| i'm doing it wrong |
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| 11:47pm 21/06/2009 |
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i've been reading xkcd from start to finish for the past few hours and am as always (despite this being the 4th time i've read it through, and the second time in the past year) moved by its poignancy, wit, and vague familiarity to or resonance with my own life. but as i was telling ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) dark_knightly, i feel like my life could never even be that well-scripted, directed, and performed. but as she was telling me, i'm the writer, actor and director and why the hell not? and this strip sums up a hint that, even if it affects none of the polish, affects all of the action of a life:
take wrong turns. talk to strangers. open unmarked doors. and if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they're doing. do things without always knowing how they'll turn out.
you're curious smart and bored, and all you see is a choice between working hard and slacking off. there are so many adventures that you miss because you're waiting to think of a plan. to find them, look for interesting choices. and remember that you are always making up the future as you go.
i love entropy's effects and i try to embrace chaos, but deep down i frequently feel like a failure in living an interesting life, which i have for years held as a primary life goal. i pretty regularly succeed at my other life goals: kindness, fun, and true deep communication, but i feel like i could do better at interesting. and this is all subjective--i need to interest myself, not anyone else. i shouldn't sit at home and play so much scrabble/waste time reading a zillion and one livejournal communities (i've optimized my time such that my LJ experience has become largely read-only instead of the active social interaction that used to take place here, and that's a tragedy. livejournal used to be a vibrant community that worked well for me in inspiring me and creating joy and connection, now it's closer to a newspaper somehow in my life. except the writing. i'm so glad to have you guys around with me in this definitely worthwhile-to-me part of the experience).
i think it's time to give my idle hours an enema--nothing wrong with relaxing, just need to be more conscious of it and less "oops, where'd this evening go?" That strategy holds the prospect of appearing to initially reduce the fun quotient, but i think also holds the keys to an active life which in my reality, equals interest.
now, to stop worrying about when to jump and in what direction and to just do it...
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| 09:30am 20/06/2009 |
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yesterday i went with kdaisy721, tristansei, and dark_knightly to another house i like. i'm not as in love with it as the last one because it's a bit more distant and less funky, but they convinced me that funk was addable and i convinced me that the distance wasn't so bad by biking there from downtown in 19 minutes. i want to pay a lot less for it than they are asking so we'll see how that goes. if it works out i'll be hunting for 3 roommates, because it's huge-o-rama.
then i had a delightfully crazy evening:
wearing striped neon green tights, no pants and a frilly tuxedo shirt i took my mp3 player with an 80's music playlist up through nopo with a roving dance party with many of my favorite people and a hundred and fifty other riders also dressed in their 80s best wherein we stopped a few times to boogie and adjust mobile sound systems and drink and watch bicycle polo and get entirely unharassed by the policia despite their frequent presence in our immediate vicinity or even following us for a mile or so and ended up down in the industrial zone under the fremont bridge where 4 of us spent 45 minutes changing and patching a girl's innertube repeatedly until it held and then we joined the group by the river and boogied and drank until the police came and talked to a tall biker about how his bike was like a horse and i departed in undesire to talk about trespassing but the man actually left faster than we did with smiles on their faces and yet i was feeling like rolling home anyway since it was around 2am and en route i passed a strangely surreal rei absolutely surrounded by tents and made it home for a white russian and most of the big lebowski because there were absolutely too many dude references in my past week/day and it just felt right and then i passed out and awoke covered in cats and everything is right with the world. |
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Read 9 - Post |
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| life is a game. play smart. |
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| 09:46pm 02/06/2009 |
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this post is only about scrabble on the surface. if you don't care about scrabble or me, i still encourage you to read the last few paragraphs. they're about something entirely different and more important.
