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Thursday, October 15, 2009
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same..." - Ronald Reagan
Definitely something to be taught to my girls as well.
The sky isn't grey, nor is it blue. There must be a thin layer of fog high up, and this is how I'm feeling lately.
My days have lost definition, blurring together work, dinner, kids, sleep.
What are the alternatives?
Catastrophe? Sure something really bad spices up life, a slap in the face mortality reminder. But already here I've spent more mental focus than I prefer on the endless possibilities of things going wrong. When's 2012 coming out? Catastrophe fetishists will be having the year of their lives!
Focus? I have so many plans, so many ideas, so many things that I *should* be doing, but nothing's really sticking lately. I dabble briefly, then drift back to mundane affairs.
There's an aspect of "Being Awake" that pervades the human condition. The majority of us spend our lives droning through, with brief experiences that stand out. Sometimes it's an emergency that brings out your best, or maybe an event like marriage that induces a transcendental feeling. Extreme sports, extreme exhaustion, extremeties of life. That's one aspect I've lost, being much closer to death through extreme activities. Now I'm closer to a web browser. "oh no, system crash...reboot... /sigh"
I crave experiences at the edge of life, I'm a boundary pusher orbiting the middle.
There's something to be said about the middle, comfort, safety, banal knowledge. Milkshake in one hand, mouse in the other, grinding out days glancing towards the faintly glowing horizon of a better tomorrow. It's just not for me, at least a happy me.
But there's more to "Awake" than boundary play. Oddly enough, too much thinking may be part of the problem. Honoring my feelings, listening to my intuition, being in the moment, focused listening to others, all these are peppered with a thousand thoughts a minute. Paraphrasing Tolle here "Would you use a tool if you could never set it down again?" The Buddhist concept of "mindfulness" is almost what I mean by "Awake", but there's a more directed quality. Apparently my vocabulary for states of consciousness is woefully lacking.
General hardware issues too; Consciousness seemingly requires a machine to function. I'm wearing mine down with poor sleep, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, stress, and over reliance on stimulants (caffeine, sugar). I don't include decline resulting from aging, there will be of sufficient cognitive function until death (barring brain disorders). I can't expect peak performance under these conditions.
There's obviously a lot more to this, but work calls.
So the action plan for the day is:
1) Eat well.
2) No free sugar snacks.
3) Green tea instead of coffee.
4) Expand vocabulary of mental states. (see Buddhism, other religious/mystical traditions)
5) Walk at lunch, outside. Vigorously.
Oh look, write long enough and the blue sky will break through!
Current music: The copier...copying
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Monday: 6 hours sleep, 1 cup of coffee, very productive
Tuesday: 5 hours sleep, 2 cups of coffee, productive
Wednesday: 4 hours sleep, 3 cups of coffee, 1/2 productive
Thursday: 6 hours sleep, 3 cups of coffee so far, zero productivity
Friday Deadline: on the line...
Less coffee?
Current mood:  restless Current music: Octopus - Crystal Method
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Beholden to none but me
critic shall not be
watch the watcher
I am the maker
Reality self aware
Choreographing life
negotiating strife
navigating Existence,
the first happy accident.
laugh too much to ever stop
playing the game as king of kings
the Future is now again
Current mood:  contemplative Current music: No Gravity - Angel
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Cool new stuff from the internets!
Pray for potatoes with a hoe in your hand. - Irish proverb
An Irish goodbye is a slang term that refers to the practice of inconspicuously leaving a place where one has gathered with friends (usually for quite some time) without ever formally announcing that one is leaving. It is a decision undertaken not for any emotional reasons, but solely as a matter of convenience. The Irish goodbye allows a person to disappear from a function with the utmost expediency without spending extra time on "thank-yous" etc. (hacked up from Wikipedia)
Monday, November 10, 2008
N reading bag of super sweet apricots:
"It says 'No Sugar Added' because they added the apricots to the sugar!"
Friday, November 7, 2008
me : "We need to learn those definitions, but it's too late. There's always tomorrow..."
V : "And if there isn't, those definitions wont matter!"
Current mood:  amused Current music: cacophony of random conversations
Sunday, November 2, 2008
me quoting someone: "There's nothing more common than the desire to be extraordinary"
V giggling: "So if you want to be common then you're extraordinary"
me playing a "meaningful music" playlist
V:"Can we stop the metaphoricalizing and play something that has simple words?"
