Thinking too much

I went for my third acupuncture appointment this evening. I feel like I've been running pretty even-keel overall, but over the past day or so, I've felt like my energy level was just a shade lower. Maybe I'm just not getting enough sleep, but I did mention it at the start of my appointment.

I've been curious about what they've been finding during my previous sessions as I've only overheard something about "heat and I've refrained from asking so as not to distract them. So today I asked Masa, one of the assistants, and he told me that they've noticed and have been treating a slight kidney deficiency. (Which interestingly enough, and probably not unsurprisingly, is what the Chinese doctor said last year when we were in Beijing.) He does the usual pulse-taking, abdominal palpation and applies magnets, and then leaves the room to let me settle in. A short time later, Mr. Kuwahara comes in (followed by Masa), takes some time to check my pulse and then asks me:

"Have you been thinking a lot recently?"

Hmmm. Finals this week in Physiology and Anatomy; trying to figure out how to test a particular feature in the design at work; and sifting through a bunch of ideas presented in this book I've been reading for the past week or so.

Well, uh, yeah, actually. Why do you ask?

Apparently he could feel it in my pulse. He and Masa speak briefly in Japanese, tells me he will return later and then leaves the room. Masa tells me: not kidneys today, spleen.

Well, there you go. I guess I'm just thinking too much. Hope the treatment works, 'cos things aren't going to settle down for a little while.

Not us...

...but still, a very strange headline to see in my feed aggregator.

And I don't much care for the reader letters that have been written in response. But I guess I have a slightly biased opinion on the matter.

What's in a number?

To be honest, I have no idea what this means, but I thought the explanation was interesting... especially the part about enjoying being alone. The old me? Or maybe the true me?

Your Life Path Number is 7

Your purpose in life is to find truth and meaning You are very spiritual, and you are interested in the mysteries of life. You are quite analytical and a great thinker. You have many theories and insights. A life of solitude is perfect for you. You need time to think and do things your way. In love, you are quite charming. You attract many with your confidence and wit. While you enjoy being alone, sometimes you take it to an extreme. You can become too isolated, shutting out loved ones and friends. Express yourself a little bit more, and you'll be surprised where it takes you!

What Is Your Life Path Number?

UPDATE:
Ok, so I googled "life path number" and found this on http://www.astrology-numerology.com/:

The Life Path Number

The Life Path is the sum of the birth date. This number represents who you are at birth and the native traits that you will carry with you through life. The most important number that will be discussed here is your Life Path number. The Life Path describes the nature of this journey through life.

...

A Life Path 7 person is a peaceful and affectionate soul, and by nature rather reserved and analytical. The overwhelming strength of the number 7 is reflected in the depth of thinking that is shown; you will garner knowledge from practically every source that you find. Intellectual, scientific and studious, you don't accept a premise until you have dissected the subject and arrived at you own independent conclusion. This is a very spiritual number and it often denotes a sort of spiritual wisdom that becomes apparent at a fairly early age. You need a good deal of quiet time to be with your own inner thoughts and dreams. You dislike crowds, noise and confusion. You are very thorough and complete in your work, the perfectionist who expects everyone else to be a meet a high standard of performance, too. You evaluate situations very quickly and with amazing accuracy. You rely heavily on your experiences and your intuition, rather than accepting advice from someone; your hunches usually prove to be very accurate, and knowing this, you are one who tends to follow the directions they seem to guide. It's easy for you to detect deception and recognize insincere people. You aren't one to have a wide circle of friends, but once you accept someone as a friend, it's for life. You really aren't a very social person, and your reserve is often taken to be aloofness. Actually, it's not that at all, but merely a cover up for your basic feeling of insecurity. You actually like being alone, away from the hustle and bustle of modern life. In many ways, you would have fit in better in much earlier times when the pace of life was less hectic.

In the most negative use of the 7 energies, you can become very pessimistic, lackadaisical, quarrelsome, and secretive. A Life Path 7 individual who is not living life fully and gaining through experiences, is a hard person to live with because of a serious lack of consideration and because there is such a negative attitude. The negative 7 is very selfish and spoiled. If you have any of the negative traits they are very difficult to get rid of because you tend to feel that the world really does owe you a living or in some way is not being fairly treated. Fortunately, the negative 7 is not the typical 7, at least not without some mitigating positive traits. This number is one that seems to have some major shifts from highs to lows. Stability in feelings may be elusive for you.

Ok, so that's kind of creepy.

