Archive Song List 18

Stars
Your Ex-lover is Dead

Lydia
It's in your Blood

American Football
The Summer Ends

Image of the day + I'm back! + Winners

Cynical picture. Notice the gold coin amounts...


So that lull I was noticing last week took my out of my little blog world for a few days, but I do feel better. Next time I'm going to need a guest blogger to help me out.


I've been listening to a ton of music and trying to steal time to read. Cole has me hooked to The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.

REALLY good reads. I furtively crept into a bar on Sunday and ordered a beer so I could get some time alone.




I need more ME time. What do you do with your me time?


I feel tremendously guilty when I hide out, but when I do get away chances are I'm by a body of water. On Saturday I stopped the car by a small lake and sat in the grass looking at the partially overcast sky reflected upon the water's surface and I finally relaxed. It felt like I hadn't truly exhaled for weeks.

I broke out the Zune and found a song I've been jamming out to and just four scant minutes later, I was right as rain.

The idiom "Right as Rain" doesn't have an agreed upon genesis. Rather, it's assumed that it is just a play on words using alliteration. However, I prefer to subscribe to the notion of mathematics and trigonometry. Right angles are 90 degree angles. If a rain drop fell at a 90 degree angle the drop would fall straight down. So "right as rain" could be thought of as straight, pure, without imperfection.


So I implore you, take a little ME time this week. Get away from everyone or, whatever, do the opposite and get everyone you know together. But remember that not only are we obligated to look out for our own happiness but we're the ones accountable to make our days more meaningful and worthwhile. I think this may be more effective than the ice cream sandwiches I suggested last week (but nowhere near as delish.)

So thank you Great Lake Swimmers, Cole, and thus Suzanne Collins for helping me stop rushing from point a to point b and to re-center myself again.


(Oh, and everyone who posted in that CD giveaway will be receiving a CD from me someway, somehow. I'm making a custom CD for each of you, so look for that next week!)

The Lull - Skirmish One

When I'm having a bad day one of the slivers of optimism that I try to hold onto is: it's days like this that help you fully appreciate the great days.

So what about the ____ days?

The days that have no particular significance one way or another. One could make an argument that these days are in-fact worse than bad days. At least bad days can stay with you, perhaps teach you something. They aren't so easily brushed aside like cookie crumbs on the counter.

The sad thing is that I was purposeful when constructing my life and schedule, going to great lengths to populate my weeks and months with these types of days. When I'm in a routine and I wake up at a certain time and I pay my bills and I eat right and I make it to the gym and I get good sleep. Not my nature!! I was warned by a friend that there is nothing more empowering and debilitating than a routine.

Well said, friend. Well said.

So I think I'm going to declare war on the days that just wash away into nothingness. How can you do this? Well, we're going to find out together.

I started by...



making this breakfast.














playing this (and everything) loud.












Setting up a reading date with my adoring niece, who I'll put to sleep and then hit my favorite coffee shop to get some reading of my own in.











sniffing this. (lemon is invigorating and I need 3 things in life... food, water, lotion)













Will it work? Any other ideas on how to assail one's senses to get them out of a lull?



If all else fails maybe I'll just go see Inception... again.

Archive Song List 17

I'd hire him.

Bon Iver
Blood Bank

Nick Drake
Pink Moon

The Honorary Title
Frame by frame

Tosh.0 clip

I spit out my water watching this last night.

Tosh.0
Kid Car Breakdown
www.comedycentral.com
Tosh.0 Videos Daniel Tosh Web Redemption

PSA - See Inception

Was able to learn another lesson about expectations... it's always good to manage your expectations but when something is true, no amount of hope or hype can diminish it.

Vegas -> Blah...
did not make the cut

Inception -> Yeah!!
incredible




I highly recommend everyone checking it out. It's definitely slotting into my top five.

Archive Song List 16

Bon Iver
The Park
(cover of the Feist track as astutely noted by molly YEH)

West Indian Girl
Green

Placebo
Sleeping with Ghosts

Glipse into the eye of idiocy

I use idiocy quite a bit when I talk about my own thoughts. While I don't really lack intelligence, it's the dwelling on the same thoughts and over-thinking that causes me to mock myself.

Even if you don't know me really well you'd be amused to hear my internal monologue when I walk around my dark living room about to leave for work. It's like the first (and terrible) draft of Rainman.

Do you have your keys?
Yes.

Are you sure??
YES.

Can you feel for them in your pocket?
Alright. Yes, they are there.

Because you know that you can't lock your door without your keys.
That's correct.

And even if you felt secure that no one would steal your stuff, you wouldn't be able to drive anywhere.
Right.

And you need to drive to work.
Right.

I guess you could take a bus, but you don't know the bus routes around here.
...

Maybe we should look into the bus routes around here?
...

If you start taking the bus you'll need to charge your Zune more often. Do you have your Zune?
Yes.

Can you feel for it in your pocket????



No joke.

Watch me when I'm leaving a place and watch me look down with a confused look and pat my pockets.

Feel free to point out when I do this in other situations because I can't even tell when my crazy gets out of the box anymore.

So occasionally I'll get into my car and head out to work and I'll remember that I don't have my laptop bag. Stellar that I'll remember the crap out of my keys and I'll visualize a future 2000 steps into the future along a path that I'll never take and I'll forget the most obvious thing. That's my idiocy.


But it's part of my charm so I don't mind it.

#100 and a giveaway

This is the official blog post #100! Why official? Apparently I have 13 posts that fall into the following categories:

#1 - Didn't finish
#2 - Were too personal
#3 - Was REAL drunk and rambled/ranted

While I can't promise that I'll go back and publish these mishaps, perhaps I'll look into these and at least see where the distribution lies.