( scrabbling for a toehold )
his response: "I don't have a few days. I have stage 4 cancer." that shut me up for a few minutes. what do you say? i've spent time with more than my share of cancer patients during my time with the texas 4000, and some of them were justifiably unhappy. but most of them were struggling, trying to make it, finding joy where they could. there was probably some self-selection in there--the ones that had given up didn't really want some healthy kids hanging around them. but even some of the stage 4 patients i met who could hardly keep their breath were still grasping at joy--they knew they weren't going to survive for long, and they'd still find a smile. to those people, you said, "hey, you're still alive. i'm here to try to help you feel a little better for a moment. and what i'm working on now, the thing i'm doing with my life this year, is raising money to help beat this fucker. and when the fundraising is done, i'm taking the show on the road, and spreading a message of hope among victims and sufferers, and a lesson in prevention for the ones that can dodge the bullet with a few simple actions. i'm doing this for you, and for team Homo Sapiens." and without fail, every one of the people i told that to...they found the energy for another smile, a heartfelt thanks. it was sometimes too late to help them personally. but i was doing what i could.
after the scrabble game, which my opponent lost pretty pitifully (i considered losing intentionally, but the fatalistic attitude on display didn't seem conducive to acceptance of such a win as a positive thing, and would probably have gotten me lambasted for being patronizing), i apologized for the imbalance in tile draws and asked in all honesty if i could do anything to help. i got no answer, but then i remembered, i can do something. i can tell *you*, my friends, who are nearly entirely a healthy group (or anyway have never admitted suffering cancer to me), that an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure. here are some layman's tips, which i spent a summer talking about, wearing spandex, in tiny churches, homes, and town halls across the continent. 3 simple things you can do to foster prevention, early detection, and thus, survival.
- get regular checkups: this is especially relevant in certain ways: guys and gals: start doing self-exams early and often, testicles and breasts. girls: gyno visits will almost universally include checking for preconditions for cervical cancer. you can stop it BEFORE IT STARTS! guys: once you hit 35, you should start getting friendly with a proctologist. there is no way it is more embarassing or uncomfortable than cancer, dudes.
- live healthy: get some exercise. don't overindulge in food or drink. smoking, playing with asbestos, hanging out in the sun without sunscreen (reapplied every couple hours!). these are things that have a dramatic effect on the odds of you getting personally acquainted with big C.
- investigate anomalies: you grow a lump. that freckle gets freaky. you get chronic headaches. sure, not deadly as symptoms, but what are they symptoms of? doctors aren't free, but with early detection, your chances of beating the thing *skyrocket*. we're talking like 90+% for a lot of situations, particularly breast, cervical, testicular, and skin cancers. the kind that you or your doctor can discover before you get crippled and really sick.
and for those who are suffering, be it firsthand, or secondhand, with friends and family, or who've already lost someone. there's hope. don't give up. we, humanity, can beat this thing. won't you join the team and pass on the message?
if you need someone professional to talk to about it--anything about it--from available social services to medical advice, it's free, and it's at the other end of a phone, and it's there 24 hours a day. call the american cancer society. their phone number is 1-800-ACS-2345.
no fair checking out before your time, we're not done having fun together yet! |
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| if i can't sleep, i'll just keep you up, too. |
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| 06:41am 01/06/2009 |
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this seems to be the message from the kitties. that and "OMG WE ARE STARVING ALL THE TIME YET SOMEHOW WE ARE STILL OVERWEIGHT!" i slightly wish kitties listened to logic, but then i think of how much less fun it would be to have a herd of little people in my life instead of a purrbox who makes me feel better even when i don't deserve it. so yay for noncritical snugglers! a small illustration of my silver-lining-finding capabilities there.
i'm a pretty rare insomniac--since i figured out in college that caffeine's effects lasted long past their apparent expiration, and *then* figured out that a little exercise goes a long way in making my body work like i want it to, i've been a champion sleeper. don't always get tired at precisely the moment i might wish to, but have gotten good at falling asleep quickly when i'm tired enough to close my eyes and then staying asleep until the alarm clock and life conspire to require me to be awake.
there's still a few things that can make for a tough night of sleep:
- kitties play-fighting in my bed. this is usually a recoverable circumstance, but here they were just the trigger to re-activate the above concerns.
