Daily Life: A Tad Hot

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.

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.

Daily Life: Just Another Day In Paradise (With Clouds)

I drove to work this morning at the leading edge of dawn. The skies were soft gray with the faintest tint of rose along the edges of the clouds. The highway was mostly empty at that hour, so the drive was smooth and pleasant, sipping coffee and listening to “Posiedon and the Bitter Bug” by the Indigo Girls. The album has some excellent songs on it.

The parking lot was mostly empty, a handful of cars, other early risers. The morning was quiet and productive, with forward movement on all items. Lunch was a walk down the street and a simple potato and bacon soup with a Blackcherry soda. The afternoon also managed to stay quietly productive.

I drove home and met my nephew Tom for dinner, then came back to the apartment for an easy evening of wandering the vast expanse of the internet. Google is an amazing thing – you can start with a simple search and start clicking through links and wind up in the most astounding places.

The sun is just now edging toward the horizon in a cloudy sky. I have the patio windows open, but the sky itself is kind of a high hazy gray. I was hoping for some sunshine on clouds for a photo opportunity, but it is not going to happen tonight. The bright indirect light through the clouds mostly washes everything out.

I’m nearing the end of “The Royal Assassin”, which is at a page turning place right now, so my plan tonight is to finish it up. I am waiting on a phone call and then it may be any early bed for me tonight.

Two more days of work and then a nice three day weekend house-sitting. I’ll take my laptop, my Kindle, and a few movies and am looking forward to a quiet weekend, sort of a semi-retreat.

Daily Life: Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup

Okay, lunch was a Vietnamese Chicken Noodle soup. Except, uh, I have no clue what made it Vietnamese. It was chicken and noodles and vegetables. It looked like ordinary chicken noodle soup. It tasted like ordinary chicken noodle soup. Maybe there was magic in it that I just didn't see. Maybe naming it Vietnamese soup was a calculated marketing ploy. I guess it is just hard to say. It was good soup though and that is what matters.

My brain was refusing to settle into anything specific this morning. It was mostly just merrily jumping from topic to topic to topic, all with minimal intervention from me. I am going to blame a good night sleep, a vividly visual dream, and an early awakening into a beautiful California dawn.

I find that I often use the word beautiful to describe the weather here. I largely do that because it is true. This area has just astounding weather. Even our bad weather is beautiful. We have a tight and temperate weather range here, with the only real variation being the occasional hot spell and the occasional long drenching winter storms. Between the two of them though they probably only account for about two months of weather, maybe less. That leaves us with ten other months where, for one reason of the other, it's beautiful. It is a terrible burden, but I like to think we bear it with grace.

I came into work early this morning with the intention of leaving early and running a few small errands. I had planned on running them last night, but once I got home I came to the conclusion that I was done for the day and spent a very nice and very quiet evening at home. It was one of those evenings where I scarcely bothered to turn on the television and never turned on the stereo. I read deeply into "Royal Assassin" by Robin Hobb. I had a great telephone call with TR. Then I drifted deeply into sleep and dreamed the very vivid and visual dream.

I've been turning something over in my mind for the last couple of days. I am thinking about "telling other people's stories". Often, in my journal, I restrict the stories I tell to my own stories, in part because I am not really comfortable taking other people's business "onto the street". What people I know are experiencing or have experienced are some pretty great stories. I encourage them to tell them, to write them down, to surrender them to the world, but most folks decline for one reason or the other. What I have been thinking about and mulling over and may write more on later is this - is it appropriate to tell someone else's story? If so, what are the parameters within which it is appropriate? What are the protocols for telling other people's stories? I don't have any answer today, just mulling the thought around.

Daily Life: Friday Slips Past

I slept in this morning for an extra pair of hours. The last week pretty much flew by on falcon's wings. Things were what I often refer to as "incidentally busy". Incidentally busy is when many small incidents occupy a lot of time, but you reach the end of the week and looking back you cannot put a finger on any one thing that took up the time.

After sleeping I came online for a while and wandered the internet, spending time in chat and time googling and a very pleasant morning in conversations with T.R.. About eleven A.M. I finally got rolling. I went out and got some lunch (a spinach salad with some chicken florentine), ran a couple of errands, and then circled back home for an afternoon nap. Despite being interrupted a couple of times during the nap (they are re-landscaping the front of the apartment complex, so several dump trucks full of dirt and rock made an appearance) it was a very good nap.

