Almost ready to write

A recap of the weekend and this morning's events and then maybe we can move on to the thoughts for the day.

On Saturday Erica and I, well what did we do, as I try andwrap my mind around the memories that seem to disappear with every passing breath I must ask myself where do they go, into what crevice and vacuum of neurological cul-de-sacs do my memories disappear to so quickly? It seems sometimes that I attempt to rember the most recent events in my life and all of a sudden they fly like so many wisps of smoke through a spring gale, invisible in a second to the casting of my eyes and thoughts. But back to the moment rather than these reminating broken smashings. On Friday I was so relieved to be done with my long day, and wound up and irritated and picked up my bicycle from the shop where they had delivered my front fork from its misery and replaced it with a two short, wrong color, quite ugly shrunken imposter of a fork. This put me in a pretty bad mood, which I allowed to continue and fester even while questioning the actual cause and root of the problem, of which I still don't know, but which I'm past. But the question of what I did on Saturday is finally answered, I gues I had to go a little farther back in my thoughts to recycle the sequence of events.

On Saturday Erica and i had a big day of Diamond shopping. Nervousness built upon nervousness as we circled the boston downtown financial district in a vain attempt to find cheap parking close to the main event. We finally settled on a metered spot near the theatres we'd gotten to know earlier in the year and settled into a long walk down the blustery streets of downtown boston. The wind shot down the rigid window-clad cliffs surrounding each avenue and upon hitting the ground, turned sharply to marshal its energy for a frontal assault on our poorly prepared clothing. We made our way down the vortex and finally found ourselves at the rather unassuming village of 333 Washington St, where the diamond gnomes of Boston live. Into it we ventured, nervous and excited where we ventured into the first shop on the second floor and attempted to figure out how diamond experts were going to treat us. Turns out pretty shabbily, but not the worst in the world, definitely salesmen, but we managed to get past the diamond sellers own nervous facades and foudna few genuine laughs. Unfortunately Erica found out that 1 carat stones are actually quite nice in size and so the whole purchase took a fairly large jump skywards. We later went up to the 7th floor after evacuating the bright lights of the first shop and found in there a far more receptive audience for our questions. They showed us some more stones, I managed to bring the size into a more manageable price range, but unfortunately using my ideal-scope I didn't find any stones that matched the level of intensity I was expecting and hoping to see. Maybe with a little work and some searching I can find some specimens a little closer to my goals. So saturday was good.

Sunday we went on a long ride after checking out the grocery store Russo's Market, finally getting some plants to place on our deck and finding that while nice, the market probably wasn't going to work out for us now that we've signed up for the Boston Organics. The ride was excellent and Solon, while a little bit of a brat for part of it, still managed to be quite cute...

Free Association for Harvard Essay

Dramatized by my complete lack of motivation, or rather, lack of direction. Here we go.

Throughout history the ideas and management of security have motivated the restructuring of man's landscape. From medieval forts, castles and villages to modern day corporate environments and enclosed estates, the need for a secure built environment often supersedes aesthetics and

WEll this certainly isn't working right now

Plan of action

So it seems every good project has to start with a good plan. I seem to realize this but never seem to follow through, so here goes following through. Here's the main goal, getting into Harvard for Landscape Architecture by putting together a fabulous portfolio by December. I have two secondary goals; to lose weight while becoming fit, and to make Erica happy. Each goal requires daily dedication, time-management and sacrifices. I guess the problem up until now have been the amount of sacrifices I've been willing to make. My main issue with working out and doing work in the morning is my tendency to become tired. In fact, we will call Sleep my Keystone (the defining feature by which my days will determine themselves), without which I give myself excuse after excuse. In order to eliminate this I have to plan my day around a proper sleep schedule. I have determined that to be in bed attempting to fall asleep between 9:30 and 10:00pm, and waking up at 5am. As my fitness increases over the next few months, my need for sleep will decrease.

As far as my Landscape Architecture portfolio goals have come, I'm falling far short of them all, I have yet to find a volunteer opportunity, write an essay, draw a still life, or draw many trees. I also have fallen off studying every day and need to resume this practice. Basically I need to surround myself with the profession, as if I were already in it. To do this I've determined I need daily study and drawing along with daily work on a pet project to build other skills within the discipline while providing a monthly design addition to my portfolio. This has been difficult for me to do lately, and I need to get back on the horse.