Although it's also kinda interesting to note that HM, the old high school friend whom I mentioned a short while back, had talked about astrology and numerology (things I needed to be more open-minded about) during our conversation over the holidays.

Up is down, black is white...

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

The tall asian dude continues to be in a pretty good mood, and yesterday, still in the middle of January in New England, it was 60°F.

Sometimes when things are all wrong, things are alright.

We played disc in shorts on a rain-softened field, followed by brunch.

Good times.

ID/PSA * The Kimberly Trip

Just heard this bumper by the Kimberly Trip on Flashback Alternatives:

"This is Kimberlina of the Kimberly Group and you're listening to Flashback Alternatives...
...because corporate radio is the Devil."

BWAHAHAHA!!!

...I wasn't really paying attention until I heard the last part and did a mental double-take. Damn WMP, if the RealAudio streams weren't overloaded (Gee, go figure -- buffering and music info encoded into the stream -- who'd want that?), I coulda backed up, listened to the whole thing and quoted it properly.

UPDATE: got the complete bumper after they played it again a few days ago. Heh.

Homework, location #3

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

And now the living room smells like incense and my left shirt sleeve smells like smoke... but otherwise I feel pretty good.

Dude, what have you been smoking?

So I decided to give acupuncture a try again.

Maybe I'm just hanging out with the wrong crowd (you know: aromatherapists, acupressure and Reiki practitioners) or I just drank the Kool-aid they were serving when I signed up for massage school, or maybe I'm just getting in touch with my inner Asian, but I've noticed a shift in my perception -- a perception that buys into the idea that traditional eastern approaches (Traditional Chinese Medicine, Five Element theory) conceptually seem like they might be more effective at managing internal physiological and emotional... uh, issues. I've always felt that I was pretty open-minded, although there's also been a pretty heavy dose of skepticism floating around. But I have to say, after a class on Shiatsu/acupressure in our Perspectives on Bodywork course and really finding the "headache pressure point" for the first time, and discovering the effectiveness of Stomach-36, I think I've really started buying into the stuff.

So anyway, I thought: hey, maybe I should try a fresh approach to what ails me. All this depression and getting sick business. And the low energy, and occasional "gastro-intestinal distress"... this seems like it'd be right up Complementary-and-alternative-medicine's alley, so to speak.

So I ended up going to the Culia Ki Clinic in Watertown. I originally found out about the clinic because a friend was attending a workshop with the director and was impressed with his... with something. Over the holiday an old friend HM told me I needed to learn to listen to my gut, and I guess I'm trying to put it into practice. I guess I could just feel that he knew his shit.

Robert, an assistant, did an intake and initial pulse and palpation evaluation and then the director, Mr. Kuwahara, came in and did his magic. It was interesting to notice that he stayed in the room and continued to adjust the needles and check my pulse several times. (This may have been part of the initial consultation, we'll see how much I'm seen by the director in future visits, I suppose.) Some time later, Robert returned and was told how to proceed with the next part of the treatment, and then after that, Mr. Kuwahara returned and did some more things ...and then gave me my homework.

Yes, they gave me acupuncture homework. Actually, I'm supposed to self-treat with MOXA. From the looks of the sheet, it could have been magnets, too. But for me: just moxa, 4 locations. Robert gave me the low-down: there are dots on my hands and feet to help me find the exact locations where I was supposed to place them.

The complete session took just over an hour and a half. I felt alright but afterwards, nothing special... but y'know, I really didn't expect to see any immediate effects -- this is supposed to be energy work after all, small changes occurring over time.

But, I must admit, I slept... oddly last night. It seemed like I was sleeping deeply, and yet I woke up several times, with a feeling I really can only describe as being... intense. Not like, "Whoa dude, that was intense!" There was just a strange intensity about it. A perception. Sorta fuzzy. Maybe it could be better described as a sort of buzz. Regardless, it seemed like I slept pretty well, despite the interruptedness.

Had to take the car in this morning. I officially decided to get up an hour before the appointment and did my homework sitting on my bed. Robert had recommended lighting the Moxa using incense which seemed to work well enough. And it seemed less involved than having to burn a bunch of matches (not to mention that I have no idea if there's still a lighter in the house). Watching the thin thread of the smoke rise, it was interesting to observe how drafts and flows within the room. And hey, incense and moxa stinking up the bedroom. Oy.

