That was just a dream, I thought you were real

I got up early yesterday, had to make it to work by 7 for this off site testing that we've been conducting all week. Huge snowstorm last night - about 3-4 inches of snow on the roads, Lake Shore was ok, all of the other streets I have to drive were unplowed. The minute I stepped out the door I immediately thought of K. and N. and felt sorry I wasn't around to help them get ready. Did my testing, once testing was over I desperately needed coffee but forgot to bring cash to buy coffee at the cafeteria, so I had to put my coat on, go back outside, and drive to Starbucks in the snowstorm for a venti coffee and a biscotti. That's how serious I am about my coffee. I worked on a fix for another project that took about five lines of code, then coasted the rest of the day. Slow day, J. and P. had work from home days. Hung out with P. and D., talking about music. I think I surprised them with the breadth of my knowledge as I don't really come off as the 'raging hipster' to people I work with, but I've been a huge lifelong music fan. Filled out my weekly project summary report and submitted it, drove home listening to my iPod, and played around with K. and N. for a little while. K. cleaned the house while I got groceries at Trader Joe's for the next 4 days, worked out at the Y (ran 2.5 miles), and picked up a set of pics at Walgreens. Afterwards, I made dinner (chili lime chicken, wild rice dish, blue cheese/cranberry/almond salad with vinagrette, these toasted mushroom things as an appetizer, dessert of sliced pears and Weight Watchers ice cream bars. We watched a documentary on autistic children while I practiced acoustic guitar for two hours. I've been playing around with songs in the open C tuning lately. Then we went to bed - K. read N. a bedtime story, then we watched videos on youtube for a while until K. went to sleep and I eventually dozed off. A really good day. Today we have auntie C's birthday party at 8, which should be fun.

I never saw it coming, waiting for something for nothing

Facebook is blowing my mind. Ever since I reconnected with A. all of these ancient people from when I was barely older than N. have come out of the woodwork. I just received a friend request from a woman who I used to go to preschool with, our parents used to carpool. It has been almost 30 years since I last saw her. I had a crush on her all through grade school and high school, I used to walk her home from school all the time - and now look at us, we're middle aged, with our own children. It's actually sort of wonderful - and yet I think about all the things that have happened over the years, and am overcome with sadness and regret over the past.

Wash away what we create, my sins like funny calls you make

I've been slowly transferring all the (hundreds of) DVD's I've burned over the years onto my new TB hard drive. I've been rediscovering so much good music that I thought I had lost. Probably the most amazing thing that I found that nearly sent me jumping up and down was this disk with a backup copy of my Master's thesis. It's a full accounting program done in Swing and CORBA, I spent so long on it and was nearly heartbroken when my old computer crashed and thought I had lost the only copy. What a great find, this is definitely going back on the 'software samples' disk I sent out with my resume. Another random thing I thought of: somehow in conversation with my parents, my dad's yearly salary was revealed. It was a lot, but it was smaller than I expected it to be. I'm not saying this is how my parents live, but I think a lot of people out there just leverage good credit to maintain the appearance of being more successful than they really are. My entire adult life, I've thought that my dad made almost double than what he actually made annually. Why did I overestimate that, when doctor's salaries are pretty guessable by even my wife.

Radiohead - House Of Cards

Song of the moment, spent the past couple days listening to In Rainbows while running errands in a snowstorm, and shoveling my car out of snow. Radiohead are a great band, I don't know why I ever lose faith in them. Hail To The Thief was a minor let down but then they come out with In Rainbows, which was unexpectedly great. Spent some time last week watching all the Scotch Mist and the Live From the Basement performances, both awesome.


Radiohead - House Of Cards

In the world so many useless bodies, so much traffic

New Years Eve passed quietly, we kept my dad company in the hospital, then I went home to cook dinner for K. The next day we took N. shopping at Water Tower Place, I think it was her first time shopping downtown, she loved all the people and lights. Sunday of the first weekend of the year, I spent running errands for my mom, who was preparing for my dad to come home from the hospital - I had to run back and forth from Home Depot to get some supplies for this shelving system she was building with my uncle to surprise my dad upon his return. K. stayed home with N., preparing for her first day back at school. K. has been working out a lot lately, I'm pretty happy about that, it will be interesting to see my wife when she's back in her triathalon shape. I remember being very stressed out and anxious that weekend, but trying to keep it inside, as I've described previously in my journal. I think everyone in my family was on edge, waiting for my dad's test results to come back from the hospital. They finally came back the day I went back to work - I got a call from my mom at work, she told me that they found some more cancer in my dad's body, that this was due to his anti-rejection drugs after his heart transplant, and that he has to see an oncologist now and will most probably need chemo. I still don't know how to deal with this piece of information myself - I'm worried for my dad, he's already been through so much with all the operations he's had in the past year, I don't know how he'll manage to go through chemo. I'm worried for my mom. There's a real possibility that my time with my dad is very limited, and yet I still don't communicate with him very well. I think about my long and convoluted relationship with my dad - all our disagreements over the years, all the times I've let him down as a son, and I get so choked up. It feels like nothing I can do now will ever make up for all the bad times. And yet our relationship has been improving so much the past few years. I try my best to show him that I love him, hopefully he knows that. Hopefully he looks at the baby granddaughter every day when she's staying at his house and knows that I love him.

Friendly Fires - Paris (Aeroplane Remix)

I downloaded the Pitchfork top 100 of 2008, I've basically had that playlist on 'random' for a week and a half now. My wife's sort of scratching her head that I'm listening to so much disco lately, hehe. This has been the big song of the past couple of nights, I really like this band - sort of a really slick, dancey, indy British band. This remix is killer - reminds me of St. Etienne.


Friendly Fires - Paris (Aeroplane Remix)

Book a week 2009 - 1-2/52

I'm going to start reading a book a week again. I just reread this excellent Steve Pavlina post about developing a book a week reading habit, and it really inspired me.

I'm reading 2 books the first two weeks of 2009 -

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

and

RailsSpace: Building a Social Networking Website with Ruby on Rails

A couple of points from Steve's post that stuck with me - reading is like exercise, you are conditioning your mind to take in more information, and you improve at this the longer you develop this habit, he says all you need is to devote 30-60 minutes a day. We'll see, seems like that's not enough time to read a book a week, I'm also kind of concerned how this type of reading program will work with technical books like RailsSpace. My plan is to read a chapter through and then do the exercises at the end of each chapter afterwards.

Some miscelleneous thoughts - I love how well thought out and complete Steve's blog, and the largeheartedboy blog are. The difference between me and all these other bloggers is I devote a part of each day on things other than blogging - mainly music and training for my races.