For the Landscape Architecture daily time budgeting I would like three hours;

5-7am Design & Drawing - Take Solon with me on morning explorations with pen and pad or camera
6:30-7:30 Study work

This would mean returning home a little before 8pm, of which time I will spend with Erica until 9:30 when I prepare for bed. In order to supplement my learning/study/thought time, I will do much of my blogging of the information gained from the morning between the 10-12 hours of my work, when there is not much going on. Unfortunately I will not have much access to the photos or sketches I have, but as I can see here, there's a lot to think about so hopefully daily logging of these thoughts will lead to a greater ability to elucidate my ideas and transmit them internally and externally. Writing and drawing everyday should be very good for both sides of the brain.



Right now on my Portfolio list of things to do we have the following;

February - LA Volunteer Opportunity, Essay
March - Still Life Drawing
April - Tree Drawing, Garden
May - Landscape Drawing,
June - Photography Project
July - Photography Project
August - 3D Wooden Modeling, 3D Landscape Model
September - 3D digital Model, CAD Model
October - 3D CAD Landscape
November - Calligraphy & Chinese Art Painting
December - Create Portfolio Website and Submit Application

Right now I'm behind, but not by very far, and I've worked on each of the projects I need to finish, I just have to set deadlines to get them done. Tomorrow morning between 8-10 I will write the essay, and this weekend I will do a still life, although I'm not sure if I should consider my art class as counting for that. Once again, the key to all this is waking up early and getting to sleep early. My priority is the Landscape Architecture goal, then comes Erica, then comes the fitness.

What should a standard day look like;

5am - wakeup - leave with Solon and go exploring, taking notes, pictures and making sketches of what I see
7am - Breakfast
8am - Gym for a swim or bike workout
9am - sauna for flexibility training
10am - Blog about the mornings experiences and thoughts
12pm - Work (if any), relax and chat online
1pm - Run or Crossfit
2pm - Work
4pm - Research
5pm - Erica
6pm - Study
8pm - Dinner
10pm - Sleep

Yep, If I can do that, I'll be a happy man, I might need to throw in another hour of sleep at night some days, but I'm definitely making sleep my anchor keystone. Lets see how it works, I'm going to make it work

To be continued... who knows where the thoughts will be when i come back to this one.

Back on top of the world?

A query goes out to all of those interested in finding themselves outside the vacuum of life. A dream of unlimited possibility but one which is imminently graspable by those of us who know but where to look. What may that be, in the most prosiac of tones, but a glance into the future without blinders on.

I find myself confronted daily with the quandary that is my organization. On the one hand confronting the desperate need for leadership on the issue of familial homelessness and early childhood development in Massachusetts. On the other hand, to continue borrowing this coined phrase, forever dealing with a tug of war within this household, not so much of budget, but of responsibility, with people refusing to share or refusing to help. In my office at least there is a lack of adequete utilization of the resources of the many talented people at hand. Following an extensive and difficult interview process, people are then given leave to sit on their laurels while following the minute dictates of their superiors. While safe, this does not lend itself to an expansion of organizational autonomy (which I will define as actively trying to come up with creative solutions to the problems facing the organization). I think there is a plethora of information and best practices out there that the people with more time on their hands should be encouraged and rewarded for pursuing. However, the current stagnation persists, with the directives from above continuing to stifle the initiative from below.

A new life of fun and dumb

It seems I've found myself at the genesis of a new stage of my life. And I like it, so I might as well be creative about writing the story of it, rather than giving some wordy, overly descriptive version of the true facts, I think its better to embellish the truth first, and then overly wordify/describify the process by which I've arrived at the step which I'm about to take.... So to begin.

Naturally the night was dark and stormy, the gods throwing down their merciless wrath to strike down human and hobbit alike, allowing no creature to stir from the twisted leaf strewn world of the dreaded land of Boston. I ventured out into the maelstrom, dedicated to bringing back a grizzly bear for dinner, or at least some McDonald's fries. Walking and walking, past tortured forests and gnarly trees bent beyond ordinary belief into the weird, Poe-shapes often seen during figure skating competitions. No one knew my intent, nor really did I, but as a living breathing procrastinator of great ingenuitity and honest deception, I refused to let the lack of planning and followthrough hamper my quest. Shortly after hopping over a plague stricken child and narrowly avoiding a couple dueling zombies, I arrived at the summit of my journey. Of course, now being here, I realized I forgot to bring all money, change, credit, and was forced to barter with the elf standing behind the counter. I ended up relieving myself of an old 4lb wad of granite I found while invading Mongolia. Long story.