At the dealership, I notice myself feeling surprisingly awake after such a strange sleeping experience. Disc during lunch, and it feels good. The field is snowy, icy, wet. By the end, my toes are semi-numb, but I can still feel all of my wet fingers. At one point, I remember thinking about intention, catch myself thinking to myself: this is the world where I catch the disc, this is the world where I throw the disc. I catch, I throw. It feels good to be outside. Then home, shower, work, eat. Then class.

*sigh*

I'm disappointed to admit that I actively dread this class. We can afford to miss one class per module, and I'm pretty sure I'm just going to bail on one since I don't have any overseas weddings to attend this month. Class has been, and is, in fact, annoying. But at the breaks, I notice something odd: I'm ...chatty? People who usually annoy the crap out of me don't seem to be bothering me at all today. Holy shit, I'm actually making jokes with him. I'm... being upbeat?

WTF?

What am I doing?

This isn't me.

...

Or... is it?

Maybe it was just the weather: gray, but mild and in the high 40's. Might've even snuck into the low 50's this evening. Maybe it's the exercise. Or maybe things are just falling into place. However, the internal energies are supposed to influence behavior as well as emotion...

It should be interesting to see how I'm feeling tomorrow... especially after I finish my homework. My acupuncture homework.

Too bad the bedroom still smells like moxa. I guess I can live with that.

synchronicity

kat, who's drawn this amazing community around her for AEM and now AW, has a post about the journey and briefly touches on the synchronicity that's been happening in her life. I followed a link over to 37days where Patti has a post on the power of words:

"And these three stories are also about how willing we are to believe the stories we tell ourselves: I'm not as smart as people think I am, I'm an imposter, I'm afraid of bats, I'm not good with money, I'm disorganized, I'm fat, I'm a lousy cook, I'm an overachiever -- we all tell ourselves stories about Self, some that we've told ourselves for years, don't we?"

Wow, that's kinda me.

I often get hung up on semantics and the baggage that sometimes comes along with certain words, but this particular aspect of words (the power of the inner dialog and the stories we constantly tell ourselves) has very recently become something that I'm going to actively work on. I'd almost call it a New Year's resolution, except that I don't really subscribe to the notion of NYRs so much, and it wasn't really so much a New Year's thing, despite it still being generally the season.

And it's funny, this whole business of words and stories and journeys...

Because I thought I was where I wanted to be, more or less, or at least on the right path and generally moving in the right direction. And a few nights ago, I got blindsided. The train jumped the track. The building collapsed. The board upturned. Bicycles everywhere.

And somehow, when the dust settled, it seems like I got dropped right by the road I was meant to be traveling all along. It's not going to be a walk in the park -- there's work ahead to be sure -- but somehow, it feels right. At least it seems like it does so far. The weather changes fast in these parts -- it's good to be prepared. But even so, sometimes you still have to hope for the best.

Keeping Score

Numbers:

• Countries visited: 4 (China, Canada, Italy, The Netherlands)
• Cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Montreal, Philadelphia, Ithaca, Stresa, Milan, Amsterdam, Chapel Hill, Albany
• Airplane legs:24
• Logged running time: 77 hours, 42 minutes, 46 seconds
• Boston's Run to Remember Half-Marathon, March 13th. Chip Time: 1:45:19
• Big Lake Half-Marathon, May 7th in Alton, NH. Chip time: 1:40:33
• Historical mean high temperature for May in Alton, NH: 61°F. Race day high temperature: 44°F (and raining)
• BUDA Spring Hat League Tournament, May 21st. Historical average high temperature: 71°F. Tournament day high: 57°F (51° and raining by 3:30pm)
• BUDA Fall Hat League Tournament, Oct 29th. Historical average high temperature: 58°F. Tournament day high: 43°F (34° and snowing by 3:30pm) (30th: high of 66°F, 31st: high of 70°F)
• Weddings: 4
• Funerals: 1
• Trips to the emergency room: 1 (right hand)
• X-rays taken: 4 (left knee, left hand)
• MRIs taken: 1 (left knee)
• Surgeries: 1 (left hand)
• Number of stitches in right hand: 4
• Number of stitches in left hand: 4
• Number of days with 2" pin in left hand: 33
• Days showering with a plastic bag over one hand: 20

Dates:

• February 9: Start 2-year muscular therapy (massage) program
• April 6: SOOTTAD moves to Chicago
• April 19: New job (contracting)
• July 16: tear Radial MCP ligament of left thumb
• August 9: Hand surgery

Thank god it's over.

