Personal Space

After reading a number of things online I have been musing on the idea of "personal space." What exacting makes up this ephemeral idea? We usually know when it has been violated. Not always as it is happening, but afterward, it can be very hard to deny. It is not solely a physical dimension or is it something that sits entirely within oneself. It is an amalgam of the two and something else, something that is not entirely definable as one or the other as well. The spaces that are on my mind:

Where and how I live?
Impact of babies?
Impact of pets?
Job spaces?
Weight and body image spaces?
Consumer spending and financial spaces?
Social value spaces (internal)?
Social value spaces (external)?

Art as life

Life is butting it head at me. It is right there foaming and everything and honestly, all I really want to do in retaliation is read, cook, stitch, and listen to music. All of this while letting it snarl. Not in a head in sand sort of way, just in a "hum..ok..I see you..your point?" sort of fashion.

Responce and Responcibility

There is a question that is itching at me today. The question has not been courteous enough to shape itself into something coherent, but I will try to mine it out.

How do you relax and enjoy life while also trying to road map a future?
Why is housecleaning so tiring to do and so terrifying to ignore?
Why is work so exhilarating when you are engrossed in a project and so draining when you are not?
Why do I have so many things and yet no place to put them?
How many of these questions will be answered by home ownership, either in the since that I will find a place for everything I keep or in the since that the stress getting to that point will be over?

Find out the answers to these questions and more on the next episode of SOAP!

Creeping

"...'but I'm a creep. I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here?....

Sitting on the balcony. Sitting on the balcony with the plants and the water running below. None of it blocked the noise of the highway. Pockets of nature utterly failing to provide but the smallest distraction from the sea of asphalt. No...Not asphalt...just concrete. Asphalt at least brings to mind the idea of the open road, images of adventure into the American highway, blacktop playgrounds and outdoor basketball courts. Concrete only evokes consumerism and commutes. How I have come to loathe the commute. Locked in a steal bubble of futility sitting so close to others but with no sense of community. Instead it is a civil war. Daily. No one has friends while in traffic. Alliances are fleeting at best, and rivals are everywhere. There are other vehicles, not people. None of them are friends. There are those you tolerate and those that not only can you not tolerate, but whose presence actually fills you with hate. Pure stark hate. Our cars have become like little homes. An extension of our influence on the outside world. We even talk freely about "road karma" with little thought about how that concept applies for use when we are not behind the wheel.

...I don't belong here. She's running out the door. Whatever makes you happy. Whatever you want. You're so fucking special. I wish I was special. I don't belong here...

Purchase and Purge

This post is being made on a New Samsung NC10 netbook. With this little acquisition there are now 3.5 computers per person in my household. Along with a random portable DVD player. It does seem excessive. So what has been pushing at the edges of my mind is the temptation to purchase is so strong and is nearly always followed by a strong cleaning/purge rush. It is that equalibrium that has been hit where every new aquisition requires the removal of another item. However, there are so many emotional attachments to the old things and the infamous "..but what if I need it later?" argument that seems into your brain evertime you think about getting rid of that pair of red platform shoes you bought in Jr. High. Then the "well maybe I can sell this stuff" argument hits. With no yard, the neighborhood sale is nearly impossible and it sems that ebay is not getting the traffic it once was.

Tricky. Am loving the netbook though ;)

A bird, a pig, and a paranoid schizophrenic walk into a doctor's office...

Sounds like the start to either a very bad or a very dirty joke but it seems to be what has been happening in the news as of late. Avian Flu, Swine Flu, everyday folks developing OCD level hand washing tendencies, avoiding being breathed on, etc. It may sound like I am mocking. I'm not. I am as scared as everyone else. I am right there with them at the sink looking for more soap and trying not to touch my neighbor, and all of these precautions may save us, may save lives, so for the sake of well, everyone, do not throw these cautions to the wind. But also try not to let it keep you up at night. Losing sleep can only make you more vulnerable.

Dinner Review: Jaleo Tapas Bar in Richardson

So I think that we all know that it is a challenging time to be diving into new business ventures, and opening a restaurant is about as high risk as it gets other then say moving dynamite or investing in a Brittany Spears driven summer day camp.  

