Electric Ladyland

pajama day

took the day off, slept late this morning.  i had a long overdue appointment with my bed that i was determined to keep.  i'm feeling much better.

today is a pajama day, a laze-about-the-house day, a day for luxuriating in the ability to do nothing at all or whatever i please.

it's done!  i pulled off the big project that's been consuming my energy in ways i haven't even fully understood these past several months.  there's quite a bit of wrap-up left to do but the knowledge that i've crossed this threshold is so satisfying.  i will be doing a lot of resting this weekend and there's a solid chunk of time off coming up too. 

last night i went back to calligraphy class after not having been able to go for two weeks due to this whole work-ruling-my-life thing.  it was so great to see everyone again.  we all set a date as a class to visit this chinese calligraphy exhibition at the met museum (the one i already saw).  i'm excited to go back. 

sensei also lent me a primer on the calligraphy of gan shinkei (顔真卿, C: yen chen-ching).  it's a series of texts written in gan's style but by the founder of our school, harada kampo.  since we have no way of knowing what brush or paper gan was originally using back in the tang dynasty, sensei explained, master kampo took a stab at gan's style on our behalf and made it more accessible to us.  i'm going to give it a try. 

tonight i'm going back to my kanji class after two absences i really didn't want to take.  i have all day today to complete the homework in advance so i'll be ready when i get there.  i'm glad to be going back.  i'm excited about studying again.

we're down to one bar here, signal's fading

i am hosed.  exhausted.  i had a moment going down in the elevator today when i turned to someone and said "yep, i just need to get some lunch and then i can power up" and he said "uh, it's one o'clock!  if you're not powered up by now it ain't gonna happen..."  and he was of course right.  didn't get off the ground energywise today although i was present and functioning.

right now silly little inane things like videos of pacmanhattan on youtube are strangely entertaining to me.  i am way past running on empty.  need to curl up into a little ball and regenerate.  i think i need to have some time alone with no people.  pajamas, bon bons and a movie wouldn't be half bad. 

all jacked up

really tired now.

i did a google image search for fatigue and this handy chart sums it up.   i've hit all three elements. 

only a little bit more to go.  hanging in there.

is it wednesday?

it must be because my computer tells me so.  i am almost done with this odyssey at work.  not quite done yet.  working again this weekend.  after this i believe it will be d-o-n-e.  i will celebrate.

superfreak

some things just stop you in your tracks.  this is one of those things.  gothamist's article led me to gawker which led me to this page.  it all snowballed. 

i, uhm, don't know where to begin.  i consider myself a pretty confident person but then there's this, which isn't exactly confidence, not just braggadocio, but something more in the warped category.  whoo boy.  it'll take years of therapy to unwind this and even then i'm not sure it can be done.

with that i bring you... alexsey vayner.  this guy put together a video application for a job at an investment bank and has many pearls of wisdom to share about success -- all this while demonstrating extreme weightlifting, high-powered tennis, schmaltzy latin dance moves and suave "daniel-san" brick-chopping stylings.  i'd say enjoy but... well, you'll see.

so busy

whew.  too busy to blog.  not much to report.  it's just workworkworkworkwork until we cross the finish line.  got a good night's sleep last night though, first in a while.  had the window open with the cool autumn air coming in.  before that i'd been watching the tigers-athletics game with dad on the phone.  a little dinner, a little baseball, a little sleep and i feel much better.

better luck next year

the weekend was not much of a weekend.  i worked today and yesterday.  a lot of good stuff got done but i have not had a day off in about a week or so and there i am.  that being said:

i took great pleasure in watching the yanks fall to the tigers yesterday.  bonderman owned them.  i think i actually saw a-rod stick his tongue out at the camera once.  he always knows when it's on him.  when someone shattered a bat and it went whizzing into the infield the commentators said "that bat represents alex rodriguez's psyche."  ouch.

