Mister Tea

Yesterday I participated in the dinner meal with the family but just didn't eat the sweet and sour pork chops and added some split pea soup instead. I at least piggybacked on the veggies and rice. I ended up going out with a couple of buddies last night. It was weird not drinking. We started out at a little Belgian restaurant in the village. They were drinking Stella's and I was drinking green tea. I think that the hardest part of committing to something for me is sharing that choice with others. So many people want you to explain and justify yourself. Do you need to be able to verbalize your motivations? It makes me think of children who answer you with just "because." They have yet to try to understand themselves and thus their actions need no justification. They are not acting as part of some elaborate scheme, they simply are what they are. We ended up at a club of sorts. I played wallflower and felt strangely detached from the whole scene. I often feel anxious in a situation like that. I used to just smoke more and drink more thinking that I should be trying to meet people and loosing myself in the situation. Without the smoke and drink I was much more aware of these feelings. Constantly comparing myself to everyone else and wondering why I wasn't doing what this guy or that guy was doing. Envy, jealousy, self loathing, lust, and prejudice all running through my body while being overly aware of the external presentation of myself. I really feel out of balance these days, not that it is something new but I am just much more aware of it. I still spend far too much time outside of myself; thinking and thinking and thinking. I can feel it as a grip inside my head that will not loosen up. This is the feeling I want to address with meditation. This is my ego refusing to recognize the feedback from the controls. I'm working on it.

Nutty Regimen

So I made it through yesterday. I am remembering how good unseasoned nuts and seeds tase. The almonds make me think of the holidays of my childhood where I would sit and chat with family and friends while cracking open and eating various nuts. I guess the nuts of my childhood gave way to beer and wine. So no meat yesterday. The regimen allows it but I am taking advantage of this seven days to experience full on veganism. I had some tasty lentil soup last night, lentils is good. The brown rice I made was a little firm. Need to work out how to get the rice cooker to get it just right. Lots of veggies, lots of fruit, I feel good.

Rasaing the Tabula

OK, I have started an all natural seven day cleansing program. Heal and detoxify. The diet is restrictive but natural and wholesome, and the shakes are tasty (especially with a banana and some berries). It feels fine so far but I just started.

Perspective Diametrics

As usual the physio was no miracle cure. I was told what I new all along: if you want it to get better then you have to work at it, it is a gradual process, you will never attain the ideal that is in your head but with concerted effort you can come close. We had another interesting conversation regarding my brace. Essentially my knee ligaments are loose so to protect my knee I can strengthen the relevant muscles around my knee or wear my brace. The trouble with the brace is that the act of wearing it contributes to the weakening of the muscles. Another example of the opposition between short-term and long-term benefit. It seems that choosing pain and effort is often the most beneficial.

Axis of Kneevil

Gots myself an appointment with a physiotherapist this evening. I'm hoping he is capable of bringing some alignment to my ankle-knee-back axis. I think this bum knee of mine is more of a weight upon my being than I realize. I wonder what affect physical imbalance, subconscious favoring, reduced capability, and mild pain piped right into the right brain hemisphere have on me. Yet another instance of singular incidents in time and space having a lasting impact on this thing I refer to as my life. Makes me want to be ready for the next one.

The Holistic Perception of Reality

The Holistic Perception of Reality

A Roll with Dyce

When I woke up this morning I remembered a dream I had just had. My maternal grandfather, my father, and I were walking downtown. My father went off ahead to get the car and my grandfather and I continued along. He was the older version of himself that I remember from my childhood, but before he had become ill approaching his passing. I felt bad having him walk as far as we seemed to need to walk and offered him my sympathy. He told me that he preferred to be in the streets, amongst the bustle of the masses rather than in a car, isolated from it all. I imagined the dampened sounds of the outside world and the white noise of the ventilation fan as I rode shotgun in a car, watching the action outside pass by without any conversation with the driver. I agreed with my grandfather and really began to take in all the sensations of the street and feel alive. I realized at that moment that there were Christmas carols playing. Two men passed us by on inline skates and all of a sudden my grandfather and I were skating. He started ahead and asked me if I remembered talking to him about what happens to our "stuff" when we die. I immediately became aware that he was going to die. He said that he used to believe that nothing happened, but that where he was in life had him believing something different. He made some comment regarding our dirty underwear as he skated out of earshot. I caught up to him at the top of a hill and when he turned around I told him that we better wait there for my father to arrive with the car. I was imagining my frail grandfather trying to skate down a hill when he lost his balance and fell backwards off the road into a sort of ditch. I feared not only for his safety but for his life and rushed to him. I found him laughing loudly. His laughter stopped and his expression became confused and helpless. I asked him to put his arms around my neck so that I could pull him out. I hauled him up onto the street and ended up sitting with him in my arms like a child. I was weeping and feared that this would be his end. I didn't want to lose him again. I held him tight rocking in a rhythmic trance. My father arrived with the car and I motioned for him to come help. Then I woke up. I started to cry. Once I recovered myself I wrote it all down in my journal, my paper and pen journal. I never cried when my grandfather died. I always felt that crying at funerals was a selfish act, that it was not sadness for the person who died but sadness for yourself and dwelling on how their death was going to impact your life. I thought it was better to fondly remember the past with them than to fearfully imagine the future without them. Neither of those perspectives fills the hole that exists right there at any given moment. I guess this dream is telling me, among other things, that in some way, he is still with me. Thanks Grandpa, I'll see ya around.

