No, Really, I Wrote This

So I've been doing a little research about this strange feeling that keeps popping up in me. Apparently it's an uncommon but not unheard of affliction that's called happiness. It's very odd and keeps throwing me off balance. Well it's supposed to be a new year with some new experiences so I think I'm just going to roll with it. 

What it is coming down to is that the life changing habits that I tried to attach to my 40th birthday are working and making a world of difference. The impending erasure of my debt has me determined not to fall into it's trap ever again. I've spent much of the first couple of weeks of the year setting up different automations to pay my bills and save as much as I can. I have never felt as in control and frankly excited about my financial future as I do right now. (Though I wouldn't complain if my 401K would stop shrinking on a daily basis.)

The other big change was to my diet and tomorrow is a full two months of tracking everything I eat on MyNetDiary. This is also paying off as I've just started using a notch twice removed from the worn one on my belt. I'm down about 15 pounds from my maximum weight and am full of energy. While I'm not thin by any means, I've begun to remember myself as the thin person I used to be. This is big for me. A positive self image is another of those mind-states that I'm just not used to. I'm already thinking about some new clothes for summer. Actually the one piece of clothing I bought this winter was a sweater that bought based on my torso length not width for the first time in a very long time. That was $20 well spent dollars.

I'm on a writing roll too, even if this blog doesn't have much to show for it. I only missed one day in December in my journal and that has meant much to my sense of well-being. I've been trying to keep a dream journal too but that has been hit and miss. Too often I want to just turn over and get back to sleep as quickly as possible.  When I do do it though the payoff is immediate as it usually helps me remember the next dream. 

Along with skipping out on this blog I haven't taken very many pictures in the last two months. My last big day with my camera was my birthday and I have hardly given those pictures a second thought. I am not done with photography by any means but it does seem to have taken a break from the forefront of my consciousness. This is not unusual for me when I'm in what I've taken to calling "process mode". That is a state of mind when I take off my creative hat and put on my technical learning cap. This time it is not so much about a particular piece of hardware or software but more about absorbing as much advise as I can take from the internet regarding diet and personal finance. Being that tis is the season for diet and personal finance blogging there has been no shortage of advise most of which can be summed up as stop eating and buying stupid shit. Writing down what you eat and buy seems to be the preferred method of showing you how much stupid shit you eat and buy. The rest is details. It's been good to read the same things over and over though It's helped cement some habits. I would like to take this time to put a shout out to the site that has done for money what MyNetDiary did for food for me, and that sight is Mint. It is hands down the easiest way of keeping track of my money and budget I have ever seen. Of course both sights have great corresponding iPhone applications to go with them. 

Well that should bring you up to date with where I'm at right now. I'm trying to turn myself into a lean, friendly, money saving machine. 

Fresh Start

So my hearing has come and gone and it was easy as pie. Actually pie sounds pretty good right now. I'm back home having just finished a celebratory rib eye smothered in mushrooms. I'm on my second glass of wine and frankly I'm feeling about as good as I've felt in years. Happy New Year everybody.

Nervous

So tomorrow is my Bankruptcy hearing with the trustee. Everything I've heard or read tells me that I have nothing to worry about still I'm a bit on edge. I hope I'm going to be able to sleep tonight. Less than 12 hours and the biggest monkey of my whole life gets his walking papers. 2009 is shaping up to be what I was thinking about when I named my old blog "Braver, newer world". Maybe it's time to refresh this one again for the new year. I remain determined to make my forty-first year a time of renewal for me. Tomorrow is a big step in that direction. Wish me luck.

Ah, New Year's week. I wasn't sure how I felt about the mid-week aspect of this year's new year's but I've made my piece with it A couple of days to review, a couple of days to celebrate, and a couple of days to try out the new habits.

My diet took some knocks Christmas week but that was to be expected. This morning on the scale I was a pound more than where I was last Monday morning. That's not enough to lose any sleep over. The thing was when I reviewed what I was eating none of it was really all that bad. A slice of cake and a scoop of ice cream maybe but mostly just an increase in the volume of meat and cheese. I'm still going to show a net loss for the holiday's and I'm happy with that. I continue to make the vast majority of my meals so I'm automatically eating better and saving some cash. Good habits to walk into 2009 with.

I've only missed writing in my journal once in the past month and a half so that's another habit in place for the new year. I'm tracking my expenses religiously so between that and my hearing on Wednesday I'm feeling as positive about finances as any point in my life.

The two things I need to get back into are this blog and my photography. I have taken only a couple of pictures in December and published nothing on flickr in over a month. That is something I'll try to work on this week. I want some natural feeling habits in place by this time next week.

