OH HAI...

Busy
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.
So, yeah, haven't really been doing much with the blog in a while. I think the Project365 business really burned me out on the whole post every day thing, even if I was only generating a post for every day and not *actually* posting everyday. (details, details) Tweets have still been happening, so if you're really craving that tall, asiany goodness, peek on over there, since things are still going to be sporadic over here for the time being.

For those keeping score at home, I did finally finish the acorn flour project, although there still needs to be a post about that. Or at least a recipe. Perhaps I'll put that up over on FoodNerd's site. I mean, it's hers, but y'know, I get some privileges for setting it up at least.

I guess I do owe y'all a quick recap, so here's a quick list of what I've been up to:

• Dancing -- I'm trying to get to more of the local dances on a regular basis, but we're also attending local workshops as well as traveling for workshops and exchanges in other cities.
  
• Running -- I was getting my mileage up in preparation for running the Chicago Marathon this year, but that fell through when some friends decided they were going to get married that same weekend. Nevertheless, I was reintroduced to a few guys who work locally and have been running pretty regularly with them for the past few months.
  
• Guitar -- been working on my finger-style country blues using this book. Good so far. Occasionally picking up the Uke, but it's been mostly guitar recently.
  
• Massage Therapy -- happy to finally be covering expenses this year, but still not a practical source of income, but enough to keep my hands busy, so to speak.
  
• Studying up on my perl and C++ to work on a random OCD data-collection project focused on shopping for organic food. I've been collecting the data and building a back-end perl-based parsing app, in part to exercise some of those coding muscles I haven't used in a while, but also because I'm tired of keeping all the data in my head. Obviously still a work in progress.
  
• studying Chinese -- some nice online services have popped up making it a lot easier to practice listening and reading skills. I'm currently using Popup Chinese, although it's taken a bit of a back seat recently since...
  
• I started a new job last week -- engineering, 3 miles from the house, nice people who run (same guys I've been running with, actually. Worked out quite nicely.) Still getting up to speed, but interesting to observe how my body is adjusting to the new schedule. (or rather, how it's not)
  

So, yeah, kind of busy. And we've also been having a lot of work done with the house -- blown-in insulation and a new roof while exterior painting in the queue and plans to rejigger the back deck. And jeez -- disc started a few weeks ago and there's some more travel coming up, a couple of weddings and... well, you know the drill.

Hopefully I'll see you guys around, even if it takes a bit of time for me to hit equilibrium again.

356/365 Actually, I had them all cut...

356/365 Actually, I had them all cut...
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

10...

Yes, I still make this joke all the time.

Late night sketch journal

Couldn't sleep, so had a snack and did a little drawing. Obviously I'm still up, and apparently now I'm also feeling nauseous. Awesome.

2008 in review

I may have mentioned that 2008 was a pretty mixed year... although my current theory is that the awesomest part of 2008 was actually just the tail end of the mostly super-awesome 2007, or perhaps to reframe, we had a glorious year of the boar, and the year of the rat mostly sucked balls.

Anyway, here we go.

Highlights:

• 3 weeks in Hawai'i. (January -- tail of year of the Boar) Totally ruled.
• All-Balboa weekend in Cleveland -- great fun.
• Completed the Cape Cod marathon in 4:08:30
• New President! w00t!
• a week in Italy with my parents. A little rushed, but overall good.

Lowlights:

• ankle injury that has put me out of commission 6 weeks and counting.
• saying goodbye to our cat in December after he went through the final stages of kidney failure. He'd been my buddy for 16 of the 17 years that I've lived in New England. We are still sad.