Squeegee Philosophy

If you are out there because you want to make lots of money or to be appreciated by all you will be unsuccessful.

If you are out there to clean every dirty windshield you come across you will be unsuccessful.

If you are out there to leave the windshields of those interested in your help cleaner than when you first came across them you can succeed.

Just make sure you know how to clean your own windshield before you start trying to clean anyone else's.

Dangerous Light Switch Cures

I was thinking last night about various interpretations of the expression "You turn me on" and then today I heard my old favorite Today by the Smashing Pumpkins which contains the lyric "I want to turn you on" repeated several times. Where is that switch again? It's tough to find with all this darkness. I borrowed a new book from the library today. My brother wanted to go get Huck Finn so I took him. While there I decided to check if there was any Goethe kicking around. There was but one, Elective Affinities translated by David Constantine. The quote on the back of the book is gold, 'Great passions are a hopeless sickness. What might cure them is what really makes them dangerous.'

RIMM Job

MicroBytes prices for RIMM memory was absurd, and they had to order it! Need to find alternative supplier. EBay? Time to consult with some big nerds. OK, so I just posted this for the title, what ya gonna do about it?

More K's for Vinyl

I was doing some software installation yesterday that required several boot cycles so I decided to listen to the turntable. It only gets disabled briefly until the sound card drivers are loaded or something early on in the boot sequence. I listened to some good Beatles (White Album, Abbey Road, Sgt. Peppers), some Joni Mitchel, Herb Alpert, Gordon Lightfoot, and the Easy Rider Soundtrack. With the stereo phono preamp I bought they sound fantastic. I bought a bunch of blank CD's a while back that look like little records. I was going to burn all sorts of Vinyl for everyone but the project never really took off. I burned MJ's Thriller and Hey Jude I believe and then that was it. I didn't like the idea of burning one track for each side of the LP so I had to use some wave file editing software to cut and save each track individually. It was a bit of a pain in the ass. Maybe I will try to find some better wave software, and some more K's for my system (or more likely M's or G's).

I'm In Suttama

OK, I'm now registered for January 21 - Feb 1. Ten days. January 20th 2003 holds some red pill significance for me so the 10 days immediately following the one year anniversary seem fitting somehow. I finally got IIS to work, had to uninstall and reinstall my Proxy client. I guess if I'm setting up IIS on my machine I should do it on my server. I'll put that on my wake list 8-) Don't forget the TLA.

Dutch al'orange

Maybe I'll start again: The Tricky Dutch have done it again! Will we start calling smokers Orangies akin to Limies of the Royal Navy? Or Orange glowers. Maybe Citrusettes. Why not Seedless Pipers. I dare say Cuban Peelers. Rind Chew? Benson and Hedges menthe d'orange one thousand ultra C legere more like it. I think Linus Pauling would be quite happy with all of this.

Six Trillian Dollar Man

Set it up yesterday. Try and find me.

Toogle Goolbar

I like it. Mr. Googbar. Pop up blocking, blogger link, easy search access. Now I can get nowhere even faster.

Windbagology

Windy out there! PV = nRT right? Does this constitute an understanding? Whatever. I got paid thirty bucks yesterday evening to have a workout, at least that is how I choose to see it. How much energy could we generate if we hooked all the treadmills, step machines, stationary bikes, glide trainers, rowing machines, and hamster wheels in North America up to the power grid? Rather than calories burned people could proudly proclaim how many kilowatt hours they contributed. Gyms would just set it up to offset their hydro bill. Skepticism of human nature kills hope and is in itself a self fulfilling prophecy of negativity. How about the harder you workout the lower your monthly fee? I gots to go to work!

Agilightenment

I just read an article regarding the concept of adaptive development methodologies as opposed to predictive ones. It seemed like a good life philosophy in general. Don't act according to what you predict is going to happen but rather act in such a way as to be capable of adapting to whatever does happen. The fundamental tenets of enlightenment continue to prove themselves universally applicable.

Interesting to think about...

http://www.theonion.com/3944/news3.html

I think I like this guy

Soros puts his money where his mouth is!

Bye bye baby

The car goes today :( And don't forget.