dad and i have been writing about him back and forth this week.  a question for the baseball fans out there:  does anybody know who the genius was who started calling a-rod the "best player in baseball"?  that's what they were all saying when he came to the yankees.  i had trouble believing it then.  thought either (a) i had been living under a rock (maybe when i was in japan something happened back home on the u.s. baseball scene i didn't know about?) or, more likely, (b) it was stupid-stupid-stupid hype.  clearly it was the latter.  had to be.  and as i pointed out to dad, if a-rod is the best player in baseball what does that make jeter?  i mean come on.

as a queens resident i was psyched to see the mets eliminate the dodgers.  it was like we were exorcising the ghosts of grady little again.  i swear the sight of that man, especially the sight of that man going to the mound, makes me feel violent.  longstanding met fans may not feel that way but i know they are going to take a special kind of joy in pitying the yankee fans whose team got mowed down so ingloriously yesterday.  it will be the talk of the town in new york.  postseason new york baseball is happening in queens, baby.

other than that, not much to report.  it's all work all the time here.  had a brief interlude without work that was quite pleasant.  that won't last long, though -- not much of this day is left and then we're at monday.  here goes...

and here we are at friday

... and here we are at friday.  man alive.

i've got my coffee and i schlepped over to the office early because we've got telco providers coming in "between 8 and 5" and you know how they are.  murphy's law is in full effect.  you know full well that if you show up early to meet them they won't be there but if you assume it's all right to show up a little later you'll miss them and be sorry.  i wouldn't care so much if it were just for me (ok, well maybe i would... i got rather testy the last time my internet went out at home) but for an office full of people it's a different story.

for some reason i couldn't sleep after the colbert report.  maybe i can't handle the truth?  too much truth and unrepentant americanism for me?  whatever the case i was lying wide awake in bed going "oh crap, i'm not going to get any sleep am i?" until dawn.  did the whole work thing on wednesday, then went out for a jamba juice and a quick trip to a nearby arcade for some skee ball and NLCS viewing with a friend.  after that, though, when i got home i was so blitzed that i just passed out.  the 11 continuous hours of sleep were nice but i was still tired yesterday. 

last night was calligraphy and that went so-so.  i learned a lesson:  never forget your brushes.  i asked sensei if i could borrow one and a nice classmate of mine kinda jumped in there and offered me his.  it was in really bad shape, though -- seven hairs came out of it as i was practicing that night.  it reminded me of how i went through the same phase not so long ago in my calligraphy study -- the same thing was happening to my brushes because i didn't know how to care for them properly and handling these battered brushes to form anything resembling a pleasing shape was an exercise in frustration.  so i kind of rewound to the past.  i did manage to turn out some mildly okay things but took a mental note to be sure and bring my own brushes next time.  they allow far more nuance in writing.

after class some of us went out to our local izakaya to catch up, gossip and snack on some yummy japanese-style otsumami (tapas).  that lasted till a little after 10 and i got home just in time to watch the final inning of the mets-dodgers game.  mets are up 2-0, not looking too bad.  yanks lost to the tigers earlier in the day (boo hoo).  anyway, after the game was over i hunkered down to do my kanji homework -- all of it.  an hour and a half later i was tired and cranky but done.  trying to keep all these activities (work, calligraphy, kanji class) afloat at the same time is tough as i knew it would be but it can be done with a little endurance and elbow grease. 

all of this beats sitting around staring at the wall wishing i had something to do.  my grandma used to say boredom is a sign of low intelligence (zing!).  i think she said that to me once when i was about 9 and whining how i was sooooo bored, for whatever reason i don't know.  i don't think i digested what she was saying then i get it now.  so, here we go:  friday.  a little coffee, a lotta work, some kanji study and then a long overdue appointment with my pillow.

truthtastic

at long last i got to attend a taping of the colbert report.  i put in for these tickets back in april!  it was worth the wait.  went with some friends from work and we did it right.  while waiting in line for the hour and a half before doors were scheduled to open, two of our crew went out foraging for provisions.  mission most definitely accomplished.  i think the ringleader was psychic because he came back from philly slim's with a buffalo chicken sandwich and a bottle of poland spring for me.  here's to the heroes.