Not Really Hiding Out

I haven't been very expressive on the web lately. I haven't taken any pictures since my birthday and I haven't even looked at those pictures all month. I'm back in process mode, trying to build up some good habits for the new year. I've been expermenting with different to-do lists and jornalling tools. The most imporant thing for each piece of software is how well the iPhone version works. I'm trying to lug my computer around as little as possible. The strain on my neck is making that weakness in my right arm worse.

Not that I want to be complaining about how I feel. For the most part I feel great. I've been sticking to my diet very well. I hit a plateau for about two weeks but broke past when I followed some advise to mix up my diet a little more. So on Friday instead of having lean hot Italian turkey sasuage for dinner like usual I picked up a nice big $13 Rib eye from Cala (marked down to $5). Sure enough the next morning I had dropped two pounds. I considered picking up a jar of lard to really turbo-charge my weight loss buy figured that might be pushing my luck.

I've been writing in my journal every day when I wake up and I even started a dream journal this morning. I've been playing around with different financal tracking software just trying to get the habits built by the time 2009 starts. Right now I'm leading towards Mint.com. It seems to play the best with my bank account. I continue to track everything I eat and keep a running calorie total. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm around and I'm doing well. Better than well even.

Two Days in a Little Apartment

Well that's pretty much my weekend. I was a total homebody these last two days. Yesterday I did venture out to Trader Joe's for groceries but today the farthest I got from my apartment was the mailroom. That is just fine with me. I spent no money (which is good cause I'm pretty broke until payday). I tackled a couple of projects I've been putting off forever including organizing my desk area, reworking my Remember the Milk account and filing the overflowing inbox and the year's worth of papers it contained. I'm in task not creative mode right now. I'm looking forward to working on my photography in this more organized environment. In the meantime I'm taking solace in the fact that I'm writing every day and blogging on a much more regular basis. I'm glad I started working on my health and finances before my birthday. I'm only 9 days in but so far my 40's are a real treat.

Food

So I wouldn't say that food and diet have been consuming my every thought, but I do believe this is the most attention I've given to what I've put in my body in my whole life. I have only really lost weight in one other period of my. That was when I was doing the Atkin's no carb thing. Even then I wasn't paying all that much attention. Basically I read the first two chapters of his book and then just stopped eating sugar and carbs. It didn't really matter what else I was eating as long as it wasn't sugar or carbs. I lost 30 pounds on a coffee, bacon and cheese diet. I have a funny feeling that wasn't exactly what I was supposed to do. Of course eventually even bacon and cheese got boring (it did take a while though), I had some sugar, my appetite came roaring back and that was that.

This time I'm paying more attention to all-around nutrition. The main thing I'm doing though is keeping a record of I eat and counting the calories. That has been the silver bullet for me. It makes me consider what I'm eating and actually answer the question do I really want that? It's been okay that the answer was yes to dinner at Cheesecake Factory on my birthday, or twice this week with a snickers bar at work from a holiday care kit from an executive. I write it down and I incorporate it into my totals.

The funny thing is that the last thing I've felt these last three weeks is deprived. In fact sometimes it's a struggle to eat enough. Since I made these changes I haven't skipped a meal. That's a new thing for me too. I've kept myself well fed all the time with foods that make me feel great. I know this is probably old hat to some of you but it's new ground for me. The only thing I've noticed is that while I eat out a lot less often, I'm going to the market all the time. In fact right now I'm on my way back from TraderJoe's.

One of those Days

Yesterday was one of those days that things get done that make all the rest of your days easier. The last document I needed for my bankruptcy had been proving very elusive for the last three weeks. In order to stave off a couple of lawsuits I had gone ahead and filed anyway. I was counting on getting something from payroll that was now way overdue. The court needed this thing by Friday and I was starthing to get frantic. By Monday night I was a real basket case. So first thing yesterday morning I began banging on payroll. Sure enough by noon I had a hard copy in my hands and at my lawyer's office by 3. A huge weight was lifted. Another weight goes away on New Year's Eve when my hearing is.

So by the end of the year I should be 6 weeks into my new diet, out of debt and starting toward a positive balance sheet for the first time in my adult life. Hey, maybe my 40's aren't going to be so bad. I might be able to get used to feeling good.

Birthday Report

Not wanting to blow the two weeks I've got invested in my new diet and wanting to get out of the city and see something a little more on the natural side I tapped Karen for birthday duties yesterday. It was a very good and mellow birthday. I took the train down to Redwood City and we ended up driving down south of Carmel. It was a little hazy but still a beautiful fall day. We had lunch at the Carmel Whole Foods Salad Bar. While that doesn't make for a very exciting blog post I can report that it was exactly what I needed at the moment. We drove down to the big bridge and took some pictures. Then we went back to Carmel and took a walk along the seaside. I have never seen such big waves. These walls of water kept crashing in. No one was in the water. Surfers were just standing there with us watching the waves come crashing in. In the afternoon we stopped by the Carmel Mission. Somehow I had never visited this Mission. The gardens and chapel were beautiful, ancient and a little sad. I haven't had a chance to go through the pictures yet but I'm excited about seeing them on my computer. Look for some new stuff on Flickr in the coming days.

