Three Days In Spring

It's Sunday evening about 6:30 PM. I thought I'd take a couple of moments and write. It was a pretty good weekend all in all.

Friday was technically my day off but I spent three or four hours working some problems at work. After I wrapped that up – neither one was actually resolved they were just moved forward - I went out and met Don for lunch at Outback. I had the Alice Springs Chicken, one of my favorites. We then went over to the Café Society for coffee and conversation and mostly talked about stem cell therapy. Afterwards I wondered home and spent a mostly quiet evening reading and writing.

I fell asleep late on Friday night and woke up early on Saturday morning – about 4:30 AM. It was a pretty clean wake up so I just got up and read my way through a quiet morning. About 8 o'clock I went out and picked up Bob and we went over to the Hickory Pit for breakfast. Bob was moving a little slow but he was otherwise in a good mood. After breakfast I ran a couple of small errands and then circled home.

I spent the afternoon cleaning, reading and binge watching the Americans. I'm all caught up now. That's a great show, the acting is outstanding and the stories are good. Keri Russell is quite wonderful in it. Since I watched five episodes and that pretty much took me through the entire day. I had a good conversation with TR and managed to fight off sleep until about 9:00 PM, when I zonked out.

Sunday I slept in until about 7:30 AM, then got up, scurried around a bit, and went to Palm Sunday mass. After that I met Tyrone for breakfast, then swing by Bob's to visit. Had a good visit with Bob. He was having trouble with his equilibrium. We spent about two hours in conversation on a beautiful day.

Then home again, another spot of cleaning, and then I went out to do a couple loads of laundry, including the linens and light jackets. There were a lot people at the laundromat so the people watching was good. I got home and I've spent the evening watching "Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters" with Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton and Famke Jensen. It's an entertaining movie and it's easy on the eyes. It's a good way to end the weekend.


Sent from my iPhone

A Discordant Sunday

The day started normally. I went to breakfast with Bob and Tyrone. Breakfast was good. I had a Santa Fe omelette. Then, we walked out and Tyrone noticed a nail in the sidewall of my right front tire. That derailed any plans I had for the day.

So I popped over to Goodyear and got a new set of tires (the old ones were warn). That took about two hours. While they worked on it I walked over to Santana Row where I sat at Starbucks and people watched waiting for Don to join me for lunch. I have to say there are some pretty people that frequent Santana Row on a Spring Sunday.

Don met me for lunch at Rosie McCann's, where I had bangers and mash, which was pretty tasty. We had a good conversation and then I walked back to Goodyear to pick the Jeep up. I'm now in a good set of tires with an 80,000 mile warranty, road hazard, and pre-paid rotation and alignment. A bit pricey, but I'm happy with it.

I wandered home from there and tried to take a nap, but the incidental sounds of an afternoon kept me from dropping very deeply into sleep. I got back up about 4:00 PM and made a couple of sandwiches for dinner. Then I idled away the time watching some ancestry show with the actress Courtney Cox. It was interesting.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do tonight - I have some work I could do but I'm not really in the mood. On the other hand I've got a fairly good shot of energy, so I might actually accomplish something. Like...being really lazy! Just kidding - I may bag up some things to through away and I may log on to read email and send some meeting notices. Or I might not.


Sent from my iPhone

A Good Saturday

It's been a good Saturday. Work wise I pulled 2.5 million rows of data to be moved into another system. It'll probably take us all week to get it into the other system, but it will be there soon enough. It's a project step I've needed to take for a while, but I just haven't been able to get there, so I'm feel pretty good about the major step. A day late and a dollar short, but well done anyway.

I had breakfast with Bob and then headed out for a drive through Los Gatos and Saratoga. It was a pleasant excursion and Bob was feeling pretty good. We checked out both Lexington and Stevens Creek reservoirs. Both of them looked pretty cool filled with water and surrounded by greenery. There were a lot of other folks out doing the exact same thing.

I got home and spent my time working and catching up on the DVR, a handful of sitcoms and then "Romancing the Stone" with Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. I consider it a classic, though I'm not sure it really qualifies. It's still an enjoyable movie though.