Merry Sickmas

The runny nose from Christmas Eve turned into a full blown cold Christmas Day, the runny nose joined by friends tired, achy, coughy and sneezy. Bah. Hopefully I'll feel better before I have to get on the plane back to Boston.

Your bad (my bad)

I'm certainly not a perfect writer -- I begin sentences with conjunctions, misuse semicolons and overuse dashes like nobody's business -- but I've always been something of a stickler for spelling. I'm far from perfect, but I thought that I was at least pretty good about the whole you're/your too/to its/it's business. At least I did until recently. I mean, it drives me nuts when I see it misused out and about in the wilds of the interwebs, and yet, here I am, correcting my own posts.

WTF?

RNC talking-points pod people

An awesome article by Wil Wheaton on Salon:

...I thought Tookie Williams was probably guilty and deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. I wasn't defending him; I was just voicing my opposition to the death penalty. My dad acted as if I loaded the gun for Tookie and helped him aim it at my sister. We weren't able to have a respectful discussion about the death penalty, because my dad wouldn't allow it. Bill O'Reilly must be so proud of the world he's helped to create.

Now here is the terrifying thing: my dad is a really smart guy. He's so smart, in fact, he should see right through it when these right-wing noise-machine guys throw out facts in favor of emotional arguments to manipulate their audience. He should know when Rush is full of shit the same way I know when Michael Moore is full of shit...

I feel like I see this happening all around me, and it just makes me sad.

Along with everything else.

The buzz

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

I think I mentioned the bees, right?

To the lady walking her dog this morning...

To answer your question: no, I don't think you should try to run through it if you start feeling pain at the front of your shin. Even if it's muscular, the pain is telling you that something's wrong and you should probably stop running to prevent it from becoming a more serious injury.

I'm back in L.A. for the holidays, and this morning I went for a run, hoping to kick-start myself back into shape again. On one of the small side streets on the way back to the house, I saw a woman walking her dog coming from the other direction. This wasn't particularly remarkable until, just as I was passing, she suddenly asked me if I thought if it was okay to just run through the pain if her leg started hurting while she was running.

I was a bit startled, but I think I stopped and tried to get more information and ended saying that she should at least stop and "try to stretch it or something" and then continued on my way. It kept bouncing around in my head as I continued up the hill until I reached the next (and final) turn off to the house and decided that I should go back and be more definitive about not running through an injury (unless, at that particular moment, she might be trying to escape from hungry bears or something). Never did find her, but it did stretch out my run by an extra 10 minutes or so. Oh well.

I've been stopped for directions once or twice before, but I've never been stopped by a pedestrian before, and certainly not for training advice. I guess she was hoping to get the green light from a fellow runner perhaps because her regular peer counselors had already advised against it. But I find it particularly interesting, because in the past, I've always felt like the people in California tended to keep to themselves, at least as far as runners go. You're just another runner, another health nut, whatever, just another body that's out on the road. In New England, you're one of the few who get it, especially if you're out when it's below freezing, or raining or snowing. I'm sure there are more runners per capita than in other parts of the country, but it's still a fairly small segment of the population, and because of it, sometimes if feeling like you're part of a secret club or something. At least, that's my take on it.

Anyway, it doesn't suck that it's been in the high 70s the last two days after feeling the "reprieve" of above-30° temperatures in Boston. But it's not a true vacation -- I've already put in a few hours of work and I need to write some papers for school. But hey, let's hear it for telecommuting, so I can actually get some work done.

Coming back home has changed over the years. For one things, it's not really Home so much anymore. Well, it is, and it isn't. It's the home of the past, it's live action reminiscing. Home is where the SOOTTAD is. Waltham is where I hang my hat(s). (I guess I'm hardly ever home these days.) It's good to be back to spend time with family and friends, but I'm really not as excited about coming back as I used to be. It doesn't feel like an escape, a time-out from the hectic day-to-day, it feels like an interruption, a disruption. Time apart from the SOOTTAD is a part of it, but I feel like at a deeper level, my connection here just isn't as strong anymore, not that that's a surprise or anything.

