Next To Nothing

I woke this morning sometime around dawn.  I laid there for a while and just listened to the sounds of the world unfolding. If you're not a morning person, well, there is a certain symphony of life at you can only here if you wake up in the hour before dawn.  It is a piece of music that I love.

A morning conversation with TR, a shower, a shave, a toast breakfast and I just kind of eased into the day.  I didn't have any goal today, I didn't have any objectives today.  It was nice to be mostly purposeless.

I grabbed lunch with Tony over at the Cheesecake Factory. Then, we drove over to Cupertino Square to see if we could catch the new Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp, but with the combination of heat and holiday, the theater was packed and the showing we were angled at was sold out. The next wave of screenings was around 3:00 and 4:00 PM, so I passed.

I came home. I watched a spot of TV (Mysteries of the Museum), then curled up in bed to nap.  When I nap I often use a timer on my iPad to wake me up.  I napped for an hour.  Then, I napped for another hour.  Then, another thirty minutes.  When I finally woke up it was about 5:30 PM.  Dinner was left over chicken enchiladas from the Cheesecake Factory and a few more episodes of Mysteries of the Museum, some time spent on Poetry.org.

As the day ends, as the sun winds toward the horizon, I think I accomplished what I set out to do today.  Next to nothing.

May All Beings

There is a decision point that I seem to hit every other weekend or so.  I try and decide if I am going to do any work on the weekend. If I thought that by working on the weekend I could gain some ground on the week, I would be more tempted to do it. But, the general result is I work extra hours in the weekend, and then I still end up working extra hours during the week, so it is definitely a zero sum game. 

This weekend was no different, but, here I am, Sunday night, watching Once Upon A Time and quite happy that I didn't work this weekend - with the full awareness that I am going to be working long days this week.  I have one major task that I want to accomplish this week, so I am going to try and stay focused on that, try and keep a disciplined approach to it.

Today was a good day, all in all.  The switch in time impacted me this morning when I woke up at about 4:00 AM, so I expect to pay for that by hitting a hard wall before too long.  I can already feel the first edges of sleep trying to steal over me, so I suspect it will just be a question of "when do I give in", followed by a bit of tossing and turning, then a swift and smooth journey into the land of sleep.

I feel like I need a day off, but the Thanksgiving holiday is just around the corner, so I may hold out until then. I also may take a day between here and there.  Perhaps to celebrate one of the milestones at work as it passes. We can list that as one of the failures of our current project management, they do not celebrate the milestones that we reach and pass.  This is just another thing in the litany of things that make this program the object lesson in how not to run a project.

I had an easy afternoon, alternating between reading and watching the DVR, then I had dinner with Tony over at Mama Mia's on Hamilton.  Excellent pizza and Tiramisu. Earlier in the day we'd gone to Cupertino Square to see RZA's "The Man With The Iron Fist", which was an enjoyable old-style Kung Fu movie. One of the players in the movie was the actress Jamie Chung, who happens to be portraying Mulan on "Once Upon A Time".  She is a very beautiful and talented actress. 

On that note I am as ready for the end of the day as I can be. I hope you had a good weekend and, as the sign on the wall in my office says:  May all beings find happiness and be free from suffering.

Daily Life: Sunnyvale Art and Wine Festival

Today was the second day of the Sunnyvale Art & Wine festival, so that was the centerpiece of the day. It has been an excellent weekend and I am wrapping it up relatively tired. I awoke early this morning, spend some time online, wandering the wilds of the internet, and learning to use Tweetdeck (for Twitter) with T.R. It was a good morning, that ended in high spirits.

Then, I went up to the festival with Pierre and Helen, had a nice lunch at Tao Tao in downtown Sunnyvale, wandered the festival and looked at the arts, crafts, and people and took some pictures. (I will transfer the pictures from the camera to Flickr sometime this week - with the new computer I have to instally Adobe Photoshop on it, which I have not got around to yet.) After the festival we stopped at Cupertino Square for ice cream at Coldstone Creamery and I picked up Volume 11 in Bill Willinghams "Fables" series at Legends.

From there, I swung over to meet Tony at Carrows for dinner (Belgium Waffle) and conversation about our favorite topic - science fiction! Then, I swung home, watched an HBO movie about Winston Churchill starring Brendan Gleason, took a hot bath and an unintentional nap. I swear, I just laid down for a moment and slept about an hour. Woke up for a phone call and came online to make this journal entry, and now I am going to go read myself to sleep. It is going to be a short read since I am already fighting to keep my eyelids open.

All in all it has been an excellent summer weekend here in San Jose.