I had a nice conversation with TR tonight about a wide variety of subjects and with plenty of laughter, so that was very enjoyable. I'm settling into the tail end of the night now, watching the clock tick off the final hours of the evening.

I finished up reading Neil Gaiman's collection of Norse tales. It was enjoyable but I'm afraid I can't highly recommend it. It's really just a collection of Norse tales. I would have liked it more if he'd dramatized it and told more character driven tales. Still, a solid 8 out of 10 as far as Norse collections go.

Saturday Slides By

Friday was my day off at work. It was a completely slack day. I slept close to a total of 12 hours Thursday night into Friday. After being up for a while and writing the last entry here on my blog I went back to sleep and slept another six hours, waking up at about 830 in the morning. I can't remember the last time I slept that much. I must've needed it.

I had three dreams, all of them traveling dreams, one of them a film noir train traveling dream with grand hotels in the middle of America. I think it was influenced by her film noir dream that TR had during the week and shared with me.

Today was a good day, Saturday that is, and it flowed relatively smooth and productively. I slept in a bit, waking up at about 7:30 AM, and then picked up Tyrone for breakfast. Bob wasn't feeling up for breakfast since he had chemo earlier in the week. After breakfast Tyrone and I went over to enterprise rental car and he pick the car up to last him for the coming week while his motorcycle is in the repair shop.

From there I ran a couple of small errands – stopped at the auto supply store and picked up some Rain-X, stopped at the drugstore and picked up some essentials, swing over to LensCrafters and order a new pair of sunglasses, then ducked into target and picked up some eyeglass cleaning stuff. After that I headed home for some lunch. I tried to take a quick nap but wasn't successful, probably because I got enough sleep in the last two days that I didn't need the nap.

So, I swung over to visit Bob for a while and spent about an hour with him watching bits and pieces of movies as this is habit to joke among multiple movies on TV. Oni kept us company but was it a testy mood. She did not want to get petted, but she insisted on laying right next to me. She wanted company but only on her terms which is always a cats prerogative. Afterword I swung home and settled in to watch some stuff off the DVR – Elementary, Last Man Standing, and Dr. Ken. Dinner was pizza.

Then I ordered an enjoyable movie on demand – Jane Got A Gun, with Natalie Portman. I think Natalie Portman is a great actress so I usually catch her movies when they're in the theater, but I don't know if this one got a release or if I just missed it. Either way I like the movie, it's an understated western with the big climatic gun battle and a satisfying resolution at the end. I'd recommend it if you like Natalie Portman or westerns or both.

Since and I've been sitting here moving DVDs from their cases into a binder. I don't have many DVDs left and the ones I had were mostly in a black case. It's my intention to dissemble the black case and throw it away. It's a display case I've had for a long time, that I inherited when an old roommate got married. It's a nice display case but it's a little damaged - so it's future is a sledgehammer in the dumpster, all in my quest to minimize, minimize, minimize.

Amusingly, in my collection of movies, about a good 20 of them have never been opened. I was going to sit here and open them but it dawns on me that I might as well just throw them away since I obviously didn't watch him in the first place. On that note I'm going to finish off that task and then call it a night. Until tomorrow!

The Song of the Wild Geese

I managed to get a good nights sleep last night. That helped improve my mood greatly. This morning is kind of gray and cool and we got two more waves of rain moving through next week – but spring is coming! The wild geese have been flying overhead in the morning. It is always a beautiful sight.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do today. I'll meet Tyrone for breakfast here shortly, and then after that I'm inclined to take a chance on a movie of some sort. We are supposed to go see Logan tomorrow – by we I mean Bob and Tyrone and I - so that's off the list of potential's for today. But I'm sure there's quite a few other movies out there that I haven't even seen yet.

I've got ample small things around the house to do if I elect to just have a quiet day at home. On the other hand, after all the hours I've been working, I am half tempted to go out and just wonderful a while. I haven't done a museum walk for quite a while now. Specifically I was thinking about going up to the Triton in Santa Clara.

Well, we will see what the day has in store. Let me finish up this cup of coffee, and I'm gonna head out and put some gas in the car, and pick up Tyrone for breakfast. The rest of it I'll just take as it comes.

