Eric's Journal

I'm such a goddamn girl.

Last week, I uttered the words: "I'm so dissatisfied with my shoe situation right now."

What's worse is that I mean it.

So, I haven't touched LJ in probably a year. It just takes so much *time* (y'all write too much), but Facebook leaves much to be desired when it comes to actually keeping up with what everyone is doing, and I have enough daily browsing tabs to keep track of.

Perhaps someone will invent a direct neural feed so I can consume information in a more efficient way.

In the meantime, I bring you ... me.

Life sucks, but is awesome at the same time.

The current suckiness in my life centers on data management - I have an old PC that I expect to fail soon (it's getting increasingly unstable), and a number of media files that I haven't bothered to back up (read: 60 GB of mp3s culled from my CD collection, downloads, and loaners) need to get taken off of there. On top of that, I have a large picture collection on a Mac formatted disc that I've been having some trouble with, so this post is mostly to apologize to those who have been wanting photos from me ... I'll get to it as soon as I can figure out my data management problems around the rest of life.

In the meantime, I'm going to go check out World Of Goo, since I'm still torn over whether to buy Guitar Hero World Tour or wait for Rock Band 2 for my Wii.

When Trent Fucking Reznor sings Hurt, you pansy-ass little whores, you don't fucking sing it back at him. You shut your cum-drizzled lips and let him sing it. Then you cower in a dark little corner, buried in your self-loathing, and cut yourselves. You do not cheer, whop, whistle, or make any other noise that gets in the way of my enjoyment of him singing it. You fucking brood. And if you don't know how to fucking brood, then you don't deserve to call yourself a NIN fan, because that's what that shit is about. It's about drowning in angst. It's about acknowledging the shit in the world. Sure, the new stuff is more about anger and discontent. But The Downward Spiral ... fuck .. that's about the existential battle of the suburban teen with his own self-worth. That album does not exist to make you happy ... especially the song in question ... that album exists to throw you headlong into the depths of your privileged ennui. If a listen, even now, 15 years later, doesn't drag you down into a hallucination of teen angst, then you weren't fucking doing it right in the first place. So put your goddamn cell phones away and experience a little angst for fuck's sake.

Bunch of bitches, is what you are.

Last day for some free e-books from TOR:

http://tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=577

In other news, next weekend at the Hollywood Bowl is Not The Messiah (He's A Very Naughty Boy) - Eric Idle's retelling of The Life Of Brian in oratorio form, based on Handel's Messiah. It'll be awesome.

There's lots to say, considering how infrequently I post, but there's much more to do, which is the double-edged sword of journaling ... you get to create a record of all those great things you've done, but you do so at the expense of doing more great things. Sadly, I've found it hard to strike that balance. I think I'll spend my computer time today getting wedding photos to Colin and Jess (awesome wedding), and maybe processing a few of my overseas photos for printing and framing (they are that awesome).

Otherwise I must clean house (it's awesomely messy in here), take a run (I'm in need of an awesome few miles of exertion), go to Target (I'm awesomely out of shaving supplies), pick up tickets (can't miss that awesome show), and maybe even do a little writing for work (I've gotten involved in several little research projects, so my workload is hitting awesome proportions).

I promised a friend a few weeks ago that I would post about the music I've been listening to lately, so I suppose I should follow through on that promise, eh? I'll write while I wait for NIN tickets to go on sale.

Lately, my musical mood has been thrashing around a lot. Some days I'm all grooved out on some mellow hip hop (Madvillian, MF Doom, Quasimoto, UNKLE, Kool Keith), other days it's darker, more experimental hip hop (Lab Waste, Dalek, El-P), then it'll be goth/industrial (Swans, Angels of Light, old NIN (a lot of the new stuff is kinda meh), TKK, Lords of Acid), then it'll be metal (Sunn0))), Vader, Emperor, Ministry, Morbid Angel), and then someone will say something like "32 flavors" and I'll get on a random Ani Difranco kick (this happened last night), which will usually be followed by a rash of Canadian indie rock (Feist, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Arcade Fire). Needless to say, I've been pretty schizophrenic in my music lately. But, there are some good albums that have made their way into my collection.

( So, here are some albums to look out for. )

Writing is hard.

I much prefer math.