Truly, I must admit, it is only after I left with my choice selection of overprocessed fat when I discovered myself in a new land. Only a second ago, Ronald was high fiving me and I was skipping down the street, now, I'm thinking. Totally unprepared for this revelation, I stop eating the fries in order to see if these were the catalyst forcing such an epidemic pox upon my brain.

Soon after, three days later, I decided to compete in the Kentucky Ironman next August, where I will test my command of random idea exposure against people who only want to swim, run, and smoke the rubber my tires leave in their wake.

112 miles of biking, but at least thats after the 2.4 miles of swimming. And luckily I can finish all that before the 26.2 mile full marathon. Ha, craziness is for fools with chicken wings. Lunacy will get you in far more trouble.

A new life of fun and dumb

It seems I've found myself at the genesis of a new stage of my life. And I like it, so I might as well be creative about writing the story of it, rather than giving some wordy, overly descriptive version of the true facts, I think its better to embellish the truth first, and then overly wordify/describify the process by which I've arrived at the step which I'm about to take.... So to begin.

Naturally the night was dark and stormy, the gods throwing down their merciless wrath to strike down human and hobbit alike, allowing no creature to stir from the twisted leaf strewn world of the dreaded land of Boston. I ventured out into the maelstrom, dedicated to bringing back a grizzly bear for dinner, or at least some McDonald's fries. Walking and walking, past tortured forests and gnarly trees bent beyond ordinary belief into the weird, Poe-shapes often seen during figure skating competitions. No one knew my intent, nor really did I, but as a living breathing procrastinator of great ingenuitity and honest deception, I refused to let the lack of planning and followthrough hamper my quest. Shortly after hopping over a plague stricken child and narrowly avoiding a couple dueling zombies, I arrived at the summit of my journey. Of course, now being here, I realized I forgot to bring all money, change, credit, and was forced to barter with the elf standing behind the counter. I ended up relieving myself of an old 4lb wad of granite I found while invading Mongolia. Long story.

Truly, I must admit, it is only after I left with my choice selection of overprocessed fat when I discovered myself in a new land. Only a second ago, Ronald was high fiving me and I was skipping down the street, now, I'm thinking. Totally unprepared for this revelation, I stop eating the fries in order to see if these were the catalyst forcing such an epidemic pox upon my brain.

Soon after, three days later, I decided to compete in the Kentucky Ironman next August, where I will test my command of random idea exposure against people who only want to swim, run, and smoke the rubber my tires leave in their wake.

112 miles of biking, but at least thats after the 2.4 miles of swimming. And luckily I can finish all that before the 26.2 mile full marathon. Ha, craziness is for fools with chicken wings. Lunacy will get you in far more trouble.

A new goal

Time flies by in its many intricate patterns and each second leaves the heavy imprint of a weightless barrier never to return. I’ve found the goals in my life, reemerging once again from the static confusion of my indefinable choices. Yet now I’ve chosen, and to follow these to the end will require the willpower I’ve always desired.

So the real reason I've started writing this is to put my goals and choices in the public eye, at least relatively so, and to keep track of my progress and thoughts until I can complete it, while at the same time writing and loosening the stream of thought which seems to be blocked up with inordinate amounts of flotsam for whatever particular reason.

