dan no sleep

Should be sleeping - went to bed early to try and recover from the sore throat & fever that came on with a vengance earlier today.

But not sleeping yet.

All I can think about is the meeting I have scheduled for Friday at work where I finally get to talk 1:1 with my new boss. I get the feeling like it could well be a "justify your existence" type of discussion...could be a great opportunity to try and improve my job or change the direction of things so I can get more satisfaction out of it.

So yeah, it's important.

And I'm glad I've worked out an entire outline of what I could say whilst tossing & turning.

But I really need to go to sleep.

I'm wide awake with the hint of a heavy headache in the back of my head.

bum-rushed by sickness

Had been doing okay today but suddenly developed a sore-throat in the late afternoon. Headache & fever later.

Now I'm sitting in bed at 20:30 pacific time. Not 100% ready for bed but probably will be soon.

Don't really want to take a sick day tomorrow...may try "working from home" but we'll see how that goes - have a new boss and I'm super self-conscious (to the point of being a little paranoid) right now - maybe better just to take the sick day.

(It sucks that our sick days & vacation days are combined...I guess this encourages us to really pay attention to our health; but on the other hand I'm super reluctant to take any time off if I am sick)

New definition - Saddlebacking

Per Savage Love:

Saddlebacking - the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities." After attending the Purity Ball, Heather and Bill saddlebacked all night because she's saving herself for marriage

great NY times rebuttal

http://bokane.org/2009/01/26/help-help-help-the-police/

Well said, dude, well said.

While I appreciate that the NY times does not blindy repeat official Chinese gov't news pronouncements, on the other hand, the article being rebutted  smacks of parachute journalism.

It's important to call them out on that.

BTW, this video is fantastic:

survived sunday

Not so bad after all...good, lazy day. Made it to the gym and then picked up food to last the rest of the week.

Fresh spinach in stock; and made use of some coupons. Not bad.

Finished up Season 2 of 30 rock, and another new-ish episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Got my electric bill in the mail for December and January (to date)...it's kind of higher than I'm used to. Several reasons:

1. We only use electric heat
2. No gas heat here
3. Bigger apartment than last year, more space to heat
4. Crappy single-pane windows here, seems like we're definitely losing something in efficiency
5. Snowy and unusually cold winter here - so the heat is on all the time.

I miss the days when ~40 bucks for a heating bill in China was enough to upset me...or even ~100 bucks to have heat for the whole winter (though, on further thought, that was totally a scam in that those bastards in my original building shut the heat off at night when I was at home and had it on during the day when I wasn't home. I'm sure someone was skimming out of that...I digress)

Full night out

Went to a wine-related event in the city today, and it was a good time.

Nice people and lots of wine to go around - little to complain about.

We did not do much in the way of having dinner prior to leaving, however, and the quantity of wine caught up with us...well, more specifically my better half.

While I understand that much was consumed in the name of having a good time tonight (and I understand that), my patience & sympathy for when she's throwing up everywhere is lacking. She could be in for a headache tomorrow. I will do my best to be quiet.

happy to be here

Had some thoughts that were relevant.

Happy to be here. Alive. Now.

Even if there's shit going on. Still good, so good to be alive.

Oh, the ravages of time! But I have a cat now

For comparison's sake...I guess that 4 years of drinking constantly and eating with little care will catch up with you.

Used to be younger

I guess that's how things go...have been doing a bit of hard drive shuffling and so moved the 20gigs of pictures I've amassed over the past 6 years since going digital with my cameras and this was one of the first images that Picasa scanned. Nice.

Not really lamenting the fact that I am getting older, but happy to have some pictures of me when I was younger and that I can look back & say, hey....not too bad. :)

I have found this to be so true

Sorry if you've seen it already...

dan's deep thoughts

Sometimes, the hardest part of adjusting to a major change in life is accepting the notion that a change will happen.

trying the beatles / led zepplin thing again

movie reviews - in 3 or so words

So, have been catching up on some movies:

The Dark Knight - lived up to the hype.

Wanted - Solid blockbuster "Matrix" style flick.

Semi-Pro - Not that funny, but good & weird.

In Bruges - Solid.

Pineapple Express - Random awesome

Zak & Miri make a porno - funny sex jokes

Death Race - solid enough action

You Don't mess with the Zohan - random & funny

Forgetting sarah marshall - best vampire musical

The house bunny - fuuny yet girly

what the hell just happened to me - facebook

While I have been "on" Facebook for a while now, it seems that I've rarely spent much time on it.

However, something has happened in that today I've spent over an hour on it and the time has flown by.

I don't think I'm aware yet what has transpired internally.

best beatles tribute led zeppelin ever

One of the better youtube clips I've seen in a while...

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making good on my resolutions...well, we'll see

Posted an ad on craigslist to find musicians to start a band. Have got a few responses, will give some meetups a shot later. The lack of a proper practice space (or accoustic guitar) on my part should result in something interesting happening.

Also will be taking a Korean class again, starting next week. That is, assuming that there is a critical mass of necessary students to go to the course. Not sure if that's really going to work out or not yet. We'll see what happens...there has to be at least 5 people signed up.

back to life as usual

Mixed feelings as the holiday vacation-ish run draws to a close.

On one hand, no more long public holidays for me until Memorial day. I do not think that my current employer chooses to recognize president's day. That's kind of a long stretch.

On the other hand, return to a "normal" routine will be welcome. It's been hard to get really into the flow of work and also the flow of vacation when the schedule keeps flip-flopping from free day to work day as it has been doing the past week or so.

Time off is a good opportunity to reflect on how I'm living and how I'd like to do things differently in the future in order to improve things.

For some reason, patience has been wearing thin. I guess that if something super exciting is to happen in my life, it's up to me to make that happen...have been waiting long enough for something to spontaneously come up; I guess that's kind of played out.

new year's video?

2 very different games

My brother was kind enough to send me "Cooking Mama" for Wii. Got to play through it a bit. Had tried the Nintendo DS version of the game before so I knew what to expect. But certainly more fun on the Wii with the Wii-mote. Gimicky; novelty will probably wear off.

But Marsha thinks it's cute and I'm ostensibly learning something about cooking.

I also picked up a game for myself. Steam is still offering Left 4 Dead for 25% off, which seems a reasonable deal as the game is still fairly new. The deal only lasts until January 2, 2009.

Played through the first level of the single-player game. Pretty fun...I'm looking forward to trying the online play. We'll see if it holds my attention as long as Team Fortress 2 has (and still does, on the few times that I can really give to online gaming).

Not that I intend on spending that much time playing video games this year...but resolutions and whatnot will be a different blog post.

Dad's Birfday

Went well; I think he was happy.

Another lazy-ish morning; left-overs for lunch, trip to the art museum during the afternoon.

Picked up Pizza ingredients at Cosetta's; then went and had Italian food in Wisconsin for dinner. Spotted Cow beer is awesome.

Dad was happy; we came home & then looked through quite a few of the old slide carousels he had - interesting seeing the shots of my parents college days in the 70s & their wedding...I don't think I had seen all of them before.

Stayed up later than I thought we would doing this, but mostly pleasant.