Last week's awesomeness:

Saw Davy Jones perform "Daydream Believer" at a karaoke bar in Santa Monica.
Picked up newly framed art to add to the wall.
Bought a bunch of new and old hip hop to feed a jones I had going, plus the latest Angels Of Light album.
Saw the beautiful, talented, witty, and fun Nellie Mckay at Largo. She's fantastic.
Harold and Kumar 2 rocked.
Finally watched Casino Royale. I was impressed with how well they went back to the classic spy movie instead of the crappy campy action flicks that bond turned into in the Brosnan years. Most pleasant surprise: they stayed true to the book very well (at least, the second half was the entirety of the book ... not sure where that first half came from, mostly just filler to add a backdrop and some action, I guess). Biggest disappointment: the lack of any female figure in the opening credits.

Next weekend's awesomeness:

Trying not to spend all my free time on the internet, and actually accomplish something good like housework, book-reading, music listening, writing (which I continually put off), catching up on work work, drawing, art shopping, etc.
Sunday morning, I'll be at the WISE booth during the JPL open house. That should be exhausting.


... but I really just posted to mention the Davy Jones thing. LA is a strange and awesome place sometimes.

Lis: "I don't use my pinkies very often. I should use them more, so my kids will have them."

Louis XIV is a very fun band to see live. They've recently added a couple of guys supporting on violins, primarily, and they're fucking HIGH-larious.

Lis now owns three Louis XIV shirts from 4 shows of theirs that we've seen. I think she's developing an unhealthy crush on Brian and his Amish-style beard.

Getting ready to head to Boston. My flight's already delayed 45 minutes, which will actually be nice because an even later redeye means better sleep on the plane.

On the one hand, I'm excited to go have fun with people I rarely see ... on the other, I'm not a big wedding fan.

I won't have much time to myself, but I'll probably have Friday night free to go wander the area, so I'm kindof looking forward to that. Well, that and getting drunk and making an ass of myself.

1. Randomly hearing from old friends is at once fantastic and weird.

2. Been sick this week. I hate being sick ... it's so counterproductive. Don't get me wrong, I love an excuse to lie around the house and play video games, especially when it's this sort of not-too-bad-but-bad-enough-to-stay-home colds. It's just that when I do that, the work doesn't go on hold with me, so it's just that much more stressful coming back.

3. Being sick does mean I had time to process some more photos from abroad ... Prague is now up on my Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/eric.b.rice

4. We're going to a wedding in Boston this week. We're leaving on the Wednesday night redeye, and staying at a house in Scituate (I think that's right) with a big group. I should have Friday night free after about 6, but otherwise I'm stuck helping with wedding stuff (stupid friends getting married ... weddings are much more fun when you can be an outsider and not have any responsibility but to get drunk and make an ass of yourself).

5. After the wedding, we fly home to LA Sunday night, arriving at midnight, and I turn around Monday afternoon to go to Boulder for a week of meetings and training.


6. Lis has a cousin visiting from Chicago this weekend, which gives us a good excuse to go to some awesome LA mainstay that we don't otherwise visit ourselves. I'm torn on which restaurant, though ... going somewhere distinctly LA that's not either a totally reprehensible place or impossible to get into is actually harder than one might think. I'm thinking Newsroom, where we can watch the paparazzi gather at the Ivy across teh street waiting for LiLo, J-Lo, or Cee Lo to have dinner with an agent or some scandalous partner. That's always a fun experience.

I suppose I should stop being online and go do some laundry. There's a lot of it. Yay.

I'm making brownies. I've had this jones on for weeks, so I'm making a couple of batches of brownies, and spreading the love with the secretaries at work that did the hard work to help me go to the conference last week.

I found that the basic Better Homes and Gardens fudge brownie recipe is a great base brownie. It's a little cakier than I want my brownies to be, so instead of making the whole recipe with yummy yum rich chocolate, I'm using the basic stuff (Baker's chocolate, what else), and adding a couple ounces of finely chopped Ghirardelli bittersweet to the batter before it goes into the oven. I hope this makes it a bit fudgier. If that doesn't work, I'll have to look at fudge recipes and see if I can find a middle ground, because most "fudgy" brownie recipes tend to be about the same as this one. I may just use a basic cream cheese frosting, but I might do a chocolate kaluha frosting. I haven't decided yet.

The next batch will be filled with candied ginger and topped with lemon frosting. Yum.

Lis, earlier tonight, made a birthday cake for a coworker. It's just amazing how much butter you go through when baking like this.

Maybe this weekend I'll actually get around to cleaning house and, heaven forfend, getting the carpets cleaned. God I want my carpets cleaned. They're really nasty.

Uh ... yeah, big surprise.

80% Geek

So, I got stuck.

