podcast you heard yesterday? true happiness will be in the afterlife, inshaAllah. death will come for you, you just have to be patient and never forget to work towards the afterlife. also dont feel too lonely. ultimately, you know you dont have the mental capacity for things like marriage and having kids and all but dear nabilah, if you get lucky and love comes to you one day through Allah, i hope that you dont close your doors firmly shut to it and embrace it if you may (only run when the guy proposes cos u aint got no time for that). last but not least, please never let go of good memories. cling on to them and let them be attestations of your kindness and love. always be kind and always try to be better for the people around you. i hope you’re smiling as you read this, i hope you’re proud of who you have become and i hope that you continue to always remind yourself of amazing person you are, despite all that you went through. 

- 23 year old nabilah (technically 24 this year but hey SUCK IT TIME IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT)

[tomoyanosekai]

Preparation ~無限の現在~ (Mugen no Genzai: The Infinite Present Time)

“... 14:10.” (June 15, 2020) 

After three months of quarantine and finding a steady jogging schedule, I can easily say that I feel I’ve reached my peak physical condition where I feel good and balanced in my health. Continuing from what I wrote last month, I’m still running every other day, and where I’m at right now, I’ve already broken my limits and set new records for myself to aim towards and beat. However, although I’ve reached new heights, I’ve been asking myself this: 

“Why do I continue to run? What am I doing this for?”

As I force myself to wake up when it’s not uncomfortably hot outside in the early June morning, I keep running through the hills. On those days in between where I’m not running, I’ve been taking two to three hour long walks through town; specifically to places that hold a lot of nostalgia for me all in one trip: my former high school, middle school, and elementary school. On that same note of nostalgia, I’m beginning to see how else that trip from Japan affected me. Aside from all the fantastic memories that I made last summer, the two largest qualities that I took away from my Japan trip are helping me through this quarantine: my awakened sense of wanderlust and a reawakened passion for cooking.

Throughout the month, June came and went and I continued to exercise by jogging and walking. Within the world, this past month has not been easy since COVID-19 still rampages through our society, but only found a way to get worse with protests on racial inequality and police violence, accompanied with looting, and very negative responses towards political unrest. As I wrote in previous entries, I really enjoy feeling a sense of adventure that comes from venturing out into new territory alone, and that feeling is something that followed me back. On the days in between jogging, I’ve been walking, but I eventually found myself travelling long distances just to think, and what started with walking four miles soon became seven or eight miles. This became my escape from the world where I explored and saw the world firsthand for myself, rather than see it as a blurred view that passed by in the window of a car. The views I saw and the sense of adventure that I felt while walking reminded me of better times last year and reminded me where my sense of wanderlust came from.  

When I was staying with a family in the countryside of Aomori, I decided to go exploring one morning. There was nothing but rice paddies and nature, and I wanted to explore and capture some of those views since this would probably be one of the only times I’d be surrounded in such an environment. As I saw so many beautiful sights within the environment, there was one magical place that I saw. In context: it’s just a normal train station called “Ashino Park Station,” but that station had train tracks that were surrounded by a tunnel of trees and the beauty of the soft morning dew that looked like it continued on for miles. It truly was a sight to behold, especially since it felt like something I’d seen in a Studio Ghibli Movie, except more amazing. I found out much later that it only becomes even more beautiful during the spring as according to one of the mothers I met at the church: those trees are Sakura Trees, and when spring rolls around, the whole train station is enveloped in a tunnel of light pink petals. With that feeling of adventure and wanderlust still strong inside me, I still continued to walk. Coming back to the present in the United States, I eventually reached the places filled with nostalgia for me: my former schools.The more I think about how and why I chose to walk to and pass by all my former schools is beyond me, and I have no idea why I chose to. If anything, the only reason I could think of was simply the fact that I was really bored. However, taking that journey and taking in the views as I walked provided some sense of excitement. But when I got to each school and dwelled there for a few minutes, it reminded me of where I came from, and the trials I had to overcome to get to this point.

Ashino Park Station in Springtime, Goshogawara, Aomori, Japan, (image taken from origami-japan.com)  

I wrote last month that I was very jaded and apathetic about celebrating my graduation. However, it took me eight miles of walking to figure out and understand my own feelings. Ever since the Biola semester ended, I never really wanted to celebrate with my family since I felt like I disappointed them and myself for failing so many times. In essence, I did and that still unfortunately stands. However, when I was able to get a haircut and catch up with some friends more recently, they wouldn’t let me feel down about myself and forced me into celebrating with them by making plans for the future. If I were to think about that, I needed that push where I couldn’t deny them, and I didn’t want to deny them in this instance. I wanted to celebrate with them was because THEY knew what I went through behind the scenes; all my frustrations and struggles that led to each of my failures weren’t forgotten by my friends, they knew and saw the things my family didn’t and couldn’t know about. I wanted to celebrate with those friends who remembered my struggles and efforts; I wanted proof that I wasn’t forgotten despite all of them moving on in their lives.

With COVID-19 still on a fluctuating rampage, I’ve realized why this time of quarantine and social distancing has been so hard on so many people, and especially myself with the subject of graduation and moving on. The simple fact is that life has been halted for everyone, and the fact that I had to sit alone and face a lot of my emotions by learning to exist in it during such a hard time only made it more difficult for me to want to celebrate my accomplishments. There was no way for me to plan for the future, short term or long term. All that stood in front of me was that I graduated, I was jobless, and couldn’t see anyone to help me escape my thoughts. There was nothing to look forward to since the future was even more uncertain than it already was, with or without the threat of a virus. It wasn’t until my friend forced me to make a plan about the future in which we’d celebrate my graduation where I had something to look forward to. The best way I can see and explain it was explained best through a Podcast I was listening to recently.

“Right now, we are living in an infinite present because future plans have all been put on hold, we’re all stuck in the same place, we don’t know what the future’s going to be, so a lot of us are just kind of dealing with almost this frozen time…” 

- Scott Frerichs, “Preaching the Midnight Gospel” (Talkcast Podshow 01x21, 55:30-55:48)

The future is uncertain, but time is slowly beginning to move forward again. Many things such as political unrest, protests on racial inequality and police violence, and looting have made it even harder to live in this infinite present time with COVID 19 and quarantining. However, despite all that, time is still trying to find a way, and is slowly beginning to move again. These are not the best times to live in, but it also shows the strength and resilience in people. Although I’ve had to spend time learning how to accept and exist within my emotions, I’ve also spent my time jogging and walking, along with improving my culinary skills; especially with improving my fried rice recipe. Like I stated previously, time is beginning to move again, and my time began to move again as I regained my job back at the ramen shop. However, as I returned, I tried the restaurant’s fried rice again, and even though it was still good, I was ultimately disappointed, yet proud. The time I spent creatively improving my recipe eventually surpassed the ramen shop’s recipe that I looked up to; I think my fried rice is better than the restaurant’s. Just as I steadily improved my fried rice, the same could be said about my physical and mental/emotional health. Although this “infinite present time” seems to continue, it also doesn’t mean that I can sharpen and improve myself within this long lull of time. I’ve been through a lot to get to this point, and I finally feel that I’m at a point where I truly can look back at the experiences I’ve been through and the trials I’ve had to overcome and learn from as they are. As the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Timothy 4:15,

“Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all.”

All the things I’ve had to overcome are all because of God’s goodness. Each lesson hurt quite a bit; some more than others, but it’s time to continue walking again. Where I’m going next is beyond me as of right now, and I don’t know what I’m being prepared for or why I’m preparing myself. As it stands at the current time of this writing, I’m looking into another job opportunity and plan on leaving the restaurant if I can get hired. But for now, as I continue to run and walk to places, just like when I looked down those train tracks surrounded by nature that seemed to go on forever, all I can ask now is this:

“Well, where to next?”   

[bisexualamy]

Nadiya, Lup, Here There Be Gerblins, Petals to the Metal, Lenny, Tres Horny Boys, Lunar Interlude, and of course, Remmy

Yes yes yes thank you!

Nadiya: Be proud – talk about something you’re good at.

I have to put in the obligatory goofy one of, at this point, I can pretty much identify every font that comes with default Microsoft Word (2007 and back, I stopped using Word during high school and don’t own it) on sight, plus some extras that aren’t in the defaults but I use a lot in design projects.

The not goofy one is I’m very good at just... articulating myself I think is the best way to put it. It used to just come out in the fact that I’m a good writer, and I’m trying to own that more because I used to own it when I was younger and then decided I shouldn’t be so public about it because it came off as arrogant. But now it’s also coming out in the fact that like, I’m a surprisingly confident public speaker for someone who can be very insecure, and I’ve had a lot of people tell me that I have good emotional intelligence, which is a very high compliment to me. I’ve always been good at sort of, identifying what I’m feeling and explaining it to myself, but only recently have I been able to put those feelings into words and explanations that other people can understand too.

Lup: You are so loved and love in return – gush about at least one sibling, friend, or partner.

I’m so fucking grateful for the fact that I have a bunch of friends now that really just love me unconditionally. I’ve talked about it a few times on this blog but I was also talking about it with my parents now that I’m home, of how I had a very rough freshman year of college and my close friends would’ve been totally justified in taking a step back from me and didn’t. Like, the majority of those people don’t use tumblr, and the ones that do know who they are and I don’t feel super comfortable @ing them.

I don’t mean this in a way of like “you should stick by your friends no matter what” because I think it’s very important to recognize when you, personally, need to take care of yourself and stop prioritizing other people above yourself. I think it takes a specific kind of person to compartmentalize other people’s emotions away from your own life experiences, and know when to step in and when to say no, and I’m super grateful that I have a core group of people that were able to do that with me freshman year. I don’t know if I would be as healthy as I am now without having those wonderful people in my life.

Here There Be Gerblins: Embrace nostalgia – what was your first encounter with a loved one?

I hate flirting specifically because I cannot pick up on the subtly that’s intrinsic to it, and I would really much rather people just come up to me and be like “I like you; let’s date” because I feel like it saves a lot of time and emotional distress. And people don’t believe me when I say this because I’m very good at reading people, but for some reason flirting specifically is a blind spot for me. My point is that when they don’t believe me I always tell the story of how I started dating one of my best friends from high school. This isn’t technically a first encounter but it is sort of, the start of a relationship, and it’s really cute so I’m gonna tell it anyway.

He’s a year above me and we were very close friends throughout the two years we knew each other before he graduated, and then when we went to college and I was a senior we still kept in close contact. And my mom kept telling me he was flirting with me (he at one point made me a sword for a cosplay I never ended up finishing, just because he “wanted a project” and he had a wood shop in his basement) but I didn’t buy it because I assumed he’d just say something.

Anyway May of my senior year of high school he came back after his freshman year and we were hanging out a bunch and over at a mutual friend’s house and cuddling on the couch and I promise you, my internal monologue was “wow isn’t it incredible that two bi/pan guys can just be gay with each other on a couch in a platonic way” because I’m fucking clueless. And he walked me to my car when we went to leave and gave me a hug, and this was still my internal monologue up until he kissed my forehead and I went “.......wait a second. Is that platonic?” Because again, I’m so so so bad at picking up on this shit.

It got brought up like five days later and we ended up dating for a few months but after I was in college for a bit I realized I don’t like long distance relationships and we had a super civil breakup. We still talk somewhat regularly and I consider us good friends still. He knows this story and he finds it hilarious because I’ve always been very very bad at picking up on flirting, which is what finally just led to him being more direct. Case and point: I found out like, literally a few months ago that not only was he flirting with me that summer, but he was into me for at least a year before that. The sword was flirting (I know, shocking). My mom was right.

Petals to the Metal: Sometimes we need to let loose – when have you done something you shouldn’t have because it made you happy?

Unhealthy coping mechanisms that I’ve kicked or am trying to kick don’t really have a place in a thread about positivity, so instead I’m gonna go really stereotypical Art Student™. I love trespassing in places to take photographs. I’ve never like, gone to a place that I REALLY shouldn’t have been, but I have wandered around some abandoned places that were totally intended to be locked or off limits. 

Photography makes me really happy, even the process of editing the photos in post-production is very calming for me, so I try to do it when I can. Probably the most dangerous place I’ve ever done this is on live train tracks? Live in the sense that like, trains run up and down them on the daily (they’re not electrified) and I still walk along/on them, because I figured that if a train was coming I’d hear it. I, no joke, am doing this again in two days, and scheduled a photoshoot with someone on these train tracks, because the aesthetic is really nice (especially in the snow) and I’ve done it twice before, so maybe I’m a little cocky. My sister mentioned to me that I should check the train schedule and coordinate around it this time, which honestly, I probably should.

Lenny: “You may remember, you subscribed to the cylinder of the month club” – what is something you are well-known (or notorious) for?

The fonts thing definitely. I regularly get messages from people asking me to identify fonts for them. Also I say some really ridiculous things occasionally that I’ve not yet lived down. I’m not going to revive them by repeating them here. ALSO “what is Ren short for” is a game that has continued past my legal name change and will probably continue into infinity. Answers are getting increasingly creative, though Renjamin is definitely the most popular and has evolved into something people actually, regularly address me as.

