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Re: pre-review of solstice message
- To: noelle
- Subject: Re: pre-review of solstice message
- From: Robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>
- Date: Mon, 16 Dec 2013 19:46:13 -0800
- Keywords: my-Oakland-voicemail-number, .
Look over the following.
the piers and parks. It was an opportunity to visit Alcatraz,
which I had never done. I was happy when we were taken out to a
vegetarian restaurant, Greens Restaurant. We hadn't been there in
years and it was very good. Pictures can be seen at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/sets/72157634975251872/
* Little big bro. My brother Chris visited us in early fall, a few
years since his last visit. Amy, his wife, came along. Chris was
+ flexible and open to doing almost anything, and Amy had a handful
+ things she wanted to do, such as hitting the shopping malls. The
+ main event was going to Carmel, 17-Mile Drive in Pebble Beach, and
+ Santa Cruz. We managed to go biking with Chris. We also tagged
+ along to eat dinner in Menlo Park at Amy's cousins. Pictures can
+ be seen at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/sets/72157636123501226/
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dr_chris_bear/sets/72157636300085804/
* Home
* Ever deterioration. We made a couple of attempts to address some issues
with the house: bolting the foundation and replacing the furnace. It was
suggested that we not bother bolting the foundation since the structure
@@ -66,19 +67,26 @@
* Garden
* Pets
* Transportation
* Commuting
* Car
* Bicycle
* Those damn tight hamstrings. Thanks to Noelle, I attended
+ "Yoga for Cyclists" in March. It was pretty gentle, which was good
since I'm not terribly flexible. Unfortunately, I think I forgot
almost everything that was taught. I guess yoga teachers make a
living from people with bad memories, like me.
+ * Tearin' through tubes. I must push my bicycles too hard. I
+ don't know how people in other countries can put huge piles of
+ stuff on their bikes and not constantly have problems with them.
+ In any case, in my life this year, I broke 2 rear spokes on 2
+ separate occasions requiring 2 separate visits to the bike shop
+ and went through 4 tubes and 2 tires on 2 different bikes.
+ Thankfully, nothing worse has happened so far, nothing that
+ would demand my buying replacement bicycles.
* Buses
* Travel
* Caves and rock faces. On our return from Thanksgiving in Santa
Barbara, we made a couple of stops at Pinnacles National Park.
The first day, we entered on the west side during late afternoon
and did a short hike. After our non-strenuous hike, we ate some
Mexican food in Soledad. The next day, we drove to the east side
@@ -93,16 +101,16 @@
research, find a place which did not have cable nor a television
and didn't have internet. (There was cell phone service.) It was
a good 3 days, and I did manage to do some things other than stare at
the cabin walls. We brought a camera and photos can be had at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/noelle/sets/72157633498318007/
* Old stomping grounds. We made a couple of trips to this year.
One time was to visit friends, and other was to hop a trip to a San
+ Francisco event (see Comedy below) and Noelle's co-op alumni group.
+ Both times, we tried to visit as many people in the area as possible.
* Holidays
* Money
* Food
* Mon cherry. Changing our ways this year, we decided to go to the cherry
tasting at Andy's Orchard this year, instead of our usual stone fruit
(apricots, peaches, plums, pluots, and nectarines). It was a nice
change, but Andy's was completely mobbed. Andy's even had to implement
@@ -114,19 +122,19 @@
* Health
* RSI
* Exercise
* Yoga
* Sleep
* What ever happened to Pavlov's dogs? In an attempt to get a non-waking
night of sleep, I tried Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to smooth
+ out my sleep. In particular, I tried sleep restriction where I went to
sleep as late as I could bear yet wake up at the same time, and slowly
back off sleep start time. While keeping a sleep diary, I did
indeed "compress" my sleep hours where my middle-of-the-night
+ insomnia became shorter. But, I ended up still feeling sleepy way
before I was allowed to go to sleep; the only way I could avoid
"resting my eyes" was watching TV -- which got dull real quickly.
Ultimately, I gave up and accepted my old sleep pattern.
http://m.livescience.com/12891-natural-sleep.html says it may be
normal, anyway.
* Psyche
* Kitty
@@ -148,15 +156,15 @@
If you're in contact with any of these people, please tell them that
I am missing their email addresses.
* Clothing
* Miscellaneous
* Mazel tov. I had never been to a mitzvah ceremony before this year.
This one happened to be a bat mitzvah for the daughter of some of our
+ friends. We gave a modest gift (3 trees planted in Israel) and the
ceremony was interesting, if not a bit confusing. Despite my being
unable to eat anything at the evening party, I think I managed to have
some fun. I was happy to listen to stories from the extended family
during the brunch the next day.
Entertainment
* Movies
@@ -168,30 +176,35 @@
(I'm so Web 2.0 .)
* Other flix. All my Movielens ratings are available at
http://tinyurl.com/robertsmovielens . You can see my Netflix queue
at http://tinyurl.com/nosnetflixqueue . Unfortunately, there's no way
to share our Netflix instant watch queue (a.k.a. My List) any more.
* Rifftrax.
* Music
+ * The Biological Foundations of Music. Noelle wanted to indulge in
+ the free beer, I wanted to indulge in the geekiness. There is a
+ meetup/event called TechXploration which presents talks on techy
+ topics. For some reason, Vijay Iyer, Jazz musician and former
+ neuroscientist, was featured. It was a pretty fascinating talk
+ and the music was interesting, but I definitely would not consider
it a technical talk.
* Radio
* Books
* Not better late and certainly not never. After 4 years, I finally
managed to finish the book "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt during
our toned-down vacation in Clear Lake. (I also started reading
"Dreaming in Code", but only got half-way through; probably another
4 years before I finish it.)
* Television
* Comics
* Comedy
+ * The final sinking. Cinematic Titanic had its farewell tour at The
+ Castro Theater mid-October. We were lucky enough to buy the
+ tickets early so we could get in. We even got to shake Joel's
+ hand. (We did wash them afterwards, 'tho.)
* Spoken word
* Outdoors
* Keep climbing. Earlier in the year, we enthusiastically participated
in regular group hikes. However, this has tapered off a bit, probably
partly to avoid the "death marches" of the power-hikers.
* Music
* Theater
@@ -203,15 +216,15 @@
always a family favorite.)
* Internet
* Art
Politics/Society
* Voting/Elections
* None of the above. Our County Supervisor, George Shirakawa, had a
+ heap of problems, including embezzling public funds and gambling his
campaign donations. In disgrace, he resigned and his seat became
available and a special election was organized. There were a bevy of
people running for the open seat in the primary, I decided on a
candidate that I liked, and voted for her. As usual, my preferred
candidate did not win. I did not like any of the finalists in the
general election, and write-ins were not allowed. As a protest, I
cast my ballot completely blank. I doubt doing this made any difference,
@@ -236,14 +249,19 @@
* Laptops
* Networks
* Mobile devices
* PC
* Linux
* Windows
* Mac
+ * Boy, you're gunna carry that weight a long time. Fearing the
+ impending damage, I got around to strapping down Noelle's Mac
+ Mini to the desktop so that an earthquake won't cause us to
+ lose the whole thing and all its data. Only time will tell
+ whether the effort was worth it.
* Telephones
* Internet
* Is it ver-izon or veri-zon? I had about had it with my wireless USB
modem and decided to order a replacement, assuming that I had had one
that was failing. I got one off eBay and it worked great. But, after
I got it, I discovered that I had misconfigured the old one and that's
what was causing all my problems: I had disabled "Global" mode, which