- niggling stress about tomorrow's ill-prepared-for workload (i should have done some coding this weekend, now i get to fix some shit in a hurry. fortunately i am way better at not getting homework assigned to me than i was in school =))
- big ol life changes a-brewing. had trouble sleeping the night before i drove off from austin & Lori for good. i get this on double-whammy today as it seems likely that my offer to purchase this house and thus indenture myself to varying financial institutions for the next, oh, say, 30 years is looming. i am still at the stage in the process where i can run away and live in a tent in the park for free, and that thought grows ever more appealing. one doesn't even need a job to do that! oh, and dark_knightly and i broke up last night, and this one feels like it's the last one. i've never been the break up/get back together type but this relationship was worth it the last two times and would be worth it again, but since we actually figured out the problem this time and it's nothing we can fix...well, it'd be better if we didn't try to pick that back up.
it was amicable and we have no plans to abandon our close friendship. shaynabelle and missingwatch and Lori are proof that it can work rather well for me and exes. and there's only algol_galaxia to be evidence on the other side of the scale.
- and the sun is already up here at 5am, even though i don't want to be.
so you know, there's that.
but otherwise i'm great! this saturday featured gorgeous gorge hiking, 2 waterfalls, silliness, eating under a stand of positively monstrous cottonwood trees (hadn't really noticed 'em up here like i did so frequently in texas), and a good group of folk. sunday featured a little more house-buying-related nail-biting, but mostly it featured a most excellent bike ride in some pretty great company, friends old and new. and the reminder that one still needs sunscreen even in oregon on occasion. but it's more of a rosy glow than an OMG OUCH NEED ALOE VERA STAT sunburn, the kind that deepens painlessly into tan. still, as a cancer awareness crusader, i was a dummkopf to not preemptively slather up. i saw a lot of that around town last night--rosy people walking gingerly. Also, i am healthy (two unrelated people told me i looked like i'd lost some weight AND physical therapy for the ankle injury is done). also also i get to put together a bicycle to replace my stolen one over the next two weeks nearly completely using insurance money; finally, pedalpalooza starts in *10 days*! oh, and i am covered in snugglecats.
also, i made it an entire month without eating or drinking at any restaurant/bar type places. this is probably related to my losing weight, and is definitely related to me spending way less of my discretionary income last month. i'm pretty sure i'm gonna do this fairly frequently--maybe every other month? i will probably relax the drinking-out rules so as not to stunt my social life again, but not eating lunch out every day at the office is indubitably a good thing.
so if you made it this far, help a brother out. no sympathy needed--still appreciated, but i want to talk about something else just now--so tell me something awesome about your life! or an awesome memory of you and me.
it's hard to complain about love when one has friends like you guys. thanks for being part of my life! here's hoping it lasts for a really long time. |
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| 12:18am 30/05/2009 |
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i'm totally commenting on my twitter on livejournal. obviously i'm bored and recovering from too much drink. also, possibly, inane.
but hey, if you want to watch me make a further fool of myself, come cheer me on at an eating contest at whiffies fried pie...stand? at 9pm next saturday. i figure, build up a head of steam by being on team early at quixoticesco's birthday and then end up puking pies everywhere. what's not to love about that plan? unless you're my shoes.
note to self, wear the beater shoes & ride the beater bike that evening. |
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| unsorted musings |
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| 12:54am 27/05/2009 |
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i just won my last 5 games of scrabble without really trying, which leaves my online rating near its peak and out of my league. so i quit for the night while i was still ahead, something at which i am fantastically bad in real life.
i spent the evening sorting through the last year and a half of my life's documentation finding out how much i'm really worth, financially. came out a good distance ahead of what i thought. most of that is (fortunately for my tendency to spend what i have in hand) in retirement accounts that will probably not be worth anything by the time i want to retire. i'm still not gonna spend 'em on the house i'm angling to buy--i just stay pessimistic and then i can be happy when my dire predictions are slightly too dire. i find it amusing that the last year and a half of my life's documentation fits into a file folder, and that i had neatly filed the half a year prior to my move in a folder marked "to file", while the rest had sat in a pile on top of my filing cabinet. now it's all in the folder marked "to file".