We headed back north as the sun set and got to Palo Alto an hour before the last Bogart double feature started. We had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory but kept it under control by sharing the Thai Lettuce Wraps and Chicken Pot Stickers. Then it was back to what used to be my favorate haunt before moving to the city, the Stanford Theater, for a double feature of To Have and to Have Not and The Maltese Falcon. I was a little stunned to realize that Karen had never seen either movie. We both did a good job staying awake through the last one when the long day seemed to catch up with us. A trip to the snack bar at intermission helped. Karen drove me home and I hit the sack right about the time my birthday was coming to an end.

Throughout the day my phone kept shaking with best wishes via voicemail, text, facebook and other modern communications. I was happy to recieve every one and they contributed to a general feeling of well being that was with me the whole day.

The End

So I'm down to the last couple of hours of my thirties. I woke up thinking about how at least a condemned prisoner can cling to that possible pardon call. No such luck for birthdays. But the death imagery stayed with me when I realized that that was the only way to avoid turning 40. All of a sudden a birthday didn't feel so bad.

A Moderate Thanksgiving

Well that was the most moderate Thanksgiving of my life. If anything I under ate. I worked for a few hours, talked to most of the people I'm close to on the phone watched some old West Wing and went to bed early. To tell you the truth I'm pretty happy about it too. The holiday didn't interfere with any of the new routines I've set up for myself and here it is the day after and I'm feeling good. The phone kept me from feeling lonely and I'm glad I didn't go out like I usually do. Eating alone in a restaurant on a holiday just brings being alone into sharper focus. Anyway it's over and with no lasting effects spilling into today. For that I'm truly thankful.

Thanksgiving

I had a cranky day yesterday. I kept getting into fights with machines. The new blogging application I bought had an undocumented bug that took me two hours to figure out, both my computers froze up on me, and I couldn't get my daily inventory to balance with the work computer and either my payroll department or my lawyer's fax machine doesn't work. I have no access to either of these machines but they are still working hard to screw me over.

By the time I was finished with dinner (my 33rd decent meal in a row) I was looking for something more than baby carrots to drown my sorrows in. I was thinking more along the lines of a chocolate cake. Mind you I didn't say slice of. Anyway there is nothing remotely like that in my apartment and I was in no mood to go out. So I put the rest of the almost stale Raymond's Sourdough round in the microwave for 20 seconds and ate the remaining crust with Smart Balance and salt. Not the best thing for me but better than the alternative. Then I started surfing the news sites. That did not make me feel any better. The news from India made me feel foolish for all the petty things that I let get to me. I thought of the health and safety of all the people I'm close to and care about. So on this day of thanksgiving I'm thankful for all you mean to me and do for me. And in this economy I'm going to say thanks for having a job that forces me to work on Thanksgiving Day. That's better than having no job any day. So...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

BlogPost

This is my second attempt to post from the BlogPost iPhone application. I wrote a long catch-up post on it this morning and was pretty happy until I went to post and it gave me a network error for the next two hours. I'm trying this to see if it was something about that first post.

iPhone Love

Like any device, or software for that matter, my love affair with my phone waxes and wanes. Actually that might be going to far. I always love my phone and use it all the time. I guess what waxes and wanes is my using it as a substitue for my computer. Right now I am on an iPhone high and my shoulder is loving me for it.

It's because it's November. November is my month. Always has been. I don't know if it's because my birthday ends the month, the shorter days, the cooler but not cold weather or the approaching holidays, but November has always meant a creative burst for me. This year was no different although it took until the second week to get going. After writing very sporadictly all spring and summer I've journaled every day for the last two weeks. Better I've been simply waking up and starting to write every morning. That's where the iPhone comes in. I've returned to my first days of owning it when I was using Notes to journal all the time. I have established a habit. Wake, grab phone, begin typing.

My morning pages are not the only place I'm connecting this way. With 40 coming up this weekend I took a good look at-well I took a good look at me. There is more of me. And there is about 40 pounds more of me than there needs to be. So I did some digging and ended up joining an online journal for keeping track of what I eat, weigh, and exercise. Of course I made the decision on which one based on how good its iPhone application is. Thanks to MyNetDiary I've recorded my last 30 meals and have yet to have a bad eating day. I also scrapped OmniFocus as my to-do list replacing it with Remember the Milk again because of the speed and ease of the iPhone application. So why am I bringing this all up here now? Because I realized that I was never really happy mailing my blog entries and with most of my writing happening on my phone I finally broke down and bought Blog Press and installed it on my first page. Hopefully this is enough of a kick in the butt to start updating regularly again.

