My coworker is a weather atheist. He refuses to believe in it, and therefore refuses to dress for it. I've never yet seen him wear a jacket (except his leather motorcycle jacket--worn only when he's on his bike, no matter what the weather), and year-round he pretty much wears the same thing: short-sleeved shirt, jeans or khaki slacks, tennis shoes or boots. I assume there's underwear involved, but naturally I've never looked. There have been jokes though about how he goes commando. It wouldn't surprise me.

This is the same guy who eats Instant Lunch daily, cutting the noodles with his utility scissors that he's never cleaned. (You don't want to see his coffee mug, either, but that's another story.) I mean he takes the styrofoam cup, sticks the scissors straight into the soup, and snips about 10 to 15 times. It's unreal. I have a difficult time not laughing.

My boss is pacing and pacing . . . and pacing. Nervously. If he doesn't stop soon, I think I'm going to deck him. Okay, not really, but I sure do feel like it. He's transferring his nervousness to me, and that's just not cool.



I've been thinking for some time of making meditation robes for myself. The ones that you can buy at the online shop recommended by the center are quite costly--over $200. Hogetsu, at the center, is quite a seamstress and has made a number of robes herself, and has kindly offered to guide me through the process of sewing my own. So, last night I got the fabric for the bottom portion of the robe--the "hakama," which is a kind of long skirt thing that gets tied at the waist over the kimono--at Joann's, for only $9 total using a 50% off coupon that she gave me. The fabric for the kimono I was not able to purchase, because although the bolt had enough fabric on it, somewhere along the line it had been cut into two roughly equal pieces, neither of which was long enough. So, I'll have to go back later for that. But that fabric is only two to three dollars a yard, so I'll be able to make the robes for less than $50. Assuming that I can actually accomplish this task. It's a little formidable, but I've been told that the sewing is pretty straightforward--mostly all straight seams--and considering the shirt I sewed, in theory, it should be easier.


Other stuff, other stuff, other stuff. No time to think or write about it. Work is swamping me. I may have to forgo this Saturday's zazenkai just to work, though I'm going to try to go if I can. I may have to go in Sunday after meditation too. Grr.

Because I've always been loath to pester my friends with emails forwarded from activist organizations, I'm bypassing that method, and using this medium instead to forward the following information:


Sudan's first multi-party elections in 24 years are scheduled for April 2010.

The upcoming Sudanese elections could legitimize a corrupt, genocidal regime - unless the international community acts today.

Please join me in sending a letter to President Obama, urging him not to recognize an illegitimate election. On that page, you may also sign up for important updates on the Sudanese election and opportunities to take action.

Well, kids, it looks like I have internet at home again. I decided, on a well-informed hunch, not to spend $120 on a new wireless modem, instead purchasing a new power supply for it. The hunch paid off. It arrived today and I plugged it into the wall, and it actually worked. I have internet! I had to wait a few days, instead of going straight to Best Buy (awful place) to get a new modem, but in the end I only paid $10, and there wasn't even any tax or shipping on that. So yay!

Not a nice day. Too much to do, and naturally, not nearly enough time. I'd have to clone three of me to get everything done. As it is, I'm working late and for a few hours on the weekends.

My wireless modem decided to crap out on me today about sixteen months after the original purchase. After some online researching (on my work computer), I found out that more than likely it's the power adapter, so I ordered one from AT&T. (Evidently it's a common issue for the 2Wire modems--the power supply was under-designed and typically fails at the twelve to eighteen month mark.) But I probably won't get it until sometime next week. I hope the power supply is the problem, because I'm without internet now, and I don't really want to spend $120 on a new wireless modem.

I've been extremely stressed out this week. I haven't slept well at all. I can't seem to fall asleep at night, however tired I feel during the day, and what sleep I do get is interspersed with periods of wakefulness. I went off all the decongestants I was taking over a week ago, and try to limit my caffeine intake to the mornings. If this keeps up, I may have to temporarily quit my morning coffee for a while.

My private issues are really weighing on me. The insomnia may be related.

The pharmacy keeps delaying my prescription refill for my birth control. I don't need it for another ten days or so, but the delay is not comforting. It was delayed three days ago, and I haven't heard anything from them since.

Of course, compared to what's going on in Haiti right now, my life is cake. I see all these terrible images of people homeless and/or injured, but oddly enough, the images that bother me the most are the ones taken of the absolutely devastated presidential palace. Seeing that, I can only think about how much they have struggled already and how it's going to take a terribly long time for them to get on their feet again. It seems like the devastation of hope itself just looking at it.