Tres Horny Boys: “Nobody ever say that out loud ever again please” – what is your worst nickname?

Someone once realized that you can make a Ronald Regan pun off of “what is Ren short for” and it didn’t last because all my friends are Gays��� but that’s gotta be the worst answer to this game.

Lunar Interlude: “I hand Leon the token” – how do you make your friends laugh?

So for the longest time I was convinced I was just Not Funny At All until I started doing improv my junior year of high school and was (to me, shockingly) good at it, and then I realized it was more of a lack of confidence than anything else. This is going to sound really stilted and empirical, but doing improv off and on for a few years and performing in front of lots of different kinds of people and audiences has made me really aware of the techniques people use to make people laugh, and has given me a sort of “shorthand” for how to, in most cases, land a joke. This is not a discovery on my part: there are 100s of podcasts and books on this stuff (I literally just finished a design project on this), but it’s a lot easier for me to understand something if I’ve experienced it.

Inside jokes are always a way that my friends and I laugh with each other, but beyond that, the golden rule for me is that specificity always gets a laugh above a general statement. If your funny comment is really tailored to your audience or in general just contains a super specific detail (3.5 minutes versus a few minutes) people find it funnier. I haven’t quite figured out why yet, though. Honestly though, I’m friends with a ton of creative people, and the times we laugh the most is just when we banter in the same space together without shooting each other down. I’m trying my best to stop shooting down comments people make, no matter how ridiculous, as long as I’m not uncomfortable. Jokes tend to build on each other and so if you’re in a supportive, funny environment, things just get funnier.

Remmy: Love is a motivator – who do you want to make proud?

It might sound like a cop out but myself. I used to really hate that concept, but I’ve been recently finding a lot of power in self-improvement. I try really hard to incorporate mindfullness and reflection into my life, and recognizing that I’m in a better place (academically, socially, emotionally, etc) then where I was in the past makes me feel really content.

Like, obviously I like when people appreciate the work I do, and the support of my friends and family is very important to me, but I try not to specifically improve to make others proud of me. The person I’m guaranteed to spend my entire life with is myself, so I should make sure I’m proud of myself first.

[firefighterkingdom]

#5 Washington St. Fire Fighters: Hit Hard Early During COVID-19 & Review

Today we have a treat with a special guest and fellow professional fire fighter Dennis Lawson from Washington State. Dennis is the president of the Washington State Council of Fire Fighters (WSCFF) and also a 33 year veteran of the fire service who has served in multiple roles over the years and brings tons of knowledge.

Dennis goes over some of the early COVID-19 reactions from Washington State who was hit hard early on, had some of the first U.S. deaths from the coronavirus, and had several fire fighters test positive. He goes over many topics from the public safety and view from a fire fighters perspective. And discusses some of what to look for going forward.

All right, welcome. This is Robert Sanchez, host of Firefighter Kingdom. Welcome back to the Firefighter Kingdom. We have a great person today, a friend of mine, definitely a person that’s well-educated in the fire service and the IFF, which we’re both proud union members of. I’m here with Dennis Lawson, president of Washington State Council of Firefighters in Washington State, a 33 year firefighter there in Washington. Dennis, glad to have you on here. It’s always an honor talking to you. Tell us a little bit about yourself, brother.

Dennis Lawson: Hey, Robert. Hey, thanks for extending the invitation. As you mentioned, I’ve got 33 years on the job, getting ready to start my 34th year. I’m currently a battalion chief here with Central Pierce Fire and Rescue just outside the city of Tacoma. Second generation firefighter, my dad worked for Tacoma Fire Local 31. My brother is down south in Vancouver, Washington. Married, couple of kids. Enjoy, really, the fire service a great deal. I spent most of my entire fire service life as part of my local, Local 726. Actually the year I got off probation is when I started in on my board, and I’ve been on my executive board for, well, I guess it’d be almost 33 years now, or getting ready to start my 33rd year. Held all the different positions concurrently like you described. State Council president, we represent right around 8,500 firefighters here in the state of Washington, 127 locals. Geographically we’ve got 11 executive board members and Secretary-Treasurer Greg Markley and myself are the two principal officers, and an office in Olympia, which is our state capitol. So a pleasure to be here. I hope that gives you a little idea of who I am.

Robert Sanchez: Yeah, very nice. That’s a mile long of accomplishments there, man. I know you’re a great leader and Dennis, we definitely bleed IFF. We’re instructors with the IFF and it’s always nice seeing you. Welcome, Dennis. He’s also a fellow pep instructor with the IFF with me. We travel across the country. We have the luxury and the honor to teach firefighters all across the country. And I’m happy today, I was thinking of today as I was driving to work just how lucky to have you on today talking about Washington State and the early COVID-19 virus that hit your state. Early in February that it hit, more than it hit any of the other states throughout the United States. And Dennis, tell me, you’ve been a firefighter for going on 33 years, right?

Dennis Lawson: Yeah. Yeah. Just getting ready to start my 34th year next week.

Robert Sanchez: Nice. Congratulations, man.

Dennis Lawson: Yeah, thanks man.

Robert Sanchez: So I bet you’re anxious to retire, and I’m not sure if your wife is, she wants you home so much or not, but …

Dennis Lawson: Yeah. Thanks Robert. Yeah. She’ll probably agree with you on that.

Robert Sanchez: So I know you’re a hard working man, and glad to have you on, and I appreciate for being on with us today. Just being a friend and just having the honor to teach with you with the IFF, that’s why I brought you on, because I knew you’d be a person with a lot of knowledge on the early COVID 19 issue that happened. And not that you really wanted to, got thrown into your guys’s plate there in Washington state.

So in early February, I know you guys got hit pretty hard specific to the Kirkland fire department there. Tell me about it. When they got hit so hard, how did they deal with it? We all say we’re ready. We all prepare as firefighters. We all know the training we go through, and we come out of the Academy, we do all these trainings, we think we’re ready to go, but sometimes you get ready to go and you get hit in the face with a hammer sometimes and it just happens. You can’t prepare for everything.

Dennis Lawson: That’s exactly right. In fact, it was interesting because you mentioned Kirkland and really what happened was it was a Friday night, and before we actually got the, the news went bad. And Friday night we had planned to have a conference call with the general president and some leadership back at the IFF. And then before Saturday morning … And the Friday night conversation was going to take place was regarding the first death, what they described in the first US death, and it happened at a nursing home here in Kirkland, Washington. And before, it was about 3:00 AM, things went completely sideways because at that point in time, we started to put our firefighters in quarantine.

And I think just to make sure everybody understands, but we had a couple different words that we were not familiar with, quarantine and isolation. And quarantine was for those folks who were initially exposed, and isolation was for those folks then who had tested positive. And in Kirkland, Kirkland’s a progressive department, they got good leadership, they’ve got a really good strong union president, good fire department, good history, very active at the IFF level. And what was concerning to all of us was is that if it’s going to happen to Kirkland, it’s probably going to happen to a lot of other people. And so it really, like you said, slap in the face. It was definitely cold water put on us at 3:00 AM.

Robert Sanchez: Absolutely. And sometimes it’s one of those things where it’s not going to happen to me, or it’s not going to happen to us, and Kirkland seems like a fair sized department. I was looking at them online and stuff like that. And that just goes to show that it can happen to you. It happened to Kirkland. And so how did it, I don’t know if crippling is a correct word, but how did it cripple them? How many people in early February did they have have in quarantine?

Dennis Lawson: There you go.

Robert Sanchez: Can you hear me?

Dennis Lawson: You’re back on.

Robert Sanchez: Okay, Thanks.

Dennis Lawson: Yeah, I lost you for a couple of seconds.

Robert Sanchez: Sorry about that, technology now with COVID-19.

Dennis Lawson: You got a virus in your speaker.

Robert Sanchez: Yeah, I’m sure it is. Yeah. So we all talk about Kirkland, it’s not going to happen to us as a fairly decent sized department. But it did happen to Kirkland, just shows that it could happen to anybody. So how did they deal with it? Because how many, at the initial stage when they started getting infected, the firefighters, how many got infected and how many were in quarantine initially?

Dennis Lawson: Yeah, initially about 17. And that number, and so that happened really quick like I mentioned. As soon as they had the death, they started to figure out … And again, progressive department, they were able to identify through tracking some of their run calls that they had been going to the same facility. And then all of a sudden they got the one death, and then they got another death, and they started looking. They started putting common denominator and that facility was the common denominator. Then they backtracked and started pulling the records up of who had responded there. And they put, initially I think was 16 or 17 people in quarantine right away. And for them, that’s pretty much a couple stations worth. And they actually took a station, they closed the station completely down and used that as a quarantine facility.

Robert Sanchez: Geez. Okay. That’s pretty crippling for a department that size. I can only imagine even the department that I work for, that would definitely, it would cause a lot of problems cause it puts a strain on the community. It puts a strain on firefighters. Talking to more people, on one of our other episodes in our podcast we talked about PTSD. We always talk about that, on the Dr. Rogers on here. And he happened to ask me, “How was it stressful being COVID, are they getting PTSD from it?” And I said, “Well, I’m sure eventually some firefighters may, but I think just the stress of knowing that you potentially have to respond to these calls and the stress of putting on masks and gowns and making sure you don’t have it and making sure your family’s not going to get it if you get it, that’s just adding stress to the job.

Dennis Lawson: Right. I think you touched on it pretty good. For the most part we come into the fire service with, I think a little bit of understanding that we potentially could have some exposures. At times the job can be very difficult. But we drew the line, I think most of us, and said that, how’s the family impacted? We don’t want to take what we’ve got, if we were exposed on a fire to a carcinogen, if we develop cancer as a firefighter, our family’s not going to get that because it’s not contagious. Right? But you get this virus, something like this where you could take home to your loved ones … And a lot of families, depending on where you are in our country, you may have multiple generations in a household. You could have grandkids and grandparents still living with people. And both of those are on the very high ends of that spectrum, older or maybe very, very young.

Dennis Lawson: So we, yeah, I think you’re right, Robert, I think that’s something PTSD hasn’t manifested yet in that right away. But I think down the road, it could. We’ve been really pumping out peer support groups, making sure that our members talk to each other, we keep an eye on each other. We’re tracking sick leave to make sure that, not for tracking sickly to see who’s using it, but more or less to see if we see any trends related to how people, a bad call, something went different for a day for somebody. So we’re doing those kinds of things.

Robert Sanchez: Absolutely. So as a great leader that they have in a state, they’re fortunate to have you, are they doing okay now in Kirkland? Obviously they’re being well taken care of, but are they recovering from the situation in February?

Dennis Lawson: Yeah. I think Kirkland again, they describe that epicenter, right? That was the initial hit. Everybody had it. But about 15 minutes west of Kirkland’s the city of Seattle, that’s our biggest city in our state. And they had a number of people who also who were in quarantine. Based on pure numbers, I think there’re around 950 members in their union. And I want to say somewhere around 30, 40 members of their department alone had testing positive. And so those are pretty good, those are high numbers. And some of the other departments on our east side of our state, we may have some combination departments, volunteer paid, and we get two positives out of a department of 10, and that can cripple that department.

Robert Sanchez: That’s a big hit. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, good. I’m glad to see they’re recovering from it. And I hate to say this, but I think the rest of the United States, especially fire department wise, and I know I was paying attention when you talked at our legislative conference and also when you had the kitchen table with with Harold Schaitberger, the general president, I was listening and I think we got a lot of information. I think I even called you about some issues we’re having here in New Mexico. And we learned from you guys. It’s sad that it came to hit you guys first, but that’s what firefighters do across the country is the brother and sisterhood, the men and women that work in the fire service across the country definitely came out and help each other out. And we learned from you guys and, and what you guys had to deal with. And-

Dennis Lawson: You mentioned the learning part, there was a couple of things we learned right away. One was that the IFF, you mentioned them. They put out that toolkit. And I think when I addressed the group back in DC on the legislative conference, I had glanced the tool kit, but I didn’t get into it. Quite honestly I was looking at something like, this is a virus that’s going to take place in China. It’s going to stay over there. It’s not going to manifest in the United States. Thinking that we’re so much above those things. And it really hit us all. So I think that, I don’t want to say apprehension, but it was just really just not the … I should’ve been much more aggressive. So that’s something I learned.

Dennis Lawson: The other thing that I’ve expressed to our executive board, and we have 11 board members in the state of Washington geographically placed out there, and we do a lot of really good things. But one thing that we were not really deeply entrenched in was our Department of Emergency Management. Because we do a lot of politics stuff, so we’re talking to the people we’re talking maybe to the County directors or executives, but we didn’t get into the Department of Emergency Management. We didn’t have anybody who was able to get into Department of Health, places like that where they’re making some decisions that really we should have labor voice at.

And so we really made a strong push in King County, and King County has King County Medic One, which is probably one of the best in the country. They always talk about how good they are, and they are very good. We were able to crack that right away and get labor involved. We had two of our board members that got onto a conference call really from that first week on. And they valued our input because we were really the people out on the streets, and it made a big difference. So a couple of real lessons learned, things that we would do different, things we’ve talked about already for gearing up what comes up next. Or if we get a resurgence of this virus, we have to be prepared at least in our state to continue to keep moving forward.