I'm going to compete in an Ironman in 303 days. I haven't swam in years, 2.4 miles of that, the most I've run is 8 miles probably, I'll have to run 26.2. And while I've done a century, a couple in fact, its been 2 years and I have 112 miles to go on that weekday. I'll need to drop weight and then drop more weight, and then drop even more weight. And the problem is, a lot of the weight I need to drop is now muscle, so I basically have to shed muscle, the non core ones, which may mean under nutrition and over work to get some of the muscles to eat themselves and rebuild harder. That will probably be the most difficult, but I want to get to 165 and right now I'm at 205. And I want to do it by my birthday. I need to save 5 grand, for hotel, for a new tri bike, for a wetsuit, and probably by then, some new running shoes, and all the appropriate gear in between. But I will prevail, for this is my goal, contingent solely upon me. All the way in, no backing out. This is my goal

Time flies by in its many intricate patterns and each second leaves the heavy imprint of a weightless barrier never to return. I’ve found the goals in my life, reemerging once again from the static confusion of my indefinable choices. Yet now I’ve chosen, and to follow these to the end will require the willpower I’ve always desired.

So the real reason I've started writing this is to put my goals and choices in the public eye, at least relatively so, and to keep track of my progress and thoughts until I can complete it, while at the same time writing and loosening the stream of thought which seems to be blocked up with inordinate amounts of flotsam for whatever particular reason.

I'm going to compete in an Ironman in 303 days. I haven't swam in years, 2.4 miles of that, the most I've run is 8 miles probably, I'll have to run 26.2. And while I've done a century, a couple in fact, its been 2 years and I have 112 miles to go on that weekday. I'll need to drop weight and then drop more weight, and then drop even more weight. And the problem is, a lot of the weight I need to drop is now muscle, so I basically have to shed muscle, the non core ones, which may mean under nutrition and over work to get some of the muscles to eat themselves and rebuild harder. That will probably be the most difficult, but I want to get to 165 and right now I'm at 205. And I want to do it by my birthday. I need to save 5 grand, for hotel, for a new tri bike, for a wetsuit, and probably by then, some new running shoes, and all the appropriate gear in between. But I will prevail, for this is my goal, contingent solely upon me. All the way in, no backing out. This is my goal

Time flies by in its many intricate patterns and each second leaves the heavy imprint of a weightless barrier never to return. I’ve found the goals in my life, reemerging once again from the static confusion of my indefinable choices. Yet now I’ve chosen, and to follow these to the end will require the willpower I’ve always desired.

So the real reason I've started writing this is to put my goals and choices in the public eye, at least relatively so, and to keep track of my progress and thoughts until I can complete it, while at the same time writing and loosening the stream of thought which seems to be blocked up with inordinate amounts of flotsam for whatever particular reason.

I'm going to compete in an Ironman in 303 days. I haven't swam in years, 2.4 miles of that, the most I've run is 8 miles probably, I'll have to run 26.2. And while I've done a century, a couple in fact, its been 2 years and I have 112 miles to go on that weekday. I'll need to drop weight and then drop more weight, and then drop even more weight. And the problem is, a lot of the weight I need to drop is now muscle, so I basically have to shed muscle, the non core ones, which may mean under nutrition and over work to get some of the muscles to eat themselves and rebuild harder. That will probably be the most difficult, but I want to get to 165 and right now I'm at 205. And I want to do it by my birthday. I need to save 5 grand, for hotel, for a new tri bike, for a wetsuit, and probably by then, some new running shoes, and all the appropriate gear in between. But I will prevail, for this is my goal, contingent solely upon me. All the way in, no backing out. This is my goal

Almost ready

Seems all the time spent thinking inbetween thoughts finally may come to fruition in a unswervingly violent explosion of applause and yells of "encore." What could I mean, well, you'd have to be further inside my head than I am to figure that out, but at least I have a path with feet to walk on... and at least a few steps visible from my angle.

Life is good

The new big thing

So I got my LSAT tomorrow, I couldn't sleep last night, but I woke up late today and I think I'm back on track, but forget about all that, it'll come as it comes and I'm going for the relaxed approach (except for the slightly tightening features of my chest).

Erica and I have decided to train for a triathlon (or ironman) by the same time next year, with the intent of getting back in shape after two months of good living but sloppy body management. So we decided to get back on track and kill ourselves with exercise. My new heart rate monitor is the shit, although it only confirms my out of shape speculations, but whats interesting, is that even though I'm in the lowest shape on their internal software program, I don't feel that bad and my heart rate stayed reasonable while working out yesterday. Still, I'm a far cry from my boxing/yoga days. Just gives me a pretty good goal. Drop 30-40lbs in a year, and transform the rest into lean muscle. WHy not... Need to get back in the blog writing zone, maybe that will help as a... yeah, stimulant or something.