Stats:

• Total days sick: 38 (Two spans, including combo bronchitis/sinusitis in July and most of the entire month of my birthday and up to the day of the marathon.)
• Birthdays of consequence: 1 (Let's just say that I am no longer in my 30s, and that this has not proven to be a good thing to date.)
• Cities visited: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Cleveland, Raleigh, Florence, Venice, Rome, Honolulu, Hilo, Lihue, Manhattan, Fergus, Buffalo, Kansas City
• States Visited: 9 (CA, HI, IL, KS, NC, NH, NV, NY, OH)
• Countries Visited: 2 (Canada, Italy)
• Airplane legs: 31
• Concerts attended: 3 (80s punk bands: 1)
• Miles run: 806 (in 6 states)
• Weddings attended: 3
• Dance workshops attended: 2
• Ultimate frisbee tournaments: 4
• Ultimate frisbee tournaments (>200mi away): 2
• Ultimate Frisbee tournament injuries: 1
• (tournaments >200mi away, lifetime: 6)
• (injuries at tournaments >200mi away, lifetime: 3)
• Awesome people to be married to: 1 (makes it all better.)

3/365 Sketchy Wiring, and what the deal is

3/365 Sketchy Wiring
3.1/365 New light fixture
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Hey.

So you may have noticed all the posts recently with the weird titles. It's probably obvious, but I kinda decided to try this whole "Project 365" thing that's been bouncing around the interwebs -- basically, take a photo a day for a whole year. Anyway, I'm going to try to take pictures every day and plan on posting a daily photo. As some of you may have already noticed, there will be some fudging of posting dates, mainly because I've got some latent OCD and want the posting date to match the photo date. But really, it'll be just the posting date. We'll see how THAT goes.

But wait, there's more!

Just to relive my overachieving college days, I'm also going to try to do some drawing every day. (which will maybe evolve into some bigger creative projects) A few years ago, I participated in a thing called Art Every Day Month that was started by my friend Leah. She's gone on to inspire a great many people to express their creativity and now has started a creative every day challenge. Basically, do something creative every day, and recognize the creativity in the things you are doing.

I suppose I'd already have my bases covered taking daily photos, so I'd get credit or something without having to do the extra work... but the whole point is that I want to work on my drawing, so... I guess there you go.

It feels like I'm making New Year's Resolutions, and I guess I sort of am, even though me and Resolutions parted ways a long time ago... and I was happier for it. But 2008 really went sour towards the end there, and it's still left a bad taste in my mouth. (To start with, I'm still broken, and the lack of activity isn't helping.) Anyway, it seemed like a good thing to give myself some goals, keep myself occupied, focus my energy... and maybe some good will come of it.

We'll see how it goes.

And maybe I'll try running another marathon in the fall.

[still to come... 2008 year in review.]

The Potential for Irony

So, sometime last year, I decided that it'd be a good idea to run a marathon.

Actually, let me rephrase that: sometime last year, I somehow got it into my head that I should run a marathon.

In 1998, I was planning on running the Bay State Marathon with a bunch of people from work. Ah, the halcyon days of my early career in computer engineering, working at a company that had its own staffed fitness center. We'd take two-hour lunches and play some hoops or go for a run, maybe do some lifting, grab a shower, and then eat at our (respective) desks.

Anyway, that year a bunch of people decided to train together for the marathon, myself included. It was maybe a month out from the actual race, when somebody asked me how many miles I was doing. I can no longer recall my answer, but I do recall that the person who had asked the question didn't think that I was running nearly enough miles to be ready for the race.

That weekend I did a 7 mile run and a 13 mile run, and by the end of the second run I had a sharp pain in one of my knees that forced me into a slow, awkward stride. I had a hard time walking the following week. Shortly thereafter, I managed to put myself out of my misery by spraining one of my ankles playing ultimate frisbee.

I quit. And vowed to never be so stupid as to try to run another marathon. The experience taught me that my body just wasn't designed for that kind of abuse.

Fast-forward 6 years to the fall of 2004. I'm at another company, post-dot-com bubble. We don't have a staffed gym, but we still have a weight room and a shower, which is all I ever needed, really. Long lunches playing disc and going running, maybe a little lifting followed by a shower and lunch at my desk. (Nevertheless, slightly less halcyon, FWIW.) And there's a small group of runners that are talking about running a half-marathon in the spring.