I'm guessing at least eight are of the #3 variety.

:)




So my bud Cole is the sole reason I actually took the plunge into blogging and for her efforts I'm going to steal an idea from her: a giveaway!

Seemed like a great idea and then two potential issues cropped up:
A. you, whoever you may be, will probably be competing with yourself over the prize (I can live with this)
B. what do I have to giveaway that someone could want??

I still don't know that I solved B, but...

Up for grabs: A Bu mix CD

(I know you're already REAL excited [end sarcasm], but let me continue)
I have phenomenal taste in music and while some may disagree, those people are terribly and horribly mistaken. But why not judge for yourself?

How to play:
Honesty has been a recurring theme on my blog and I think it's fitting to pay it tribute here.

To win the best cd ever burned by Bu (ahem, by anyone??) all you have to do is tell someone (anyone) something (anything) that you've been meaning to tell them but haven't.
*edit after Cole's input* Or something you COULD tell someone but you haven't... doesn't need to be something you are harboring!

Reply in the comments with as much detail or vagueness about what you wanted to say and why you didn't say it earlier and maybe even how it turned out.



I'll spend the next week thinking up some amazing playlists, so you have some time to finish your homework.




I'll pick a winner (winners maybe, if there are more than one players :P) on next Friday.



Live with complete and utter sincerity

Archive Song List 15

The Decemberists
O Valencia (love, love this song)

Bon Iver & St. Vincent
Rosalyn

Lykke Li
Possibility

The last two are from Twilight - New Moon. Hoping the next Twilight has a better soundtrack than Eclipse! (but the movie was actually pretty good, which was really surprising -- so it all evens out)

And we're back...

Where did you go? We were having a good time, weren't we? I thought we were. We laughed and drank. We relaxed and saw treasured faces. We met new people and heard funny stories. But weekend, you left me again, didn't you?

However, you DID drop me off to a Tuesday, which is considerably better than the typical Monday departure. And as they say we'll always have Paris...

Friday
Work. But It was beautiful outside. I had to escape.


(view from my cube)


Sneaking out of work early... this is an art. The battleground is littered with mines in the form of urgent emails and envious colleagues.

The key is to send a flurry of emails (and time delayed emails) right before your departure.

If someone tries to talk to you on your way out (they will) try: "I'm working on the [inaudible muddled name] thing for [insert the name of THEIR boss]"


Done-zo.


Buffalo Wild Wings to meet up with friends and reunite with beer. Gave it up for awhile. Felt good.

Which leads to meeting some guys. Which leads to talking sports. Which leads to talking crap about sports. Which of course leads to boring the bajingo out of any females in the area. Which engendered competition.

Which leads to Big Buck Safari.

Which leads to...





Bu holding it down.

That score and this picture are about to be flaunted all over facebook.






Saturday
Owwwww...

Soccer:
Watched Germany trounce Argentina (boo!)
then Spain eliminated Paraguay (hooray!)

Helped my brother move for a few hours and then I got a call from my childhood friend






that I hadn't seen for 14-16 YEARS and he was in town for the weekend.




SundayHappy 4th everyone!!! Hope you had a super holiday.




Mine started off by going with a friend to buy this:




Which now looks like...




This.

We go to buy the car and the guy wants to take it for one last spin. We hop in.

He's driving pretty aggressively but we're only going around the block, let the guy have a little fun before he gives up the sports car. Sure. What's the worst that could happen?

So he leaves his neighborhood and heads out to Papago, where the Phoenix Zoo is located. He hits about 60 on a round-about and says (I quote because this is about the best thing that's happened to me this year): "The beaut about this car is that it'll just eat up corners. You hit a corner and it just wants more and more."

He slows down and u-turns and we come to the same round-about that he just made that comment. He takes too aggressive of a line and loses the ass of the car and we fishtail into another lane. He corrects the line but doesn't lay off the gas. Since the wheels won't catch he thinks he hasn't corrected enough and oversteers. We then slide perpendicular to the road until the tires finally catch and we launch over the curb, over/through a boulder and into a tree.

If a crash is going to happen, this was about perfect. No one was seriously hurt, it wasn't my car or my buddies car (yet), and... well... it was pretty fun.

Rest of the weekend was kinda a blur, but from what I can piece together in sequential order:
- got to play with Kinect, the new microsoft product
- saw Quantum of Solace at my buddy's place while he looked for a new car...
- stopped by Sky's birthday party and saw some good people
- lay on Z's couch for about 8 hours watching The Descent 2, Adventureland (LOVE THIS), and Jaws 2 and 3 and ate a TON of carne asada with cream cheese filled brownies...

On second thought, weekend... I don't think it's working out. I do need a little space. Maybe just a little time?

So good.

I don't think you need to be too techy to appreciate the brilliance of this:

Happiness (counts as the image of the day)

Enough said.

Renewal

New month. New look. New motivation.

We are officially at the mid-way point of 2010.

How'd it feel?
Go by in a blur? Inching along like a drip bag? Probably a bit of both.


Over the next couple of days I'm gonna create or rehash some goals for this year and (insert preemptive regret) post them here for the world (about 7 of you fine people) to see. Guilt and fear of disappointing others are wonderful motivators!

Here are some categories for goals that I'm considering:

• Health
• Leisure
• Travel/Exploration
• Reading
• Community
• Meditation
• Bluntness
• Diet
• Organization

And on a related note, here is a section as requested by a friend:
Negative calorie foods.










Let's start with the bad news.


Kinda took the wind out of my sails for this post.









However... health science is a continually evolving discipline.

While these foods may not be proven as negative calorie by definition (the energy of digesting these foods burns more calories than the foods themselves contain) eating a smattering of these over the course of a few weeks is sure to do a body good.