I got to the airport at 2 for my 5:00 flight, and it was nearly blizzard conditions. 10 minutes after I checked in, they canceled it (3 hours before my flight!), so I called my work travel folks for a hotel and a car, and by 3, while I was driving toward the hotel, it was clearing up. Then by 4 it was blizzarding again, and now the sun is out. It's about as schizophrenic as Colorado here.

On the plus side, they got me in a nice little lodge out of town but only 10 minutes to the airport. The owners weren't around to check me in, so I'm hanging out in an internet cafe for a bit.

Bozeman is interesting. It's something like Longmont - cow town meets college town (or college town overflow, in the case of Longmont). It has about 5 blocks of downtown on Main street, with yuppie shops, fancy little coffee houses, and cute college girls in North Face gear, and the rest of the town is a mix of low victorian and ranch-style houses.

I should have just stayed in the mountains at the conference for the night and skied, but I was anxious to get to Colorado and I was encouraged by reports of little to no snow at the airport. I'm guessing the cancellation had more to do with flying over the storm and high winds in Denver than it did with the weather here. It's still frustrating.

Oh well. I'll enjoy my fancy digs for the night (as much as one can enjoy them alone), and I should make it to Boulder in the morning.

So, I guess there's a pretty decent chance I'll be stuck in Montana - it's snowing, we've already had a solid 1-1.5" of accumulation, and the forecast is for snow through the day. Not that I would particularly complain about staying here another day (maybe I'd even rent some skis for the day). Unfortunately for me, my flight isn't until 5, and United isn't likely to cancel it until, like, 4, which would leave me stranded in Bozeman rather than the nice ski town at the conference. That would suck.

From the mouth of my wife:

"In the planetary cafeteria, if artificial satellites counted for something, Earth would be one of the cool kids. But, he's not, he's just a dweeb in the corner. You know why? Because if you poke him, he just sloshes around."

I thought this was a good commentary on the Oscars in general.

Nutrition is hard.

I was just wasting a little time looking at NutritionData.com, and it suggests that I have 2800 Calories a day, with ~100g of fat and 130g of carbs, plus all those silly vitamins, based on a moderately active lifestyle. More if I go back to my old routine. If I count the Calories I would eat in a day about a year ago, I had a hard time hitting more than about 2000. This nearly constitutes starving myself. The rub is that, since I started eating more, I've gained a little weight, which means either their numbers are off, my estimates are off, or my metabolism is way out of whack because I spent too much time eating too little.

Maybe I should just suck it up and go see a nutritionist to get some advice on the general problem of diet.

Or maybe I should just eat a damn hamburger.

There are a million things that I'd like to do with my free time - climb rocks and mountains, learn art, read, yoga, clean house (I like having a clean house), drink beer, collect music, learn to play music again. Unfortunately, I can't do all of it. I found that, last year, most of my free time was taken up by a few TV shows, climbing, yoga, and house work. In general, that's not a bad routine. It's very balanced between the physical, the mental (when you count work) and the necessities, but it doesn't allow much for creative pursuits, and I'd like to fine tune that balance.

Here's the rub: yoga days kill all my free time. I get home from work at 6, have to get to yoga by 6:30, and I don't get home and showered until about 9, at which point I need to figure out dinner. By the time that's all done, in the haze of a yoga coma, I'm left with an hour to veg on the couch until bed time. Climbing days kill all my other free time. A good gym session is 2-3 hours. See yoga days for the rest of it. A climbing outing is an all-day affair, often leaving at sunrise, hiking for an hour or more, and eeking every last climb out of the day and leaving just early enough to get to the car by sunset, often leaving the crag at sunset and hiking out with a headlamp. These pursuits don't leave much time for things like books, writing, drawing, or even watching movies, though they are fantastic pursuits in-and-of themselves.

I love climbing, but absent strong, regular partners to do it with, I find that I don't get the personal enrichment I want out of it. On top of that, it takes a long-term sustained commitment to improvement. I can get a similar feeling from hiking less technical peaks without the personal risk or necessary training.

So, I think I'm going to quit climbing. I love it, I love the problem solving and physical challenges, and I love the feeling of conquering a climb. But, I need a creative outlet too, and with climbing I just don't have the time for that.

I think I'm going to go back to running, hiking, and yoga to keep my health good, but I need to decide what I'm going to fill the rest of my time with. Writing and art both take a significant long-term commitment to improvement, though not as intensive of one as climbing ... and I can do them in the in-between times, which makes it easier. I just need to decide what to focus on first.

I know a lot of you have found time to pursue many different aspects of life and still do all that pesky daily maintenance ... how have you done it? What have you given up? What do you find enriches you the most?