(PS: yes, i slipped that in there, there's a house i'm trying to buy. it reminds me of capital-H home where my sisters and i grew up. you can't go home, but you can make home?)
14 hours of sleep in one night is, in fact, too much. unless you have a really good excuse like not sleeping the night before. no such excuse here, so now i pay. i have a long day tomorrow, so i'll continue to pay up til bedtime tomorrow, i think.
if you live in portland and have a pulse, you should be coming to this kickass party we're putting on on saturday, 13 june @ 2181 NW Nicolai st. there'll be a couple thousand people there. oh yeah, and you need a bike to get in. free party (6 musical acts, body painting) but the beer (new belgium) is $2/glass. unless you want to volunteer, in which case, free beer! and you should volunteer, because all the cool kids are doing it. i will be happy to pass your info on to our volunteer coordinator should you be hip to it. oh, also, there will be a ton of sexy naked people there, since the party is before and after portland's installment of the world naked bike ride. no obligation to get naked, of course. just don't be that creepy ogler. theme: where the wild things are!
i'm in final negotiations to buy the bike of my dreams a second time. of course, i am buying the skeleton and must assemble some of the skin and all of the organs, but i did it once and can do it again. i'm also in negotiations to buy the other bike i've been thinking of, though it won't be rideable for awhile, since i'm gonna tear it down and make it something it's not. but i found a frame my size which is incredibly rare in the type of girls' bike i've been lusting after (http://www.flickr.com/groups/mixte/). so hey, bike things are looking good! and that hybrid my parents got me in 2003? still tearing up the mean streets quite respectably. i rode it down some stairs today. lost a filling but the bike is fine...(just kidding, i don't have any fillings. it was tooth-rattling, though.)
yeah, nothing major to get off my chest. ttyl. |
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| expense vs happiness |
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| 09:20am 23/05/2009 |
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this one might actually be interesting. and wasn't a meme before missingwatch made it one. (if you answered it on her journal point me to the comment plx! very curious what my friends rank where...)
a hypothesis:
we buy things to show off and make ourselves look better to peers and potential friends/lovers/enemies. but the things we are lured to buy (and high price can make seem attractive i.e. *chough*ipod*cough*) don't actually necessarily make us happy.
an exercise:
List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.
link from this article http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/science/19tier.html?_r=1&em
(which we found via ww0308
expensive things, in rough order of expense:
- taxes
- my volvo
- college education
- my health (doctors visits, surgery, physical therapy. hain't really needed much medication.)
- alcohol
- seeing the world (road trips, texas 4000, vacations)
- my mitsubishi
- brush with the law in nevada
- my fancy bike
- home theater
happy things (harder to rank! also, sometimes purchased with effort)
- family & friends (free in $s)
- alcohol-fueled good times
- my health
- biking in general
- my kitty (free)
- my girlfriend (free in $s)
- texas 4000 (free)
- burning man
- cooking & eating
- reading & writing
like missingwatch, i am not so much a materialist in what i spend money on and what makes me happy, so perhaps i am abnormal in that i have decent crossover between money spent and joy gained. perhaps she & i are also doing it wrong--if it has to be "things you bought" then my expense list will gain more trivial items as i push health, taxes, and cops off the list. i have a feeling that if i'd made the list at age 21, things would have been rather different--not only because i had nothing of value at that time, either. i've definitely figured out the happiness thing a lot better. i wasn't sad at 21, but i hadn't homed in on what my life was to be about yet, and i'd yet to start my love affair with alcohol. |
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| 07:15pm 16/05/2009 |
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proof of purchase means insurance will cover enough of my bike cost to rebuild him, same as the first. i'm hunting a used frame to take the "enough" to "complete" since i have to buy the rest of the parts new, to make things easy/plausible. i found a dude with the frame i wanted and may buy it despite the fact that it comes with all the components i don't want. or not. still thinking that over. travellers renters insurance cost me $100/yr and paid me back 25x that much, less than two weeks after the theft with minimum hassle. i recommend them heartily!