Current mood:  sleepy Current music: computer fans
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Last time I surfed I thought I had to get my muscles back in shape to be able to catch waves, so I pushed hard. The result was 5 days of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) that made me wonder if I’d injured myself. Today I experimented with surfing before work so the session wasn’t as long, and I didn’t paddle excessively just for exercise, so I’ll probably be able to get back in the water within a couple days. I got one great wave and saw the sunrise from the water: breakfast of champions! Today’s a holy day for me which means very little food, and surfing always makes me ravenous, so it’s especially good will power training.
In animal news, we’re feeding a vacationing cat. I think she lives a couple houses down and is wanting some time away from her home so she’s hanging out with us for a bit. She has no collar, but she’s very friendly and keeps trying to come inside, so she definitely is/was someone’s pet. We’re going to put up a “found cat” sign to lure the owner out, but in the meantime it’s nice to have a cute furry purring pet who follows you around but stays out of your way. L and I are both allergic to cats, but she’s just too damn cute! We don't let her inside, and she doesn't force her way in, I don't know what I'd do if it rained.
Current mood:  relaxed Current music: Boingo - Dead Man's Party
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Against some odds, I entered the Great Frozen Pacific again. It’d been almost three years since I’d surfed. Three years! By far the longest dry spell in the last 25 years. Growing up in Santa Cruz and focusing a large portion of the energy of youth into surfing, I will never really quit, there are just extended flat spells, debilitating injuries, or inland incarceration. I’m healthy and out on probation, bring on the swell!
After enjoying the warm water of Costa Rica (2001? I really need to fill out my personal timeline to augment my feeble memory), and before last Sunday, I had been in cold water maybe once since that tropical freedom. But with the sun shining at noon in a 3-4 suit and carrying an extra 40 lbs., it really wasn’t cold at all. I'd been remembering a winter dawn patrol session at the Lane with 49 degree water that's warmer than the foggy air. I’ll acclimate in the next couple months before facing that reality, hopefully faster than losing my warm layer of blubber. As much as the cold, I’d been dreading the restriction of 4mm of neoprene, but when you catch only one wave and paddling is more like plodding, it’s not much of an issue.
Rear shoulder and back muscles are painfully sore, I’d mistake it for joint issues if I didn’t know better. The ribs below my sternum are tender from propping up my head and arms, even with my thick pad of fat. It’ll be a couple days before I head out again, and I certainly will. I've modified my eating routine to include a protein trickle so my muscles can recover properly.
I definitely had been missing playing in the waves and exercising without sweating. I even had a very close encounter with a couple sea otters. Who knew their little hands had such dexterous stubby fingers? I watched silently as they swam within a couple feet in front of me, until I attempted communication with a whistle. What, they aren’t birds? I need to work on my otter cluck.
One of the great things about surfing is the feeling afterwards. There’s a palpable glow that surfers exude, something about the negative ions, saltwater scrub, nasal flush, relaxed exhaustion, and having harnessed liquid violence of nature (6’ swell whoo hoo!). I was feeling it the rest of that day, and want to the rest of my days.
Current mood:  cheerful Current music: Time - PFloyd
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Yesterday I watched The Forbidden Kingdom with my daughters. They were reluctant, but I wasn't offering choices. They got all riled up of course, and proceeded to rip my shirt and scratch my stomach, arms, and back. Such cute little claw marks, and only one drop of blood. No children were hurt in the mauling of this body (though kids where flying everywhere), so I win!
I told them that eventually I expect to see bruises and have broken teeth or bones. They have a long way to go.
I love my little Furies! Now I need to map out their exposure to Fu flicks: Does Bruce Lee come before the Matrix? There's plenty of Jackie Chan pulp to forge through, but I need to find some other kid friendly Fu, preferably by martial artists (Karate Kid, ugh)
Current mood:  lazy Current music: Chemical Brothers
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
12:03PM
"Life, exercise and all its rewards belong to people who can intelligently understand and deal with risks" - Bryce Lane from here
Nice summary of something I've been struggling with. Mostly I'm struggling with being intelligent.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
I have to say that Red Bell Peppers are the best sweets ever!
Breakfast = 2 eggs, 1 yolk, bike to work
Lunch = bike home, cottage cheese, raspberries, blueberries, chia seeds, bike back to work
4:00 snack = carrots, celery and OMG BELL PEPPERS!
Is there a food you don’t like much but wish you liked more? Eat almost nothing all day, do 30 minutes of bike riding, then savor the extra deliciousness of any food. Sweet Red Organic Bell Peppers chilled in water = heaven. Next time I’m cutting them into little hearts.