A bad note to end an entry on, but what can I say?--things suck a little today.

Also, this is an interesting game that tests how well you can eyeball center points, angle bisectors and such. Evidently, I totally rock at it. I should, though, since I've had a lot of training in that way.

There's an exclamation point, because that's how I felt when I saw the chicken. I still kind of feel that way. The word "chicken" is just sort of fun to say--especially with tones of childish glee.

You can see that I was not raised on a farm. Nor have I had any real first-hand dealings with chickens, such as has been chronicled in the travails of e_compass_rosa, or there would likely be a good deal less glee in my tone. Something more flat and sarcastic when pronouncing the word "chicken" would then be more appropriate, I think.

The photos I've posted over the last couple of days were taken on the zen retreat in November. It was not snowy the entire time I was there--only the first morning, and I'm glad I was able to take these shots. I'm appreciating the understated quality of these images, the desaturation--the natural combinational effect of the overcast sky, the snow and the haze in the air.

My shutterbug tendencies have grown somewhat dormant over the last . . . oh, I don't know . . . couple of years or so. Part of that has had to do with the superseding of other interests and responsibilities. I've undertaken a number of projects in the interim and they have kept me quite busy, in pursuits that have felt less lonely (and more "productive") than spending my time on the back side of a camera lens. But, there's another reason why I've lagged in my photography, if I choose to be honest with myself.

I've experienced a kind of two-prong frustration with my photographic efforts in the last couple of years. On one hand, I've fallen subject too frequently to a tendency to compare my efforts with the products my friends are creating, finding my own results lacking--either in technical quality, or in what I think of as "photographic theory", or the idea behind a photo. There's also an internal tension between what I want to create, and the sort of photography I see in the marketplace--i.e. "what sells" in photography. I lost interest in the idea of professionally creating photography, in part because I saw that my creative desires did not fit within the demands of the marketplace--my images would never be "popular." Nevertheless, I would find myself adopting techniques that would produce results like those I saw in the marketplace, and I would feel oddly guilty about the results--a feeling of not being true to my own intentions.

On the other hand, I've also become frustrated with the gap between what I see when I take a photo, and what my camera and computer skills in post-processing are capable of producing. However, over time, I've grown more sophisticated in my methods of closing that gap, as I've studied more about photographic techniques. My recent switch to shooting in RAW format, and burgeoning interest in the technical aspects of digital dynamic range have contributed positively towards this goal. I've learned about image histograms and the adjustments that can be made, in camera and in post-processing, to maximize the effect of the available light with fewer distortions in "image truth." I sometimes wonder if I wouldn't benefit from some real photography courses that would give me more of a grip on this kind of image tooling. However, with other things in my life taking precedence at the moment, I'm not certain that I want to spend the money and effort on such a pursuit at this time.



On another note, on looking over the images from this trip, I'm noticing issues with image focus that I have not noticed in previous photos I've taken. I'm not sure if this is the result of increased pickiness on my part, or if there's an actual problem with my camera or lens. It has me concerned enough for me to want to take some test photos to see if the problems I'm noticing are consistent, and related to a hardware issue, or if they result from a lack of accuracy in my focusing methods.

I decided I would do a little writing again in my other blog--the one I keep other than this one, that is. Not that I would abandon this one; only that I tend to release certain things a little more freely in that other one, since I don't advertise its presence here and I doubt that anyone would actually connect it to me. I write there in a different tone, explain my meaning less, make allusions to subjects I won't touch in this forum. Even though it resides in a technically larger pool of the internet whole than the backwater (however sizeable) that is LiveJournal, it has always felt more private to me--that is, less linked to the persona I've cultivated in this medium, and the real-life connections I have to people I know here. Still, it is publicly readable by anyone who might choose, and in a peculiar sort of way, this fact has comforted me. It is out there, instead of locked up in the claustrophobic ramblings of my private notebooks stashed on my living room shelf. Besides, it was only public "in theory," as I never expected anyone would visit it except me, right?

Imagine my surprise then, when logging on to it for the first time in nearly two years, I find that the counter has registered some 11,900 visits in the interim. Last time I had accessed it, there weren't a hundred, and nearly all of those, I knew, were my visits to the page. So, either the counter's programming has been somehow fouled, or my lowly, anonymous, (now ironically) "private" blog has been visited over 11,000 times in the last two years. I know that this isn't a large number of visits in the greater scheme of the internet, but it certainly seems like a large number of visits for such a small and hidden cul-de-sac (nay, more like blind alley) on the interwebs.