Sunday with the Skeleton Twins

We've gone through a pair of hot days here in California with temps in the mid-nineties. One good thing about the heat at this time of year is that it drops precipitously off when the sun goes down. We lose about 10 degrees an hour, sometimes more, for the first two hours. That is nice because it means the evenings are cool enough to sleep comfortably.

I had a decent day today - met Tyrone for breakfast early, went over and got my car washed, then stopped at the hardware store and the bird store for some odds and ends, including food for the bird tribe that I so enjoy when they are on the patio. After that I came home and spent a lazy afternoon relaxing, unwinding and dodging the heat. 

Oops, I almost forgot that in the middle of it I saw an entertaining movie - The Skeleton Twins.  It was an interesting study on relationships, well acted and enjoyable.  I am going to watch a bit of TV tonight and then curl up with the latest novel I've started - SPQR (a detective story set in ancient Rome).  I had to abandon "The Clockwork Dagger" - it just bogged down badly in the middle.  I may pick it up again later, perhaps when I am in a different mood.

Sunday on a Simple Mothers Day

It is 10 minutes after 7:00 PM Pacific time. I have that great just shaved feeling. Probably because – I just shaved. I went through the day without shaving but as the evening was approaching it was starting to bother me so it had to be done.

It was a good and easy day. It was Mother's Day of course and now that my parents live in town I was able to do something I haven't been able to do most of my adult life. I was able to send my mom flowers. They just don't deliver flowers to the middle of nowhere except the UPS version. They count, but in my mind, it just wasn't the same thing. So, flowers to my mother, the quintessential Mother's Day.

I'm going to go back to South Dakota for a week on the 23rd, staying through the 31st. I'm looking forward to the visit. I'm going to spend a couple of days on the ranch with my nephew and four or five days in town at the Holiday Inn. I'm actually looking forward to staying in town.

After a couple of days on the ranch, well, you get kind to stir crazy if you are used to life in the city. Plus one of the things I'm really looking forward to is not going off the grid. Now it's not that I have anything against going off the grid, as a matter fact I think it's a good idea periodically in the course of any given year to simply drop off. That is something I learned from TR, and have come to value in my own.

However it's no fun to drop off the grid because there is no grid. Then I usually go through two or three days of electronics withdrawal. I'm looking forward to being able to stay on my cell phone while I'm traveling. Oh, I'm sure I'm going to venture into some parts of South Dakota where I fall off the grid, but for the most part it's going to be all good.

Today was a pretty simple day, an early breakfast at the Hickory pit with Tyrone, then a broad sweep of early morning errands, then home. I spent a pair of hours this morning catching up on da Vinci's demons and then headed back out to meet Tony for pizza. After pizza I wandered home and took a nap for about an hour and a half. Then I woke up to do some incidental things around the house and prepare some dinner. After dinner spme cleaning and then this moment, this now, where the only sound in the apartment is the hum of the air conditioner and my voice as I dictate to the Dragon. On that note I'm going to wrap this little entry up and settle in for some reading.

A Grateful Day

It is Saturday evening here in California. Life has been moving a fairly quick pace so I really haven't had much time to write. Life is good. I woke up this morning with a strong sense of being grateful for what I have. Then, I proceeded to fritter the day away. But it was a pleasant day regardless of what I was doing. 

I woke up early, took a shower, then spent most of the morning reading. After I talked my book away I went over to the Hickory pit to have breakfast with Tony, then we made a walk-through at Best Buy, and then I took a walk-through at Home Depot. I'm looking for a new set of patio furniture but right now I'm in that phase were what I am doing is just kind of trying to see what is out there. 

Oddly enough, so far, the best that I have seen has been at big lots. I'm going to go online here shortly and check for modular patio furniture because I think that's the direction I want to go. I want something that's comfortable to sit on but at the same time I want to be able to lay down and enjoy a quiet evening on the patio. Target has some nice patio rugs and I may get one of those. 

After Home Depot I swung by Bob's to drop some books off for Pierre who was there for a game. Then I swung up to Milpitas and met Don for lunch at outback steakhouse. After lunch we took a rambling stroll around the great Mall and then sat drinking Starbucks and people watching. 

