It is chasing 10:00 PM here in San Jose. We are having a spell of warm weather that is supposed to last through the end of the week - days are in the low nineties and high eighties, which is hot for here. I had been running the AC more that I usually do, so tonight, when I made it home, I kicked open all the windows and fired up the fans to get some clean air circulating. They are whirring away fight now and I am sure if my apartment had wings it would take off.
It was a quiet day at work today with a triple set of time consuming challenges that rose up, a customer request, a mistake during a deployment of code, and a server problem - the full gamut. Fortunately, because it was a quiet day, they were all resolved rather smoothly. After work I swung by the grocery store and met my friend Tony at Johnny Rockets (Tony had dinner, I had ice cream and a brownie), then picked up some odds and ends and swung home.
I spent most of the evening reading - I am nearing the end of Assassin's Quest and am letting it stretch out - I should finish it by this week and then I plan to be on to Dean Koontz's "Relentless" - I am looking forward to it very much as I have heard from two other Koontz fans that it is very good. I have about three weeks until I start my vacation - a full two weeks plus off. About half of it will be spend in San Diego at the ultimate pop-culture event, Comic Con San Diego, and the rest of it will be spend at home - I am definitely looking forward to both parts of the vacation! It has been a long stretch since my last vacation that was longer than an extended weekend, though in all fairness I have made it a point to take several shorter, more local, vacations, it's just not quite the same.
I still feel semi-blocked when it comes to writing - I have a couple of stories I would like to tell, but they are just not coming out - they are in there, sort of hovering. I get a feeling they are going to hover a little more and then come pouring out all at once, which will be kind of cool.
Showing posts with label Assassins Quest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Assassins Quest. Show all posts
Monday, June 29, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Daily Life: Num Lock, Egg Drop Soup, and Noil Silk
Well, it took me a while to figure out how to turn the NUM LOCK off on this laptop. In the course of learning that I managed to find out how to put it into battery conserving sleep mode! I guess we learn something every day.
I woke this morning for a dream of noil silk (a type of raw silk), of great bolts of it draping and cascading. It was a visually powerful and charged dream. The dream pretty much set the mood of the day for me and I moved through the day with an strong sensual awareness. Work went smoothly, productively and quickly. Lunch was a simple egg drop soup (not the best I have ever had, that honor usually goes to Tao Tao in Sunnyvale, where they make an excellent egg drop soup. I wrapped up the day reviewing a couple of training modules (all in all a vast improvement over what we have in place now), so that was good focus time. I like those moments in work where you lose yourself.
Dinner was a chicken Caesar salad and a bottle of sparkling water at a local restaurant, then a quiet evening at home. I spent most of the evening reading the last of the Robin Hobb trilogy I have been working my way through, called “Assassins Quest”. It is also an excellent read. I about twenty five percent through it and I will probably dedicate another hour or so to it tonight. I’ve also downloaded the Kindle application for my iPhone, which has me doing something I used to do years ago but fell out of the habit, which is read on breaks and at lunch during work. That is speeding me through the novels a little faster.
Then, I have Dean Koontz’s new novel, “Relentless” waiting in the hopper. (That is actually a tribute to Robin Hobb – I am a huge Koontz fan and when he comes out with a new novel he is automatically bumped to the top of the list – and in this case, he wasn’t – because I want to see how Hobb wraps up the Assassins Quest.)
It is a beautiful evening here right now. The day was hot, in the high eighties, and now it is dropping off into the seventies, heading straight into the sixties. There is still a band of soft gray at the western horizon and a few stars are peeking out. I’ve got all the windows open, there is a cooling breeze drifting through the living room, and having had a good conversation with my dear T.R., I am wrapping the night up with a little bit of writing and “So You Think You Can Dance”. It is a guilty pleasure for me, and I tend to be fond of guilty pleasures.
I woke this morning for a dream of noil silk (a type of raw silk), of great bolts of it draping and cascading. It was a visually powerful and charged dream. The dream pretty much set the mood of the day for me and I moved through the day with an strong sensual awareness. Work went smoothly, productively and quickly. Lunch was a simple egg drop soup (not the best I have ever had, that honor usually goes to Tao Tao in Sunnyvale, where they make an excellent egg drop soup. I wrapped up the day reviewing a couple of training modules (all in all a vast improvement over what we have in place now), so that was good focus time. I like those moments in work where you lose yourself.
Dinner was a chicken Caesar salad and a bottle of sparkling water at a local restaurant, then a quiet evening at home. I spent most of the evening reading the last of the Robin Hobb trilogy I have been working my way through, called “Assassins Quest”. It is also an excellent read. I about twenty five percent through it and I will probably dedicate another hour or so to it tonight. I’ve also downloaded the Kindle application for my iPhone, which has me doing something I used to do years ago but fell out of the habit, which is read on breaks and at lunch during work. That is speeding me through the novels a little faster.
Then, I have Dean Koontz’s new novel, “Relentless” waiting in the hopper. (That is actually a tribute to Robin Hobb – I am a huge Koontz fan and when he comes out with a new novel he is automatically bumped to the top of the list – and in this case, he wasn’t – because I want to see how Hobb wraps up the Assassins Quest.)
