Righting The Ship

Instinctively my hands typed “Righting The Shit”. Freudian much?

Because today’s planned event (see today’s Website Of The Day) falls under the category “Things I should be avoiding” I will attempt to start righting my life’s ship starting tomorrow.

Today’s Daily Challenge
Make one meal more visually appealing: add garnish, put take-out food on a plate, or use a glass.

As the saying goes, we eat with our eyes first! Sitting down to a meal that is visually appealing – if even in just a small way – can make us more mindful of our food and help us slow down and appreciate what we are eating.

I’ll keep this in mind as I nosh on beer and cheese later.

I Need A Wake Up Call
Both figuratively as well as literally.

My goal is to start waking early again in order to achieve some form of exercise prior to starting the rest of my day. I must not lament on the fact that my favorite early-morning portion of the year has passed and that I will increasingly have to deal with frigid/freezing temperatures. This needs to happen.

MARTA Worked Like A Champ, Why Didn’t I Do It Again Today?
I’ve been getting fairly lucky on MARTA in my limited return to ridership. On more than one occasion I have nearly stepped into a train immediately after reaching the platform and I’ve yet to encounter the belligerent riders that bothered me back in the olden days.

Of course I’ve been riding aging during “perfect MARTA weather” — dry and cool, so we’ll have to see how things go when the weather turns in a few weeks.

I stood on the train and smiled yesterday afternoon as we sped past stopped traffic on 400 S and 85 S, and made it to my Kirkwood destination with plenty of time to spare as well.

So why didn’t I ride today? As you see in today’s “Website Of The Day” I am attending an event at Park Tavern which sits at the corner of Piedmont Park (on Pride Weekend? WTH were they thinking?). I considered doing my normal drive-to-station-ride-train trick today but figured driving to Park Tavern this afternoon after spending all that time on the train would suck. I considered trying to park near the park and walk to MARTA therefore my car would be already parked and “near,” but that required too much time commitment for this morning. I suppose that I could MARTA from work to midtown and then back again later much in the same way that I did on Wednesday night, although this time I’ll be flying solo and have little incentive to ride MARTA back to Perimeter Mall only to have to drive all the way back into East Atlanta.

Paulie’s “First World” problems.

Maybe I’ll just leave work early today…

“New Math” Never Caught On, But “New Spelling” Certainly Has
On the train the other day a mother of three young children (one in a stroller even) got on the train. The two unrestrained youths were boys and they went dashing toward the middle of the car before the mother yelled for them to return. Through my earbuds I heard that one of the lads was named “Julian.”

I was wrong.

As the young boy sat in the seat ahead of me I saw him pull out a piece of paper from his book bag. His name was “Jewelien.”

W
T
F

I suppose that the youth of today are lucky that people have invented machines that can generate keychains and bicycle license plates on the fly now because what are the chances of finding a “Jewelien” version of one of these on a standard rack?

ITP Flickr Pic
This section may have to change and not because I haven’t been taking photos for awhile now. No, I’m finding out that Flickr is altering its user interface and contemplating changing the feature I deem to be critical — tags.

If you’ve ever looked at my Flickr photos you’ll see that nearly all of my shots are tagged (by me) with meta-data describing the photo, like “blogged” to identify shots I’ve included in this blog. With Flickr’s new “Photo Experience” they have temporarily removed tags and are “considering how to handle tags in the future.”

No tagging will mean no Flickr for me. I only hope they make a decision before my yearly subscription expires at the end of the month.

What’s Your Strangest Notebook/Note Use Case?
On Monday night I’ll be attending a programming “Hack Night” and the subject of this month’s meetup is the Evernote. Application Programmers Interface (API). As I try to teach myself how to use the Evernote API this weekend I will also be trying to think of a novel way to use it in my development on Monday night.

Do you have a weird uses case for using notebooks or notes, either digitally or physically?

For My Brother
ITP-Reader “Ronnie” if you are still out there I think you start reading/listening to Billy Crystal’s new book “Still Foolin’ ‘Em: Where I’ve Been, Where I’m Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys?”. I listened to about the first ninety minutes of it on my train ride into work yesterday (I listen to audiobooks at 1.5x speed) and think that you might enjoy it as well.

I’d suggest you pick up the book as well, but I really don’t know your sense of humor.

Today’s Personal Project
Start setting myself up for success instead of failure.

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – fat, frustrated, and set on returning to LA Fitness tomorrow
Current Music – listening to my Hüsker Dü iTunes Radio Station — now playing Hoodoo Gurus – “Bittersweet”
Website Of The Day – Tonight I’ll be attending the first annual Atlanta Cheese Festival. Of course as soon as I pulled into work I received an email warning me about the limited parking at Park Tavern — not that I didn’t know that already.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car (I talked myself out of MARTA today)
Exercise (b)Log – nothing
Morning Weigh-In – 213 pounds (October 1). I couldn’t check today because my scale was under a large pile of dirty laundry.

Monthly
Foot Mileage – ~10.1 miles
Wheel Mileage – 0.0 miles
Gym Visits – 0 (0 cardio)

Days Of Bed-Making – 0

Vegetarian Meals – 9
Carnivorous Meals – 15

Marta Rides To Work – 3
Bike Rides To Work – 0

October Goals
– clean my basement to the point where I could have people over
– hire a plumber to replace my malfunctioning faucets
– submit to important documents, neither of which I can talk about at this time
– walk no fewer than 75 miles

2013 Goals: Measurable
– Get my weight down to 190 pounds so that I can wear a 36″ waist pants comfortably
– Completely read ten books, audio books permissible
– Dissolve Sharpened Stone
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Completely run at least one 10k
– Fix all (or at least most) of the things which are wrong with the ITP Estate

2013 Goals: Unmeasurable
– Simplify, simplify, simplify
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
– Eat smaller portions
– Start, and continue, to make my own bread using my bread machine as well as using the technique outlined in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
– Read and discard magazines during the month in which they arrive (even digitally)
– Take two real vacations, perhaps one abroad
– Take a more proactive approach to meeting women (read “stop being such a pussy”)

Books I’ve Read/Heard In 2013

1. Pages 1.7 for iPad (Timestompers Guide) — by Sean Wells
2. 60 Mountain Lion Tips — by David Sparks and Brett Terpstra
3. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business — by Charles Duhigg
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy — by Douglas Adams
5. Amazing Things Will Happen: A Real-World Guide on Achieving Success and Happiness — by CC Chapman
6. So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love — by Cal Newport
7. Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life — by Steve Martin
8. Who Am I: A Memoir — by Pete Townshend

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]