| in Seattle with Lester |
[30 Dec 2009|12:35am] |
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We're here for the next week and want to see you! Avatar at the Cinerama (Friday after we recover)? Snowshoeing or hiking (Saturday)? Sushi (Monday night)? SAM, coffee&laptops, pool, cards, etc (anytime)? I hear Jon hosts a pub quiz somewhere? We'll be at SteamSlant for NYE, obviously.
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[29 Dec 2009|02:36pm] |
(More from The Devil and Miss Prym)
Once a year, the inhabitants shut themselves up in their houses, made two lists, turned to face the highest mountain and then raised their first list to the heavens.
"Here, Lord, are all the sins I have committed against you," they said, reading the account of all the sins they had committed. Business swindles, adulteries, injustices, things of that sort. "I have sinned and beg forgiveness for having offended You so greatly."
Then - and here lay Ahab's originality - the residents immediately pulled the second list out of their pocket and, still facing the same mountain, they held that one up to the skies too. And they said something like: "And here, Lord, is a list of all Your sins against me: You made me work harder than necessary, my daughter fell ill despite all my prayers, I was robbed when I was trying to be honest, I suffered more than was fair." After reading out the second list, they ended the ritual: "I have been unjust towards You, and You have been unjust towards me. However, since today is the Day of Atonement, You will forget my faults and I will forget Yours and we can carry on together for another year."
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[28 Dec 2009|12:46pm] |
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I seem to have gotten myself involved with working backstage for a theater. How does that even happen?
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[28 Dec 2009|11:35am] |
It's not the case that when we are certain we stop paying attention. It /is/ the case though, I think, that we often stop paying attention in the same way. The tendency is to 1) pay somewhat less attention than before, 2) focus the attention that we are paying to factors that either directly support or deny our conviction, ie factors are directly relevant to our decision. What we are not doing is being open to unexpected or "irrelevant" factors because we are already committed to a particular way of thought.
This sheds some light on the practice of non-commitment to (but acknowledgement of) thoughts that pass through the mind during meditation.
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| Keystones |
[27 Dec 2009|02:57pm] |
It would be useful at some point to map out the things that I want to get done and see if there are some keystone pieces of knowledge (or physical tools) that I could use to speed the process up.
I really need to get some experience with grant writing. I have some very basic experience that I got from FIRST, but not enough to count. I'm thinking more and more that I'm going to end up forming my own company down the line (in a couple of years?) and I need enough business and legal experience to not have that be entirely overwhelming. Enough of my friends will be out of law school for me to not have to dig /too/ much into it :p
So the plan is to finish going through my current rails book this week, go through ADR (since I have it and all) next week, and then start reading up on grant writing in January and maybe pick up some volunteer work or (gasp) some for-pay part-time non-profit gig to get experience.
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[26 Dec 2009|05:47pm] |
Christmas went really well. I somehow successfully managed to split my time between some of my various families and houses (including performing the annual tree liberation with Mom), and ended up at Viridian for late night Pandemic.
Thoughts hit through strange phrasings sometimes. One recently was (and the exact phrasing made sense at the time) "what do I want of myself as a man?" Which translates to "I'm holding an amount of space beside myself which I sometimes forget to be aware of, where by space I mean potential, roles, and tasks. The "why" is because it would be .. pleasing? satisfying? fulfilling, maybe? to have that sort of a counterpoint... but it's not clear how much of that is an assumption or an illusion, and if I were to retake those roles and tasks back onto my own self, that wouldn't actually be a loss. It's very likely that holding space is not useful and in fact only damaging." Most obviously, I tend to delay on starting projects on my own, because I very intensely /feel/ the empty space(s) beside me, but there are a lot of more subtle things. I'm really interested in experimenting with consciously trying to collapse that space.
I just picked up Paolo Cuehlo's "The Devil and Miss Prym", and am really enjoying it, particularly: "It doesn't take a devil much time to bring about destruction; they are like storms, hurricanes or avalanches, which, in a few short hours, can destroy trees planted two hundred years before. Suddenly, Berta realised that the mere fact that evil had just arrived in Viscos did not change anything: devils come and go all the time without necessarily affecting anything by their presence. They are constantly abroad in the world, sometimes simply to find out what's going on, at others to put some soul or other to the test. But they are fickle creatures, and there is no logic in their choice of target, being drawn merely by the pleasure of a battle worth fighting. Berta concluded that there was nothing sufficiently interesting or special about Viscos to attract the attention of anyone for more than a day, let alone someone as important and busy as a messenger from the dark."
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[25 Dec 2009|09:40am] |
Orphan Christmas Eve dinner: plan a menu, pick up food, invite people over and make them cook!
Spent yesterday biking around like a crazy person, leaving tomorrow for a cruise with Brad and his fam, and now I've got piles of dishes to do!