3 months into my MWF Holy Day Plan I’m down 30 lbs. and way up in energy. I’ve stayed away from sugary stuff pretty well, and now I’m starting to decrease starchy carbs (breads, potatoes, rice), but I’ll always eat any fruit or berry. The best thing is that I don’t stress over food, I just know I can eat whatever I want tomorrow, and today I have excellent fruits and vegetables. A great quote from Surfwise (I think) “Primitive man had to fight every day to get food, modern man has to fight to get hungry”. With my plan, hunger is built in, and it’s definitely what I had been missing.
Current music: Metallica - Judas Kiss
Friday, August 8, 2008
A couple weeks ago we (Lesly, V, Nora, me) played Risk. It was the kids' first time playing, so I liberally gave strategy advice, but my attempts at objective suggestions were doubted, probably because I focused on individual perspective and rather than alliances.
So they ganged up, killed me, divided up the world and lived happily ever after.
Blasphemy! You can't do that! You're missing the point of the game!
I couldn't have been prouder :)
Current mood:  artistic
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
9:00AM
I feel better than I have in a long time.
As a rational atheist in Santa Cruz, I've been exposed to a large amount of alternative thinking, around here you can't throw a crystal without 5 hippies blessing its passing. When I was 16 I did a lot of meditation and solidified a life of "body work" such as yoga, tai chi, martial arts, surfing, skateboarding, and dance. I followed those through college, married a chiropractic student, got a responsible job, and spent several years sitting on my ass and disconnecting from myself.
Well I'm back :)
The catalyst for my reconnection was Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk. It gave me an understandable framework which I could use to connect my extraordinary personal experiences with the propensity for humans to worship the divine and philosophize obscurely. Like probably everyone, I've had moments of clarity and discontinuous states of consciousness, and If I had been indoctrinated into a religious cult, I'd have ascribed those moments to experiencing god. Now I'd identify those feelings as primarily right brain experiences. I realize now some imbalances in my life: my lack of empathy and compassion, my skittish and rambling left brain talk, rise of negative emotional states featuring anger on lead guitar, and all these are enhanced by disconnection from my body. My way, my path has a strong physical component, it was time to get back to that.
So I've lost 25 lbs. (235 now) in the last two months because I'm back on my path. I've always had an interest in diet and exercise, so it's never been a question of knowledge, I just needed to have a strong enough awareness at all times to actually do the right thing. I see the childish destructive patterns that have messed up and could continue to mess up, my relationship with Lesly. I've recently been a better father for my children because I can actually listen to them and am more often filled with deep love for them. Right now, the answer to all my problems is awareness.
To cultivate my awareness, I eat just ~500 calories on M,W,F, so it keeps me very aware of my craving for food. Like everyone, I also have strong cravings for sex, security, lethargy, and acceptance, but when those cravings aren't fulfilled, there's some aspect of what Buddhists call "suffering". By evaluating my mind's responses to the need for food, it's increased my awareness dramatically in all areas of my life and decreases my suffering. I'm treating my growing awareness like a muscle and not trying to do too much at once, so I'm allowing for plenty of down time and periodically gauging my psychological stamina for these changes. I will continue to seek out awareness fostering methods that religious and spiritual institutions have spent millennia discovering and burying under their ego created facade of "truth" and mystical imagery.
This post is to remind me of this path should I stray in the future. It's a beginning of course, I'm not sure where I'll want to go once I've attained a more constant awareness.
I feel 16 again :) Well, 16 and carrying around 60 lbs. all day...
Current mood:  chipper Current music: Science Fiction - Ornette Coleman
Monday, August 4, 2008
me: "Let's watch Jurassic Park..."
DD: "What's Jurassic?"
me: "It's a time period about 175 million years ago"
DD: "That's *definitely* in black and white"
me: "So about that $7 you borrowed from me for Nora's present..."
DD: "Well, since Nora get's it, shouldn't she be the one to pay you back?"
V (who is 12) just came back from a week at "Jesus Camp" where every day they memorized verse, had "Jesus and me" time, and talked a lot about the bible. I picked her up from camp Saturday, and she talked for two hours straight about the camp and her whole new set of plans that included building a small cabin, taking up archery, and creating her own religion. She had an elaborate creation myth all worked out where the dragon creator hatched from a ball of dust and lots of other details I want to get her to write down. I need a video camera with me at all times!