proof that i live in the right town and have awesome friends? two bike moves in the past week, 10 miles total, mostly uphill (of course...nobody moves downhill these days, it seems) of shlepping heavy boxes and furniture across town in the bike trailer with 20 or so of my craziest compadres, led to awesome times afterward both times--house party time the first, sitting on the porch drinking beer and then an impromptu ride through my favorite on-road off-road course through the park, passing all the mountain bikers, us 4 road bikers--turns out the old tank is totally up to some muddin' as are these outta shape legs =)
proof that i am not entirely a consumer: i've made it 16 days without eating out or purchasing alcohol. i accidentally ended up not spending any of my last paycheck. i'd be rich if i had the willpower to keep this up forever, but i'd be happy if i kept it up for the rest of the month.
proof that a wonderful girlfriend in whose love i bask i must be getting enough back from me: she sticks around and does the wiggle of joy a lot.
tomorrow is a festival of sushi.
a kitten is sitting on my neck, and my favorite furry orange daughter is purring on my thigh. if i get up, i could go have drinks and bbq with friends.
yup, i'm living life right. the roadbumps pass, but the good times carry on. hope your world is treating you as well! |
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Read 5 - Post |
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| back in the saddle again |
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| 12:07am 07/05/2009 |
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it's not all parties and stolen bikes around here, though a casual observer might think that. no real news on the stolen bike front except that insurance will pay for some portion of a new ride; that might take quite a while to materialize though, and i can't get the same bike, since lemond stopped making frames last year--mine was one of the last. i really liked it though, so i might just find a used one and spend aeons re-outfitting it in the same fashion. i wouldn't really do anything different--i liked almost everything i'd done to it without reservation. i'd get a different speedometer (i still have the old one, but not the sensors, so it's pretty useless) and rear rack, and i doubt elden will be willing to make me more fenders considering how long the last set took to make, but i'd play it much the same on drivetrain/brake/wheels/lighting/tires/saddle. i guess that speaks well to my choices. if i were a good little boy, i'd buy something used and sock away some of the cash, but i really liked that setup. we'll see. (he says as he tells a guy on craigslist he'll come over and take a look at a 70's peugeot next week--it's my size and it's that metallic green that i love! i learned to ride big kids bikes on my dad's peugeot (metallic red), which i still have dibs on if he stops riding. my sister has dibs on the BMW. i go for the bike, of course.)
i've restored my trusty old steed, my first grownup bike (i don't think the bike that i rode til i was 15 and shattered my arm due to steep hill + no brakes really counts), to functionality as of earlier this evening. it's featured in such cameos as this picture:
and it has its own myspace page! (http://www.myspace.com/137792079). pretty clever for a bike.
it's heavy and it's no road bike, but it'll beat kdaisy721's mountain bike for getting around--that one's a shiny sexy steed too, but the knobbies and functional front shocks and lack of rack were kinda getting to me. tomorrow i have to drill a hole in its rack so i can schlep a trailer for a bike move on friday. this not having my own wheels has been a bummer so even if it isn't in quite the same class as the lemond in zip & polish, it's still a bike i love, and so all's well on the western front. except working crazy hours for no compensation. gotta stop doing that. maybe after this week. |
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| portland people's contact info |
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| 03:17pm 03/05/2009 |
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party season is upon us--kdaisy721 and i are going to have to make the most out of our beautiful hundred year home in the next few months before we move out and into the world of less-central, less-fancy, non-cohabitation. our balcony is a sweet place to spend a summer evening, and we want you to do so with us!
i do most of my party/event invites via email these days. if you think you'd like to come to my parties and think i don't have your email address (people associated with casa de doom, this is mainly aimed at you!) please leave it in the comments below. comments are screened so that nobody but me will get your infoz! no harm in giving me your address again even if you do think i have it. i just spent the better part of 2 hours plumbing all of my gmail contacts and found at least a few glaring omissions. i love chatting with you on LJ but you owe it to yourself to get on this boat, too!