S
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[24 Dec 2009|10:19am] |
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I've said this before (a lot), but after the misery of trying to learn Rails from Agile Development with Rails, O'Reilly's Learning Rails makes my brain sigh with pleasure. Which is not to say that I know a lot about Rails now, but it's no longer the voodoo that ADR has tried to make it. I'm all for magic and flair, but not with code, guys. Never with code. Amd teaching via one long example is just bad.
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[24 Dec 2009|02:24am] |
If I mourn anything, it's a loss of the possibility of the easy path. Easy isn't always bad...
Speaking of mourning - Princess passed away today. From Buckaroo Bob: ( Sweet Princess was the only pony/mini to bite a kid, to kick a kid, to kick a pony handler in both shins at once, to rear straight up with a three yr old on her back, and to lead the minis on an outing through an open gate, up the driveway and down the road towards Duvall (presumably for a mocha). She was the only one who, for sure, knew her own name. On the other hand, she gave a gazillion wonderful rides (often trotting) to smaller children who normally wouldn't have gotten on a horse. She was 32 inches tall at the shoulder with the persona of Black Beauty and deserves her own star on the pony trail of fame. )
Sad. Not unexpected, but we'll miss you, Prin.
On an upside, it was great hanging out at the Abbey with the old gang tonight. I feel like I'm really beginning to slow down, which makes me very happy. And it looks like I'll be redoing my mother's illustrator friend Tanya's website, which also makes me quite happy. I mean, it'll be a nice thing to have in my portfolio, but mainly, I like her art a lot, and want to do what I can to make it accessible.
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| diggy-doo |
[23 Dec 2009|10:07am] |
I am just over 25% done with Peace Corps. I cannot believe it.
A plane crashed at the Kingston Airport last night, about 5 miles from my house. I heard nothing but woke up to quite a commotion in Port Royal this morning.
I also woke up in the middle of the night last night to what was quite possibly the most extraordinary symphony of dogs barking I have ever experienced. This all happened about 4hrs after the plane crash and might be related. There is really no way of knowing. I did not wake up because of the dogs barking (I woke up from a bad dream and was incredibly thirsty) but I noticed the dogs barking because it made it that much harder to fall asleep.
Work is going well, although can be frustrating at times. We keep on having mechanical problems getting the aquaria up and running and it takes a long time to fix stuff around here. Hopefully once the center is up and running I will be able to spend more time doing outreach and education and less time trying to get ornery saltwater pumps to work. The past three weeks have been really slow, with lots of people on leave and not a lot going on.
I miss Ghana pretty bad but it is hard to pinpoint what I miss. I also miss Seattle, but in a totally different way.
I think that when we miss something or someone we not only miss that person or that thing, but we also miss the self that they bring out in us. Having identity reified by familiarity is a blessing and a curse I suppose. There is great liberation to be found in changes of context, but this process can still be lonely and scary. It is true that no matter where you are you are always in your own company, but I think the Xhosa saying that that "people are people through other people" is incredibly powerful and incredibly true.
I am reminded of the famous admissions essay prompt for Amherst College that went "Sartre said, 'Hell is other people'; but Streisand sang, 'People who need people/Are the luckiest people in the world.' With whom do you agree and why? Don't be icky."
I love this prompt, but it is too binary and taken literally as an either/or option it misses the point. The balance between self-definition and existence of self through encounter is the key tension in the dynamics of identity. I doubt if there is a clean resolution or perfect balance. So maybe a key to happiness is finding beauty and peace in eternal struggles like this one while also avoiding being icky?
Happy tidings of Yule, everyone.
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[21 Dec 2009|11:21am] |
Course I was epic. I managed to make myself sick a day or two before the course, and my cycle started just about then, but I was going on so much adrenaline that I didn't even notice anything except vague discomfort until I got back to the car on Sun afternoon.
We did four compass runs and nine location problems, had to bushwhack through all sorts of terrain (really gives "going off the beaten path" and "safety" a whole new meaning when you're crawling along a pile of skinny pines with a ten foot drop below you as part of an organized course), and just generally had a blast. For all that I hated Course B (because look, guys, standing around in the rain for hours on end while someone is lecturing you is not fun), I absolutely loved Course I.
Initially Pam and I were supposed to be a team of two, but we had another person assigned to us at the last minute. Sarah was really great, but because we were a three person team, it just took that much longer to get going each time. I was all for through going through the night so we would have the max time possible to finish Sunday's compass runs (and because I was afraid that if I stopped, my being sick would win over my adrenaline), but was voted down. We were then planning on getting up at four, but didn't end up hitting the trail until 7, which was mildly frustrating. But the dynamic was really good, and it was fascinating to watch how the team really did absorb the tiredness etc of the individuals. All of us sine waved between feeling great about ourselves and our progress and feeling pretty dismal about it, and it was great to be in a dynamic where it was normal to be going through all of that. I ended up falling into my default TL role (which still surprises me every time, because it takes some effort for me to get past my dislike of invading people's spaces at all, including by telling them what to do), but it worked out really well. My teammates were really great about both going along with my crazy math plans and about saying no. There were some interesting parallels between this and being the VC for BookFest in that on both occasions (assuming you're working with a motivated group of people), being a TL is 60% taking care of your team, and 40% pushing forward.
