Freedom

Hi, gang. It's been a while since I rapped at ya, but I've been stretching my wings, as it were.

I've been taking flying lessons. I haven't purchased a ship yet, but probably wouldn't make much sense to get one until I know how to fly it. Ernie is friends with a couple of spacers, and he's introduced me to them. One of them, a freighter pilot from Ord Mantell, has been teaching me how to fly. It's nothing like flying a speeder. We've been practicing in his YT-2000, the Kokada Maru. It's a beauty of a ship, and it handles really nicely. I can now take-off and land with relative ease, and I'm getting to be a smooth touch at the controls at sublight speeds. I still need some work with the navcomputer, but it's getting a little better all the time.

I've been looking at ships, though. I saw a nice old YT-1210 at Vynn's friend's shipyard. Just the fact that two generations of my family have worked for CEC makes me lean towards that. From what I can tell, there's nothing really wrong with it, and the only reason those never did well is because the 1300 series came out soon after the 1200 series, and they were just that much better. So who knows? I also saw a nice chrome Nubian, and it's pretty sleek, but probably beyond my price range.

I've been asked to head out to Myrkr to report on some minor political disturbances going on there, so I'll probably be out for the next week or so, and then I'm going back home to visit Sienn and the fam. Being back for my grandfather's funeral really reminded me of how much I missed my family, so I'm going to take more time to visit. And see Sienn.

Here's a picture I made of her. Doesn't nearly do her justice. But I found some old paints in an old shop in Mos Espa, so I figured I'd put them to good use.

Overreaction

I still miss Sienn. But I guess it's not the end of the world that I'm back here. Yesterday I went out on my swoop and took some images with my antique 2D camera (we're talking old-school stuff, but it still works). I almost got caught up in this sandstorm, but managed to blow out of there before sand caked in my air intake. I had to do a story on swoop racers once, and I remember one biker had left his ride out in his yard when a big sandstorm blew through. He cleaned his bike off, but he forgot to blow all of the sand out of the intakes. He didn't know it, but the sand had mixed with the hydraulic fluid and made it coarse enough that it wouldn't flow properly. His stabilizers froze up half way through Beggar's Canyon. You can probably figure out the rest for yourself; I won't insult your intelligence.

Here's a picture of my house:
















Oh, so all those messages? Ten of them were from Callie and Sienn. :) Made my month. The rest of them were a smorgasbord of work, friends, and drunk dials, mostly from Ernie (don't think I've mentioned him yet, but he's a geologist from Coruscant...he goes out in the Jundland Wastes and collects rock and soil samples to try and figure out the history of this place).

I've just now been sitting here for the last 30 minutes trying to think of what else to share with you, but I've been coming up empty. I'm going down to the Traveler. Maybe I'll have something else to say later. Sienn is calling tonight, so at least I have something to look forward to. :)

JJK

Home Again

I really hate to call this place home, especially after being on Commenor. Seriously, Anchorhead sucks. The beer here sucks. The climate sucks. The dust sucks. The heat sucks. The lack of imagination and willingness to just accept life and not change it sucks! I miss Sienn like crazy, and it SUCKS!!! AAAAAAAAA I HATE ANCHORHEAD!!!!!!

Oh, don't worry, I'll be fine. It's always like this the first few days I'm back in town, and it's especially bad because I'm leaving such a beautiful creature behind. I seriously hope she wasn't jerking my chain. Man.

Anyway, I'm back. :( Meh. Tomorrow Vynn and I are going to see his friend's friend's friend's shipyard. Other than that, it's back to the drudgery. I've got 40 messages in my message minder to go through. Which...actually...seems like a lot.

I'm going to check them now. Maybe Sienn's been calling. :)

Laters,
JJK

Ta Ta For Now...

Hmm? What's that, you ask?

Why, yes, Sienn and I are in fact together. In two manners of speaking, in fact. Here, Sienn...say hello to everyone.

Hello to everyone. JJ is a nerd and he's forcing me to type this. :P Bye! ~S

Okay, that's not true. She even sat in my chair. But I coloured the text blue so you'd know it was her (it's even the same colour as her skin). Okay, she's going downstairs now. Man, listen to me...you'd think I'd never been out with a girl before. I mean, well...it has been a long time. And this girl has me as giddy as a schoolboy!

So anyway, we've decided to be a thing. :) We're going to have to rock the long-distance relationship thing, but hopefully I can get a ship and visit. Or maybe I can move back here and then we can be together. Stars know I don't want her to move to Anchorhead. She doesn't belong there...she's got hopes and dreams and the power to make them come true. But we'll make it work. I've already talked to the staffing people at NewsLine, and there's a possibility that I'd be able to relocate here as a beat reporter for the Colonies/Core Worlds.

Anyway, I'm just writing to say goodbye for now. My ship leaves in three hours, so it's downstairs for dinner with Mum and Dad, Callie, my brother Wolt, and Sienn.

See y'all on the flip side!

JJK

The Finer Things

Have you ever thought you were meant to do something other than what you're doing right now? I mean, I know it's silly because everyone loves their jobs and their lives, and nobody would ever want to change.


I'm kidding.


I like being a journalist. I like the travel, I love writing (obviously). I enjoy the variety I get in the stories I can write. Most of the time it's really boring, but every once in a while the Hutts will have someone vaped or spaced, and then it gets interesting. I remember a few years ago one of Jabbas bookies thought he could skim a little off the top. One day the Anchorhead cops found a pile of limbs in the middle of the city, right outside the market. That caused quite a stir. And another time someone from off-planet tried to muscle in on Hutt turf. This guy hijacked a couple of freighters and made off with a few hundred thousand in spice, and the rumor mill had it that the guy was going to be doing a little business with, shall we say, a Rodian...pleasure...establishment in town. He was trying to be subtle, coming to sleepy little Anchorhead. Well, news spreads like a sandstorm around here, so practically within hours of the news hitting the town, one could see the bounty hunters materializing out of the ferrocrete. I never saw what happened to the rival guy. He just disappeared, probably into the sarlacc.