I had dinner with Tom at Frankie, Johnny & Luigi's and then we swung up to Fry's Electronics to look at movies. Tom picked up a pair - "Outpost" with Ray Stevenson (a.k.a. Titus Pullo from HBO's "Rome") and "Night Watch" with Ewan McGregor. Tom is a huge Ewan McGregor fan. I picked up the directors cut of one of my personal favorite movies (though it is not to everyone's taste) and that is "Brotherhood of the Wolf". I looked at a couple of other movies but decided what I really need to do is take an evening and update my movie inventory. I have a sizable movie collection and I have periodically bought movies I already owned.

Then, I slipped home about sunset, had a nice phone call, and then settled in to watch a movie. I tried to find a movie called "Final" on HBO, but it does not seem to be running here, so I made a note to check for it next time I am at one of the movie stores. It is a psychological thriller with Denise Leary. I watched the last hour or so of "Saving Private Ryan" on HBO, sent an email to some of my friends and I plead guilty to doing something I rarely do - a "cc multiple people with the same email because I am too lazy to write to each person individually".

I always dislike doing that, but sometimes it has to be done. Now, it is about fifteen minutes after ten, so I am going to curl up with "The Kings Assassin" by Robin Hobb and read myself to sleep. I am looking forward to Saturday and Sunday - our weather is supposed to be gray, cloudy, and cool, but today, though cloudy, was actually pretty pleasant.

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.

Daily Life: Dawn & The Amazon Kindle 2

Dawn was a thin ribbon of lighter blue on the horizon when I woke up this morning. There were birds singing outside, as if their songs were summoning the sun. I left my apartment and walked through the quiet courtyard. The moon was hanging over the Santa Cruz Mountains, a brilliant white orb all alone in a pale blue sky. It was an excellent start to the day.

I had a reason for waking up early this morning, for coming into the office almost two hours early. I had something I wanted to do this afternoon, so I was planning on flexing out two hours early. But, now, as I am sitting here, I cannot remember what it was. I checked my ubiquitous list of things to do and I don't see anything on it that sparks my memory. (I do see that I need to stop at a furniture store and look at getting two new kitchen chairs, but I am pretty sure that one is not it.) I am trusting that the reason will come to me as I move through the day. It wasn't something that I had to do - it was something that I wanted to do, so it didn't make it into the list. I hope it doesn't start to bug me.

On a different subject, a few weeks ago I bought an Amazon Kindle 2. Reading is a huge part of my life and my book collection tends to grow until it starts to crowd me out and then I purge books by donating them to the Friends of Library or another charitable organization. On top of that, I am a bit of a technology buff - I like to have the new technical toys. I am not of the opinion that whoever has the best toys wins in the game of life, but I do think that whoever has the best toys probably has a lot more fun on the journey.

Since I tend to read I lot I usually have three or four books stacked up in the hopper, waiting to be read. The same was true when I bought the Kindle - I had a couple of other books already stacked up waiting their turns, so I had to move through them before I got to actually sit down and read something of substance on the Kindle. I finished the last of the books in the hopper the other night (Gibson's "Spook Country") and started reading my first novel on the Kindle Sunday night.

I started reading "Assassin's Apprentice" by Robin Hobb, a fantasy novel. As a novel it is pretty good so far and so that might be influencing my impression of the Kindle. I have to say, I am fairly dang impressed. Up until now I had mostly read magazines, blogs and newspapers on the Kindle and found I liked it (no messy stacks of magazines and newspapers).

There are a couple of things I really like about the Kindle 2. First, the size and heft of it are, for me, almost perfect. It is light, but it has just enough heft to have substance. The screen is very easy to read, grayscale, and clear. Navigation is easy, a few clicks and you are on your way. Turning the page is simply pushing a button. I like very much that you simply stop reading, turn the device off (or set it down and it turns itself off), and then when you turn it back on - you're exactly where you left off. That is cool. I always used a bookmark before and sometimes the bookmark would slip out of the book and then I would have to figure out exactly where I was. With the Kindle 2 there is no doubt as to where you were, because you turn it on and you're there. So, for that first crucial novel reading experience on the Kindle, let me say - I am duly impressed.

The only drawback with the device I have found so far is the finish - I would like it if it had a more rubberized feel, more of a texture to grip onto. It is (like the I-Phone) just a little on the slick side and it has slipped out of my fingers a couple a couple of times. Of course, I take that in context of once, lying in bed, reading, I dropped Edward Rutherford's "The New Forest" right on my face as I nodded off and managed to give myself a bloody nose. Yes, we are injured for the things we love!