It was a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. Dinner was a nice little salad with grape tomatoes. The quiet evening, once again, reading. I wrapped it up with a quick call to the parents in South Dakota and then flowed seamlessly into this moment. After this quick entry 

I am heading off to bed to read myself to sleep. I missed talking with TR tonight as she had late guests. I end this entry as I and this day in the same condition that I started this morning – grateful. Simply grateful.

An Ordinary Day with A Last Stand

A mostly easy day I reckon. An early morning family phone call (no bad news).  Breakfast at the Hickory Pit.  A trip to Fry's. Then, off to see a movie - Tony and I decided to catch "The Last Stand" with Arnold.  It was exactly what it appears to be - an action movie with some snappy (and corny) dialogue. Definitely a popcorn movie and definitely recommended as such.

After the movie we grabbed lunch at Red Robin, then I went for a long walk, initially around the shopping center, then down through San Tomas Aquino park. An afternoon nap, a dinner of left-over pizza, an episode of America Unearthed and an episode of Ancient Aliens, then another walk through the neighborhood in the cool darkness of the winter evening. Somewhere in there I also answered several work email did some prep work for a working session tomorrow, and sorted junk mail.

Hickory Pit - Christmas Pig

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

On Saturday, I Ramble

It was an even 60 hours by the time I logged out of work Friday, which was a mostly unproductive and frustrating day. I made it a point to take most of today off just to give myself a chance to recover. I was mostly successful. 

Here is what the day looked like - I got up about seven this morning, after a long night sleep.  Breakfast with Tony and Ty at the Hickory Pit, then I zipped home for an hour long teleconference. When the teleconference wrapped up I dashed out and met the guys at AMC 14, where we saw "Skyfall", the new James Bond movie.  It was...excellent.  After we came out of the movie I made the comment that it has that one thing that all good Bond movies have to have - that ability to thrill you.  An excellent addition to the Bond canon.

From there, we had lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings.  Then, I came home and just relaxed - I did some work related email off the Blackberry, but mostly I watched "Carnage" on the DVR (based on the play "God of Carnage"). It was a strange and amusing movie, a good choice for easing through the afternoon.

After it ended, I curled up and took a nap for the better part of two hours.  I had set the alarm to wake me after an hour, and it did, but I needed the extra time so I simply stayed in bed. All of the hours I worked last week caught up with me and I needed to get the batteries recharged.

I am tired, all in all. I am on the borderline of being burnt out at work, so I need to be careful and "brush back" to a degree and make sure I don't let myself get unhealthily overloaded.  Part of the process of brushing back is to remember to take time for myself, in simple ways, and give my brain a rest. I keep letting the frustrating things at work get under my skin and make me short tempered, which is a wicked little loop to get caught it.  It becomes a feedback loop of frustration and I have a tough time breaking through it.

I do give a lot of credit to the counselor that I went to several years ago for work stress, in that I am putting a lot of the techniques to use and though my stress does occasionally peak, it rarely stays at the peak.  Generally, when I go through a peak period I start laughing about it - finding the humor in it, realizing that most of the stress and unreasonableness at work has nothing to do with me.

One of the key stress triggers I run into is when I am told to one thing, start work on that thing, and then get told to either do it differently or to do something else.  This stop, start, and rework has been one of the killers on this project - wasting a tremendous amount of time. I estimated at one point that some very routine and ordinary tasks were taking up to three times as long as normal to get done because of the constant rework.

That was part of what sent me into a stress loop on Friday.  I'd been asked to create 250 test scenarios, so I got the team working on it. It was slow going, as I had predicted, and we made some progress but not as much as project management would have liked.  I provided the feedback on the progress - and after a days worth of work, was told to do it a different way. Now, the different way is faster, but it was not what I was originally told to do, and it completely skips one of the purposes of the exercise.  It was very frustrating and I expressed that frustrating. (One of the key things I learned from the counseling was not to lock it up inside.)