Later in the day she says "Nora, do you know how Jesus died and what all those crosses mean?" It made me realize I wasn't spending any time at all on their religious education. The extent of it was reading them a kids book (the name escapes me) that says "Gods aren't real. They are made up stories that primitive man used to explain the world" and other unambiguous statements that I happen to agree with. I objected to the propagandic one sided nature of that book, but I needed to balance out their mother's sloppy New Age thinking. Anyways, I had been slightly worried about V getting converted or something, but I'm glad to see she's got her head screwed on right.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
I'd always longed for the ability to access the perfect song to compliment the mood I was experiencing or wanting to experience, the soundtrack of my life. Bouncy summer tunes for the bike ride home, unwinding mellowness late at night, drivingly productive background music while coding, the occasional conceptual song to remind me of what's important, sappy love ballads looking into my darling's eyes, boom chicka mauw mauw while gettin it on.
Laziness made me miss the iPod bandwagon, and the 50gb of music I ripped never really got categorized correctly before evaporating a couple hard drive crashes ago. I used Yahoo Launchcast Music religiously at work for a long time, rating thousands of songs, but when I switched ISPs and lost my premium account, I was subjected to commercials and lower audio quality...Next! Pandora is pretty good, and I may use the mobile version when I eventually get an iPhone type device. Imeem has a greater quantity of music, but I appreciate the simple web design of Pandora. Stripping away features and focusing on the core functionality appeals to me (unless I'm writing apparently...)
What I'd really like is a page as simple as Now Do This that allows me to multiple select from a list of emotions I'm experiencing or want to experience and I get a Pandora station displayed, allowing me to edit emotional state tags for songs. Eventually I'd allow an AI to visually read my facial expressions, consult my calendar, read my pulse, identify who else is in the room, tag songs via voice command, cull tags from the collective, and tell me "I chose this song because the rock structures lend familiarity, the electronica influences fuel a focus on the future, the subtle vocal harmonies lighten the mood, and the minor key tonality is different than the recently played songs" when I ask.
Similarly, I'd like to eat the foods that best compliment my body experience and needs. Ideally I'd like to eat a wide variety of fresh, in season, locally grown foods that fuel my exercise and mental activities. I'd love to carry around an iPhone type device that I can use to take pictures of food I'm eating, record and plan my exercise, keep updated on the latest nutritional science, get feedback about food's effect on me, analyse my excrement/urine, get updates from my scale, track the state of my digestion and the bioavailability of the previously ingested nutrients. Right now we all need to do this ourselves, but not nearly as optimally as possible. I want my Anthro-PC without the attitude, though it'd probably drive me crazy with the "beep: Now would be a good time to eat an apple and 3 oz. of almond butter" all the time.
Generally I want to offload information gathering to a transparent, connected, personalized "expert".
I guess I should begin to work on a dietary expert system in my spare time, if nothing else it'd give me a place to organize the dietary information I'm continually learning. Crazy spreadsheets here I come!
Current mood: techno dreaming Current music: Picture's of Success - Rilo Kiley
Monday, July 28, 2008
I’ve discovered and re-defined “The Hill”.
Riding my bike to work has been good exercise. I went from being sedentary to riding 10 minutes with only a relatively minor elevation change. At first I couldn’t even pedal the whole way, I spent a lot of time coasting, but now I’m pushing hard the entire way. Time to get my clip on shoes and a stopwatch to keep in touch with my limit.
While staring out the window around noon today, wondering if I should just work through the lunch hour again (Mon, Wed, Fri are my “holy days” where I eat ~500 calories in healthy snacks for the day so don’t go out for lunch), the blue sky and sun enticed me out for a walk.
UC Santa Cruz sits on a hill giving fantastic views of the Monterey bay and Santa Cruz. I work at the bottom of that hill, at a former SCO building below the Pogonip area. I’d done some hiking through Pogonip during college, but never all the way down, so I went looking for a way up. First I went straight up from the street and found some awesome views of the city, but no paths. After coming down and skirting behind some buildings, I saw a guy in running attire all sweaty and jogging back towards the street, a tip off that there’s a trail.
