Mirch Masala Indian Cuisine

Had really good Indian Buffet here after a weekend in the mountains. Mirch Masala Indian Cuisine Thumbs Up

thought

‎"Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich." — Sarah Bernhardt (thank you Jessica)

Midnight in Paris

I was destined to love Woody Allen's new film Midnight in Paris. I cannot think of a Woody Allen that I actively dislike and there are quite a few that I am outright in love with. I think Midnight in Paris will definately fall into the later catagory. It's a gem of a movie that I am glad I didn't know very much about when I walked into the theater. The movie kept surprising me and delighting me as it wasn't what I thought it was at all. Given this fact it's quite difficult to review, I don't want to spoil any of the things that came to me as wonderful little surprises.

The themes of Midnight in Paris are simple and the lessons learned by our protagonist timeless and oft repeated.

The movie should come with a warning label however. The next morning you will have an irresistable urge to get on a plane to fly to Paris for coffee, to walk the streets, to listen to some Cole Porter, to re-read some Hemmingway, and if you are really lucky fall in love. Unfortunately the plane ticket alone would be $4088. Not that I checked or anything.

GPS

summer dawn so blue and clear
but my latte is almost gone
and the GPS is asking me
to select a destination
i am fairly certain
it was not intended
to be a difficult question
capable of provoking
such existential angst

dark and broody or smiling

Hmm, maybe according to science... I am not dark and broody enough.

Trying Dark and Brooding



Normal Look

What I've Been Reading

Killer Instinct, Zoe Sharp (2001) I dearly love badass women and Charlie Fox certainly suits that bill. A self-defense instructor in Lancaster England that gets that gets caught up in the mystery surrounding a serial killer. Killer instinct is straight forward mystery and action that reminds me of the kind of fun that I had reading Lee Child or John McDonald. Killer Instinct is actually the first book in the series which has only recently been released in the US. I am pretty sure I will be reading the rest of them.

Pygmy, Chuck Palahniuk (2009) Pygmy is narrated by a foreign exchange student who has come to America as part of a covert plot to strike a blow against America. The language and the cadence of the narrative was initially a little off-putting. But once I got past that I found the book an increasingly funny look at our modern American society from the perspective of someone coming from a completely different ideology. A number of Pygmy's observations were uncomfortably spot on.

Choke, Chuck Palahniuk (2001) I didn’t like this one nearly as much as I enjoyed Pygmy. The humor was there, but a little more uneven and the story seemed to wander a little bit towards the end. There were elements of Palahniuk’s best work present; they just never seemed to come together. I think Choke was my least favorite Palahniuk book.

Jo Nesbø

Having millions of readers is not dramatically different from having a few thousand; you still have to write books and you still wake up in the morning being your own boss, deciding whether you want to get up. -Jo Nesbø (cnn)

The Weekend Finally

I took this picture of the sky yesterday as I was sitting in traffic on the way from from work Friday afternoon. It was gourgous out, but I was not feeling any lifting of my spirits from those beautiful blue skies.  It had been a long week. I was hoping to come home and get some things done, but was just too tired and frazzled. I settled for cooking some burgers, eating, then laying down and listening to the Braves game. I am not a big baseball fan, but I do find listening to games on the radio very relaxing. I certainly did last night, I fell asleep almost immediatley. (Hey, they won!) I don't even think that I feed the cat last night, she was looking at me fairly indignantly this morning when I woke up.

A friend posted this link on Facebook this morning, a TED video of performance poet Sarah Keyes which got my mind started on the right note. It's a little uneven, but there are bits of it I really like. A few clicks later I found an even more talk on TED, Steve Job's Stanford University graduation speech on How to Live Before You Die where he talks about having the faith to follow your heart and how you should wake up everyone morning, look in the mirror, and ask yourself if what you were going to do today would be what you would do if you knew if it was the last day of your life, and if your answer to that was no too many days in a row you had better make changes. He talked about how dropping out of school freed him to learn and how being fired from Apple opened up so many other doors. It's definately worth a listen.

I've had coffee with friends this morning to get the weekend off to a good start and have been spending most of the day relearning CSS and XHTML and have started delving into ASP.NET and C#. I'm thinking of making it a goal to become a training and educational web guru. And if that doesn't work out, maybe I can just become a web lackey, sell the house, move to Seattle, and spend my life biking between coffee houses.

Tonight I'm looking forward hearing my extremely talented friend Rheba perform at Ragamuffin Hall's during their open mic night tonight.

I have a couple of hours before heading out for dinner and music. Think I will spend it hitting the book again or maybe brushing up on my Gratuitous Space Battles skills.

focus

I am not saying that I am easily distractable, but I was having some yogurt and thinking that I needed to write an entry about budgeting my time and attention because I not making near the progress on several projects that I want. I had gotten as far as typing in a title and had a bite of Fage Greek Yogurt. I thought to myself the Acai Berries flavor was pretty good so I went out on the Internet to see what kind of plant Acai Berries grew on and if you could grow them in Georgia and it was not until several minutes later I realized I had started this entry and immediately abandoned it. For the record, no you cannot grow them in Georgia or anywhere else the temperature regularly gets below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

So with the overload of projects both work and personal I realized that I need to be pretty serious choosing what I am going to focus my brain on at any given moment for the foreseeable future and budget my time carefully. There is so much I want to do, to learn, to explore, and experience and time seems so limited!

Cloning seems like an approach, but I think there are a couple of cautionary sci-fi stories out there about that.

Jonathan Lethem Writing Quote

Waking up every day totally baffled, that's the condition of the novelist. I don't know what I'm doing today, I must be doing the right thing.Jonathan Lethem

Royal Wedding

Didn't intend to watch it. Was only vaguely aware when it was happening. Ended up watching it.