I arrived at Jaleo around 5 pm on a Tuesday to take advantage of the 4-7 pm happy hour drink specials and went with a signature Mojito ($4.00).  It was well mixed and not too sweet with ample mint.  We ordered a Charcuturie for the table ($14.00) and Calamari ($7.00).  The calamari came out piping hot with an aioli type dipping sauce, it was not in anyway disappointing other then the fact that it went too quickly.  The Charcuturie featured 5 paper thin slices of 5 kinds of traditional cured meats accompanied by stone ground mustard, 3 cornichons, and 3 almonds.  Bread was brought out as something of an after thought.  Good all around, but I was hoping for something slightly more substantial, which is admittedly a bit foreign in the land of tapas.

Sadly the one item I would have really liked to see on the menu, a full tapas sampler either for the table or the individual seems to be available only at lunch.   Lunch also offers a Prix Fix option ($16.00) which includes Tapas, Entree, and Dessert.  

Chef's specials included a 6 oz filet of sliced duck breast on spiced lentils ($16.95), and a 4oz halibut filet in a tomato, chili pepper, almond and hazelnut sauce topped with 2 manilla clams ($9.95).  Featured entrees on the menu also include a very sweet meated half quail and lamb chops. Everything we tried was delicious.  It arrived well seasoned and at the proper temperatures and only the paella ($15.00) had any thing at all left behind.  

Dessert featured a fairly standard Cream Brulee($5.00), and Rice Pudding ($5.00), but the standout dish was the Churros and Chocholate ($7.00) with featured 6-7 very freshly made gourmet Churros with a dark chocolate dipping sauce that was not too sweet but very cleanly finished the meal. 

Verdict: I will attend again, but will likely gravitate towards the lunch and brunch specials which seem to offer a more substantial, but no less artful, dining experience for a more reasonable price.  The dinner and tapas menu, while delicious, may be better served by having fewer selections and more chef's combined samplers.  Now if they begin offering a fixed menu with wine accompaniment...that is a sure-fire winner!

Morning with Rainstorm

Time has stopped.  It is dead still, inside and out, but there is an energy about the stillness that feels something like a well deserved exhale.  That sounds a bit Jr. High poetic to me, but it fits. I absolutely love mornings where the sky opens and crashes in.  The sun is slower to come out and the world goes still.  Even when I used to be a TV addict, on these mornings I would let the sounds of the storm win out over the buzz and chatter of the television.  Right now I can't even abide the overhead lights.  Feels like disregarding the gift of the storm.  This is the perfect morning for a book, a cat (or two), and some tea.  I will give myself ten more minutes of this bliss  before I go tame the hair and put on my responsible adult shoes. 

Bread and Water can so easily be Toast and Tea.

13 May 1903, Oakland (CA) Tribune, pg. 6, col. 4: LOVE ON TOAST.

“While I’ve no gold,” he whispered,
“Love’s riches shall be thine.
Though we, in a modest cottage,
On bread and water dine.”

“With love’s warm flame to serve us,
At slight expense,” said she,
“We can make of bread and water
Sweet feasts of toast and tea.”

-- The Tattler in Town Topics.

Barriers to Productivity

My mind cannot seem to sit still and focus. I have begun to wonder if the work day isn't set out all wrong. There are so many points during the day where I find myself motivated to work on things that are not necessarily the things that I am "supposed" to be doing right then. While I am at work in my office working on a project I am able to stay very motivated and on-task, sometimes to the point of staying past business hours because I am on a roll and it is just easier not to stop. What is difficult however is jumping into the next project. When I have several things to do, but when I prioritize them they frequently either come out even, or I have things that need input from others at a time they are unavailable to work on it. What is truly odd is that the projects in my private life, the book I am reading, updating my blog, these things, seem to pop in my head and come to the forefront of my mind when I am not really technically in a position to indulge them. On the same note I find myself being in the perfect mind-set to work on tedious office projects in the evening at home where I should be on home and family matters. It seems to have gotten switched around in my head somehow. Odd.

