The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

There were two names associated with this movie that absolutely insured I was going to see this movie. Judy Dench. Maggie Smith.  You could put the two of them in a television commercial and I would probably watch it over and over, so I was definitely in when it came to seeing "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel".  I was not disappointed.  The movie is very enjoyable - funny and touching, without a false performance in the lot of them.  I highly recommend it.

Tony and I went and saw it at CineArts theater at Santana Row in San Jose on Sunday morning.  We caught the early show, then grabbed lunch at The Flames across the street.  From there, I circled home and spent an easy afternoon, sliding into a graceful evening.

All in all, it was a good weekend.  Today was a typical Monday at work. I was in a pretty good mood until I got into the office and then I spun black pretty quickly.  A couple of things frustrated me - mainly a pair of pointless meetings.

I took a nice lunch and was able to refocus the day and pull a productive afternoon, including a complete review of the set of requirements that I am going to be working on for the next six months or so.  Tomorrow, I will make a second pass through them with a more critical eye and try and intellectually explore future minefields.

This evening was a pleasant evening with T.R. and I am closing the evening out watching Bones.  All in all, a good day.

A Day and Dark Shadows

A simple morning, a nice breakfast at the Hickory Pit, Johnny Depp and Eva Green in Tim Burton's "Dark Shadows" (excellent movie by the way). A stop at Target for incidentals and some groceries. Then a stop at the clothing store for five pairs of pants (two cargo, three casual) and five shirts (business casual). Lunch at the Race Street Fish Market. Home for "Fringe" and now "Midnight in Paris". A short, simple and beautiful day.

The Day Is Smooth

It is a pleasantly slow moving day here at work.  I’ve just taken a break from reading several dozen pages of project planning documents to eat some popcorn. I spend most of the morning catching up on my training and working my way through my email backlog. For there, I had a nice lunch at the Del Monte Café in downtown Sunnyvale. Hour-wise, I am well past my gate, so this afternoon is mostly going to be another hour of catch-up and then a one-on-one meeting with my manager. I am expecting both events to pass smoothly. 

I don’t have any plans for the weekend, outside of the ordinary, but I am interesting in catching the new Dark Shadows movie with Johnny Depp.  I am feeling pretty domestic this weekend, so I might keep it in close to home, just enjoy the passage of time on these beautiful spring days.  I may have to drift over to one of the many parks to enjoy the beautiful weekend weather or I might just curl up with a cup of iced coffee and a book and enjoy the quiet comfort of my patio.

The Android Experience - A Dream

It was a mash up of a dream - in the dream I was some sort of investigator. I had come to very a remote place where they were having problems with their android - in the dream it was a town called Parmalee, in South Dakota.

They had an old android that was being replaced by a young android, and the old android was training the young android. The old android lived in a small house (what was called a "transitional") with almost no furnishings.

The old android had reported problems with the young android - specifically, each night the young android went to sleep, in the morning when it woke it had no memory of the events of the day before - it was a clean slate, as far as past experiences were concerned.

This was reported as a problem because the young android was not learning - but, I was trying to understand just why that was a problem. It meant that in every action, the young android was fresh and unburdened by the events of the prior day.

So prior experience, good or bad, did not influence the young android in its interactions with people - each interaction was fresh and new and based entirely on the immediate circumstance, not prior events and outcomes. It was, in the mornings analysis, a very cool dream.

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A Four Minute Update

I have four minutes before I am going to start walking down the street to grab a quick lunch, so I thought I would fire off a quick note.  I’ve made arrangements for my June trip back to South Dakota to visit family over Fathers Day and my mother’s birthday. I’ve made hotel arrangemetns in San Diego (at the Marriott on Coronado Island) for Comic Con weekend (five days, four nights) and I am jazzed about that trip.  I have a podiatrist appointment tomorrow and I am very much looking forward to coming off the IPO boot. I finished Christopher Moore’s Sacre Bleu and learned more about painters then I ever knew before. Next up, for fiction, I am going to read “Mocking Jay” and finish up the Hunger Games trilogy. I am nearly finished with Haruki Murakami’s “The Elephant Vanishes” and when I finish there, I plan on diving deeply into IQ84. The unexpected spiritual journey of 2012 continues. I contemplate many things.

A Day With The Animal Kingdom

Today was a simple and quiet day.  I got up at about my usual time, just shy of 6:00 AM, then had a simple cup and coffee and bowl of cereal. I spent the morning writing and reading, then met Tony for breakfast at Goodies II on Bascom Avenue for the most excellent Huevos Mexicana.

After breakfast I had to stop at the car wash. Yesterday evening I made the mistake of parking under a big tall tree - and was rewarded with a dedicated saturation bombing raid on my car by birds of unknown type but sizable scat.  After the car wash, I swung over and got a trim on the hair. From there, I ran a few incidental errands, then circled home for the afternoon.