thanks! |
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| my heart is heavy with the loss. |
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| 08:29am 02/05/2009 |
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mood:  crushed
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it is with a heavy heart that i report my 2008 lemond poprad (bicycle) stolen last night. it's a pretty unique ride, so folks keeping their eyes open would be much appreciated.
i wish i had a picture of it all tricked out, but that photo shoot was scheduled for tomorrow. there's a stock shot here:
http://w.tf/poprad.jpg
mine looked like that, except for the following additions and omissions:
white selle anatomica leather saddle with bronze rivets (funky split-down-the-middle look)
bamboo fenders (look kinda like those $150 ones from river city, except unpolished)
bamboo water bottle holder on the seat tube, silver metal one on the down tube
stock-looking white leather handlebar tape
exchanged front wheel for a 36-spoke all-black mavic with a SON generator hub
removed the crash/cheater brake levers on the top of the handlebars
crank brothers mallet pedals (silver) - platforms with eggbeaters in the middle
black edelux LED headlight bolted on to the top of the handlebars
(rounded metal thing about the size of a raquetball)
bar-end red LED lights
28mm armadillo slick tires
exchanged front of drivetrain for a compact dual w/silver shimano cranks.
beefy black back rack for holding panniers, with a shift sticker (the white one with SHIFT spelled out in bike parts) on, and a hole drilled into the middle of the rack.
handlebar mount for wireless speedometer; sensor on front fork & wheel
red chris king threadless headset
replacement shimano cantilever brakes
the bamboo fenders and water bottle holder are by far the most distinctive things about the bike, but will probably be the first to go. the front wheel is held on by a locking lugnut, so the fuckers
will be unable to change the front tire/tube, ever. small consolation.
it was locked with a U-lock and there was no evidence of extreme force or power tools used to remove it from the (bendable) rack, strangely. maybe i failed at locking it properly, dunno.
anyway, if you see it, there's a substantial reward for its return ($500). please call me day or night at 503 766 3728 (503-some-rat). thanks for your help, and lock carefully, folks. |
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| a slice of heaven and blasphemy |
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| 11:04am 07/03/2009 |
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weekends are my eggs-n-bacon days. the only days i really have breakfast, which i usually consume at either lunchtime (ahh, lazy day) or before dawn (ahh, long impending bike ride or other outdoor activity). my nutritionist would hate me.
anyway, i celebrated saturday by sleeping in, cleaning up cat vomit, and a failed omelette. i just didn't wait long enough to do the flip. so instead i dumped my ingredients into the runny egg-sheet and turned it into a scramble. i was presented with a view of sea leg (aka krab, aka plyfish), an avocado, and cream cheese when i opened the fridge to get the bacon out, and so i decided to go fusion and do a sushi-esque omelette, which turned into a scramble, which i proceeded to turn into breakfast tacos. for topping, some shichimi togarashi and sesame seed/sugar/salt mixture. all it was really missing was nori, but i've learned my lesson about the sushi burrito from a broken tooth in 2001 and left that out for lack of desire to chop it up into bite-size pieces.
it was fucking wow. and i have all the materiel necessary to recreate it tomorrow! win!
the blasphemy is in the bacon. it didn't go with this dish at all. i've never said that before and hopefully i'll never have to say it at again. of course i ate it anyway, after finishing the btacos and then drinking a large glass of OJ. it was like dessert, which, yay. but i've never had to put bacon on pause for reasons of flavor before.
now, to decide which of my todo list tasks will get todone in this vast empty time between now and tonight's extravaganza... |
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| 04:35pm 05/03/2009 |
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i'm surviving, never fear.
this is totally unrelated to that last post. but we need a somewhat-to-very seasoned programmer who is unix-savvy at my office, ASAP. good team. exciting atmosphere. healthy company, economically.
http://lnk.nu/r2cgroup.com/tee.doc
(the irony of asking for unix-savvy people with a Word job posting is not lost on me, but i pick my battles w/HR)
respond ASAP, plx! |
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| 11:53pm 01/03/2009 |
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sometimes i wish i was a different person. |
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