I'm reluctant. It does have the word "marathon" in it, after all.

Then, a confluence of events. Well, event. I get laid off from my job. Meaning, lots of free time. And a friend willing to be a running partner.

We sign up for two races, and this time, older and wiser, I actually set up a training plan. (And there are far worse things to do with your time between jobs than having a set training schedule.) And sticking with the plan, both races go pretty well, all things considered.

Which I must admit was somewhat unexpected.

A little less than two years later and about a year ago, perhaps a few weeks before finishing the massage therapy program, we were asked in class to do a goal-setting exercise. And I thought to myself:

Y'know, I'm getting old...
gonna hit one of those big milestones next year...
maybe I could... RUN A MARATHON to prove that I'm not "old" ...
yeah! there's an idea...

And now, here I am, one month into a new training schedule.

The crazy part is that I've been running in the mornings before work. There's no longer a shower at the office, so I could only run in the afternoon on weekends or days that I was working from home. And running after work is suboptimal because, being winter, it's dark outside (not to mention cold and often icy), the gym is usually packed, and when things run late, I'm also wicked hungry. So any number of things can tank a workout.

So I switched to mornings. It forces me to do the workout. And because I know I have to start working at a reasonable hour (say 10am, worst case), it forces me to start early. And for the most part, it's worked pretty well: I haven't missed any planned workouts, the regular workouts have helped improve my mood (it's always been a form of self-medication for me), and on average, I'm actually getting to the office earlier than I used to. The primary downside is that it's often colder in the mornings (say 10°F instead of 28°F) in which case I'm stuck going to the gym. (But it isn't any worse than going to the gym after work, and it's less crowded in the morning.)

I've also found that my sleeping habits have finally settled down. For the most part, I've been falling asleep pretty easily and on the occasions where I do wake-up in the middle of the night, I haven't had any trouble falling back asleep. Of course, the down side to that is that a lot of nights, I'll be wanting to go to bed at 9pm, which is just sad. It really messes with the social calendar, although I'm hoping to eventually adjust. Actually stayed up past 11 last night! Woo, uh, hoo...

So, I've opened myself up to the potential for some serious irony. The obvious one:

Things seem to be going pretty well so far, but I have had a nagging hamstring problem since last fall which may well be due to an adductor injury last summer. It seems to be holding out alright, but of course, I'm only a month into the training plan so far. It may be that when I get to the 16 mile or 18 mile runs, my body will just give up and stop working. So it may be that this exercise to prove that I'm NOT old may just prove that I am. Subjunctive oops.

The other potential irony?

Well, what do I mean when I say "old?" What do I think of?

I've already mentioned the part about the body breaking down, unable to handle the rigors of youthful exuberance. Or running several hundred miles (possibly over a thousand) over the course of the next several months. There's also a "responsible adult" component... I'm already guilty of some of that -- got a mortgage, saving for retirement, think about the consequences to your actions (look before you leap... and we won't talk about exactly how I got that adductor injury last year). But there's also the teetotaling, conservative, restrained old guy -- too old to be silly, too old to have any fun, too old to stay out late at night...

um, OOPS.

Four Things

Still sick. But I got this meme through email from some friends and I figured I'd post it here, since I saw it floating around the interwebs/blogosphere a few months ago.

Four jobs I have had in my life:

1. The fry-guy at Carl's Jr restaurant. That job lasted all of two weeks -- couldn't get the smell of grease off my skin for days.
2. accounting department at an insurance company
3. convenience store lackey -- manned the register, restocked the shelves and coolers and made sandwiches. Regret selling beer to the dick/jock with the real, but not his, ID (I recognized him from the paper -- he was a sophomore on the football team) and not selling to the cute girls with the obvious fake ID
4. school computer room PTOP. (Part-time operator) Not particularly technical -- we just checked people in and out for the most part. But it did get you the chance to stay there after hours to get your homework/projects done when everyone else got booted.