April 4th or so is when I think they talked about us hitting our peak. It was about a week before, maybe 10 days before they had anticipated. And we’ve done well, we flattened out as they described. That’s a word everybody wants to use. And I cautioned even our state, and we’ve talked about this, we have weekly conference calls for our board, is that flattening out doesn’t mean the virus is gone. It still means that people are getting sick. It’s just at a pace that it doesn’t overwhelm everything. And the unfortunate part is people still die. And really that’s the sad part because this is going to be around for a while for it.

Robert Sanchez: Absolutely. just the way it’s looking, I think just watching it and seeing of course the news and everything else, it just, it’s hard. Nobody’s been able to predict what it’s going to happen. We all, like myself, I thought it was just a flu virus, everybody’s in a panic. But even just being in the field and being on the firetruck, I see that it’s not a panic. Look what’s happening in New York. How do you explain that? So across the country, the numbers in some States aren’t as high, but how do you explain New York? How do you explain their morgues are full? They’re having to get trucks to put the body from people who are suffering, who passed away or expired from the COVID-19 virus. So, it’s real and it’s out there, but I’m just hoping that with the four stage plan that the States are having right now that it’s done correctly and we can work it out where it brings us from that curve.

Dennis Lawson: Right, right. I know in the state of Washington, I mentioned our four phases and part of that’s putting our state back in service, back to business. I’m not sure how you guys are doing down there. The economics here, a little concerning. We have municipal fire departments, and we have County fire departments, fire districts, and I work for a fire district. It’s basically, it’s a city, there’s counties, it’s a combination of a bunch of things. But I’ll use Seattle as an example. Their hotels are running at 20% occupancy, if that, right now. They canceled the entire Alaska cruise season, or at least up until probably late August. And so they won’t be running cruises out of there. Our airport’s probably at 10 or 15% capacity.

Dennis Lawson: This has completely crippled a lot of things. And so our municipalities who rely on tax dollars, really the sales, that’s going to be a significant problem for them as they move forward. And so we’ve talked about using our DVP, Mickey Walsh trying to get some of the same things we teach when we do our prep stuff in negotiation, starting to forecast using our municipal financial analysis, getting the IFF on board and making sure that we’re preparing our people. We’ve talked about, maybe it’s a really good time to maybe consider rolling contracts for one year instead of getting full blown into a deep contract negotiation and not knowing what the numbers look like as we move forward. I’d hate for our members to give up stuff and then things turn around rapidly. And on the other hand, I’d hate for us to say that we’re going to get something and then have to give it back.

Robert Sanchez: Absolutely. Yeah, so we’re having the same problem here. We have the city of Santa Fe, which is the capital of New Mexico, and the city firefighters, even the County firefighters in Santa Fe, they’re struggling because Santa Fe really relies on gross receipt tax, right? They rely on tourism. Tourism is huge in Santa Fe. And looking at the numbers, talking about MFAs again, we’re getting into that and we’re making sure to have a municipal financial analysis to see, do they have money? And they don’t have money. That’s there, we could see it.

Robert Sanchez: But yeah, so if we’re planning for the future and it’s definitely we’re going to have to be creative on contracts, and it is going to have to be a give and take in this situation, especially if we know exactly what the money is. And so it is concerning. We start coming into brown outs and layoffs and hopefully we can prevent pay cuts and cutting our benefits. And we just had a huge bill pass our last legislature, which is a funding our pension, which is good for firefighters. And here we are again, having to, hopefully it doesn’t come up and we have to deal with that.

Dennis Lawson: Right. So you mentioned legislation, how have you guys done on any presumptive type coverage or anything like that in your state?

Robert Sanchez: Well, so our legislature finished in February, mid February. So we didn’t get a chance to even work on that issue. But we did have an executive order, and we have a great governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham here in New Mexico, she’s pro firefighter a hundred percent. And so is our legislature, both our Senate and our House, but she came out with an executive order which basically says that per our presumptive bill that we already had in place, it basically explains to the municipalities and the counties that if they get this on duty, it’s going to be presumptive. It’s presumed that it happened on duty. So it swings a bigger hammer if you will, on that executive order. It’s not what we wanted, it’s not legislature, because like I said, our legislative session was over. But it’s something definitely we’re already in the works.

Robert Sanchez: I just got off a zoom call with my executive board of my presence in my state. And we talked about how important politics are now, right now at this time, because we’re going to have to get the right people in there that understand firefighting, would understand what we’ve done, firefighters and what we’re doing for them to make legislation that that helps us for presumptive issues. We all know, Dennis, that we can actually say right now, and I could say with confidence that we weren’t held up with these last couple of months because of the billionaires and the CEOs. We were held up because of the transit workers, the semi truck drivers, the factory workers, the firefighters, the healthcare workers, the police officers. So it’s the working men and women of the United States that kept us afloat, and they still are. So I’m happy to say that for sure.

Dennis Lawson: Yeah. I agree with you a hundred percent. Our governor, we have governor Jay Inslee, and he’s been very outspoken. Especially when this thing happened, of course Mike Pence, vice president of the United States flies out here and they have a conference call, and for the most part everything went pretty well. And then that information of course gets taken back to the White House, and unfortunately you hear that some comments made there probably aren’t appropriate from the White House regarding our governor. Our governor has done a good job for us. He’s very much been in our corner for a number of years. He was a former state, or I should say congressional member at one point in time, and he’s dialed in on our issues. And he did the same thing.

Dennis Lawson: He didn’t have an executive order, but he did, he put a policy down, policy directive through our state labor and industrial workers’ comp. And that’s the way, we’re same way as you are. Our legislative session had ended. We will go back. We have language right now that’s currently in place that says that infectious diseases. And we also have language in there that talks about respiratory, which COVID is very much a respiratory disease. And so we’re going to go ahead and firm these up as we go back in. We’ve got a board of, they call it a board of epidemiology, it’s our doctors that will be starting to work on this during the interim right now. So we’ve got a few things we’ve got to continue to work on, but I’m thankful that, like you said, we have good people, good support, and our governor, our House, our Senate as well.

Robert Sanchez: Very good. Yeah. So we’re lucky here in New Mexico. I hope other States learn from us and learn from you. We’re definitely learning from you now, all the information you’ve laid out in our legislative conference, just even being on the kitchen table with our general president. And I’ve been lucky to work with team district also. DVP [Lima’s 00:21:19] Doing great for us. We’ve had several zooms with probably 160, 70 participants, and it was real informative. And some of the information they got I know was from you and from your state. So I appreciate that.

Robert Sanchez: So I was just going to ask you, so would you change anything on the way that it happened? Obviously, we try to be prepared the most we can. Was there anything that you think that we could change that if we ever had another pandemic, in the fire service?

Dennis Lawson: Yeah, I think like I mentioned, I think we have focused so hard on the political part of our state organization, working on our legislation, where I think we needed to be much more entrenched into our communities. And it doesn’t always have to be our executive boards from our state groups, but our local need to take, as an example, the city of Seattle, they have a Department of Emergency Management just for the city of Seattle. And I know president Stewart from up there was trying to do those things to have his members’ interests taken there, but that doesn’t happen in all the different cities. And so that’s one strong lesson we learned.

Dennis Lawson: The other one was just simply just to make sure that we have really good communication. And I think for the most part we did really well. We tried to reach out. When we talked to the IFF, we wanted one consistent message. We wanted the IFF message. We wanted the seventh district message, which coincided with our state message, because we knew right away if we start to go different ways, we’re going to have a problem with fracture, shows little signs of weakness. And then probably the other thing that if I was to do something different, maybe a little bit earlier on, maybe treat it like a fire incident where you actually have a command type system, command board. I took on probably more than I probably should have initially. I figured it took me about maybe 14 days to figure it out that this is not sustainable.

Robert Sanchez: Right. And we all would do that. As a leader, you’re going to do that.

Dennis Lawson: Yeah. So I really realized on a couple of board members, our vice president, our secretary of treasure, and a couple of key board members, just, “Okay, can you do this?” We have a standing health and safety committee. And I really, I tasked him to do a lot of work and he did a really good job. Kevin is his name, fantastic guy to work with. Just those little things like that. So the delegation, because like you said, we all want to do those kinds of things and maintain a lot of our own work. So yeah, just little things. Maybe if I was probably, as we gear up, maybe just a little bit more attention to what the IFF is putting out, just because they know. Like I said, I saw it, I read it. I just didn’t think it was going to happen to us.

Robert Sanchez: Right. Yeah. We talked about that earlier. Do we ever think it’s going to happen to us? That’s a part of the issue that we have, is we have tons of resources out there, we have tons of information. But as firefighters, we’re constantly on training, and online training, and training in the field, and we just sometimes it becomes just a, we just do it and go with the flow and just do it. So I think that we need to start paying more attention to some of this stuff, even as far as wearing masks and gloves on duty on calls. We all knew we used to wear gloves, but we weren’t real religious in doing what we’re supposed to do in the first … We were supposed to be wearing gloves and face masks anyways on calls. But there’s a lot of times that we weren’t doing it. We lacked on it. So it definitely woke us up, gave us a wake up call.

Dennis Lawson: That’s a good point too, is the PPE part, is that I think it’s important for people to realize that the individuals in Kirkland had the appropriate gear on for the type of call. They got dispatched to a low blood sugar call, now how many of us would wear a gown, the whole bit? Right? Well, they get there and the person was, basically they were unconscious, unresponsive. So they had to begin CPR, and they didn’t have time to put all their gear on. That was one example. The other example was a patient that fell out of bed. Well, they fell out of bed because unfortunately, they had passed away. So they get there, they work on them.

Dennis Lawson: But I think from the fire service standpoint, maybe we need to look a little bit different. Instead of N95 masks, maybe we should go to a different mask that has cartridges like an APR. We went to those things early on, so everybody has issued an APR. A little bit more money, but the cartridges are good for a very long period of time. You decon them, they’re quicker to get back in service than most anything else. And so I think that would be helpful. Just, what are we wearing? Is the type of gear that we wear on an EMS call, is that appropriate? Does a gown give us the best protection? So I think those are the kinds of things, and I’m glad Pat Morrison from the IFF and a few, Jim [Brinkly 00:26:07] And a few other people are just, they’re starting to look into those different things.

Robert Sanchez: Well, that’s good. Yeah. I think that definitely when this is, hopefully it ends and we get a vaccine or something to help us out with. But I think we’re going to come up with these ideas, what’s better, what worked and what didn’t. We’re all going to learn from our own mistakes unfortunately, but that’s just the way life is in general. Right?

Robert Sanchez: So just one last thing, so how’s the firefighters out there as far as mentally? Are they holding together, or have you seen any difference? I know we talked about the stress of them.

Dennis Lawson: Yeah. I think for the most part, again, the unknown is the worst part, right?

Robert Sanchez: Absolutely.

Dennis Lawson: You go to a fire call and you got it in front of you, and you pull your line, whether you’re fire tack or you’re doing exposure or whatever it is, you got something you know what you’re dealing with. This one, you just don’t know. And I think for the most part, you know how a firehouse can be. I think a lot of times you can feel the dynamics, you can feel when there’s tension in the air in a fire station. And some of that is because people are just not really sure what’s going on.

Dennis Lawson: And like I said, we’ve utilized our peer support, support teams, to make sure that they’re reaching out, talking to people, putting things out. We actually started in different organizations, mine included, brought back a safety week a little bit earlier. So we had, because just some time to make sure people are staying really focused on themselves. Our call volume’s down. I’m not sure about you guys, but we’re down about 20% here. And I think that is because people don’t want to go to the hospital right now, because I think they’re fearful that they go to the hospital they’ll catch a virus from somebody already there.

Robert Sanchez: Absolutely.

Dennis Lawson: And so, yeah. Is that what you’ve experienced as well?

Robert Sanchez: Yeah, definitely the call volume is down. And I think, yeah, they’re staying home, whereas most people are, and taking it serious. And yeah, I think that we do, when we respond to calls a lot of them are, they’re saying, “I don’t want to go to the hospital because I don’t want to catch COVID, or coronavirus.” And that makes a lot of sense. So I think that also shows that sometimes maybe not everybody needs to go to the hospital like they think they should, because they’re totally fine after that.

Dennis Lawson: We’ve been saying that for a long time.

Robert Sanchez: And don’t get me wrong, it’s an honor for me to be a firefighter, but sometimes we got to definitely look, is this something that I really need to go to the hospital for? Because it was really causing a huge backlog in some of our hospitals here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But I think people are realizing now that maybe they don’t need to go to the hospital all the time.

Dennis Lawson: I think you’re right. I think you’re right on that. Yeah.

Robert Sanchez: But definitely, I just wanted to thank you. I know you have a family with career firefighters. Your brother and your father is also a firefighter, were firefighters, are retired, right?

Dennis Lawson: My brother is active down in Vancouver. My dad was Local 31 in Tacoma. He passed away. It’s been a number of years now.

