From the depths

“Everybody will want to hear about your adventures. So be careful how you tell that story, will you? Don’t glamorise it. Don’t make war sound like an exciting and thrilling game. Tell them about the members of your mission that will not be returning. Tell them about the fear, otherwise your people might relish the idea of war. We don’t want that.”

The full LifeMinute Interview of Tim is finally online and he starts talking about Téa at 2:38

The transcript of all the things Tim said about Téa and their relationship:

J: And you're recently married?

T: I am.

J: Congratulations, finally.

T: I know.

J: What took so long?

T: Well, actually I asked Téa to marry me, I think about nine years ago. She said yes. Let's just wait a minute. Nine years later she asked me, and I was like, Yeah, I already asked. Anyways, so we got it done. It's kind of amazing. It's a little different.

J: How so?

T: It's just... there's something — it's better. I like being married to Téa.

J: Yeah, you're a good couple.

T: Yeah, we are.

J: What's your advice for making it work?

T: That's a hard thing to say because every couple is different, and Téa and I are crazy about each other, which is really lucky. But also, we have true intimacy, I think. We actually talk about everything, including the bad stuff. Part of sort of my daily routine in life is to spend a little time being in gratitude, and I realized at some point that I was being grateful for all the low-hanging fruit — my kids, I have food, I have a place to live, my dog, you know, all that stuff. I've recently started to try to have some gratitude for the things that have been really challenging and painful, because I wouldn't be here without all of that stuff. And so, being able to share all of that with my partner is a relief — it just creates an atmosphere of real trust.

J: When did you realize you were in love?

T: Oh god, about four minutes after I met her at the office of Madam Secretary. I had met Téa twice before because we went to the same high school ten years apart. I'm way older than she is — way older — hear that, babe? Way older. I was doing a fundraiser when I was doing Wings at Paramount, and she was there, you know, like a smoking-hot 23-year-old or something, and I didn't pay her any mind because I was in the midst of all kinds of stuff. Then I met her again because her then-husband was friends with my first cousin, so I'd just kinda shaken her hand a couple of times. And then Madam Secretary happened, and she just kinda caught me in her tractor beam, and I was terrified. I was like, “Oh my god.” Anyway, it was quick. It was very fast.

J: It obviously helped your role.

T: Oh yeah, every time people said we had great chemistry, I was like, “no sh*t— oh, sorry.” Yeah, it was funny, because in our first season we were supposedly trying to keep it quiet, you know, be on the down low. But, you know, the teamsters were sort of picking us up — being at each other's houses all the time, looking at each other with goo goo eyes. Anyway, if she were here, she would tell this story, but she was still at this little boarding school in Vermont, The Putney School, when I made Diner. And it was a little bit of a splash, you know, because a kid from this school was in this movie that was getting attention. And she saw the movie and told her roommate that she was gonna marry me someday — having never met me. Yeah, so she gets what she wants.

J: What do you guys like to do when you're not working?

T: I probably shouldn't talk about this — she would probably be mad at me — but recently, this is really weird, we've been spending a lot of time at this cabin in the wilderness that has no electricity. And we've found these big burls — they’re sort of knobs that grow off the trees. We've been making these kind of arts... I don't know if it's art or if it's like a 50-pound salad bowl. We've been carving — woodcarving, making sculptures and stuff like that.

...

J: How do you stay fit mentally and physically?

T: I've been meditating quite a lot, which sounds very woo-woo — it's not really. One of the things that has happened in this meditation I do is that, for some reason, I have a lot of laughing fits during it, because the guy says — well, actually Téa and I were doing it together — and this guy says, “You know, you might want to lie down for this meditation, or you can sit up.” And Téa just quietly says, “Losers,” and we laugh for about 20 minutes till our bellies hurt, till tears are streaming down our faces. So laughter is good. Meditation is good...

And physically, I work out. Yeah. What can I say? I mean, it's funny because Téa is the kind of person who, if she works out for two days, she like loses 10 pounds and gets ripped. And I was always like a chubby kid, so I've been at this forever.

...

J: So does Téa cook, or do you do all that?

T: She does. And she's like — I call her a cook with a home run swing. She either knocks it out of the park or she whiffs.

...

J: Favorite actor, actress?

Which is very odd to the galactic community.

Rest comes in all sorts of forms across the galaxy, some having sleep similar to ours, some having hibernation/brumation cycles, some going into meditative states, some retreating to cocoons, some photosynthesising, some even being technologically advanced enough to simply just plug themselves in and literally recharge. But the seeming inescapability of human sleep is…a little concerning.

If a human is tired enough, they will be able to sleep just about anywhere. Bed, sofa, armchair, the floor, a table, three chairs lined up, propped up like a doll against the wall, on top of another person, on a rock that’s even vaguely flat, on a gnarled tree branch, sometimes even floating in water or suspended by a harness. Wherever. So long as we can breathe, we can and will fall asleep.

The same can’t be said of aliens, they’re a bit more picky by comparison, or they can stave off their exhaustion through emergency chemical reactions long enough to find somewhere appropriate to rest. Some are so specialised that they require their environments to be utterly perfect before their body allows them to rest. Those aliens are deeply jealous while waiting around at the Spaceport for their shuttle to start boarding and seeing humans clumped together on a bench in a very uncomfortable looking pile, snoring away.

And then, an alien species named the Khak’Cthrax, a species known for their aggressive behaviour and bodies covered in rocky scales and dangerous barbs, discovering this aspect of humans.

One Khak’CThrax soldier being deployed to assist in saving some human civilians from a war zone and ending up having to carry a teenager for a while due to there not being enough gurneys. The juvenile human ends up nodding off in the soldier’s hands and at first he thinks the teenager has perished because the Khak’CThrax are not the type of person you would consider comfortable to rest on much less feel ‘safe’ around inherently, but after the field medic explains that the child is only asleep, unsurprisingly from the day they had had, the soldier practically becomes a broody mother hen for the human. This little one trusted him??? Enough to rest while held in his arms??? They are his baby now???

Hello @asuitablegirl ! I'm your not-so-secret-santa this year!

As requested, Moiraine and Lan before the Eyes of the World. I chose the classic scene from New Spring. It's been quite a while since I finished that book so before I started I couldn't even be sure who threw whom into a pond (ok wikia told me they both did????), but I sure as hell enjoy putting a frog on Moiraine's head. 🐸🤫😂

Thanks for organizing this event @feast-of-lights ! Happy holidays folks!

*Btw this was my first attempt using acrylic and honestly I haven't coloured in traditional medium for years, so I adjusted the original colours which I'm not super satisfied with. The original work looks like this 🤔⬇️