The usual list of random notes and observations:

• Ugh, headache -- probably because I'm a bit dehydrated. Hopefully I'll acclimate soon.
• I know that I should be pleased that it's in the 70s, but I actually feel like it's just a shade too warm. I'm actually a bit uncomfortable. WTF is wrong with me?
• I'm a few years shy of 40 and yet I still feel like a kid the moment I drop my bags off in my old room at my parents house.
• All of my married high school friends here have spawned kidlets. All of them. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong.
• To be fair, there are actually only three who fall into the previous category. But 100% is still 100%.
• there are a lot of bees in the backyard. I couldn't find a hive or anything, but the constant buzz is just ever so slightly disconcerting if you stop to pay attention to it.
• I've mentioned this before, but I still find it amusing that nasturtiums and morning glories are not annuals here.
• I seem to recall many years ago, the California government outlawed the use of gas-powered leaf blowers, and yet I still see them being used. I wonder whether the law changed, or it's enforcement, but I think I'm more bothered seeing, in drought sensitive southern California, people using a hose to wash leaves into the gutter off a 50 foot driveway.
• I still find it weird to see water constantly running down the gutters along the sides of the street. Constantly. And somehow this didn't used to bother me when I was a kid.

We have our top people working on the situation

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

I was right; we have mice.

But thanks to Cat 1, problem solved.

The quality of information

I really should be writing a paper for class right now, but I got distracted, and well, here I am. Hopefully I can keep it brief and get back to writing things that I'm actually going to get graded on.

I've been meaning to write a post about this for a while now, but every time I've started I've kind of run out of gas in the middle. The arguments become too subtle, the examples too longwinded or convoluted, I lose my train of thought and eventually just give up. But here we go again. I guess we'll see how it turns out this time...

* * *

It always goes back to an idea that I remember reading in Job by Robert Heinlein, where the protagonist keeps finding the world around him suddenly changing entirely. Except that [ok, so the following is a spoiler of sorts, BTW, just so you know] it turns out that it's not, really. Things do most certainly change, but it turns out that the changes only take place in the localized region where he can physically experience and interact with it. The rest (like the background of the overall society, its history and all that) only gets changed in the books -- history books, atlases. (It's SF/fantasy, ok? Just accept that it happens so I don't have to spoil the rest of it for you.)

And with all the "he said, she said" business that you find in the blogosphere, my mind always wanders back to that story, and I wonder, how good is the information that's out on the web really. I mean, how good is it *really*. It seemed like all it would take would be enough people to just *say* that something happened in such-and-such a way, and at some point it would hit critical mass and that would be it. But that couldn't happen, right? Is this ringing any bells? Heard about the controversy that's been going on over at Wikipedia recently?

But, y'know? People are talking about this now, which is good. And I figured since that dialog was going on elsewhere in the blogosphere, and probably better thought out and better written, I certainly didn't need to throw in my two cents.

Except that I was just surfing around because of something our new Physiology teacher was talking about at the end of class, when he felt the need (which I must admit, was in response to some specific feedback he was given when he had finished his lecture) to show that he could be an independent thinker, free from the shackles of the iron thumb of the school administration. (Dear god, the mixed metaphors!)

So he decided to talk about the evils of Aspartame. (ironic that I send you to a Wikipedia page, no?) You go, dude. And being a curious monkey and feeling unmotivated, I did a little web searching and, well, it was more of a mixed bag than I had hoped.

One of the first pages I looked at was on Snopes, a site that categorizes Urban Legends. In the past I've found it entertaining as well as an invaluable resource when receiving scare-chain-letters from well-meaning family, friends and acquaintances that urgently need to be forwarded it everyone I know. And their brother. A good site, but not a good sign for the anti-aspartame camp. (Especially since a lot of things our teacher said seemed to parallel points made in the email in question.) But I did note that they cite government organizations (such as the FDA) to debunk the claims, and there are those who suggest that the FDA was on the take. (The Wiki entry covers this somewhat) Unfortunately, most of the links only dismiss the chain letter, and only in broad sweeping terms. And can you really trust a reference from a site called aspartame.org or aspartame.net? I did appreciate that the latter article at least addresses the formaldehyde concern with specific numbers. (although those too are called into question by other sources) Well, at least I trust MIT.

So that all made me a little concerned about the temperament of our new instructor. But I dug a little more, and found a few other sites of interest:

• holistic medicine resource page on aspartame
• David O. Rietz - "Aspartame is NOT safe."
• Aspartame -- History of Fraud and Deception (complete with Donald Rumsfeld connection)

Kinda depressing really. And even trying to stay openminded, it certainly raises some questions. But I think that's enough for me; I've got work I need to get done, after all.

However, you might consider bouncing back up to the broader questions about the quality of information and the reliability of sources, where it seems the question fundamentally distills down to: who can you trust?