Robert Sanchez: I’m sorry.

Dennis Lawson: It’s okay. He was a tiller man for years. Some good fire calls. I’ve got great memories of hanging out at the fire station when I was really little, going down there and playing basketball with all the guys, and doing those kinds of things. And then he moved up, he went into the Fire Marshall’s office and retired as the Fire Marshall for department.

Robert Sanchez: Very cool man. So you come from a line of firefighters. And your brother’s in Canada, right, being a firefighter?

Dennis Lawson: No, Vancouver, Washington.

Robert Sanchez: Oh, Vancouver, Washington. Okay. My apologies. So that’s nice, man. Well, thanks Dennis. It’s always been a pleasure. I like talking to you every time we talk, we have a good conversation, and I miss having a beer with you, man. And when you see we’re instructing, and we’ll get back together when we start being instructors again, the United States, hopefully we start traveling.

Dennis Lawson: Yeah, I’m hoping that the IFF convention still goes off.

Robert Sanchez: Me too.

Dennis Lawson: I’m not sure what that’s going to look like or how we’re going to do it, but I’m sure if we get back there together, it’d be nice to dip a beer and say hi to ya.

Robert Sanchez: Absolutely. Yeah. And you’re always welcome in New Mexico. Come and have a beer. Hope you and your family’s doing well.

Dennis Lawson: You too buddy.

Robert Sanchez: And thanks again for the information. We definitely learned something.

Dennis Lawson: Let me know if I can give you something, I’m more than happy to share it.

Robert Sanchez: Thank you, sir. I appreciate it.

Dennis Lawson: All right buddy. You take care.

Robert Sanchez: You too. All right. So signing off, that’s it for Firefighter Kingdom. Thanks for being in the Kingdom, firefighters and community. Thank you Dennis for the being on the podcast, it’s always an honor having you on here. A leader like yourself, educating firefighters across the nation. And again, thanks to Vince Trujillo. He’s the mastermind behind everything. He makes me look good. I know it’s a hard job. Again, signing off. Thanks again, Dennis.

Dennis Lawson: All right. Thank you.

The post #5 Washington St. Fire Fighters: Hit Hard Early During COVID-19 & Review appeared first on FireFighter Kingdom.

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[technicalillustrator]

Annual Report 2018

For me 2018 felt like a year of ups and downs, personally and professionally. It’s been about a year since my Ten Year Review, so I thought I’d share and reflect on my experiences.

The Numbers

Last year I completed 81 projects with 28 clients, including some big names like Google, Microsoft, Air Canada, and BF Goodrich. 90% of my work was with American clients, 9% with Canadians and 1% with British. About 70% of my work was technical illustration, and 30% was editorial illustration under my alias Textbook Example.

Total sales were down slightly from 2017, but I took more personal time off and I was happy with my work/life balance.

The Hits

2018 started out slow for new projects. I used the downtime to organize my studio, redesign Textbook Example, and learn more about 3D rigging and animation in Cinema 4D. I think this was time well spent.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by James Provost (@jamesprovost) on Jan 12, 2018 at 7:27am PST

Work eventually picked up, and I collaborated with some big names, and produced work that I’m very proud of. Unfortunately, I’m not able to share some of it due to NDAs.

Last year, I declined more projects that I wasn’t a good fit for or didn’t have time to take on, and referred them on to fellow illustrators that were more suitable or available. These colleagues also did the same for me.

In the fall, my wife and I took three weeks off to visit China and Hong Kong for our first time. It was a great experience and we met some amazing people. Highlights for me were a tour of Shanghai by sidecar, a hike of an unrestored section of the Great Wall, and cycling around the hills of Yangshuo.

I also made pasta from scratch (linguine), built new office desks (wood and black steel pipe), and bought a new motorcycle (Ducati Scrambler)!

The Misses

Many of the projects I worked on in 2018 are under non-disclosure agreements, meaning I can’t use them for self-promotion. NDAs are a fact of life in technical illustration because it often deals with confidential information, but it makes for a quiet social media stream and a stagnant portfolio.

As a result, I didn’t share my work or engage with the illustration community as much as I wanted to. I was pretty quiet on Instagram, Dribbble, Technical Illustrators.org, and this blog.

Last year one of my goals was recognition, in the form of an illustration award, but I didn’t end up entering my work into a single competition.

I was thinking of attending the ICON illustration conference in Detroit, but I sat on it and missed out. #fomo.

The Apps

Notes (iOS/Mac) was a big breakthrough for me in 2018. In January I started a list on my phone and throughout the year whenever I accomplished something, big or small, I simply made note of it.

My list started with easy wins (framed some art, organized my books & magazines, mounted a TV), but these snowballed into bigger victories (having an awesome home-studio that I love spending time in). It also got me to reframe some setbacks that I suffered into challenges that I overcame.

I think it’s natural (even beneficial) to reflect on your shortcomings or failures – you can learn a lot from them – but it can bog you down. Having a list of my growth and progress over time was a great way to reset and get motivated for the next victory.

Downcast (iOS/Mac) is my new podcast player of choice. I listen to a lot of podcasts while I work, from news to education to comedy. Downcast does it way better than iTunes. Last year I listened to about 372 episodes about economics! (shoutout to Planet Money, The Indicator, and Freakonomics)

Cineware (Mac/PC) is a plugin that allows you to place Cinema 4D scene files and work with them right inside Illustrator. You can rotate and position 3D objects, lights, and cameras, and create, edit and apply materials. I used it extensively on one project to create reference views of a Jeep.

The Year Ahead

Smarter Goals The goals in my Ten Year report weren’t SMART, so I didn’t make much progress on them. My goal for 2019 is to create better goals!

Metrics Using Google Forms, I’m going to create a daily survey to better track my hours, energy level, mood, and more. This might provide some insights into my productivity, or at least make for a more interesting “Numbers” section in next year’s annual report.

Community In 2019, to better engage with the community, I will write a post at least monthly here and on Technical Illustrators.org. I’ll also post to Instagram and Dribbble at least weekly.

New Workstation I’m still happy with my 2009 Mac Pro tower, but I’m eager to see what Apple has come up with for its new generation of modular Mac Pros.

I’d like to say a big thank you to all of my clients for your business and your trust. Also to my colleagues and friends for your support and camaraderie. And of course, to you for reading!

Original Post

[tinseltine]

What'd Ya Think of This Flick? BLACK PANTHER

Tinsel & Tine's Look at

BLACK PANTHER

By Le Anne Lindsay, Editor I don’t follow comic books, but I do consider myself a “Blerd” (Black Nerd). I’m all about superhero movies, Sci-Fi Flicks, Game of Thrones, totally love Fantasy, so I see every MCU & D.C. movie that comes out, but the excitement for BLACK PANTHER starring Chadwick Boseman was palpable, building since Captain America: Civil War. Whenever I’d get depressed about something, I'd console myself by saying, but Black Panther is coming out soon! I took a day off from work to see the press screening, I bought a T-shirt, I even bought a comic book during the @AmalgamPhilly Black Panther panel discussion and party! It’s a major event to have Disney & Marvel provide an A-List Hollywood marketing roll out for a movie starring a mainly black cast, written and directed by a black man (Ryan Coogler) who I got to interview way back in 2013 when his first film came out Fruitvale Station and I’m ashamed to say it, but he seemed so uncomfortable with the attention that movie was receiving at the time, that I didn’t think he’d amount to anything. So I was blown away when he wrote & directed the Rocky movie Creed, but this… Wow, he’s really arrived. And the black community came out to support him. Of course you can’t talk about Black Panther without talking about the strength of the female characters – Tech Genius. Warrior General. Activist Spy. Queen Mother. None of them are fighting over a guy, being catty or needing to be saved. They are fierce, proud, intelligent and capable. How are you not gonna love the all bald female warrior army “the Dora Milage”. Can’t help but wonder who would win in a fight between them and the Amazon’s of Themyscira? It might be the Dora Milage because when Gen Okoya (Danai Gurira) stops that charging armor plated Rhino in its tracks, just by her mere presence, I mean that’s cool! Not to mention, a female Production designer, Hannah Beachler and Costume designer Ruth E. Carter and Oscar nominated (Mudbound) Rachel Morrison as cinematographer. I’ve seen Letitia Wright (Shuri) in that famous episode of Black Mirror with the Black Museum, but didn’t pay the actress as much attention as the show. But she’s got my attention now as the “Q” of Wakanda. I've added to my Netflix queue the movie Urban Hymn (2015) which she starred in about a troubled girl in the system who’s encouraged by a social worker to find herself through singing. From the trailer it looks like Letitia has a great voice too. And Oscar winner (12 Years a Slave) and fashion icon Lupita Nyong'o (Nakia) gets to be the object of affection and desire, while at the same time being all about her mission, which T’Challa totally respects despite obviously wanting her to be his queen. To be fair, I was also excited last year with Hidden Figures portrayal of super intelligent black females at NASA. That movie took pride in encouraging women to enter the STEM fields of (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and now these women in "Black Panther" have taken it all to a new level. As a black woman, my heart almost burst with pride and excitement. Thank you Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole for writing this story and thank you MCU for allowing them the freedom. These guys understand the tropes of good storytelling. They borrow themes we’re familiar with like from James Bond & The Lion King but use them effectively, so as not to feel copied, but a shorthand. I’m also not taking anything away from Anthony Mackie as The Falcon or Don Cheadle in Iron Man, but of course we all know they are sidekicks and really would never warrant their own movie. What I like about Chadwick Boseman’s portrayal of Black Panther is his lack of ego. He’s really there to be King first, Black Panther second and accepts the fact that it literally takes a village to protect Wakanda and their way of life.

After the screening a whole mess of Black Tribbles stayed to tape an episode of SPOILED TRIBBLES which you can listen to below:

which will also get embedded here soon as it posts. And my 2.20.18 live segment on That's Show Biz w/ Chuck Darrow (WWDB-Talk-869) will feature Black Panther, which I'll link to podcast. Which brings us to the simplistic yet inspired storyline of Wakanda itself, which is a wonderfully expressed dilemma; a big part of me feels like a sure fire way of turning a Utopia into a Dystopia is to let in outsiders. On the other hand, if your way of life, technology, funds can help the rest of the world, do you have a duty to share? Coogler says he based aspects of his version of Wakanda on Lesotho, which were able to resist both the Zulus and the Boers, and was only lightly colonized by the British. Which reminds me - love when Shuri calls Martin Freeman’s character “Colonizer” this term for the white race, kinda makes me think of "Muggles" in Harry Potter - those without magic.

I also guested on THE LAMBcast BLACK PANTHER Podcast

On this week's @lambcast we're talking Black Panther with @TryingToBeDJV @jeanette_y_ward @SmallMind @tinseltine & @LifeVsFilm: https://t.co/cozrvUEp51 #BlackPanther #MCU #killmongerdidnothingwrong #Killmonger #FrasierDreams

— The LAMB (@LambThe)

February 23, 2018

Totally didn’t see two villains coming in this movie. I assumed Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) would be a henchman to Klaue/Klaw (Andy Serkis) who is great fun; however, I feel we don’t really get the full sense of his long standing villainy with Wakanda, they talk about never having captured him before, but he doesn’t seem to possess as much power as I understand Klaw does in the comics. I think they down played him a bit because you also have Killmonger, with a great backstory, who truly at times is hard to see as a villain, except when he demands they burn all the purple flowers which gives the Black Panther his power. Which makes me wonder, why don’t they all just drink of the flower and become super human? It takes a lot of loyalty for the people to refrain and agree it’s only for the Black Panther/King to drink.

The first challenger M’Baku (Winston Duke) the leader of the White Gorilla tribe, who have lived separately from the rest of Wakandian society, is also a well-written side character. I understand in the comics he’s called Man-Ape and this is why this movie had to be written and directed by a person of color, because otherwise he might still be referred to as such in the movie, and that would have created a bad backlash. M'Baku is fierce and sexy, but also provides a couple of very humorous moments, telling Ross (Martin Freeman) to be quiet or they’ll eat him, cracks himself up, and then admits they're vegetarians! Gorgeous world building, love the opening sequence explaining the Vibranium meteor that hit this part of Africa and how that created their way of life. I was expecting a slightly more pronounced visual opening of the city. When T’Challa, Nakia and Okoya first fly into Wakanda, we go from seeing the treetops to just being inside the Capital City. However, the Virtual Reality car chase and flight battle - leading-edge! When the Wakandans aren't speaking English they're actually speaking Xhosa, a language spoken by the Bantu in South Africa. South African actor John Kani, who plays T’Challa’s father, T’Chaka, suggested using it while filming Captain America: Civil War and taught it to Chadwick Boseman. Now I just wonder with the success of Black Panther is the D.C. Movie Universe going to move up the Cyborg movie with Ray Fisher which isn’t scheduled until April of 2020.