It is a beautiful evening here right now. The day was hot, in the high eighties, and now it is dropping off into the seventies, heading straight into the sixties. There is still a band of soft gray at the western horizon and a few stars are peeking out. I’ve got all the windows open, there is a cooling breeze drifting through the living room, and having had a good conversation with my dear T.R., I am wrapping the night up with a little bit of writing and “So You Think You Can Dance”. It is a guilty pleasure for me, and I tend to be fond of guilty pleasures.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Daily Life: The End Of The Work Week Arrives
The end of the work week is upon me. It was amazingly fast this week, though if I look backwards I could not say why. I am sure part of it is the stunning beauty of spring evenings in the Santa Clara valley. I had a bit of good news today - the doctor gave me a clear bill of health on my stress fractured foot, so I can resume walking and running (gradually of course). I am very happy with that since this is almost the perfect time for those long rambling evening walks with the Twilight Gods.
It was mostly a quiet day at the office. My company works what is called a 9/80 schedule. You work five days one week and four days the next so you have every other Friday off. There are two tracks - the A track and the B track. Most of the people are on the A track and I am on the B track. The good thing about it is that on the Friday when I have to work all of the people on the A track are off. That means my working Friday is usually pretty quiet and a good opportunity to catch up on those things that are not as time sensitive and that require a little more detail work.
I have a folder in my in-box where I drop the items of that nature and then on my working Friday I work my way through them one at a time. This works well for me with the rhythm of corporate life and I usually end the day on my working Friday's with a sense of accomplishment. Today was no different there.
I don't yet have anything planned for the weekend. I was looking at the events schedule on MetroActive (the web site of the local alternative paper), but I didn't see anything that particularly caught my fancy. It may turn out to be a good weekend to just stay at home and do those incidental things that need to be done. I went into this week with a pretty long "to do" list of incidental personal thing and I have managed to work my way through most of the list through the course of the week, so I will be entering the weekend with a handful of things that have to be done. It might turn out to be a good weekend either go wandering or to simply stay home, read, listen to music, and watch movies.
I am also in a writing mood this weekend. I was partially word-blocked due to the post I wrote on stillness. That post occurred to me and then just took a long time to pull itself together in my mind. I found that I was expending a lot of time thinking about how to express what I wanted to express and it was nudging other things out of the way. I kept notes on the other things so that I could write them later, so I will review those notes and see what inspires me.
I've spent the last two weeks reading a fantasy book, Robin Hobb's "Assassins Apprentice". It turned out to be pretty good and I got invested in the character by the end of the book. Consequently, I bought the other two books in the trilogy and have them loaded onto my Kindle. I started reading the second book last night "The Kings Assassin" and have the third lying in wait behind it, "Assassins Quest". It seems to me that it has been quite a while since I have read a good fantasy novel, so I have been enjoying it.
Whatever I ultimately decide to do the weekend is on me with its sense of anticipation, so I am looking forward to it very much.
It was mostly a quiet day at the office. My company works what is called a 9/80 schedule. You work five days one week and four days the next so you have every other Friday off. There are two tracks - the A track and the B track. Most of the people are on the A track and I am on the B track. The good thing about it is that on the Friday when I have to work all of the people on the A track are off. That means my working Friday is usually pretty quiet and a good opportunity to catch up on those things that are not as time sensitive and that require a little more detail work.
I have a folder in my in-box where I drop the items of that nature and then on my working Friday I work my way through them one at a time. This works well for me with the rhythm of corporate life and I usually end the day on my working Friday's with a sense of accomplishment. Today was no different there.
I don't yet have anything planned for the weekend. I was looking at the events schedule on MetroActive (the web site of the local alternative paper), but I didn't see anything that particularly caught my fancy. It may turn out to be a good weekend to just stay at home and do those incidental things that need to be done. I went into this week with a pretty long "to do" list of incidental personal thing and I have managed to work my way through most of the list through the course of the week, so I will be entering the weekend with a handful of things that have to be done. It might turn out to be a good weekend either go wandering or to simply stay home, read, listen to music, and watch movies.
I am also in a writing mood this weekend. I was partially word-blocked due to the post I wrote on stillness. That post occurred to me and then just took a long time to pull itself together in my mind. I found that I was expending a lot of time thinking about how to express what I wanted to express and it was nudging other things out of the way. I kept notes on the other things so that I could write them later, so I will review those notes and see what inspires me.
I've spent the last two weeks reading a fantasy book, Robin Hobb's "Assassins Apprentice". It turned out to be pretty good and I got invested in the character by the end of the book. Consequently, I bought the other two books in the trilogy and have them loaded onto my Kindle. I started reading the second book last night "The Kings Assassin" and have the third lying in wait behind it, "Assassins Quest". It seems to me that it has been quite a while since I have read a good fantasy novel, so I have been enjoying it.
Whatever I ultimately decide to do the weekend is on me with its sense of anticipation, so I am looking forward to it very much.
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