I spent a quiet afternoon reading "The Buddha Walks Into A Bar" for a while and then watching an excellent film I had heard about but hadn't seen before, called "Animal Kingdom", about an the disintegration of an Australian crime family.  It was a wicked and well done film noir. I would highly recommend that.

From there, we popped over to my friend Bob's, where Brandy had cooked a coq au vin for a simple little dinner for Tony.  From there, I scooted home and have just now seated myself for an evening of Tumblr, StumpleUpon, and writing. Hopefully I will get a chance to spend some quality time with T.R. as well, which will round out the day nicely.

Patience

There are times in life when we wait...

Looking Back

Looking back over the entries for the last couple of weeks, I noticed that it has been a while since I had written anything personal. I seemed to have been focused quite a bit on work.  Art is definitely imitating life there, since work has been my focus as we’ve gone through the transitional phase here at The Evil Corporation.  So, I thought I would take a few moments and make some personal updates, in no particular order.

No San Diego Comic Con 2012: The great tragedy of my summer.  Due to the high demand we were unable to get tickets to Comic Con San Diego this year.  It was definitely a bit of a heartbreaker, since that is usually the “Geek High Point” of my summer.  I do have the time off and I may still head down to San Diego on Comic Con weekend.  There are a lot of events that surround the convention that are not official events, but are still very fun, and of course, San Diego is a beautiful city. 

We Discover Haruki Murakami: T.R. made a brilliant discovery earlier this year that has colored the entire year, literature wise. She found and let me to the author Haruki Murakami, whose works I have quoted several times in the last couple of weeks.  He is a prolific and brilliant author and I am currently consuming two of his books at the same time – IQ84 and The Elephant Vanishes. Reading wise, this is shaping up to be the year of Murakami.

Adventures in an IPO Boot: I had a callus removed from my right foot a March and it healed up nicely.  When I went back for a follow-up, the podiatrist did not like the way it had healed, so he removed it again and put me back up on the IPO boot. I’ve been limping around on it for the last three weeks. On my last appointment, the removal site had completely healed, but he wanted me to stay off it for another week, to make sure it did not get irritated.  It has been an inconvenience that has influenced and shaped the last couple of weeks, since it takes my habit of pointless wandering and walking and puts it on the back burner, just as the spring is unfolding around us.

I Write:  I continue to write, working on my novel, though it seems to be continually transforming itself into something else. I would, at this point, call the act of creation a slippery one.

I Simplify: I am poised for another round of simplification, probably this weekend.  I’ve got more stuff that needs to go. It’s good stuff. It is interesting stuff. But, in the end, it is just stuff. I would say it is about five or six boxes worth, mostly odds and ends and knick-knacks.  I keep joking that I am going to end up living in my apartment, wearing a robe, with one blue bowl and my big screen TV.  I continue to enjoy the journey.

I Contemplate: I have been focused on contemplation.  I am reading a pretty good book right now, called “The Buddha Walks Into A Bar”, which is a basic and simple introduction to the concepts of Tibetan Buddhism, without all the religious overtones. I’ve learned some good things. I’ve also been listening to Tolle and Adyashanti. T.R. and I are both in a year of spiritual exploration and growth.

Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“You know what I think?” she says. “That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed ‘em to the fire, they’re all just paper. The fire isn’t thinking ‘Oh, this is Kant,’ or ‘Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,’ or ‘Nice tits,’ while it burns. To the fire, they’re nothing but scraps of paper. It’s the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there’s no distinction—they’re all just fuel.” —  Haruki Murakami, After Dark

Need to Restart the Day

I find that the process of building stress begins as I prepare to come into work.  If that set of preparations go smoothly then the morning goes smoothly.  If that set of preparations is bumpy, then the morning tends to be bumpy.  Today was a bumpy morning. I tossed and turned before I fell asleep last night for no apparent reason.  During the night I dreamed of work, one of my least favorite things to dream of. I moved smoothly enough through the morning until I realized I had missed at 6:30 AM meeting.

When I gathered my stuff to get ready for the morning commute it was a process of fits and starts. One of those fits and starts is what I consider to be a primary tip off that that the morning is going to go awry.  I have a small table that most of the incidental things I carry land on at the end of the day. When the clutter on that table gets to me, that is the first tip off that I am about to slide into a cranky morning. So, what I need to figure out is how to intervene, right then and then, and reset the day.  A stop, pause, contemplate and release sort of process might work well.  From there, I tend to carry that nagging sense of frustration into the day, a frustration at small things that begins to color every experience during the rest of the day.  

It was amplified by a long commute.  I have a variety of routes available to me as I drive into work, about four major ones. Normally, I take Lawrence Expressway.  The close second is 280 to 87 to 237. I opted for 280 this morning and that was a very slow choice.  It took me a long time to get onto 280 and then the interstate itself moved at a very slow creep until I got off at Wolfe Road, about three miles from the place I got on.  That three miles took about forty minutes. 

So now I am in the office, I have a bit of a tension headache, and I am trying to get the day restarted.