2.20.18 T&T Weekly Movie Segment on THAT'S SHOW BIZ WITH CHUCK DARROW also featured Black Panther start at 45:40

T & T's LAMB (movie bloggers association) Score: 5 outta 5 #WakandaForever! (Note: all above links take you to the T&T post for that subject) click to COMMENT Share :)

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[yourswordship]

10-10-10 Tag

I was tagged back by @crossroadsred and @sweatersonlambs

(I was gonna do two separate posts, but I was tagged a while ago by both of them and I know if I don’t do them both right now I never will! So you guys are getting a two-fer!)

@crossroadsred ‘s questions:

1. If you could travel to any time period, which one would you choose?

I wanna say something a little less cliche, but probably the 20′s in New York. Or maybe Ancient Greece. You know what, I think I’m liking the idea of Ancient Greece more. Like there’s so many questions! There’s so many gaps, things we don’t know about them. And the things we do know are pretty damn cool. So yeah Ancient Greece. Though I’d love to have my own Midnight in Paris type thing too.

2. If you could travel to any fictional world or universe, which one would it be?

I feel like a lot of the shows I watch are in places that I really wouldn’t want to ever find myself in (*cough cough* Game of Thrones). I think the the world in Avatar The Last Airbender would be pretty cool though! Especially if I had cool bending powers too!

3. What does your dream house/apartment look like? Where would it be (city, countryside, etc.)?

I always go back and forth with this. Part of me wants to live in a cozy apartment in a city. I just love the accessibility and energy of cities. But another part of me really likes the idea of living in the countryside in a small cottage type house, you know? I feel suffocated and get overwhelmed pretty easily. I guess I don’t really know what my dream house or apartment would be. Or even where it would be. But regardless I think it’d be cozy. I don’t that’d I be happy in a huge mansion. Just more to clean. I tend to have a favorite nook or room and never leave that area anyways, so yeah definitely small and cozy for me. Oh and this is a bit random but, I love fireplaces so my dream place would definitely have one. And a garden too.

4. What’s your favorite possession?

Would it be really materialistic of me to say my laptop?

5. If you had to eat or drink something for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Lemonade! I was obsessed with it when I was a kid- like my mom would buy me the powdered packages of pink lemonade so that I could make it at home easily. Like just buying a jug of it wasn’t enough. And yeah, that obsession never really went away, though it did tone down a bit.

6. If you had the opportunity to turn a book into a movie or tv show, which would it be? Would you prefer a movie or a tv show? Who would you cast?

I used to have an answer for this- 13 Reasons Why. It was one of the few books I actually read once I got to middle school age, and I really liked it and connected to it. Obviously it’s a Netflix show now, but I think it’s still a valid answer cause I didn’t really love it. I think it would’ve made a much better movie. I get the whole 13 reasons, so let’s do 13 episodes thing. But it was too drawn out. And they changed a lot. I know why they did, but I didn’t think it was necessary. They just tried to squeeze too much into it.  I don’t really have anyone in mind to cast either. One thing I did like about the show is they cast a not well known actress for the lead. I’d like to do that as well if I were to make it into a movie.

7. What’s something that you’ve always wanted to learn (language, skill, subject, etc.)?

Languages for sure! All of them. I took Italian all through high school and even a bit in college, but I swear I cannot speak a word of it. I think I’d like to be fluent in all the romance languages. I also took a Latin class in a recent semester and I actually loved it. 

8. Pick three characters. Which one would you want to be partnered up with for lab? Which one would you want to be stuck in an elevator with for an hour? Which one would you want to be stuck on a deserted island with?

Partner for a lab: Kala from Sense8. For obvious reasons. But also I relate to her so much, so I think it’d actually be a good time.

Stuck in an elevator: Jake Peralta from Brooklyn Nine-Nine. He’s super funny so we’d have no problem passing the time. And also he’s a police officer so he’s good in emergencies too.

Deserted Island: Rey from Star Wars. I just like her, okay? And she’s pretty crafty so she’d probably find a way to get us home.

9. Name something good that’s happened to you this year. It can be anything.

I got a job after having to take a year long medical leave from school. Making money and feeling like I’ve accomplished something has really helped me through the sort of detour I’ve taken with my education. I also got promoted after a month at said job. And yeah, that felt pretty good. I still have a lot of self doubt for sure, but I don’t feel like a complete failure anymore.

10. What’s a weird fact you know?

In ancient times, there were professional mourners. Women were paid to mourn- like hardcore bawling, screaming, clawing at their face type mourning. (I definitely have better ones, but this is what I got for ya right now.)

@sweatersonlambs ‘s questions:

1. Pitch me a movie you wish you could write.

Okay I actually started writing this a million years ago, but here it is: Death tracks down a teenage girl who has the power to heal people, even those inches away from death. But Death doesn’t want to get rid of her- they want to work with her. Death is going rogue. They’re tired of collecting people’s souls and having no control over it. They’re basically the world’s most infamous garbage man. But is the responsibility of choosing who lives and dies too much? And who’s decision is it their’s or the girl’s?  

2. If you had a podcast, what would it be about? Basically, what could you talk about for an hour every week?

Make up? I'm not sure. I don’t really listen to podcasts, so I’m not sure what would work or not. I mean are make up podcasts a thing?

3. Talk to me about your pets! If you don’t have one, I want to hear about the pet of your dreams.

I don’t have a pet unfortunately. And shockingly, to myself and everyone who knows me, I think I’d want a dog. I used to be a cat only kind of person, but dogs have really grown on me. When I was a kid, I was terrified of them. I’m not anymore. And in a way getting a dog would be like the final step of overcoming that. Though I suppose that’s a very selfish reason. Really I just want cuddles. And all I want is a pet who wants cuddles too. So dog, cat, or stuffed animal, I think I’ll be happy. I do envision myself with a gentle giant type dog for some reason though. Maybe a Saint Bernard or even a Great Dane.

4. When did you feel the most proud of yourself?

Most recently in getting and keeping my current job. I’m taking a medical leave from school and honestly I wasn’t sure I’d be physically able to devote the amount of time and energy into this job. But I have. And I have had obstacles, hospital stays, getting sick at work, etc. But I haven’t quit. And that feels good. Cause sometimes I feel like that’s all I do. It’s not always my fault, I know. But the point is I feel somewhat normal. And even though I’m fighting hard behind the scenes for what comes naturally to so many others, I’m fucking doing it.

5. What are you looking forward to next week?

I don’t think I have any real plans yet. So 1) sleeping. And 2) going outside. It’s starting to actually feel like summertime and I really want to be present this summer.

6. Tell me about your favorite dessert. I want all of the details.

Oh god, the hard part about this question is picking just one favorite. I’m gonna go with the comfort food choice. Monkey bread. And I’m talking homemade. Gooey cinnamon sugar goodness. 

7. Who is your favorite drag queen on “RuPaul’s Drag Race”? If you haven’t seen the show, please explain why.

Okay so I haven’t actually seen her on the show cause I don’t really watch it to be honest. But I’m definitely a fan of Shangela’s. She hosted the drag show my university did and she was just perfection. She ended the show with this routine to a mash up of Beyonce hits and it was BREATHTAKING.

8. What is your favorite thing to watch on TV while hung over?

Cartoons probably. Usually Avatar The Last Airbender. 

9. Please share your favorite animal fact.

That snakes (the common ones people own at least) are the chillest pets in the world. The ball python got it’s name because it curls into a ball when it’s nervous or threatened, rather than attacking. Not really a fun fact necessarily, but I was a bit stuck on this one. I’ll think of something way better right after I post this, just wait.

10. What would you bring to a potluck? In other words, what is your favorite thing to cook for friends?

Chocolate chip cookies. I’ve perfected the recipe. Okay it’s from a Martha Stewart cookbook, but I have altered it a little over time I swear. At one point I was making these so often I had the recipe memorized.

So I’m not writing any questions since I’ve already done this tag. Though I was tempted to, this tag is fun!

I am however tagging anyone who wants to do this! Anddd you have two different sets of questions to choose from! Both @crossroadsred and @sweatersonlambs brought their A game with these questions!

[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Michael Martinez of Eat Clean LLC, a brand that makes healthy, natural prepared mealsSome stats:Product: Healthy, Natural Prepared MealsRevenue/mo: $300,000Started: January 2015Location: Fort LauderdaleFounders: 1Employees: 68Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?My name is Michael Martinez, the owner and founder of Eat Clean, a healthy meal delivery service located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We prepare healthy meals with all-natural and organic ingredients, then deliver meals directly to the consumer's doorstep.Our customers are typically 25-44-year-old professionals that are too busy to cook or want to live a healthy lifestyle. We opened for business back in January 2015 with just three of us in a shared commercial kitchen space. We have now grown to monthly revenue to over $300k per month in sales.imageWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?The idea came from my desire to enjoy healthy foods as well as to help others live a healthy lifestyle. I did not have a background in preparing food although my roommate at the time was a chef and helped start the business and prepare our original menus.At the time the business was started I was fresh out of college renting an apartment. I actually had to downsize and move into a mobile home due to the massive cost of starting a food business.Kitchen equipment such as commercial ovens, walk-in coolers, and freezers are very expensive. My goal was to grow fast and I learned quickly that without investment it was only possible if I was willing to sacrifice and invest everything into the business.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.We prepare our meals from scratch using only natural and organic ingredients. We have a full kitchen staff that includes three executive chefs, one chef is for our breakfast menu, the second chef is for our dessert items and the third chef is for our lunch and dinner menu.We receive all of our ingredients fresh, then prep all the vegetables and marinate the proteins. Our kitchen staff will then cook all of our ingredients in the oven or on the grill. None of our items are ever fried.imageDescribe the process of launching the business.The business was started with three of my long-time friends and just $3,000(which was all that I had in my savings account at the time). That money was used for kitchen hours in a commercial kitchen, food and our original website. By our third month, we were delivering to over 100 customers each week and we then had to lease a space and build our own kitchen. Initially, our customer base was family, friends, local gyms, and sports teams.The space we leased was a pizza restaurant that we had to tear down and build it to our requirements. Later on, we then leased the two locations next to us for additional space to prepare our meals.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Social media was a huge resource for us to attract customers. Back in 2015 some of our competitors did not even have an Instagram account and we used that to our advantage. We offered meals at a discounted rate or even free meals to social media influencers that were in our area.https://www.instagram.com/p/B38KDZSAU29/https://www.instagram.com/p/B5LwzE7ALkT/https://www.instagram.com/p/B5eDvxNA8lp/Once we started to grow we made sure to branch out and started advertising on Google, Facebook and a lot of events, giving potential customers a chance to taste our product. Such as Health Fairs, Corporate Lunches, and Gym challenges.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?When I look into the future I see us shipping our meals nationwide and opening kitchens in different states to offer our local delivery system to big cities such as New York and Los Angeles.Our goal is to one day be the biggest meal delivery service and go beyond that in time.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?I have personally learned a lot and made a lot of mistakes. One mistake was the way I managed people in the beginning. Trusting people a little too much and I was not patient enough with our staff in the first few years.I have learned that people learn at a different pace. I have also learned that sometimes it’s better and more advantageous to find someone with potential and take the time to mold them, rather than to pay big money for someone experienced that may not buy into our culture as much.What platform/tools do you use for your business?We use a CRM called Hubb. We are fortunate to have a great relationship with them and they have customized it around our form of business.We also use a delivery software called Workwave which allows us to receive pictures of each delivery and track our drivers in progress to make sure our drivers are safe and on time.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?I personally listen to Ben Greenfield's podcasts, I research healthy foods daily and I’ll watch documentaries for inspiration. Watching what others had to go through to accomplish their goals, is very motivating and that’s why I enjoy watching documentaries.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?The advice I would give is to put the business first and to keep your foot on the gas. Earlier I referred to the fact that I had to downsize to live in a mobile home for a certain period of time.I would strongly recommend doing something like that or moving back in with your family for a certain period of time. Do whatever is necessary to be able to grow your business and usually, it takes a lot of sacrifices that are not fun at the time but when you look back on it your proud that you actually did go the extra mile.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We are currently looking for sales representatives that have knowledge of the health and fitness industry. The main goal would be to acquire corporate accounts, where we can provide their employees with a healthy option for lunch. Hours would be from 10-6 pm.Where can we go to learn more?WebsiteInstagramIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

[captainpachacho-blog]

You Will Never Thought That Knowing SEO 2019 Could Be So Beneficial!