I think I'm the worst at returning calls

Its bad because I want to, briefly, return a few calls everyday. But I don't. The thing about returning calls is its a process that's made easier and easier by these goddamn cell phone companies until finally its become a worthless endeavor that means virtually nothing. It used to be you had to first have someone there to answer the phone in the first place, then write down the number, then lose the slip of paper, then find the slip of paper, then try and get the rotary spots in the right positions, or find a pay phone, for which you would need a quarter, not to mention everytime you tried it'd be pouring down rain or someone would be already standing in the booth, then you'd have to refind the number, attempt to make sense of the now smeared numberline, guess at a couple and talk to two to three strangers before actually getting a hold of the person you wanted to. And that's just to let them know you're coming home for dinner.

Now, the msg waits for you, then you have the option to hit a clearly marked number to return the phone call without ever hanging up, after which crystal clear reception no matter where you are lets you connect instantaneously. It sickens me and makes me want to start a revolution. Again

Setting up the new life

Just had this awesome idea... well now it can be nothing but a letdown when further explored and put into some sort of critiqueable form, but here goes. Taking a online recipe site like epicurious and then putting the recipes into a weekly file that are also crossreferenced by type of food or something, although this may not be necessary with the advances in harddrive search engines, but I guess the question should be if I should be writing this by hand and putting it into a circular deck just for ease of access or should I go full digital. The nice thing about the digital is that I could put it on a palm pilot and then use it whereever I am, but the roller deck preserves antiquited, kind of nice methods of cooking and is probably easier to use, not to mention more safe in a recipe flashing, food flying sort of area. To ponder to ponder

maybe I'm not quite sober...

Well, after India ended, I broke down and found that I love Seattle perhaps a little bit more than I ever thought possible. And I'm leaving Tuesday. But thats ok, because all I have are good thoughts for the future being helped with thoughts by my friend Dave, who may or may not be the coolest dude out of Wyoming...ever. THERE'S NO FUCKING COWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In any case, don't read this if you shouldn't be reading this.

Something to tlak about

Well, given the crappy job I've done keeping my blog updated, and the general mishmash of material floating around in my head, I figured I'd try and dissect and defragment it through a long email recapping the various adventures I may or may not have had for the past one month. As I'm leaving in just a couple days, now seems as good a time as ever.

One month ago, after tearfully waving goodbye to the children who have added sunshine to my life for the past 10 months, I hopped on a train alone to that fantastic paradise of beaches and (even brighter) sunshine. I arrived in the Goa region and promptly got ripped off by a motorcycle taxi who dropped me off at the bus stand... the completely opposite bus stand from where I needed to be, before jumping back on his bike, a fairly significant feat given his size and the bike's size, and speeding away before I could hit him. This anger was only inflamed when I remember the previous warnings I had told my friend Norm (arriving soon) to not trust anyone, ever, especially when they speak english. Luckily anger and stubbornness guided me past dark alleys through which in the flickering light drunken indian men, bastard rickshaw drivers (also drunk) and the normal cow and packs of stray dogs could be seen... a few feet away. I finally find another motorcycle taxi willing to take me to the nearest beach, negotiate a cheap room and leave only asking for a little extra baksheesh. Dinner was fairly bad, but edible and conversation was good, so I consider my time at Benaulim well spent.

Finally arriving in Palolem after a short 2 hour bus ride, I begin searching for my friends through marginally skin frying sand, slipping and sliding up the beach with my 40lb rucksack and a nice "home" feeling. They spot me, we get together, start drinking, Norm comes up behind me, taps me on the shoulder, manly pats on the back, more drinks ordered, tapped glasses, repeated realizations of the fact its been over two years, friendly and then pleasantly violent bickering begins (he's leaving soon so hopefully it will end). I'm happy.