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. I like journalism. But when I was a kid, I loved art. I used to sculpt, draw, paint, make my own holograms with different coloured light-pens, all that stuff. I've always wanted to get back into that, but I'm always busy. Actually I'm not, but I'm never inspired at home. Maybe it's a restless spirit, but I always feel like there's something more out there, and I'm not going to find it on Tatooine. So if I'm stuck on a planet I hate, I may as well make the best of it by imagining other places. This is where art comes in.

Tomorrow I leave for Tatooine. Today I'm going over to Sienn's place. She is a classically trained dancer (she learned the Coruscanti style at the academy on Coruscant...she's that good), so she's going to show me her art, and I'm going to attempt to capture her using my art. Trying to decide if I should use a graphite and a flimsy pad, or if I should bring my light pens. Anyway, if it's any good, I'll post what I made later on.

Got a call from my friend Vynn today. He knows a guy in Mos Espa who knows a guy who owns a shipyard, and the guy just got a couple of nice used Starhome family-style cruisers in, so they might be able to swing me a deal, especially since I work for NewsLine. All I need now is some piloting lessons, but Vynn said he could help me out with that too.

Well, gotta go shower. Catch you all later.

JJK

It ain't easy being...blue?

Holy crap! I'm in love!

I went out with Callie yesterday. She's been invited to this really fancy ball by her on-and-off boyfriend in the Chasin City Constabulary, and needed a male opinion for a gown she wanted. She casually says, "You know that friend I want you to meet? She's going to meet us at the dress shop." She'd also drop hints like, "Well, I think she's pretty, but that's just me," which tells me nothing about what to expect.

So we're in the dress shop, and while Callie is trying on a nice, shimmery cream-coloured gown, I hear the door chime ring. It's a small shop, so naturally I turn around to see who it was.

In walks the most beautiful Twi'lek I have ever seen. Gorgeous, smooth light blue skin, dark eyes, and wearing a burgundy dress that looked stunning on her! Flowed where it needed to, and hugged her in all the right places. She wore a matching head-wrap thing that looked really good too. And she has freckles! Freckles! I nearly died. And with the grace of a dancer, she walked up, shook my hand and said, "You must be J.J. I'm Sienn."

Then Callie walked out with a big grin on her face, like she planned for things to happen that way. We hung out all afternoon, and then in the evening Callie's boyfriend Rollo met up with us and we went dancing. Afterwards he took Callie home, and Sienn and I started walking.

She told me about growing up on Ryloth, was impressed that I knew more than your average tauntaun about Twi'lek customs, and filled me in on what's wrong with the local music scene. Of course, she could have been talking about the innards of a rancor and it would have sounded like poetry to me. I was so happy just to be walking next to such a majestic creature in the first place. A couple of times her lekku brushed up against my arm, and it felt...well...electric. And she's a good girl, too! I wasn't expecting anything to happen (just so you know), and when we got to her apartment door she shook my hand again, gave me this amazingly sly look and said, "See you around, Spacer." And that was it.

Stars above, I am so...AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!! And she digs me! Callie called me today, and I guess Sienn called her when she got home and the chatted for a bit. Do you have any idea how good that feels, after spending years rebuffing the advances of skanky, spice-using Anchorhead girls, to have a nice girl that's smart and hot take interest in you? It's like winning the lotto. No! It's better!

Man alive. Sienn. Sienn and JJ. I like that. :)

The Remembering

It's always a little weird being back home in my parents' house. The house looks the same, except Dad changed the colour. The interior looks the same. Same furniture as I remember growing up, more or less. Mum got a new instrument called a touchboard, and you wave your hand over it and it plays this nice, soothing music. Dad's Zabrak quetarra still hangs from the wall in the living room. But it's different still. My room isn't my room anymore, but a guest room. The posters and art I used to have on the walls are either in boxes in storage or were thrown out after I moved away. My neighbourhood friends have all moved to other towns. Spacer, my pet spukamas (a native Corellian housecat that my dad brought back from one of his trips to Corellia), is now buried in the back yard. I loved that cat. My younger brother Wolt moved out a couple of years ago, and he's now a flight engineer on an ore freighter. But he came back for this, which is great. It's weird, because to me, he's still my little brother, but he's a man now. I mean, he's been in a light fight before! That's something I've never had to do...yet.

But despite all the changes, home is still home. It's still memory lane for me.

We had the funeral yesterday. It was really great to see all these people who knew and loved my grandfather. A lot of people he worked with at CEC, and a lot of people who knew him through the various clubs and things that he was a part of. Wolt and I also got to reconnect with some of our cousins, which was great. It helped me forget about how much it hurt to lose Grandpa, at least for a little while. My cousin Callie and I had a good cry about it at the after-party at my parents' house. She and I were especially close to him, and I think it was good for us to try and process that together. Callie lives in Chasin City and works for the parks and rec department, and talking with her made me really wish I didn't live on a desert planet where only 2% of the darn thing is inhabitable. Maybe someday I'll move back here and get a news job...

Anyway, after a nice dinner with my whole family, we played some bolo-ball out in the back yard. We had a great time. My uncle Kennick was a star bolo-baller in college. He's getting along in the years, and it was fun to tease him about being slow, but you can tell he still knows how to handle himself out on the field.

Well, time to get off this thing. I promised Callie I'd hang out with her today. She says she's got a friend she wants me to meet. She thinks we'll get a long really well. Aw.

Later, vornskrs (I know, it doesn't really work)

JJK