Electric Ladyland

My Nabaztag and me

This probably goes into the "Is she really an adult?" category.  *Cough*

So my birthday was last week and Mom prepared a birthday fun pack (as one of my favorite coworkers put it), that is to say a letter with a narrative introducing all sorts of little presents leading up to one big killer present.  The littler presents included a fuzzy bathrobe, scented candles, bath salts, B&B, and a book on sushi.  The star present was perfectly tailored for me -- a WiFi rabbit, aka a Nabaztag/tag. 

This thing is the best thing ever (you know, kind of like VH1 has that show "The Best Week Ever" -- we should have "The Best Geek Toy Ever").  It picks up RSS feeds, reads you your email, gives you the weather forecast, and more.  And it has voice recognition software built in as well -- haven't tapped into that yet.  So far I'm mostly thankful that my Nabaztag/tag, aka Baby Love, has been alerting me to what hour it is in the morning when I wake up.  That's better than the standard whining buzzer I've been hearing.  Now I know exactly how tardy I am (or not).  That'll be good because I'm up with the roosters tomorrow.  I'll probably want to wake up at about 5 and leave the nabe at 6 to get to work before 7 and catch a car service at 7:30 with a coworker for a retreat that begins at 9.  The tech training I'm doing doesn't start till 1 but I'll have a WWAN card and a laptop so I won't be hurting for things to do.  Plenty of work to get done including a #(*$&! contract negotiation that won't seem to end, (#@*!   @#($*& !. 

Ahem.  Anyway, it is nice to have this little robo-buddy in the area.  Mom only found out about this because I took her to Wired NextFest 2006 last fall, where we encountered and immediately fell in love with the Atari Rabbit Theater.  Oh yes.  There was lots of geektastic fun to be had and apparently I'm still reaping the benefits from that trip. 

These things go to eleven

Wow.  I'm going to sound like a broken record when I say I'm still, gosh, really busy.

But there's busy and then there's busy.  Our busy, where I work, is its own particular and funky variety of busy.  Within that there are tiers of busyness.  But then there's a special level of busy that's a bit beyond all that and I think I'm there right now.  I know because I'm using the same coping mechanisms to remind myself of things and stay on top of important to-dos that I used while preparing to bring our first renovation online last summer.  They work fine, especially since I'm used to them, but I had to pause for a minute today when I noticed it was getting to that point and go "oh crap!" just because.

I felt the need to get on top of stuff because I hate feeling like things are sliding, so tonight after working late I took a laptop with WWAN card down to a cafe in the Village so I could bang out the work that didn't get done during the day while slurping some coffee and listening to MC Solaar's spankin' new album on my iPod.  I always get good work done when I've got music on and am in the zone, uninterrupted for a good chunk of maybe 2-3 hours or so.  That's really hard to come by where I work.  And this week has been inventive in throwing weird-ass obstacles in my way on top of the usual emergencies:  yesterday the AC in my server room broke down and then today some car service company's main line started ringing on our main line because Verizon screwed up their forwarding request (you rockstars you!) and a host of law firms, natch, started calling our receptionist demanding to book cars for this morning.

Everything's all fixed now, fine, and the actual projects that had to keep going are on their merry ways.  I squirrelled away some fun time with friends and family to keep a little levity in all of this.  On Monday I went out to a Sox bar to watch the game with some fellow Boston faithful (Schilling imploded, though... and now he's on the DL) and last night Mom and I hit up the Brandy Library for... brandy!  It was fantastic.   Tomorrow night I've got calligraphy and then over the weekend I've got a day trip to see some Japanese art (including my beloved Obaku calligraphy) in Philly.  Actually I'll get a fair amount of traveling in these next few days since Friday has me schlepping to a training site in Jersey for a presentation on a database. 

So things are actually pretty fun right now but yeesh, hold on to your hats.  There is an actual vacation in the works come early August, however, so there will be play time in the near future to balance all of this out.

Big week

Woah, this week...

Tuesday = Birthday.  I'm 31, woot woot!
Wednesday = My nonprofit's coming of age gala event featuring Bubba the ex-POTUS
Thursday = Board meeting

My room looks like a bomb hit it because I ain't been home to clean it.  I'll have some catchup cleanup duty this weekend.  I'm feeling much better than I did last week.  I hope to do more writing about Ghana.  It seems that brief moments are all I've had in which to write down some miscellaneous thoughts about the experience.  So far they mainly involve:

• Dissonance:  it's weird to be back in the glittering diamond of prosperity that is New York after having just been in the rural Volta region of Ghana surrounded by dusty roads being traversed by both livestock and people, no basic services that I would ever have taken for granted available
• Moral questions:  what do I do now that I know experientially and first-hand how people live in poverty in the developing world?  After having met people whose definition of success in many cases is to survive and care for their families, and that words like profession, career and life's work seem like luxuries themselves?
• Metaphysical and spiritual questions:  how do I understand through and through that I am another person and that other person is me?  Zen teaches us that there is no difference -- we are one.  When I was in Ghana I thought about that a lot.  I am the people I met there and yet I am not.  Last night President Clinton spoke about how we are genetically 99% the same.  That is easy for me to believe.  Understanding the truth of our connectedness in a wholistic, spiritual way is another leap and one I want to make.

Of course there are other things.  I definitely have a heightened interest in things African in general and Ghanaian in particular now and am glad for the spark of curiosity.  I ran into a JET alum friend last week who asked if I'd write a piece on my trip for our alumni chapter newsletter and I said I would.  There are some interesting contrasts between the experiences I had in Japan and Ghana. 

Yeah, and just the fact that I can even say I've had those experiences at my age in life is something to be thankful for...  gotta make them count, make them meaningful.

Old Navy

We've got some smartasses out there on the Internet, for sure.  I just came across this random t-shirt.  It says "Old Navy" in Japanese.  For the smug Nihongophile sengoku daimyo geek set.  I've got some friends who would definitely crack a smile if they saw this.

In other news, I've been meaning to sit down and do some writing and thinking this week.  Neither got done.  I came down hard with a bug my first day back to work and it went downhill from there.  It's been nothing but bedrest since then and I'm battling some cabin fever.  Wrote a letter to one of my former students in Japan and ended up talking mostly about the trip to Ghana.  Clearly there's a lot to say.  I'm just waiting until my health returns to really get into it.  More after I recover.  At the very least I want to enjoy my birthday week.

Back from Ghana

I just got back from Ghana last night.  New York welcomed me home with the remnants of a tropical storm.  It's still raining outside.  Seems an ideal day to rest and recover.  The trip was incredible to the point where I didn't really feel like getting back on the plane home.  I'll write more later after I've gotten settled here.