Again, no answers, but food for thought. Who's saying what, and why... be it a friend, a teacher, a writer or a liarleader.

Um, wow.

Programming, soley for art's sake. Very cool.

For All Seasons

by Andreas Müller, from Kaliber 10000.

Life imitates art

So, the SOOTTAD just called me up; she's going to see King Kong tonight.

If you want to see how the conversation went, all you need to do is go back about a week and a half to Penny Arcade and read:

"As Regards Spoilification"

Well, it didn't go down exactly like that, but there was some unfortunate spoilage action. And on the one hand, I find it HI-larious that we just unintentionally role-played online comic characters. On the other, I feel kinda bad that I spoiled the ending for her.

And I've never even seen any of the other films in their entirety.

Contrasts

"My common sense tells me that I'd be far better off in the America that helped Grand Forks in 1997, not the America that says "We don't owe you a damn thing" to New Orleans in 2005. What a difference eight years makes. Which America do you want to live in?"

"Eight Years, Two Americas" at Operation Eden. [via Cardhouse]

Chasing sunsets post snow day

I kinda wish I had some pictures from the sunset this evening, but I guess that's part of the story, really.

We had the first major storm of the season yesterday. It snowed pretty heavy all day, pretty much all day, with thunder and lightning in the late afternoon. I was happy to be working from home, thankful to not have to drive through the mess outside to get to the office. That would have been fraught with peril as I don't think the plows made it to our street until well into the afternoon. They certainly hadn't been through when I briefly poked my head out to grab the mail around 1pm.

Marginally productive during the day (finally finished that one thing I was supposed to have had done Tuesday... ugh), but the only tangible accomplishment of the day was shoveling out the driveway at dusk when the storm had finally passed. We had maybe 10-12 inches, but the work is always in the 3 foot snowbank of packed snow that the plows push up which block the whole driveway. Well, exercise for the day at least.

I spent most of the rest of the evening lost in the interweb. Severe RII I'd say. But happy to have found videos for the Ditty Bops and the Dresden Dolls at least, thank you Wil Wheaton. I'll take what I can get. (the Dresden Dolls video is a little crashy, safer to do a SaveAs or go to their site and grab the small one.)

Today, clear and sunny and beautiful. Or at least that's how it seemed like it was from the bed. For whatever reason (probably the usual suspects), I had a hard time getting up. I eventually dragged myself out, mid-John Funke. I don't even know what I did today... oh yeah, work. Read. Some laundry. Sat at the piano for a while. Tried to study. Participated in a phone survey. (sounds like they're trying to put in a monster mall in Waltham... called it a village-lifestyle-touchy-feeling something or other. Ugh, more development. But I guess all the people moving into the luxury condos up the road are going to have to shop somewhere. *sigh*)

So anyway, I had to study at some point, But it hit me that I really needed to get some exercise. (The difficulty getting out of bed was a pretty good sign.) In a perfect world, I would have gone for a run this morning when it was bright and sunny. But it's not perfect. And the very reason I needed to run was the reason I was having so much trouble going out and just doing it.

I was losing light, but near dusk, the forces of procrastination finally provided the last little nudge I needed to get myself moving. Not too cold yet, and... wow, it was beautiful out. To the east, the sky glowing pink, apparently catching the light from the setting sun, trees with bare branches outstretched, silhouetted against it in the foreground. Down the hill, roads are wet but not slick -- they haven't frozen over yet. I plan to take my usual route, but realize the sidewalks haven't been cleared, so it looks like I'm doing a neighborhood ramble today. I turn a corner, and the clouds to the west are a mix of pink and rich fuchsia, but it's the sky behind that it stunning -- a gradation of blue down to an almost amber near the horizon, somehow contrasting perfectly with the pinks and reds. And it has this amazing intensity and strange clarity, as if the cold is somehow making things appear hyperreal.

I want to run home and get my camera but I realize that it'll be too late. As I turn towards the house, the colors are already changing. The sky to the east is already gray as the night encroaches, and I just have to try and enjoy the moment and take it all in.

It's funny. I'm reading about the Long Now, which is all about thinking in terms of, well, "long time." We're all focused on this year, this month, this week, and it suggests that we need to think, this decade, this century, this millennium. And yet, the colors of the sunset are visible in a span measured in minutes, seconds, moments. The book may get to this, but the thought I had was this: watching the sunset, in that moment, you can sense how transient that moment is. And in so doing, you can feel the transience of all things. And yet, in that moment, things somehow seem timeless.