What are the suggestions to SEO writing? Without the doubt, one of the greatest trends that has already started to take place and may continue well into 2018 may be the consolidation of niche MarTech gamers by larger content cloud suppliers, with the role and significance of SEO increasing significantly all through this transformation. SEO Internet marketing offers major components, which develop the particular website traffic, and top lookup engine rankings. SEO is brief for Seo, and there will be nothing really mystical about this particular. You might have heard the lot about SEO and exactly how it works, but basically exactly what is a measurable, repeatable procedure which is used to deliver signals to search engines that will the pages are worth displaying in Google's index. Topic clusters possess been lauded since the future associated with SEO and content strategy, yet are widely underreported on (so now's the time to hit! ) 93% of B2B companies use content marketing. Teresa Walsh, Marketing Professional at automobile site, Cazana, forecasts that hyper organic targeting will probably increase its importance in 2019 with more location search plus more voice search. We get to the particular bottom of on-page SEO issues in order for search motors to clearly see what your own website is all about. SEO requires you to continuously become a student because of exactly how quickly the algorithms of research engine companies change. Google's punishing methods probably class pages as some thing akin to a poor UX if they meet certain detectable criteria e. g. lack associated with reputation or old-school SEO stuff such as keyword stuffing a site. If you understand you might have VERY lower-quality doorway pages on the site, a person should remove them or think again about your SEO strategy if a person want to rank high within Google for the long phrase. One of the issues search engines like yahoo and Bing have usually attempted to overcome is knowing which external links exist exclusively for SEO purposes and which usually links represent a true indicator that the source content is usually of value to the visitors. 2018 has currently seen some particularly significant SEO paradigm shifts from Mobile First” in order to the ever-advancing Rankbrain machine-learning formula. Content marketing is definitely a bigger approach which along with SEO forms a part associated with your digital marketing strategy. What You Should Know: This future of search engine search engine optimization is Semantic SEO. Links plus technical SEO are the biggest pieces of the pie, yet multimedia efforts such as video clip, photos, and podcasts will become the game changer and differentiator in many competitive markets. Occasional, and We do more occasional and not really frequent, usage of keywords plus keyword phrases in these hyperlinks may also help very somewhat in your SEO processes. Excelling at SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION means serving your visitors—not simply search engines. Here arrives the idea of SEO or even search engine optimization. The particular fact remains that SEO solutions assure clients that even in the event that the site will not position among the top search motors like google, the money may not be a waste expected to the refund. A great SEO service includes a great deal of research and lots associated with smart keywords application which will certainly period website at a increased notch and provide it the higher ranking in Google web search engine. Professional SEO content authors work on creating articles just after understanding the nature associated with your business, your industry, competition and what kind of content your business might most want for maximum benefits; in the particular short-term and the long-term. Linking to other webpages inside your site, as well because linking to other sites plus getting other sites to url to yours, is a great method to improve your SEO. Influencer marketing doesn't seem in order to be slowing down anytime shortly, so it will probably obtain bigger in 2018 and actually bigger in 2019 when even more companies start to catch upon to this trend. Keeping within mind the last point, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION agencies are fluent in navigating by way of a wide range of on the internet marketing tools that helps boost the value of your marketing technique. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will be a powerful process that may help make you and your own research more visible to lookup engines like Google and Search engines Scholar. I have simply no clue about SEO only several basics that is available just about all over the place and We feel this article must help as your other articles assisted me give some direction upon recovering my lost traffic plus generating more content as properly as repurposing old content. A several of the popular keyword analysis tools are Wordtracker, SEOMOZ Key phrase Difficulty Tool, SEOBook Keyword Device and Google Keyword Tool. Thankfully, SEO allows webmasters to supply clues that the engines may use to understand content. Because less as 20% dentists within a city hire SEO expert s who really wants that shift within their Google ranking. The particular analytical part of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is about tracking organic key phrase positions, website traffic and the engagement in Google Analytics, Internet marketer Tools and many other specific tools. Mobile SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is nothing than a typical SEO, creating content and marking to be able to endure out online. SEO rankings are placing excess fat than ever upon what users have to state. The Search Gaming console will help you to evaluate your keyword rankings, CTRs, achievable Never Mess With SEO 2019 And Here's The Reasons Why Google penalties and many various other useful data for technical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Blog posts, guides, whitepapers, situation studies, videos, and social content all need to include the particular right keywords for social plus SEO. For even more detailed information on the make use of of keywords on your web site visit SEOcious to will discover many other important factors included in having your web web page in the top 10 entries on the search engines. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, search engine optimization is most about search engines, search motor result page (SERP), search rating, online visibility, and quality visitors. If your web site has about 5-10 niche key phrases that are extremely targeted yet not very competitive, your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION pricing is going to end up being quite less. You discuss core SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategies and tactics used in order to drive more organic search prospects to a specific website or even set of websites, as properly as tactics to avoid in order to prevent penalization from search motors. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Smart links allows you in order to specify a word, like 'SEO' and then link it in order to a post on your web site. It's great for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION to feed the search motors a good amount of keyword-rich links. Sites making use of organic SEO in the strict sense is going to end up being much like organisms, meaning these people will grow, expand and adjust over time according to readers' desires. No matter the market, the age of business, or even status of competitors, every company should at least implement fundamental SEO strategies to help their particular offerings get found on Yahoo. So your SEO if your own thinking mobile, needs to become either responsive or app-store technique with the right dimensions, style, user-friendly, UX experience. Dark hat SEO methods, such since the use of keyword filling and link farming, can furthermore boost organic SEO. SEO is usually important in every area associated with advertising, marketing, design, optimization, movie, content, mobile and e-commerce, with regard to without SEO all is untuned in need of synchronization, as an orchestra of musicians without a good experienced conductor. Unfortunately, 95% of links through SEO link building never provide a single new visitor in order to your website. With regard to successful team management and inter-client cooperation, online editors really are usually a must, especially those which usually detect and highlight critical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION errors, non-unique, text, and key word stuffing. By the end of this particular module, you should be capable to define Search Engine Optimisation and explain the basics associated with SEO being a business (as nicely as how SEO shapes the particular Internet itself. ) You'll furthermore be able to explain the particular differences between three main SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION job types, and be ready to choose a career that will best suits your current targets. A highly effective research marketing campaign, will encompass each search engine optimisation (SEO) plus pay per click advertising (PPC). One of our favorite on-line toolkits is SEMrush, which consists of a variety of tools regarding SEO, content marketing, and search engine marketing techniques. An SEO Content Writer is usually someone that writes content for the particular purpose of having it display up on search engines plus gain website visitors. Internet marketing perfect for the platform of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or Search engine optimization. With voice search arrives two areas of interest in order to SEO folks wishing to link with consumers: intent and circumstance. SocialSEO is proud to help future experts in the globe of business and marketing along with the annual SocialSEO Digital Advertising and SEO Scholarship. Finally SEO Wise links enables you to arranged nofollow attribute and open hyperlinks in new window. Google My Business is Google's business directory and, thus, extra vital that you your local SEO Outlined businesses with all the best SEO will certainly appear in the Local 3-Pack, the batch of 3 highlighted businesses nearest you that seem when you do a appropriate local search. Fire up Visibility recently released SEO: The particular Movie ”. This 40-minute movie covers a brief history associated with search engine optimization portrayed via the experiences of some associated with the biggest names within the particular SEO industry. In addition to producing content accessible to search engines, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION also helps boost rankings therefore that content will be positioned where searchers will more easily believe it is. The Internet is getting increasingly competitive, and people companies who else perform SEO may have the decided advantage in visitors plus customers. Unfortunately, SEO - and research in general - is usually soloed into focusing on The particular Google” and not really regarded as for other tactics. This means website owners plus SEO experts will need in order to be on top of their particular game when it comes in order to keyword research and keeping the particular context of their site related to users. Varvy's SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Overview tool audits your web site for key parameters like website strength, links, image SEO, sociable counts, on-page SEO, technical standing, page speed, loading time plus more. Typically the trouble is that SEO rating factors have changed a whole lot over the years (find out there how in our keyword study guide ). That means this search engine optimization techniques of which worked 5 in years past won't travel today. The number 1 reason for using video upon your site to improve SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is to increase the quantity of time users remain upon your site. Search engine optimization had been but still is fascinating in order to me. The SEO placement intended for any size business begins along with proper web site optimization, a good excellent link building strategy plus a well planned online advertising plan. One part of focus for better marketing and SEO performance within 2018 is the confluence associated with content, influence, and social. This can be helpful for SEO, because it helps avoid search engine crawlers from getting confused by syntax or affirmation errors, and leads to even more accurate indexing. Stop thinking in terms associated with SEO vs. content marketing” plus start exploring how well they will perform together. (Give it a try tone of voice search using OK Google through your cell phone and inquire "What Is BlowFish SEO" ) In the event that all remains as it is definitely, Google will read out loud most about my company in the short to the point method, These cards are formatted in order to fit the screen of your own cell with no scrolling upward or down. Although SEO is really the time-consuming process but believes me personally, if you work well along with dedication and trendy techniques, the particular combined results of on-page plus off-page SEO holds you upon the top with rank #1 for a specific search outcome. Fairly lately, I've seen a resurgence associated with on-page SEO factors making the difference searching engine rankings. SEO is really the shortened phrase for search motor optimization. I believe SEO within 2019 will largely be such as SEO in 2018, with the particular exception of some big” Search engines update that wipes out sufficient websites to make people think the algorithms have grown significantly smarter. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION works by optimizing a home page's pages, conducting keyword research, plus earning inbound links. The organization offers excellent SEO packages that will help rank the clients' web site within top three pages associated with search engine pages. That can make SEO an ideal lead era tool, because when searchers stick to links back to your web site, you have the chance in order to convert them to leads, plus later make sales. Whenever asked to point out ideas that are unique towards the particular web, most people will arrive up with two main types: SEO and social media. How many links do a person need for good off-page SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION? If you are carrying out a professional SEO audit for any genuine business, you are going in order to have to think like the Google Search Quality Rater Plus a Google search engineer to offer real long-term value to the client. 44. Give your own social media profiles an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION boost. 10% of our experts believe that will there's likely to be the lot of focus on cellular in 2019, as older SEOs realize optimizing for desktop is usually pointless. White hat SEO is not really just about following guidelines, yet is about ensuring that the particular content google search indexes and consequently ranks will be the same content the user will see. This free marketing device is really a long-term technique and can be time intense but it will worth this. A good user experience is usually the key to satisfaction and also a powerful SEO. 1 SEO might target different kinds of lookup, including image search, video research, academic search, 2 news lookup, and industry-specific vertical search motors. Many of us are in the fourth 1 / 4 of 2018, it is the particular right time start thinking regarding the year ahead and brand new changes SEO realm might anticipate. We've long known that client opinions, input, and sentiment regarding a brand deeply impact SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION rankings, but we wanted the particular information to prove it. Off-page SEO means having action to build trust, power, social signals and inbound hyperlinks. How video affects SEO actually depends on your goals whenever using video in your advertising campaign and which video system you use. LSI is just not what most SEO specialists claim it to be. This is certainly not a idea that can be used simply by the average web designer or even webmaster to improve their lookup engine listings, and it is definitely not what many people, which includes myself, has written it in order to be. Nevertheless, first some history. This particular video walks you through the particular specific steps you should get increased rankings in 2018, including launching speed, technical SEO, content, hyperlinks, and more. Due to the fact it is, all across the particular year companies specializing in SEO were hectic recovering and finding new procedures to optimize the search motor even better than what their particular competitors were doing. Numerous of these so-called 'tweaks' include advertising and link-gathering, and We use SEO and article advertising for that. Within 2018, your SEO success will not depend on how well a person optimize your website for Search engines. But if you're brief on money, use these diy SEO ways to improve your natural rankings. If you choose SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you're helping Google's spiders in order to crawl and understand your posts. The job of a good SEO is to manage the particular optimization of websites to make sure they gain site traffic from lookup engines such as Google and Bing. One great part of content that will ranks well within the lookup results is its beginner's explained SEO. SEOs and even online marketing specialists in common who are dealing with global Blog9T websites or for online organizations thinking about going international will certainly certainly benefit from attending ISS. We would certainly like to serve you in order to save money and your power by offering affordable SEO solutions to increase link popularity. Work the key word into the SEO page name, content header, image, image altbier text, etc. SEO equipment provide position monitoring, deep key word research, and crawling through personalized reports and analytics. Certainly, white hat SEO always incorporated creating high quality, unique content material as a prerequisite for getting long-term quality results, this truth hasn't changed. Beyond compensated and organic, there are some other types of SEO and expertise and niches within search motor marketing. Presently there are a few fundamentals that will can help boost the technique, but SEO, or seo, is usually hardly ever considered. While employing the services of a great SEO agency can get a person good marketing copy for the particular website and an effective make use of of the related keywords, getting a brilliantly designed website will certainly help a lot when this comes to attracting people plus even the search engines in order to your website. You are able to get into important SEO-related data like the particular page title, description, and key phrases for every page or a person can have the system immediately populate this data depending upon a document name or some other fields. SEO has become broadly adopted as an online marketing and advertising strategy due to its effectiveness. Creating high-quality content along with SEO in your mind through the beginning boosts search presence. In contrast, dark hat SEO is about attempting to take shortcuts and video game search engines. You may also use Google Analytics in order to find SEO keywords for content material optimization. Keyword research is the particular process SEOs value to discover what search queries consumers get into into a search engine intended for a given topic. Within today's rapidly shifting world, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION techniques can change on the dime—and the worst part will be that you might not also know it. Hacks that can have won you a front-page result as recently as 2016 are not only obsolete right now, but they may even harm your website's rankings. For blog websites the greatest SEO practice would be in order to set the title of your own post in a heading1 label. Search engines is the gatekeeper to substantial amounts of traffic and prospects - search engine optimization (SEO) opens the doors. Simply because long as they are gained naturally, inbound links are possibly the most dependable authority contractors in the world of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. All of us call this new methodology AdaptiveSEO so that as its title suggests, it is made in order to adapt to the evolving plus sometimes unexpected changes in research algorithms. Numerous get confused in this region of SEO article writing suggestions for either they in place too little or maybe the particular wrong kind of keywords, or even they mention the keyword method too much which is occasionally called keyword over stuffing. Social SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION isn't a separate branch associated with SEO and it won't shortly be replacing traditional SEO, yet social signals are becoming progressively incorporated into search engine methods. Perhaps the particular most important aspect of research engine optimization is how a person can actually leverage SEO in order to assist drive more relevant visitors, leads, and sales for your own business. Just browse through the various types of our SEO blog site to find those important on-page ranking factors. According to him, key phrases have already lost their significance and in 2019 this pattern would only get stronger. Seo (SEO) will be the most efficient way in order to drive traffic to your site. It's maybe not an ideal SEO page title because of the multiple distinct services, however the structure might give rise to rankings for some long-tail keyword phrases. SEOs will have to collaborate carefully with designers and developers in order to prioritize technical SEO and functionality search engine ranking factors to achieve a competitive edge. Further SEO Smart hyperlinks allows you to set upward your personal keywords and set associated with matching URLs. In case search engine optimization SEO will not involve ethical practices, the particular website may have low presence on Google as well as be eliminated from the Google index. An SEO technique will be considered white hat if this conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deceptiveness. As an SEO, which indicates that you have to considerably raise your standards around high quality content and links in purchase to achieve top search motor rankings. Most SEO focuses on customizing for Google's search engine, which usually dominates the overall search marketplace with a share of more than 90%. 7. Social indicators may even become more essential to SEO as time passes. One Grain is really a electronic marketing agency that helps businesses like Uber, Amazon and Salesforce grow their revenues online making use of SEO plus paid advertising. This may be a growth chance regarding content marketing-specific agencies and the necessary and justified budget series item for in-house SEO groups. SEO includes both technical and creative components necessary to improve rankings, drive visitors, and increase awareness in research engines. Let's confirm our knowing of SEO basics with the one question quiz about the particular factors in search rankings: webpages, links and keyphrases. When it comes in order to Google SEO, the rel=canonical hyperlink element has become VERY IMPORTANT over the many years and NEVER MORE SO. To place the particular focus on the website customer, it has been suggested that will acronym SEO should are a symbol of lookup experience optimization. It's important to remember in order to share content from your internet site or blog socially to provide it an SEO boost as well. Some Webmasters will pay out thousands of dollars to a few so-called professional SEO expert in order to get their Websites on best in the rankings. It is constantly preferable to ask questions upon their SEO procedures and find out whether they have knowledge associated with keyword density or if they will have information about the most recent keyword research strategies and equipment. This combined expertise makes all of us uniquely qualified to present a good ethics-based, search engine-friendly SEO guide to teach you guidelines that will reflect the latest developments looking. They protect important subjects like search motor success factors and how SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION relates to social media advertising. In order in order to make web pages appear in high positions in the search outcomes, SEO tries to shape the website according to Google's criteria. The major problem of SEO is the truth that there are billions associated with pages in the internet lookup engine indexes and your placement in the SERPS is reliant on a constantly changing protocol which is not published.