as we went in we noticed a young colbert report staffer scanning the lines who looked remarkably like the show's namesake.  an affable guy, we took to calling him "son of colbert."  he showed us to our seats and then, when everybody was more or less seated (i won't say settled down -- we were pumped), they had the warm-up comedian come on.  he was a bit like the warm-up comedian for the daily show the last two times i'd been there -- edgy to the point of being uncomfortable, also trying a bit too hard to weave everything back together and wrap up all the loose ends.  a bit too stylized and self-conscious, definitely into singling people out from the audience and being like "yeah, what's up with that getup you're wearing?"  one of the things he kept saying was "don't judge me.  i hate it when people judge me."  um, yeah... okay?  one of my friends made the point that maybe they have comedians like that to be the foil to colbert and stewart, whose styles have zing and bite from time to time but don't use the same methods.

anyhoo, once warm-up guy's schtick was over they brought stephen in to do the "toss," which is apparently the football metaphor they use for that moment at the end of the daily show when jon checks in with stephen to make that transition from one show to the next.  apparently this only happens once every three weeks or so and we were very lucky.  it went well.  someone near us blurted out "we love you jon!"

the show itself was a lot of fun and, not surprisingly, they got a lot of mileage out of the foley story.  they made a few jokes about people binge drinking and just forgetting embarrassing/professionally compromising things that they might have done or not done (for example, condi rice forgetting to react to the al qaeda memo -- that was explained away as a blackout induced by her taking a shot every time she ran across the word "imminent" while reading said memo).  i was seated in just such a way that stephen was mostly blocked by the camera, so most of the time i was just watching the display as i would at home.  it was better with the crowd vibe, though. 

after the show was over we ambled over to 9th avenue in search of a nice bar or lounge to have drinks.  valhalla was right there, so we went in.  great beer list -- only problem was they were out of about half the things on the menu.  we ended up with some good choices and were pretty content.  saw the ALCS on the tv in the corner, noted the whooping yankee fans and then went back to my beer and conversation.  i'll be paying more attention to the NLCS.  as a sox fan i can't root for the yankees but i'm all right with supporting the mets (plus i live in queens) and i'll have a certain amount of interest in the dodgers due to their high quotient of former sox players.  till tonight, then.

nextfest 2006

went to nextfest (newsday article) with mom today.  it was a hoot.  our favorite thing, although we couldn't explain to you why, was the atari rabbit theater.  while mom and i were there the entire left section of the choir/orchestra was silent but the center and right sections had some action going on.  there was a coordinator at the bottom far right corner.  mom and i liked how the rabbits' ears went flat or raised back up in quizzical positions depending on the tone of the music.  only gripes?  that dormant left section and the faintness of the music.

in no particular order, i also enjoyed the kung fu arcade game you could jump into and play.  it was funny seeing this little kid whale on a bruce lee character with a bat although nothing that really happened in the game itself could be called kung fu.  mom and i were both creeped out by the albert hubo, a robot with an eerily accurate recreation of albert einstein's face.  japanese researchers were out in force with waltzing fembots and small, cute little anime-style robots.  nearly everything from japan was related to the medical industry or care for the elderly, not surprising to those of us who've been hearing the news for quite some time that japan is aging so rapidly that providing for the elderly is going to be a big problem and soon.  i thought the paro robotic baby seal was more than a bit odd.

we kind of liked the laser harp although we couldn't hear our notes being played and we definitely liked the touch-orchestra monitors.  we got a kick out of the virgin airways spacecraft and the nasa spacesuits.  i also found the vocal blog aggregator fascinating -- as the lady there described it to me the software they wrote pores the blogosphere for posts reflecting dreams, arguments and strong emotions.  four rendered heads on separate monitors spoke in turn as a text cloud on the monitor at the center flashed up key words from the postings.  the text-to-speech function was very smooth and natural and there was a very human quality about the whole thing.   

overall i'd give high marks to nextfest.  it was a lot of fun!