The cat has landed

Are you ever moving about your house, minding your own business, settle down into the couch, chair, floor, or other stationary surface.  You read a book, look at something on the computer, stair aimlessly into space, etc.  and suddenly, there is a cat on your arm....a sleeping one.  Not just drowsy, but out cold.  The kicker of the whole event is that you haven't any idea of when she got there.  It is as if she materialized on top of you out of nothingness and you realize that if you hadn't had to hit the "Shift" key that you may have gone on not noticing your little visitor for a while longer.  And it feels like luck, and it feels like love to suddenly have been made into a pillow.  Don't even mind the kitty drool.

How does YOUR garden grow?

Most of my time in the past week or so has been eaten up by all things gardening. I got it in my head that I wanted to start tomatoes, habaneros, radishes, basil, nasturtiums, spicy micro greens, sweet bell peppers, and cat grass all from seed and have been running around cleaning out fish tanks to use as mini-greenhouse/grow light set-ups when I realized that nothing was getting enough light. Why do I always do this in the springtime? I also cheated a little with some pre-established plants and filled my strawberry pot with English Thyme, Lemon Thyme, Coconut Thyme, Grapefruit Mint, and Chocolate mint and threw some watercress into a pot as well. They seem to be doing well, but I am a bit impatient with everything.

All the cliches about spring renewal seem to be hitting me all at once. The days get a little bit longer and flip-flops start being viable footwear - not just wishful thinking, and suddenly projects start popping into my head. I have to start my garden and go through the book shelves, get back into the habit of the gym, etc, etc. So my question, the point of all this, is how do I make all this renewed energy and drive last? How does one take spring and bottle it for later when it is too hot, too cold, or just glum and gloomy? Anyone who figures it please out send me a diagram and I will get started strait away, or at least as soon as I get my seeds in the ground.

Burnt Offerings, A Stir of Echos, and Heroes

This weekend was spent reading and gardening. Finished Robert Marasco's 1973 novel "Burnt Offerings" on Saturday. Gothic little work about a house/family that absorbes life energy from fresh victims every few years as a way to ...remodel lets say. Some people just paint. Worth the read though. Almost a ghost story, at least emotionally, and deserves to be better known then it is. Sunday I decided to stick with the theme and read Richard Matheson's "A Stir of Echos". Not my favorite of Matheson's works, and absoultly nothing like the movie with Kevin Bacon, but still worth a quick read. At this point I feel like I want to keep devouring novels, but I am not sure what to read next. On the hot list I have Stephen King's " Black House", James Ellroy's "The Black Dahlia", Max Allan Collins and Righard Piers Rayner's "Road to Perdition", and Susan Minot's "Evening". Not sure which one will take the hot seat, but I will let you know.

For now I am going to drink my coffee and watch "Heroes: Season One" While I get ready for work.

Coffee Spoons

I do know why a teaspoon is a "tea" spoon, but why no coffee spoons. Seems wrong somehow. Usually I am a tea drinker, but this week my sensibilities have been crying out, aching for coffee. Not the caffeine, just the rich black liquid so dark that you can successfully scry in it. Maybe I just want to know the future. Possible I suppose. Times like these make me think of the opening line to chapter one of Tom Robbins "Still Life With Woodpecker"

..."In the last quarter of the twentieth century, at a time when Western civilization was declining too rapidly for comfort and yet too slowly to be very exciting, much of the world sat on the edge of an increasingly expensive theater seat, waiting - with various combinations of dread, hope, and ennui - for something momentous to occur."...

That really does sum it up in a nice neat nutshell. Except that the last quarter of the twentieth century has come and gone and while may things have happened, including the huge financial crash that seems to be squarely putting us all back in our places, nothing universally catastrophic has happened that has redefined existence. We all still do the things we do everyday, even if we do them with a little more frugality.

I am on bit of a precipice myself. Attempting to make since of my paths. There they all are stretched out in front of me. But the exit signs seem to be getting closer and I am not sure how may gas stations might be ahead. Perhaps I need a road trip, or at least another cup of coffee.

Shakespeare really knew how to curse.

One of my favorite authors, Christopher Moore, has just released a new novel titled "Fool" and it is his take on King Lear from the perspective of the Fool.  I am about 90% through and it is likely his most ambitious novel to date.  To anyone who enjoys the darker side of Shakespeare I highly recommend it.  This is dirty minded, violent, historical re-telling at its best.