Four places I have lived:

1. Sherman Oaks, CA
2. Ithaca, NY
3. Acton, MA
4. Newton, MA

Four places I have been on vacation:

1. London
2. Shanghai
3. Ambergris Caye, Belize
4. Hawaii

Four favorite foods:

1. Noodle Soups (Spicy Beef Noodle Soup, Jambong -- a spicy Chinese/Korean seafood noodle soup, Pho -- vietnamese beef noodle soup, ramen, saimin...)
2. Clearly fried Shrimp
3. Mac 'n Franks (powdered mac 'n cheese variety)
4. Ice Cream (generally in a banana split with hot fudge configuration)

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. Hawaii, surfing
2. Hawaii, hiking
3. Hawaii, snorkeling
4. Hawaii, not being sick.

Kinda got Hawaii on the brain right now. Can you tell?

Four friends or relatives I think will respond first:

1. ...
2. ...
3. ...
4. ...

...which where we end, since I'm not particularly bloggily-connected and those that I do know have probably already played this game.

Back to bed, I think. Or maybe to the kitchen for some more chicken soup.

overlooked

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Just documenting the cute; he's been climbing onto my shoulder since we got him as a kitteen. (kitty teen)

Last day of work tomorrow before the holiday and the honeymoon. (w00t!) But still lots to do before getting on the plane early Monday morning.

Ketchup?

Hide
Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

I had every intention of doing Art Everyday Month this year, what will all the craziness of the year theoretically behind us -- moving into the new house, finishing school, setting up the new business, selling the old house, getting married. Y'know, stuff. But I guess it wasn't really *every* intention, seeing as I got as far as starting the above drawing on the first and only just got around to "finishing" it this afternoon. (and by that I mean that I've done enough for it to be presentable, even though it doesn't really feel done.)

Life often seems like a never-ending sequence (an infinite series?) of "almost there" moments where things are largely sucking and it seems like you just need to turn a corner and everything will fall into place and it'll just be smooth sailing from then on. (you mean like in Iraq? No, not like that. Well, yes, kinda... in the never-quite-turning-the-corner way as opposed to the unfailingly-optimistic-in-a-delusional-if-not-cynical-way way)

Anyway, things keep feeling like they're going to settle down and get back to "normal." Except that they're not. There's always something coming up on the horizon. Things are good, but invariably there's always something that's a little crazy going on in the background, some crisis we're managing or some crazybomb that's about to go off.

Shit happens.

But, you know, things are good. Always with the step back and the happy sigh. And it still feels like we're making progress. Maybe it *is* fair to think of it like a mathematical infinite series. As in, mathematical convergence.

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit out of it these days, but I haven't been able to put my finger on what the dealio is. The head feels like it's in a funny place. I've felt a bit disconnected. Things seems strangely unfamiliar. Maybe it's just that my routines are gone and I have to develop new systems.

So I went to the well. Although it's really more like I found myself in my well, and I've been trying to find a pause between all the stuff that's been going on to take some time to process things a bit.

The well isn't really a bad place. It's a concept I took from Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" where it's something of a reoccurring theme. It's a place for introspection. A quiet place, hidden away, separated from the systems, the chaos, the crazy of everyday living. Maybe it's its own little crazy, but it's at least in a more manageable form-factor.

So it's the start of the Turkey day long weekend. I figured I'd have some free time while we're at the SOOTTAD's parental homestead, although we've been put to work for a good chunk of the time we've been here already. But I may still have a chance to find that pause. Hopefully I'll at least get a few of the catch-up posts out to let you know what I've been doing and thinking about recently.

And, of course, if not, hopefully this'll do for some of the explaining.

Updates

Originally uploaded by foodnerd.