It's gross to say it, but I sure am tired of the post-cold mucus production I'm experiencing. It feels like my head does nothing but produce mucus, day in, day out. Clearing my throat, blowing my nose, not being able to hear right. I'm drinking lots of water, flushing with the neti pot daily and taking decongestants. My sinuses insist on making more. Take a note, nose: I'm bored with the yuck feeling--can we get on with it, already? Please?

Yesterday, I woke up and went to meditation after about three and a half hours of sleep. I thought that the day would feel extremely long and that I would have to take a nap at lunch just to survive the day. Instead, it would seem I had energy to burn--I worked steadily all day, took a short lunch, went home after work to cook dinner, cleaned the kitchen, did two loads of dishes, and spent the remainder of the evening reading material I barely understand about physics. I even had trouble getting to sleep.

Today is a different story. I still went to meditation, but feel a little groggy after roughly six hours of sleep. I think the perfect amount of sleep for me comes in increments of three and half hours or so. Seven hours works, and evidently I can survive on half that. But, six hours? Not so much.

I have to convert my current building design from concrete block to insulated concrete forms at the request of the owner. The insulated concrete forms produce a larger total wall thickness, which means all kinds of small adjustments to the plans. Fun fun fun.

Today, it would seem that I have little of interest to say.

Tonight I glimpsed the glow of the moon behind the mountain, and so stayed to watch it rise.


I was stupid with my mandoline this evening and cut my finger while cleaning it. Stupid, because I was careless and did not think about how close my finger was to the blade. I'm lucky it wasn't a worse cut. It is sore and gooped up with superglue now, so I can shower without reopening the wound.

After a couple of months worth of craziness--between sesshin (zen retreat) and the holidays and illness, I was finally able to do some baking again today. Lovely cookies comprised mostly of sugar and butter . . . and sugar. And some flour and nuts. But mostly sugar and butter. I hope the buddhists will be pleased, since I'm taking them to meditation tomorrow morning.

I finished Anathem a little over a week ago. I was somewhat disappointed in the ending. The excitement and intensity of the tale reached a peak and was suddenly deflated about forty or so pages from the end. Still, it was a very enjoyable read, and I don't know how else it could have ended. The difficult thing about writing such a complicated story is tying up all the loose ends--especially if the story is the sort that would fail if the ends were not addressed. Stephenson is not Murakami, and so cannot leave his threads dangling artfully, like erratic fringe at the end of an exquisite scarf.

(Speaking of scarfs (scarves?--Firefox chooses not to correct me on either spelling . . .), the one I was knitting is completed, and in the hands of its new owner. I think it was a success, but it's hard to tell, since the person had never owned, much less worn a scarf before! Imagine my perplexity in having to show them how to don it properly.)

From reading fictional accounts of quantum and poly-cosmic theory, I've returned to reading about the real thing. A few years ago, I purchased The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, all about the developments in superstring theory, but I never managed to slog past the first one-hundred pages, in which is reiterated the theories of special and general relativity, the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, and the difficulty in bringing these two theories of the universe together into a single framework. Don't get me wrong--the material is fascinating to me--but I've always found it to be difficult to wrap my head around the oddities of relativity, much less the bizarre quirks of quantum theory. Each time I picked up the book before, I would read twenty or so pages, get dizzy, and have to put it down for a few hours--or months--merely to digest what I had read. Last night, I decided I would start again from the beginning, thereby reviewing all the material that I had read before, and have now finally progressed to the section that begins to talk about string theory. It is my hope that I will actually finish the book this time, but it's possibly that string theory might boggle my mind back into dizziness.

I know that NOVA created a special based on the book. Maybe it would benefit me to watch it.


Toogie just perched herself on my lap. Is it humanly possible that I could love these kitties more than I do? I think not.

It is a blue moon.

I am completely overwhelmed.

I managed to drag my sorry sick ass into work this morning. Actually, it's not quite as bad as it sounds. I'm still pretty run down, but last night around eight o'clock I started to feel much better than I had in a couple of days. I figured I better get at least one day of work in this week, since I'm off Thursday and Friday. Also, since the office is issuing paychecks today, I should at least show up for that.

Actually, it feels good to be out of my apartment, sick or no. I was getting stir crazy in there.

i'm officially into day 4 of cold, with no end in sight, despite all efforts to rest, drink plenty of fluids, flush my nose with the neti pot, and plug myself full of zinc and vitamin c. it sure must be nice to have a strong immune system--i can only imagine what that must be like.

sorry, i become morose and self-pitying when sick.