If you’re going to have 8 dogs in your house, the more of them that are housebroken the better.
Batting .500 really isn’t good enough, and in this case, two out of three IS bad. Don’t ask.
It’s been a year with a lot of small but important changes. Sometimes the most impressive changes are the ones that are easiest to see - new house, loss of job, new pet, kid - but those sort of take care of themselves. They don’t happen all the time. For me, I find that I sort of coast through the big changes and it’s the apparent doldrums in between that get a little tricky. I could ramble about how my kid’s in preschool or recap the car accident I had in the summer, but my kid was in daycare before, and I didn’t get hurt in the accident and ended up with a very similar car afterwards. They make up events on the timeline of the linear version of my life, but they don’t make up real change. (more…)
I’m excited to be applying for a little writing job at a major content website, it’s the kind of change I’ve been looking for. I’ve got almost no chance of landing the gig, a monthly retainer project reviewing and writing about digital photography, but just taking the leap of faith to apply feels good.
It’s got me started thinking about other stuff, and I’m working on some skeletal ideas for other blogs. As much fun as it is to ramble about broken toes and quitting music and how much I love the little birdies where I live, I’ve got tons of interests, and I’m interested in forging the discipline of writing regularly about some of them. (more…)
Since I work at home, I wouldn’t easily get snow days anyway, but I feel cheated sometimes when people around me are off and I’m in my lair hunched over a keyboard and pushing pixels around. My clients are still in New York City, and it’s 60 degrees there right now. Me, I have half a foot of snow on the ground and it’s under 30 degrees, so I feel like I ought to get snow day. Locally schools are closed and people are staying home in some cases; 6 inches of snow is not exactly like armageddon, but it’s a nice excuse to take it easy when that’s what’s going on anyway. I’m not actually having any trouble working (remember being in school and trying to focus when it was snowing outside?), but it would definitely be fun to sneak out and play with my daughter for a couple of hours. (more…)
To paraphrase George Carlin, it’s pretty easy to consider anyone who’d driving much faster than you as crazy, and anyone who’s driving slower than you to be a jackass. I’ve noticed some more granular versions of the rules here in Eldorado, and it’s deepend the awareness I already have that I’m a hypocrite. (Yay!) (more…)
I offer now my own Dave Barry style contribution to Murphy’s Law; nothing scatological need be implied by the title.
I don’t know what cosmic law of attraction is involved, but as a mostly private person, I’ve found that the best way to abort a lonely fugue right at the onset is a quick trip to a bathroom, wherever I live, whoever I live with, and whatever I’m doing. (more…)
I love living in New Mexico, and I love the seasons. Autumn has gently started; we still have mild weather and quiet nights, but the leaves are changing. It’s beautiful. I’ll trick myself into ignoring that it’s what precedes winter - not my favorite time of year - and enjoy what is usually a long and enjoyable autumn. (more…)
I just finished Week 1 of my Super Busy Period™ and survived. It’s been so busy I haven’t had time to quite stress about any of it, and now that I have a minute to breathe, I’ve done a little math so I can quantify my relationship to it, the numbers tell stories. (more…)
I’m not sure what sort of metaphysical dynamics are involved, but I’ve gone from almost no music involvement to a temporarily crushing workload. Pretty amazing. I’m not sure why music, of all things, tends to be like that for me - it’s like an on or off switch and very few shades of gray in between.
It’s been OK to not be busy; conceptually I hate the idea of not playing more, but realistically, I have a pretty full plate with my business and my family so it’s usually OK. Like I didn’t have any gigs or rehearsals last weekend, so I built gates. Wooden ones. And I barbecued. And the weekend was too short. Add to that a couple of 150 mile drives and several hours of practicing or playing, and they get even shorter. (more…)
A friend of ours who has just about completed a house she’s building invited my little family over to be part of the blessing ceremony she had arranged. She’s a Buddhist, I can’t remember if she started with the Zen tradition and moved toward Tibetan or the other way around. Anyway, there are some visiting Tibetan monks in town, and it can be arranged that they come to your home to bless and purify it as well as anyone within it. (more…)