I haven't felt like I've had much time to post, or had much to post about, but I finally got around to updating the About page. Quite a bit has changed, and I guess I'm a little sad that I didn't bother to save some of what used to be there. But one of life's lessons is that, oftentimes, once you've done something, it can't really be undone. And at that point, you just have to let go and move on.

Anyway, all the big craziness of the year is finally over. Well, mostly, anyway. The wedding, the travel, the house sale, school, massage certification and licensing. There's still plenty of leftover crazy to go around -- we've got thank you notes to write and we're finally starting to take some baby steps getting the new house in proper order, but otherwise it's just everyday normal crazy.

In the last week, I took my car to the shop, had the SOOTTAD's car insured and registered in Massachusetts, played some ultimate, worked in the garden, ran shopping errands, went to a BBQ, a baby shower, a birthday party and a roofdeck concert eavesdrop (the Police concert at Fenway Park) and finally broke down and installed the window A/C* units in the bedroom and the SOOTTAD's office.

There always seems to be something. We're still busy, although I'm happy to say that it doesn't feel crushingly so. Maybe there's something about our lives that really is unusual or extraordinary, but in this, I think it's just business as usual. There will always be things that we need to take care of, planning, working, fixing, building. We have projects now, and when those are done, there are already plenty of others that are waiting in the wings. It never ends.

But I think I'm ok with that. It seems normal. Life is an everyday kind of a thing, after all. All is well.

...although a bit hot and sticky, at the moment.

* Unfortunately, no A/C in my workspace at the house, but I should be back in the office-office for the rest of the week.

About

Originally uploaded by foodnerd.

• The tall asian dude is pretty tall... for an asian dude. The SOOTTAD (significant other of the tall asian dude) says that he's pretty tall for most people. Admittedly, while falling below the average height of the Boston Celtics, he is taller than their shortest player.
• The tall asian dude likes to think that he still looks like he's in his 20's, even though he isn't -- and hasn't been for a while. He's really just a big kid pretending to be an adult, although recently he's been feeling like he's been forced to grow up some.
• The tall asian dude lives with the SOOTTAD and their last remaining (crotchety old eccentric) cat in the cozy Boston suburb of Waltham, MA.
• Having recently bought a new house and sold the old one, he is quite thankful that he first bought before the housing boom hit its stride in the late 90's.
• The SOOTTAD spent almost 2 years living and working in Chicago after having lived in Massachusetts for almost her entire life, which really bummed out the tall asian dude. Thankfully, the SOOTTAD moved back to Massachusetts in early 2007.
• In the summer of 2007, the tall asian dude and the SOOTTAD got married and are actively engaged in the process of living happily ever after.
• Although the tall asian dude grew up in southern California and has willingly chosen to remain in Massachusetts, he is, in fact, not crazy.
• The tall asian dude considers himself to be a pseudo-geek, mostly due to his occupation (engineer) and education (engineering degree). However, he much prefers getting irradiated running around outside than sitting in front of a monitor. Sitting outside working on a laptop would still fall in the latter category and thus is behavior to be avoided. He is geeky enough to realize that TFT screens, and really even CRT monitors, don't generate all that much radiation.
• The tall asian dude completed a program in muscular therapy and now has a small part-time massage therapy practice in Newton, MA that he runs with a friend and former classmate.
• The tall asian dude's primary passion, outside of the SOOTTAD, is ultimate frisbee. Technically, it's "ultimate disc" or just "ultimate" but generally when the tall asian dude used to say that, people would look kind of perplexed. The sport has grown in popularity so it may no longer be as much of an issue, but the tall asian dude is always just a shade behind the times, it seems.
• The tall asian dude has been known to swing. (dance that is. Lindy hop, specifically.)
• He likes running, too.
• The tall asian dude is aware of how silly it is that he's writing this description in the third person, but seems content to continue doing it anyway.

[UPDATED: Fri Jul 29, 2007, 09:37:29 PM EDT]