After looking at Friday’s forecast for new snow in Lake Tahoe, my friends Kyle and Dan convinced me to leave at 5am on Friday to get in a good day of skiing/snowboarding at Kirkwood before driving back that evening. It was a good plan, and we were confident that it would lead to a full day of great snowboarding conditions with relatively few people on the slopes. Unfortunately, Nature had several other ideas for how we were to spend our time. ...
Some people I know have world records in sports, and what have you, but I have just today earned the assuredly-awesome distinction of being the first Standpoint user to reach 1000 beliefs. What is Standpoint? Standpoint is an online community started by my friends Justin and Gentry, which I’ve been having a lot of fun with recently, and have been able to help along in some small ways. Basically, Standpoint is an online community organized around formulations of, and reasons given for, beliefs. The basic unit of Standpoint is a “claim”, or a proposition, towards which you can take a few attitudes, including belief, consideration, or “disbelief” (which is more complicated). You can create your own claims, believe ones others created, disagree with people, and in general try to have discussions using very short, disjointed, and atomic sentences. At least that’s the idea–in practice, people aren’t very good at keeping things short, atomic, or well-formed, so it gets interesting (and at times frustrating to the logician-philosopher inside me). ...
Since it’s the title of this weblog, one might guess that I am good at (or otherwise enjoy) recreation. However, I’m experiencing some problems with it. I’ve just returned from a community dinner up on Skyline (where it snowed briefly for the first time in my six years in this part of the Bay Area!), and have a few hours to spend doing something. My problem is, there are a lot of options. Here’s what I’ve thought about doing so far: ...
Some random experiences from a few days in the Bahamas (from which I am now in the process of returning) spawned this poem, which spilled edit-free from my pen yesterday: Shapes in clear water when moving are blurred and the fuzz provides fear For unknown says death's always seeking and will in the end become near So sun and life soon are forgotten if only for a space of seconds Heart and mind illusion-smitten propel the soul back to the sands From the shore heartbeats are slower Embarrassment looks like the heat of the day The water is clear, it seems fear need not tower O'er a reckless rejoining the fray But horizon reveals, dark symbols appear Omens or fins? both blacker than sky Recklessness checked, the imagined is here It seems a more rational soul would have died
This week, I am in the Bahamas. My friend Nathan Akers is randomly an extra in the next two Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and has a hotel room in Freeport for a while. I decided there needed to be availing of (a) Nathan’s company, (b) Nathan’s hotel room, and (c) Nathan’s hotel’s free wireless, and so here I am. No idea what will happen, but so far the company is fun and the drinks are provided by someone else! Cheers. ...
For the last three nights, I stayed up till an average hour of 5am…working. In fact, working on the finishing touches for the site design which, unless you’re reading this in an RSS reader, is now before your eyes. So you’d better like it. Anyway, the reason this is somewhat noteworthy is that there’s no technical reason I had to do this. Well, a while back I decided to switch servers, which is about a week-long process, and so I set myself the goal of going live with the new design on the day that I’d have to cancel billing for the old server, namely yesterday. It was a somewhat arbitrary goal, but one I knew I would probably need if I was ever going to get stuff done.
I have a tradition (since 2000, I think) where, sometime in the first week of the new year, I drive to see the sunrise at Cocoa beach. I like to spend a few hours watching the beautiful scene, giving myself time and space to pray, meditate, wander around, and generally get centered for the upcoming year. This year, T-Bone accompanied me to Cocoa, where we were greeted by an absolutely amazing sunrise, replete with a flock of gulls that would zoom and flutter about, putting on an amazing show: ...
As 2005, a year that has seen many and incredible changes in my life, draws to a close, I thought it appropriate to mention some of the personal highlights, and make observations about these last 365 days from a perspective blessed with hindsight. So now, in hopefully chronological order, here are the things that were important to me since December 31, 2004 (some significant events being censored to protect certain individuals, of course). Note: if the event which I am describing has been written about previously on one of my weblogs or something similar, I offer a link to that entry, called “read more…”.
Last month’s emotional bloodletting was musical. Here is this month’s: a paragraph that wants to be a poem when it grows up. Some violent days the red and rain are all too thunderingly silent, staying stored in Heaven when Earth’s ironies are Hellishly blue and clear, spying down on cracked and broken souls that move and labor searching amidst blood for each other to wish wreckage was external, indicating the spiritual state–less existence equals less pain but color is beautiful and cannot be slain (only why won’t it rain singing water, rising up to drown unworth?), but grace prevails, the ship sails and souls float, regarding unjustly their inevitability of being, the world a mockery of them and they of it, made now of shimmering sand when floods should rule till penitence dies and comes again in more wrath and less doom, carving channels of whistling light to lands where mirrors give heed to more than sight, and true lenses perceive the matching hue of Heaven and Earth, for the first time: above and below to agree in mirth.
I went to the UK last week with my family, as we wanted to go and see my sister when she got off from her semester at Capernwray hall, and accompany her home for Christmas. We had a wonderful time wandering around the lake district of England, randomly went to a Delirious concert in Liverpool (my mom is friends with the keyboardist), and then hung out a few days in Wales, hiking up mountains and seeing castles and such. ...