[pete-and-pete]

Kealia Ohai, J.J. Watt’s Girlfriend: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

J.J. Watt has been dating his girlfriend, Kealia Ohai, for about 2 years now. The duo went public with their relationship back in January 2017, after quietly dating for about a year.

“The rumors are true. We are dating,” Ohai said during an interview on the 2 Up Front podcast. “I’ve known J.J. for a really long time, and we’ve always been great friends,” she added.

Ohai is a Houston Dash and United States Women’s National Team forward.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. She Plays Forward for the Houston Dash

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Ohai is an athlete, just like her boyfriend. She is a forward for the Houston Dash, and had her best professional season in 2016. The NWSL lost a decent amount of players to the Rio Olympics, but Ohai stepped up her game in the absence.

Ohai was a high draft pick for expansion Houston, but didn’t light up the scoresheet in his first two seasons in Houston. Ohai scored four goals in 19 games in 2015, and was determined to improve that performance this year. She responded with a monster season, finishing with 11 goals, tied for the highest total in the league. Ohai, who is also the Dash’s captain, averaged a goal or assist every 69 minutes. That performance not only put her in the NWSL MVP conversation, it attracted the attention of USWNT head coach Jill Ellis.

Ohai has plenty of national team experience, but it’s not at the senior level. She has experience with the U18 and U20 teams, and she scored the game-winning goal for the U20 team at the Women’s World Cup in Japan.

Her athleticism makes her a good match for Watt, and the two seem to enjoy some healthy competition in their relationship.

“We’re very competitive. Very, very competitive and we like to workout together. She’s much faster than me, [while] I’m slightly stronger,” Watt told People Magazine last year.

2. She Is Blind in Her Right Eye

Ohai has defied critics by earning a call-up to the national team, but she’s been overcoming adversity her entire life.

When she was 6 years old, Ohai was diagnosed with severe astigmatism in her right eye. The left eye had become dominant, and Ohai and had been favoring her left eye throughout childhood. By the time parents Cindy and Ben Ohai realized what Kealia was going through, she was mostly blind in her right eye. She wore a patch over the “good” eye for a year in an attempt to regain strength, but her and her family eventually conceded to the fact that the right eye would never regain full strength.

Ohai didn’t keep her condition a secret, but didn’t tell the world, either. It wasn’t until an interview during her junior year at UNC that she told a reporter about her blindness.

Just found out Im in the 0 percentile for depth perception among collegiate athletes..been a rough day #blindinmyrighteye #ineedaspecialist

— Kealia Ohai (@KealiaOhai) September 17, 2012

Ohai said that while most people would be devastated with losing an eye, it doesn’t affect her much. She credits this to it being a lifelong affliction, so she’s never really had full functionality in both eyes. Ohai added that it doesn’t really affect her game, but the lack of depth perception comes into play on long balls and crosses.

3. She Is Very Supportive of Watt’s Career

Before the start of the 2018 football season, Ohai took to Instagram to wish her boyfriend the best of luck. She recalled the season-ending injury that Watts suffered in 2017.

“Eleven months ago, we sat in a hospital room while the doctors told us you may never play football again. You walked up and down the hallway learning how you would use your crutches for the next 8 weeks. Today, you are starting your 8th NFL season. I am so incredibly proud and inspired by you. You have fought and worked your ass off, even when things were not easy. I cannot wait to watch you dominate this season. You are the best of the best. I love you, Justin,” she wrote.

Back in February, Watt chatted with People Magazine, opening up about his relationship with Ohai.

“[We are] both very proud of each other and what we both do,” he told the outlet.

When he was honored as one of Sports Illustrated‘s Sportsperson of the Year, Ohai was there to support him.

“I’m excited that my family is here to share [the honor] with me… I’m excited to share the award with Jose and the city and most importantly, I’m just excited to be able to honor Houston and everything that they’ve been through and shine a light on what’s still going on,” he told People.

4. She Won 4 State Championships at Utah’s Alta High

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Ohai grew up in Utah, where she was a dominant athlete at Alta High. In soccer, she led her team to four straight state championships, and on the track, she ran the 100-meter dash and 4×100-meter relay.

As the best soccer player in Utah, Ohai received her share of accolades. She was Gatorade Player of the Year for Utah twice, was named Utah Ms. Soccer in 2008 and 2009, and was the 2010 NSCAA National High School Player of the Year.

5. Her Sister Is Married to Brian Cushing

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There’s a link between Ohai and Watt, and it’s not just the Houston professional sports scene.

The couple has known each other for years through Brian Cushing, who has spent the last eight seasons as the anchor of the Texans defense. Cushing is married to Ohai’s sister, Megan. They welcomed their second son in 2014.

Ohai may be a standout for the Dash, but Megan could ball out back in the day. She was a four-year starter at USC and even had aspirations to play professionally. When Houston Dash management expressed their interest in Kealia, there was also interest in signing Megan as a package deal. That deal fell through when Megan was pregnant with her second child.

source https://heavy.com/sports/2018/10/jj-watt-girlfriend-kealia-ohai/

[kivircikedebiyatii]

You Will Never Thought That Knowing SEO 2019 Could Be So Beneficial!