Overall, the people and the energy at ESAR are fantastic. It's the feeling that I've missed since elementary school of just getting along well with everybody there. And I think that had a lot to do with why our team passed. Very similar to my Ranger training, actually. Becoming a Ranger was very much a spur-of-the-moment thing for me, so I came to the training pretty thoroughly underprepared, with a bag made out of a hat that I sewed a piece of fabric on to for a strap. I didn't have notebook, and I had to borrow a pencil. I don't remember what I had for a water bottle, but I remember having to MacGyver that, too. But I really connected with the people (both rangers and participants), and the feedback that I got was to the effect of "well, you got off to a rocky start, but the way you handle people is awesome, and both of us immediately saw that you were a ranger."
My gear management for C1 was actually great, I thought (lessons learned, right?). But again I think my team ended up passing on charisma as much as anything else. We finished everything, were slightly off one of the compass runs, but had really great rapport with all of the course staff, and I think they just wanted us in their organization enough to overlook that error. I mean, how could they not want us? :) I'm probably the most famous person going through the training program after not being able to find my car keys after CB last month. But in all seriousness, we like them and they like us, and despite having been off by a little bit, we do know what we're doing, so I feel really great about that decision (though if we had to redo C1, I'd be ok with that too, I had so much fun doing it. I'll probably do it next year just for the hell of it).
Course II will be in two weeks (well, the first opportunity for it, anyway), and that one is going to be a lot more difficult (cover more ground, be out in the middle of nowhere, not have any of the staff around, etc). It sounds somewhat intimidating, but then I think I overestimated how difficult Course I was going to be, so maybe Course II won't be so bad. I feel like I was pretty well mentally prepared for C1, and that was important. I'll need to spend some time sitting and thinking through C2...
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| There's always been an inexplicable celebrity on my wall |
[20 Dec 2009|03:41pm] |
The only thing that's been in my room since high school is a picture of Brittany Murphy that Elizabeth cut out of Rolling Stone (I think? the back of the picture is just another photo) and put in a gold-painted frame some time our Junior year. The Google is so flooded with real time results that I can't find who she was supposed to be impersonating in the image, it was a small artist who had gained notoriety by re-arranging the paintings in a ritzy gallery, if anyone knows who this is referencing, please let me know.
The image on the back of the page is more morbid, I wonder if I should turn it around.
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[19 Dec 2009|01:19am] |
Course I starts in a couple of hours. I'm really excited about it. And sick as a dog again. Sigh. But with luck, it'll be as beautiful out there as it's been around here the last few days, and I can just power through it.
Theresa is in town, so there's rumors of imminent drinking and singing. What say?
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[18 Dec 2009|12:23am] |
Went to hang out at Sureshot today to get some Rails reading done (what with having about two weeks to get up to speed with it for ClinicLink) and ended up having a really fantastic conversation with David instead. Later at the ARC FOM class I was sitting thinking about the conversation and pinpointed another thing that I was looking for from my friends: a feeling of pride. The people close to me are such interesting, complex, talented, warm individuals that whatever else, I feel very proud of all of them, both for their accomplishments in life, and even more so for their accomplishments as humans. I hadn't thought about it in such terms before, but it's very meaningful to me to inspire a sense of pride in return. I'm not a particularly insecure person; I make a lot of conscious choices in my life that I have confidence in, and so I'm not someone who needs nonstop compliments or reassurance. The things I do (work, projects, volunteering, or otherwise) I do because I enjoy doing them, and not to win points or karma or to "give back" or anything like that. I just don't think in those terms. But there is a big part of me that starts to wither away if I don't get a sense of pride/respect/value/competence from the people who matter.
Otherwise... went on another consultation for Fetch, hung out with Mike for a bit, and am now being lightly useful at the chiropractic space with the guys while they lay cable. And there's not a thing in the world I'd rather be doing right now.
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| cookie porn! aka "trying new things" |
[17 Dec 2009|09:05am] |
I co-opted Cooking at Brads for Cookie-ing at Brad's purposes, as I wanted to do something nice for my coworkers and also try some new things. Made:- Rocky Mountain Chocolate Chip Cookies (not a new thing, the recipe is I think from the Silver Platter cookbook and is one of my Mom's favorites)
- Cranberry Noels (a new thing, they're ok, I like that they're pretty, I wish I'd put more effort into making them prettier, or getting a better cookie pan, as the botoms browned to quickly)
- Peanutbutter Cookies (some with strawberry jam, which worked out exceptionally well. it helped that brad did an amazing job with the dough, despite little experience and an under-specified recipe)
Thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mr_um2312 , Mikey (do you have a desired internet link presence?) and brad for their help in cookie production!
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[16 Dec 2009|10:14pm] |
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I really like working with wood and am immensely grateful to Lawrence for finally getting me to start playing in the shop. Yay wood! Yay making things!
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