We hang out listening to music played by my new friend Karl, always a very good name for a new friend, on his classical guitar while Norm bumped his fingers against a taut canvas sheet shaped like a drum, well. This went on and on while we lazed in the sun, until finally people started dropping off like flies for their own separate adventures, until just Norm and I were left, walking through the sand at another beach, Anjuna, at 4am after having failed to find the rumored rave hyped up earlier in the day. While walking, the wind shifts and my party spider sense picks up the faintest whisper of a heavy trance beat, somewhere to the left. Naturally I turn away from the well lit beach, well lit streets and rather comfortable surroundings of a quiet beach town, to begin my trek through rather dense fields, past dimly lit houses and the occasional vicious looking barking dog, following that deeper and deeper bass note. Norm angrily follows, I smile to myself, but keep a couple extra feet in between the two of us knowing that he's carrying a rather wicked looking sickle knife and was still angry over talking to one of the most ignorant people in the world earlier that night. Low and behold, after only 6km of barefoot walking through every terrain you could possibly imagine, we arrive at a scene from a Jennifer Lopez or Madonna video, with orange and green laser lights flickering against silhouetted trees, 100-200 people laying around carpeted flat areas smoking who knows what while another 2-300 danced to a deep deep bass that as you know, could be heard from the beach, quite a ways away. As we arrived at 4am, we had to put our good faith time in, I danced while norm flirted, and by the time we left, the 8am sun was beating down on our heads with a rather frenetic energy, only matched by the crowd of undulated half naked people dancing to the beat of a song that showed no signs of slowing.

Enter Recovery for two days.

After finding our way up to Mumbai (bombay) we ate mcdonalds, watched Syriana, went to some TGIFriday's ripoff, and got on a train later that night. It was ok.

A pretty short 7 hours later we departed the train, barged into a hotel lobby at 4am after fending off rickshaw mosquitoes (risquitoes), and then I was denied the chance to barter for the room by Norm's inconvenient collapsing onto the bed, probably for the best as it was only 5$ a night and the guys actually let us into this place.

From this town, Aurangabad, we went to these ancient, 2-3000 years old caves which we climbed on, profaned to a small degree, and then found that if you go up a river bank, you leave settled areas and have trouble finding your way back in the dark. This email is testament to our finding our way back, not being slowly eaten by bandits, and not having offended the gods too much with missplaced feet. To our dismay, the caves we were heading to the next day were closed, and so the first of many travel plan changes went into effect. There were no direct buses to our next destination, so we got on an 9 hour suspensionless sleeper bus ride to Indore (allowing us to bounce higher and for longer times than any well tensioned trampoline), which broke down at 5am, from there we transferred to an already crowded much smaller bus which we sat on for 20 min Indian Standard Time (2 1/2 hours in the rest of the world). This was fun. Then we jumped on another bus for only 4 hours and we were in Bhopal, where we promptly found out you couldn't leave because it was one of the holiest days in the Indian calendar (Holi, a week or so of multicolored hand grenades being thrown at anything that moves, only slightly toxic). So we're stuck, we go to the zoo, check out some tigers (not as big as you'd think, though still hungry looking), walk around, begin another period of unabridged laziness, finally get to Sanchi the next day, the stated reason for stopping in Bhopal, enjoy a thunderstorm in a leaking bus, go back to sleep, leave Bhopal on our way to Khajaruho.

If you have trouble imagining a city of temples totally dedicated to the act of wild orgiastic sex, then you should visit this town and complex of history. Internet sites get shut down for some of the stuff they prettily carved on those walls, as there are discerning readers on this list, I wont go into details, but man o man...

From there we went to Varanasi on a 15 hour public government bus. To describe this ride would take far more energy than I could possibly exhume from my body. To describe it with the sick stomach I had from eating too much fried food, might kill me. The town of Varanasi is nice, if you like cows (and their byproducts) shoved into spaces only wide enough for the cows (and their byproducts), or if you don't mind the occasional burning (or not so burning) body floating down the most disgusting water you've ever seen, which the average citizen of Varanasi is frolicking around in. Otherwise you may have problems.

Then we went to the mountains, those being the Himalayas of great fame and fortune, of which neither is enough to possibly describe their beauty and splendor. Absolutely amazing. Naturally our plans didn't work out exactly as planned. After another 12 hour sleeper bus ride in which no sleep was had because of the continual precipice-lined roads we were swinging around at much greater than safe speeds, we arrive in Manali, or in translation, Paradise. I'll leave the description of that and the Dalai Lama for later, because I have to go meet friends, but I'll be home soon and I hope anybody worried about me stops, because it looks like I'm making it through this here trip all right (finding my peice of wood to knock on).