About 15 minutes up that trail, it comes out of the trees into an open field with no shade, so I decided to stop there. It was pretty steep to that point, with uneven terrain. As I was walking up, I was planning my progression from struggling up it to running full speed to the top. I’ll get to know that little trail very well. After looking on the internet, I see there are miles of trails all throughout Pogonip. So maybe I’ll expand the range of my 1 hour lunchtime bubble, like run as far as I can in 20 minutes then walk back. But I know I’m not ready to run yet, I’ll put in my time walking and speed up slowly. As I drop weight it’ll become easier as well, right now it’s like I’m hiking up hill with a 60 lb. monkey on my belly.
When I was commuting from Santa Cruz to Milpitas daily, “The Hill” meant clogged highway 17 going over the Santa Cruz mountains. Now it’s a place for me to explore the limits of my heart and lungs in a peaceful, beautiful setting. Quite an improvement!
Current mood:  satisfied
Friday, July 25, 2008
I got the cutest phone message from my six year old yesterday:
Hello Daddy this is Diamond.
Go to blue ball park as soon as you can,
Well after you heard this message.
I love you!
That was DD if you forgot.
So we’re going to meet you at blue ball park,
and get there as soon as you can as I said…
(mom in background): We’re not meeting Dad at blue ball park, no, it’s just mommy
Actually it’s ok, actually mom said no,
so actually don’t meet you at the blue ball park.
OK bye Daddy.
Just don’t remember it.
Tomorrow meet us at blue ball park.
Tomorrow OK Daddy?
Love you, bye!
That was DD if you forgot.
Bye Daddy love you!
That’s tomorrow if you forgot.
Not today, tomorrow.
But come as soon as you can tomorrow.
Actually same thing, everything I said, but tomorrow.
But it’s all just all doing it tomorrow.
OK Daddy love you bye.
Nora and Verity can leave a message if they want, but I don’t think they want to
I’m going to go ask them, so you might not hear talking for one minute.
(15 seconds of silence)
OK, bye Daddy love you!
5 "I love you"s, but also 5 reminders, she must not trust my memory. I need to find a way to get the audio from my phone to my computer, too bad I didn't have a girlfriend who was good at that kind of stuff...oh wait.
Current mood: Fatherly Current music: Santogold
Thursday, July 24, 2008
“If only a small fraction of what is already known about the effects of sugar were to be revealed in relation to any other material used as a food additive, that material would promptly be banned.”
– John Yudkin MD, Ph.D., F.R.C.P., F.R.S.C., F.I. Biol., Prof of Nutrition at London University.
I've been eating about 500 calories on M,W,F for about a month now, and it's going great. I "screw up" occasionally, but it doesn't bother me much because I know I'll get right back on track in 2 days. But last Monday I went way overboard. We had a bay cruise with my work, and I hadn't eaten anything but a couple plums all day when we set out at 6:30pm. I had a couple glasses of chardonnay, which led to a couple more, which led to me grabbing 6 cookies from the desert tray. The next day I figured it was the remnants of a hangover, but two days later I was still wiped out. I haven't been sleeping well lately, perhaps due to moving our bed around, but I've been exhausted since the binge.
Although the worst of it was probably from alcohol on an empty stomach, I'm going to cut down on sugar. While discussing this with Lesly over japanese lunchbox, I realized that although I had no refined carbs or flours, there was teriaki beef (sugar in sauce) and sunomono (sugar in sauce). It's real tough to be strict about sugar consumption since it's in everything, so I'm just going to cut out the obvious sources like sodas/drinks and deserts. Wine with dinner is still in, and fruits are alright since they contain so many other good things, but added sugar (including anything containing high fructose corn syrup) is out.
I'll sum it up as "Sugar is Poison" just so I can reinforce it to myself. I know our brains run on sugar, but I'll be getting plenty through other carbs and fruits and berries.
After being overweight her entire life, my sister has transformed her body after joining Overeater's Anonymous. Besides the peer pressure, their main thing is no sugar. My mother cut out sugar and at 63 has lost 40 lbs. in 6 months. So there's some familial precedence for me to follow, though I wont be as religious about it. I'll have a bite of ice cream occasionally, and dark chocolate (72%+) doesn't have that much sugar, a little poison never killed anybody...immediately.
Since losing 15 lbs. right away I've only lost about one pound a week for the last three weeks, and that included an indulgent weekend in Vegas, so I'm still losing at a good pace. I've also hit the gym a bit and am riding my bike to work ~3 times a week, so I've probably gained some muscle as well. We'll see what affect removing sugar poison has, but I think it's a good plan regardless of weight loss. This will be harder than intermittent fasting, but worth it I think.
It feels good to be doing the right things again.
Current mood: cheerful
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