Such a lovely, marvelous occasion. It was like watching human beings at their very best. All that emotion in England, I felt a little jealous being an observer and not a participant.

The ceremony was pretty close to my ideal wedding. At least the first bit, I confess I had to leave for work long before it was over.

I loved the St Catherine's quote used in the service, "Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire."

That's a tall order to try to live up to.

Sent from my iPhone from MARTA's Red Line

Glimpse

Every now and then
I will catch a glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
My life as it was meant
Like walking past a television
Having a shock of recognition
Before someone flips channels

Sent from my iPhone

Fragment

I am on the train
the sun rises over the city
glinting off the glass tower
like a promise
no hint of the afternoon rains

Sent from my iPhone

Monday

Monday

Monday here. Sleep is all messed up from staying up very late on Saturday night. I had the opportunity to visit a friend that I don't get to see much and also to have my head crammed full of web development, dot.net, asp, and C# goodness. I felt like my head was going to explode. In a good way. Didn't get home until about two am and made the mistake of getting up and going out for coffee and then breakfast with friends the next day. I tried to nap a bit, didn't really work. And my sleep was all off Sunday night as well. It's Monday morning and I still have to get my head straight.

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am not going to get anything accomplished on my ongoing projects today which is frustrating. I will have the chance to show up and be of service and be useful, for which I am grateful. Still I will be anxiously awaiting Tuesday when I can get back to the fun stuff.

I have a full to do list going right now and I am not making as much progress as I would like. I need to just take it one day at a time and keep my feet moving forward. It will all get done eventually if I keep that forward momentum going.

windy night

A big storm rolled in about 11:30 PM. After it blew through the rest of the night was punctuated by random gusts of heavy wind. I wasn't particularly grateful a year ago when I moved into my new house that the first thing my home owners insurance company did was to make me take down an huge, menacing, and mostly dead tree. But after a night like last night, I gotta say, it was a relief knowing that tree wasn't in the front yard.

It was odd. The heavy winds woke me several times during the night, but I awoke feeling particularly refreshed, and even, optimistic. I cannot help but think that the somehow blew some cobwebs out of my mind and spirit. It feels good.

After talking to a coworker yesterday, I decided to get back on the MARTA wagon, or more literally the MARTA train. This time around however, I am not going to catch the bus in front of my house, I am going to drive the few miles down the road to the Inman Park Station. This should cut at least a half hour to forty five minutes off the MARTA only option.

My reward to myself once I get back in shape and lose the excess weight that I am carrying around is to buy a fixed gear bike and use it to get between my house and the train station and on the other end, between the Dunwoody Station and my job.

I did stop by Starbucks to have a latte, surf the Internet, and get a little work done. It's a decent walk from Starbucks to the office. The broken little toe is much better, although still tender. I have become considerably more careful walking around my house, particularly in the dark. I expect this to last for a little while before I forget how painful a broken toe is anyway. 

no power

Wow, sitting in the dark at 6 AM with the power off and no Internet. I feel very unplugged. Although, I do have my iPhone sitting on the shelf next to me and I have already updated my Facebook status with the power outage, so how unplugged am I really. Then there is the matter that I am sitting here typing on a laptop with far more computational power than was used to land man on the moon.  I think I need to do a little more work on my unplugging, although in fairness, this was not a planned period of unplugging. I keep meaning to do one of those, just 24 hours worth, but life has not been cooperating with that.

I suppose given that all the power is out and I cannot really work as m project is on my desktop which is quietly cooling off in the dark corner, I could use this time to meditate. I have the guided meditation on my phone and I know where my ear buds are. It’s the perfect time to get it out of the way if I can get over the distraction that the power could come on at any second. Let’s give it a try.

Okay, I am back and feeling very… oh what is the word I looking for? Self-congratulatory that I took advantage of the power outage and made good use of the time. Okay, now I am ready for the power to come back on. I am waiting. Well I guess the universe has other plans for the time being. It’s still dark outside and honestly I am not sure exactly what time the sun comes up. I think I have awhile.

The cat seems undeterred in wandering around the house in the dark. It’s making the most interesting noises. If this was the end of a horror story instead of a blog entry, I would now end with “at least, I think that’s the cat...”

Okay, really, what part of lights action camera are you not getting?

So, after some more sitting in the dark our intrepid young hero decided to keep his momentums going even without power. Noticing that the sky was just beginning to lighten and one of his resolutions was to get more exercise he decided that a brisk walk was in order. By the time he returned, the power still wasn’t on. With web based training class approaching and no internet connection, our hero jumped into the shower, jumped into the car, and hightailed it to work. (With a brief diversion to Starbucks.)

Quote of the Day

"Fortunately from the outside most people can’t tell rapid exploitation of a belatedly recognized opportunity from deep laid planning." Miles Vorkosigan via Lois McMaster Bujold (Komarr)

thought for the day

"Aim high, you may still miss the target but at least you won't shoot your foot off" Eli Quinn via Miles Vorkosigan via Lois McMaster Bujold (Komarr)

coffee song

where's the coffee
cause i need it hot and black
i got have my coffee
or i'm not coming back

i mean last night was nice
and all, i had a great time
you really are amazing and
i think you blew my mind

but morning is here now
and i gotta get to work
just tell me where you keep your beans
i'm not trying to be a jerk

sorry, i just can't get awake
and i just can't face the day
my brain's is on overload
i'm not sure what to say

it's cause i haven't had my coffee
and the wheels just won't turn
i gotta have my coffee
this truth you should learn

so brew me that coffee
make it hot and black
if you just brew me that coffee
you know i'll be back

cause life without coffee
isn't something i want to know
cause if i cann't have my coffee
damn it, i'd rather be alone

so you work in a coffee shop
sorry i was a jerk
i would like to make it up to you
maybe walk you to work?