SEO will be one of the most efficient actions you can take on-line, getting your web site enhanced in a way that the particular search engines will reward a person by basically sending traffic your own path. If you understand you might have VERY lower-quality doorway pages on your own site, a person should remove them or think again about your SEO strategy if a person want to rank high within Google for the long expression. One of the problems engines like google and Bing have constantly attempted to overcome is knowing which external links exist exclusively for SEO purposes and which usually links represent a true sign that the source content will be of value to the visitors. 2018 has currently seen some particularly significant SEO paradigm shifts from Mobile First” in order to the ever-advancing Rankbrain machine-learning protocol. Content marketing will be a bigger approach which along with SEO forms a part associated with your digital marketing strategy. What You Should Know: Typically the future of search engine marketing is Semantic SEO. Links plus technical SEO are the biggest pieces of the pie, yet multimedia efforts such as movie, photos, and podcasts will become the game changer and differentiator in many competitive markets. Occasional, and We do more occasional and not really frequent, usage of keywords plus keyword phrases in these hyperlinks may also help very somewhat in your SEO processes. Excelling at SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION means serving your visitors—not simply search engines. Here arrives the idea of SEO or even search engine optimization. The particular fact remains that SEO providers assure clients that even in the event that the site will not position among the top search motors like google, the money may not be a waste expected to the refund. Ultimately, simply by the end of 2018 or even mid-2019, we'll see a golf swing back to natural” content created by real humans who may produce valuable content that in fact provides value. Hiring experienced SEO experts will certainly ensure that your website climbs the search engine ranks without having using any illegal practices or even short cuts that could create temporary spikes in the home page's ranking, but eventually lead in order to your website having to spend penalties. Official Site Associated with BlowFish SEO - Professional Search Motor Optimization Services operated by Robert DiSalvo SEO Located in Hand Beach Gardens, Florida. The takeaway here is definitely that if you might possess LOTS of location pages offering A SINGLE business in one particular location, then those are extremely probably classed as some type of doorway pages, and most likely old-school SEO techniques for these types of type of pages will notice them classed as lower-quality -- or even - spammy web pages. CRAWL this, like Google does, with (for example) Screaming Frog SEO spider, plus fix malformed links or issues that result in server errors (500), broken links (400+) and needless redirects (300+). SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION gives you a go at rating for the terms which your own customers use, so you may do better business. The job of the SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is to create high-quality articles after which win the attention, the particular love as well as the particular link from a blogger or even editor. The keyword difficulty or even keyword SEO difficulty is the very useful metric for key word research. A greater number associated with people will stick to tone of voice search, so SEO specialists will certainly need to adjust to this particular relatively new kind of research. Seo or SEO is definitely a powerful method to generate targeted traffic to your site and hopefully increase your bottom part line. Whilst many marketing tactics rely upon you reaching out to your own audience, SEO gives you the particular power to achieve people whenever they are actively searching out there information related to your providers and products. Light hat SEOs the actual recommendations of Google and other lookup engines like google. As Google's search engine outcomes become increasingly monetized and additional platforms such as Amazon plus YouTube gain more SoV plus search volume, I think jooxie is overdue for the focus associated with SEO to shift far through Google. Traditional SEO is usually focused on building (keyword relevant) links and (keyword relevant) articles. The main reason could possibly be sometimes misunderstood is because there are a whole Internet underbelly of alleged SEO companies that you may pay to link to your own site on their networks associated with low-quality articles. However, before we obtain to our main event, I actually must note that after our own 2017 edition of SEO tendencies launched last year on Lookup Engine Journal, we heard the couple of complaints about simply how long it was. After that your boss tells you you aren't accountable for search engine marketing (SEO), too. Michael jordan Harling, SEO Specialist at Roman Blinds Direct, agrees with the particular consensus that voice search can be the trend in 2019. It helps your SEO work to ensure that your keyword phrases are added to the destinazione description and it will offer you a ranking boost in case your specific terms are noticeable in this area. Moreover, a Google Penguin update drastically changed the position of backlinks on SEO, doing it more difficult to find link juice to a internet site. Gone are the times of traditional SEO techniques, on the internet content is changing. The cognitiveSEO Rank System offers accurate country, language plus city precision for all your own tracked keywords. Even if your URLs not necessarily pretty, ” if you may feel as though they're adversely impacting users and your company in general, don't change all of them to be more keyword concentrated for better SEO. ” In the event that you do need to modify your URL structure, make certain to utilize the proper (301 permanent) type of redirect. In this particular post, we've broken down the particular very best SEO techniques to assist you skyrocket your rankings plus boost your number of regular monthly visitors. An accessible URL is usually an important SEO ranking element. Heidi Cohen: To increase 2018 SEO results, marketers will keep on moving away from disposable, as soon as and done content. They concentrate on SEO Internet marketing objectives and provide top search motor rank like Google and Askjeeve. Collectively, these developments are plus can continue to have the dramatic impact on the method in which we search optimize our websites in 2019 plus form the core of the newest SEO 2019 update briefing. With regard to successful team management and inter-client cooperation, online editors really are usually a must, especially those which usually detect and highlight critical SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION errors, non-unique, text, and key phrase stuffing. By the end of this particular module, you should be capable to define Search Engine Search engine optimization and explain the basics associated with SEO as being a business (as nicely as how SEO shapes the particular Internet itself. ) You'll furthermore be able to explain the particular differences between three main SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION job types, and be ready to choose a career that will best suits your current objectives. A highly effective lookup marketing campaign, will encompass each search engine optimisation (SEO) plus pay per click advertising (PPC). One of our favorite on the internet toolkits is SEMrush, which contains a variety of tools regarding SEO, content marketing, and search engine marketing techniques. An SEO Content Writer will be someone that writes content for the particular purpose of having it display up on search engines plus gain website visitors. Internet marketing perfect for the platform of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION or Seo. With voice search arrives two areas of interest in order to SEO folks wishing to link with consumers: intent and circumstance. SocialSEO is proud to help future experts in the planet of business and marketing along with the annual SocialSEO Digital Advertising and SEO Scholarship. Finally SEO Wise links enables you to arranged nofollow attribute and open hyperlinks in new window. If you avoid look after SEO, you may get lost among the trillions of links out there. Heading forward SEOs have to end up being able to quantitatively show the particular value of their online marketing and advertising by identifying and implementing Important Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can demonstrate the value added simply by their SEO initiatives. The topic cluster model is definitely your way forward in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION this year, but it's not really the only method to obtain your website content to position higher once it's been made. WIthout simple SEO in location, your business may not end up being a result on the look for engines when a customer will be specifically searching for your organization! SEO information can help improve your interpersonal efforts, and social media may help with the search rankings. Within his book Ultimate Facts Enhancing Your Website, SEO and web marketing expert Jon Rognerud displays you how to construct Never Mess With SEO 2019 And Here's The Reasons Why a top of the line website and get top rating on all search engines. 00: 38 SEO is definitely heading towards voice search. SpyFu is usually really a paid tool that will uses 11 years of historic data to help you discover your competitors' most profitable key phrases and the keywords they've utilized for SEO and ads. The reality is that on-site navigation hackers for example search bar with smart autocomplete, internal linking with point texts or immediate customer assistance boost both UX and SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. Even though it is difficult to assume about the alterations that might take place inside 2019, but we know regarding sure what SEO trends associated with 2018 will take greater popularity in 2019. An SEO on the internet marketing strategy is a extensive plan to get more individuals to your website through research engines. Several search optimizers try to key Google by using aggressive strategies that go beyond the simple SEO techniques. Subscribe to the particular Single Grain blog now intended for the latest content on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, PPC, paid social, and the particular future of internet marketing. SEO can furthermore stand for search engine optimizer. Like the rest of the particular digital landscape, SEO marketing is definitely continuously evolving. Search Engine Book — Read information right after Moz's guide to solidify knowing regarding it of the basic parts of SEO. If a person do not have the period or have insufficient training upon web design or SEO, Appear for web design experts plus hire a professional SEO services agency to keep your site and your good reputation in any other case you business may depend upon it. I ended with the website number 1, 228, 570, 060. This particular generates SEO anchor text, which usually helps you in improving your own search engine rankings. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION marketing is focused on the keyword choice that will attract a excellent deal of unique visitors in order to your website. Perhaps you have question what will be the brand new changes and updates that all of us can experience in SEO inbound links sphere in 2019? A Cisco research found that by 2019, eighty percent of all consumer Web traffic will be from Web video traffic. If you have spent time online recently, you have probably see the term "SEO, inch or "Search Engine Optimization. You discuss core SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategies and tactics used in order to drive more organic search qualified prospects to a specific website or even set of websites, as nicely as tactics to avoid in order to prevent penalization from search motors. SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Smart links allows you in order to specify a word, like 'SEO' and then link it in order to a post on your web site. It's great for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION to feed the search motors a good amount of keyword-rich links. Sites making use of organic SEO in the strict sense is going to become much like organisms, meaning these people will grow, expand and adjust over time according to readers' desires. No matter the market, the age of business, or even status of competitors, every company should at least implement simple SEO strategies to help their particular offerings get found on Yahoo and google. So your SEO if your own thinking mobile, needs to become either responsive or app-store technique with the right dimensions, style, user-friendly, UX experience. Dark hat SEO methods, such because the use of keyword filling and link farming, can furthermore boost organic SEO. SEO is definitely important in every area associated with advertising, marketing, design, optimization, movie, content, mobile and e-commerce, regarding without SEO all is untuned in need of synchronization, such as an orchestra of musicians without a good experienced conductor. Unfortunately, 95% of links through SEO link building never provide a single new visitor in order to your website. Over the particular last 20 years SocialSEO offers grown to be the biggest full digital marketing firm within the state of Colorado, supplying Social Media, Pay Per Click on and SEO in Denver, Co Springs, Boulder and across the particular State. Lastly, Amazon will dominate web commerce queries in 2018 via Alexa voice, touch, along with other innovative interfaces, leaving many e-commerce SEOs in order to focus in on the content-side of their marketing. If you could use thirty times more chances for internet traffic, three times better effects than social, and returns upon investment that will only raise over time, SEO must end up being a priority. Since artificial intelligence search motor optimization is in its preliminary stage, the impact of synthetic intelligence in marketing is heading to be felt in 2019 and 2020. So nearby businesses have to put specific effort into maximizing their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts for local visibility, which usually means doing things like customizing their Google Places pages. All these types of steps are used by the particular company to provide the greatest search engine optimization services in order to its clients in Thailand, below the Thailand SEO concept. Keyword phrases, although it is not being as important in order to SEO ranking as they after were, still play a significant position. •Social Mass media Optimization - SEO services make use of various means of social press optimization for clients. Lots of people are usually now asking, How will AI and Voice Search impact SEO”? If you speak about search ranking in SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, you're talking about the placement of your content on lookup results pages (SERPs). Kent Lewis, Owner, and President of Anvil, the performance-based firm based out associated with Portland, says that in 2019 voice search and Amazon research can become a lot more notable than they were in 2018. Google Search Console (Webmaster tools) is one of the particular SEO basics. If you need to find out how I actually actually do it, visit Content Czar to get a free gift plus details of the way i use write-up marketing and SEOcious to acquire top Google listings. It really is geared towards SEO professionals (in-house and agency), marketing managers, and business people. But now SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION considers tweets, retweets, Google+ authorship, as well as other social signals. Besides rank the site, the SEO team gets fault Client's marketing or product sales team by converting surfers or even visitors into buyers. Because therefore much sharing now takes place on major social media systems, social signals may become simply because important to SEO as period on page, editorial linking, plus content quality. Using social mass media marketing in PA with SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION tactics can help boost the website's ranking and popularity. This may create friction and the impact that most well-designed websites are usually very poorly optimized for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. They have impacted SEO previously as well by bringing inbound links, and today it's even even more. Still, even for the particular best websites, maintaining a best organic SEO ranking requires regular keyword monitoring and content re-doing. Writer and consultant Peter Kent provides helped businesses including Amazon plus Zillow with SEO and on-line marketing. Very first, understand that schema markup will be one of the most effective, least used parts of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION today Schema are basically short snippets of data that may give extra information to look customers and search engines. SEO is definitely a marketing discipline focused upon growing visibility in organic (non-paid) search engine results. Simply no matter how many times Search engines tweaks or evolves The Criteria, from Panda to Penguin in order to Polar Bear, these logical plus intuitive core SEO tips need to remain timeless. Certainly, all those searching for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION agencies will have to create their selection by passing SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION companies through careful and careful scrutiny, to ensure that all of them to get the best within search engine optimization for their own business website. The article provides you 12 tricks for E-commerce plus establishing an SEO optimized site which will help you improve your business exposure and visibility upon search engines. Making use of keywords in your article name, article body and resource is usually a great SEO article composing strategy that may make your own articles more effective in bringing in attention from search engines. Use SEO strategies like as transcripts and tags in order to help your videos appear increased in search results and bring in more viewers over time. Performing SEO upon your own websites is the great method to practice plus hone your SEO ability. We optimize your web site both of internal and exterior factors thats Google's engine believe in and reliable for top rating search result, Gurantee your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking No succeed can refundable. Looking deeper: An SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION cost often means one associated with two things: the investment within your organic search strategy, or exactly how much you pay for compensated search engine marketing (SEM) solutions like Google AdWords. We all are dealing with new methods designed to target old design SEO tactics and that concentrate around the truism that SITE ‘REPUTATION' plus Plenty of WEB PAGES plus SEO equals Plenty associated with Keywords equals LOTS of Search engines traffic. BrightonSEO is a one-day search advertising conference and series of teaching courses held, unsurprisingly, in Brighton. From narrowing straight down target markets to changing the particular way content is written, AI and voice search will have got a continuous effect on SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION moving forward. One aspect of SEO is usually link building, which we will certainly discuss slightly below, which generally leads to thin content. Applications for the particular 2018-2019 cycle of the SEO Progress programme are now closed and even will re-open again in Planting season 2019. SEO could be complex because search engines are often reevaluating and changing how these people prioritize search engine results. Moreover, it will help SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION by gaining backlinks, likes, remarks or shares. The much better you get at SEO, the particular more traffic - and even more leads - you're likely in order to attract over time. To find out there more read our 2019 styles in SEO marketing report. Are voice searches plus it's expected that by 2019, 67 million voice-assisted devices will be going to be in make use of in the U. S. These types of kinds of changes and provide on your website shouldn't end up being a problem logistically — the particular overall practice among the greatest web companies nowadays is making sure that websites are flexible sufficient, especially for SEO purposes. Whether you will be a marketer, webmaster or organization owner, it is very significant invest in voice SEO optimisation to reap benefits in 2019. We said earlier that sociable media isn't a direct SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION ranking factor, so you're most likely wondering why we're even talking about it. The particular effects of Black hat SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION are temporary, it will not take the particular search engine long before this spots these illegal strategies plus then penalizes you; the lookup engine may spam your hyperlinks and if you continue making use of these malpractices the search motor will altogether block your web site and links. Algorithmic chasers, technical SEOs, plus Google Doodle followers should develop their technical skills to concentrate on emerging voice search technology and AI applications. Single Grain is a electronic marketing agency in order in order to companies like Uber, Amazon plus Salesforce grow their revenues on the web using SEO and paid marketing. This free marketing device is really a long-term technique and can be time rigorous but it will worth this. A good user experience is usually the key to satisfaction plus a powerful SEO. 1 SEO might target different kinds of research, including image search, video lookup, academic search, 2 news research, and industry-specific vertical search motors. Many of us are in the fourth 1 / 4 of 2018, it is this right time start thinking regarding the year ahead and brand-new changes SEO realm might anticipate. We've long known that consumer opinions, input, and sentiment regarding a brand deeply impact SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION rankings, but we wanted the particular information to prove it. Off-page SEO means using action to build trust, specialist, social signals and inbound hyperlinks. How video affects SEO actually depends on your goals whenever using video in your marketing and advertising campaign and which video system you use. LSI is just not what most SEO specialists claim it to be. This is certainly not a idea that can be used simply by the average web designer or even webmaster to improve their lookup engine listings, and it will be not what many people, which includes myself, has written it in order to be. Nevertheless, first some history. This particular video walks you through the particular specific steps you should get increased rankings in 2018, including launching speed, technical SEO, content, hyperlinks, and more. Considering that it is, all across typically the year companies specializing in SEO were hectic improving and finding new procedures to optimize the search motor even better than what their particular competitors were doing. You may generally see outcomes of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts once the webpage proceeds to be crawled and listed by a internet search motor. Most likely the best form of interpersonal media to pay attention in order to when turning to SEO will be Google Plus. A single of the most successful techniques to ensure your clients discover your photography business is simply by implementing an SEO strategy, this particular is more than just generating it to number 1 about Google, it means ensuring that will a varied and steady supply of traffic is proceeding to your site, over and even above that of your rivals. If you are usually willing to improvise your web site search and boost up your own Google ranking, but do not really have time or resources regarding doing that, hire an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION specialist for the same objective. Mobile SEO is definitely mobile search engine optimization or even optimizing content for a much better search ranking. Titles on pages and explanations affect what people see within search results, so it's important to check these out within any SEO audit. Search motors give some guidelines for SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION, but big search engines maintain result ranking as a industry Blog9T secret. Along with $80 billion forecast to turn out to be spent annually on SEO — and content marketing set to be able to become a $300+ billion industry by simply 2019 — it might end up being tempting for stakeholders to discover SEO and content marketing because cost centers rather than profits centers. While that will theory is sound (when concentrated on a single page, when the particular intent is to deliver energy content to a Google user) using old school SEO methods on especially a large web site spread out across many webpages seems to amplify site high quality problems, after recent algorithm adjustments, and so this type associated with optimisation without keeping track associated with overall site quality is self-defeating in the long run.