Having my head beaten against a wall

I was about to start this post with "beating my head against a wall" but that implies choice, a kind of mindfulness that isn't involved with the situation at hand. We all know I am an advocate of controlling your own destiny, taking responsibility for your own damn self and all of that. But there are times where outside factors really do impact your situation. In those cases where it is linked to family or job or a situation where the impact of removing yourself from it would potentially create more of a headache then staying in and pushing through, those times it can honestly feel like someone is shoving you into an immovable barrier. At those times it is hard to know what to do. When you are in between the archetypal rock and hard place and you head is going to get smashed into something either way.

I need some tea.

Volume of commitment

Has anyone else ever noticed that we speak about doing things with our whole hearts, while at the same time, in the same culture, we talk about doing things with half our ass. Somehow this idea strikes me as being both profound and sad.

Pull on the plastic gloves and grab an ice cream scoop

It is time to dish. Or, more to the point to talk about dishing, namely at work. I have never quite mastered the fine art, the balancing act, of gossiping at work. Now before you shout out that gossip at work is a bad idea and is to be avoided, especially for those who do not have the skill, I agree with you. I would like nothing better then to be without it. When your boss and department run on it, however, it gets trickier. When you don't get involved, it seems that not only can you get a reputation for being aloof or stuck-up, but frequently the water-cooler chatter seems to be punctuated with real work information that is never mentioned in any other email or staff meeting. So there is the predicament. Is there some merit to getting professional development in the fine art of work socialization? If so, where do you start, where do you go for that kind of skill development? Tricky.

One of THOSE days

So today is what I think we like to call "one of THOSE days". You know that day where nothing quite goes right and you lack anything resembling grace to to get through it without either throwing a fit or just hiding under the bed? Well it is one of those, and I have a question.

Is it better to try to bounce yourself out of it and trudge through your normal routine knowing that you are basically as unstable as old dynamite, or should you just turn off the phone, call in sick and hide?

I see virtues and merits to both approaches and I am not sure which is superior. Obviously if this is something that is chronic for you then you had better just get up and get going or face being jobless, friendless, etc. However, this kind of individual is not the sort of person I am talking about, I am trying to decide the best course of action for someone who is generally a healthy, functional adult that sometimes for one reason or another randomly gets into a colossal snit.

Jury is still out.

Monday Holidays

I am never quite sure what to think of or do with Monday holidays. Only a small percentage of people actually get them off, and the ones who don't spend the entire day at work doing as little as possible in a kind of universal mock protest that they are not a part of said percentage. While I would rather be home with a nice cup of tea or a well mixed Manhattan, really the random Mondays off tend to be at least kind of quiet, which we really don't usually get often enough.

I have slacked off a little in my quest to be a little less consumerist and have bought several things in the last, oh, week and a half. But I did it, and there is no changing it now, bills are paid, meals have been eaten, and feeling guilt would be silly. At least I can say that the things purchased are probably not likely to sit on a shelf somewhere gathering dust, and there is something to that.

I need to get back on a system of improvement though. Not spending related, but in improving myself and my surroundings. Getting the mildew out of the bathroom is high on the list - ewww. Further down but important are setting systems in place to track budgets. So far I have at least been collecting all receipts in a box, but at the end of January I will actually have to do something with them.

But unlike blogs that are filled with intentions that never go anywhere I plan on at least bleaching the tub tonight, I may not bleach it well, but at least it is a start.

Definition: Oh Shit

Oh Shit: A Definition

The sudden acceptance of impending calamity.

By Request...

So while talking one night my friends down right demanded that I write a book. Well too bad! Too much time, and I am not a terrific writter. I can do this though. I can give you a piece of my mind which, in all actual reality, is what I think you were likely looking for in the first place. Some Ground Rules:
1. My spelling sucks, deal with it: - Spell check only takes me so far and I am living proof that smart people sometimes misspell things, espcially while typing fast.
2. Sometimes it may be about you, sometimes not: - I am not mean spirited, but part of my charm is that I call things in life like I see them, though my own flawed eyes, and like everyone else, sometimes I am not right, and sometimes I am downright full of shit.
3. No fucking wining and it is not a PG blog: Deal with it.
4. I am going to leave my name and the names of others out of it. Otherwise I will be tempted to edit, and that spoils the fun and makes it all less honest.
5. I am going to need some imput. Brain food people. Feed me.