Well I've got to go. Can't skip breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day.

HRC

Well the news is all abuzz with the idea that Hillary Clinton may be Obama's Secretary of State. I just want to weigh in that I think this is a bad idea. Not that I don't think that she would be an effective SoS, rather that she is far more valuable in the Senate. I think the Senate needs Hillary. I think the country and the institution is well served when there are people on the far ends of the political spectrum that know how do drill down an issue to find common ground. For the longest time the left has had Ted Kennedy to do this job but that may not be for long. I think Clinton is the natural heir to that position and we would all be better served if she stayed put and took that mantle. 

Yes I'm Still Out Here

Got an email from my most faithful reader (my mother of course) reminding me that I haven't communicated in awhile. This is just a quick note to say that I have not been in my usual self imposed exile. Rather I've been playing around with a little pre-turning-40-time-to-get-into-the game thoughts. I finally got off my ass and hired a lawyer to start my much needed bankruptcy proceedings. Just that simple first step was like getting a giant weight off of my back. That's led me to thinking about the other much needed changes. I've been journaling every day for the past 5 days and I haven't done that since February. I bought a scale and joined one of those online food journaling sites. I've been taking pictures again this month and trying to post as often as I can. Getting back on this site is the next step. I know this is just a mid-life crisis coming into bloom but I'm determined to make this one of the great positive mid-life crisis's of all time. After all I've been going through them since my early teens. I've got more experience than most. I'm going to do this one right. 

Election Day

Before tomorrow dawns and the 2012 presidential campaigns go into full swing I thought it might be time to weigh in on the present political landscape. 

First the easy prediction: Barack Obama will indeed be elected President. How big will the margin be will decided pretty early. If Indiana is close when its polls close then McCain is in for a very short night of remaining a candidate. Personally I think I'm having a hard time seeing Obama winning Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Indiana, North Carolina or Missouri. The problem for McCain is that he has to win every one of those states plus taking Pennsylvania for him to have any chance. The best McCain can hope for without Pennsylvania is a 269-269 tie in which case the House of Representatives would give the election to Obama. This scenario also counts McCain winning New Hampshire, and Nevada as well as all of the above states which is highly unlikely. Far more likely is Obama winning New Hampshire, Nevada and Virginia and cruising to a 291-247 win. Less likely but still possible is more of a blowout with many or all of the swing states going for Obama along with a popular vote of more than 50%. That combined with what will certainly be at least 15 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate will give the new president the first real mandate from the electorate since the Reagan revolution. 

That of course is the segue. Obama is the new Reagan. These are troubled times. We have couple of unpopular wars, who may not be going exactly badly, but show little signs of ever ending. The world economy has found itself in its worst state in decades. The President has proven massively ineffective at dealing with anything and is horribly unpopular at home and even more unpopular around the world. America needs someone that can articulate a populist competent optimism. Shockingly enough it was the Democratic party that ran exactly that campaign. That more than anything else is why they are poised to win big today. 

Milestone

In January when I bought my new camera and started posting to flickr on a more regular basis I made a goal of a thousand total views a week or 50,000 for the year. Yesterday I hit that number. I got there with more than a little help from our Lion friends from the San Francisco Zoo. My first Lion Sex picture also hit a milestone yesterday being my first picture to get to 5,000 views. 

It's a simple truth that having my pictures looked at makes me happy. Though as I've been working on some different photo shoots lately I've been wondering how much of what I do is tailored toward getting a few more views. I contribute to award and rating groups and I'm never sure how much influence their views or lack of response changes what I do to my pictures and what I choose to share. I've been having fun with color lately but this morning I realized that as colorful as the Italian Parade was what I really wanted to do was print these shots in black and white. I guess I'm still trying to figure out what my own palette looks like and sometimes I worry about letting other people's opinions take me away from the directions I want to be. Where does my ego run off to when I start creating?

Feet Week

Blue Angels and Flag, originally uploaded by lacadaz.

I woke up early this morning and started working on yesterday's pictures. I shot over 600 between the Fleet Week Air Show and the Italian Heritage Parade. I may have gotten up too early actually as my first posts included flights by the Blue "Angles" during "Feet" Week. Hopefully I got it all corrected. Anyway the first five are up on my flickr account.

Feeling a Little Purple Tonight

Sailboat at Dawn, Lake Tahoe, originally uploaded by lacadaz.

Well I finally posted my first five pictures from last week's Tahoe Trip. I'm not sure if I like what I've done with them. I've soften them up and they ended up pretty darn purple. That's just the way it went once I started working with them tonight. Tomorrow may be a different story altogether. I promised myself that I would spend my first year taking photography seriously doing some experiments in style. Tonight is no different. Who knows tomorrow I may be putting them up sharp like a tack and in black and white. We'll see. I have inventory tomorrow at work so I really should be in bed now.