Oscar Worthy - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Time of a quick entry - but not much.  It is about ten minutes until the start of "The Walking Dead" and I am definitely looking forward to it. It was an interesting day on many fronts - it started with a conversation I have been wanted, from there, into breakfast at the Hickory Pit with Tony.  After breakfast, we stopped at Fry's, then Target, where I picked up "Prometheus". Then, a quick dash across the street and we saw "The Perks of Being a Wallflower".  From there, home, two hours of work, then back out to get Patxi's pizza in Campbell. After pizza, a quick turn around, a dash home, time to write an email, then right into this moment - with five minutes to go before the season premiere.

 

Let me simple say - two of the first truly Oscar worthy films in a single weekend - "The Perks of Being A Wallflower" and "Argo".  I am going to look forward to the fall movie season and I hope we get some truly great movies.

"Perks..." is a great movie and demonstrates what an amazing actress Emma Watson has become.  She is the heart and soul of this movie and dazzles in virtually every scene she appears in, conveying a beautiful and fragile humanity.  All of the performances around her are as amazing.  There is not a false note in this movie, at all.  I would highly recommend it.

On Any Ordinary Saturday

A quiet, cold, and beautiful Saturday morning unfolding here in California. I stood in the bedroom for a while and watched the sun rise start.  It looks like it is going to be a clear and blue day, with a brilliant sun.

Comcast came in yesterday morning and installed my cable modem (and phone).  The installation went smoothly, though I ran into some problems trying to get my wireless-N router to work (it was a D-Link). Finally, after two hours of careful trouble-shooting, I narrowed the problem down to a hardware problem with the device itself, so it will be going back to the electronics store today.  I popped down and picked up a Linksys and it was up and running within about twenty minutes.

The cable modem is nice.  The speeds are pretty impressive, and I spent part of yesterday watching a variety of streaming videos simply because they streamed so nicely.

Last night I dreamed of house cleaning and computer cleaning, so I  am going to take that as a sign to do neither today!  (Gee, isn't it nice when signs are so convenient!).  Seriously though, I have done a lot of house cleaning and a lot of computer futzing in the last couple of days, and I think my subconscious last night was telling me to set that aside for a while.

So, my plan today is pretty straight-forward.  I am going to meet some of "the guys" for breakfast at the Hickory Pit in Campbell, then I am going to stop at Fry's and return the back D-Link modem. Then, from there, I may do a bit of wandering. If the day turns out as nice as I suspect it is going to be, I am going to try and spend a little time doing some park wandering, basic "get out and go" kind of stuff.  Then, I may shoot some pool. I was also thinking about catching a movie, but I am not really sure if there is anything playing this weekend that is interesting to me.  In short, I am hoping to have a very ordinary day.

Ending With The Brothers Grimm

Well, I would call today an unexpected day. It contained curves and waves and ripples that I had not foreseen. Of course, the simple truth is, we lack the ability to foresee much at all. So, in reality, we pretty much only get to see what we see as it unfolds. Is that existential enough for us?

I slept pretty well last night, except for a strange dream that involved my microwave oven exploding, and I woke in the still and cool hours of the morning. I lingered in bed as long as I could, tucked in safe and warm, then ventured out for a cup of coffee and a simple bowl of oatmeal to start the day.

I ran into some strange problems with my computer in the morning and ended up having to back out some software installs and reinstall them before I managed to return it to full service. That was a frustrating way to start the day. From there, I met the guys over at the Hickory Pit for breakfast (a Western Sausage Omelet). We wandered the electronics store for a while, then wandered over to Bob's place, where we spent most of the afternoon, socializing amid imaginary errands.

A quick dinner and I was home for the evening. Once hear, I found a few more problems with my computer and did another reinstall on another piece of software, which corrected that. So, as off right now, it appears to be working correctly, though I am a little tired of playing with it.

After all of that, as I settled in for a quiet evening, I decided to watch an enjoyable movie on DVD tonight - "The Brothers Grimm", with Heath Ledger, Matt Damon, and Lena Headey. I've always enjoyed the film and tonight was no exception - a great little way to slide into the quiet evening. With the onrush of fall, with the early darkness of the evenings, I seem to be drawing a great pleasure out of the simplicity of quiet evenings at home.

I've tossed a couple of the posters from "The Brothers Grimm" up - if you haven't seen it before, it is worth catching off of Netflix or On-Demand. Personally, I own the DVD, but that is because I do enjoy the movie enough to watch it more that once or twice a year.