* particularly when paired with boots on cute girls.
Sleepy. Looking forward to a reprise of this morning, waking up before the sun came up, the world outside was still and the light perfect. 100 crunches, 20 (sad, I know) pushups, then a motorcycle ride to MC for bouldering, flailing on the dozenth v1 without resting, then to Cento where I ended up pairing Blue Bottle with a talk with The Ex over refinances and mortgages. That part unfortunately will be reprised, I’m afraid not for the last time, either.
Looking forward to climbing with Case, Libby and Xis this week. 2nd year in a row I’ve failed to get lead cert in the gym over the summer. Think it’s because I’m so fat.
A friend of mine used to ask me every day, “What was the best thing that happened to you today?” I love that question. Unlike the more pedestrian “how are you? or “how was your day?" it forces the person answering to think about a specific event, the entire day, and in a positive context. Even the worst of days, there’s something good—however small—that happens.
I took issue with the question for a while, because I thought it was too passive, the “happened to you” part leaving out self-determination, as if the person to whom the question was directed was an observer or passenger.
Today, after tweeting about sad pandas in the inner sunset, I recalled another panda and saw the question differently. Instead of being passive, it can be interpreted as very personal, an individual observation. Taken in pieces, “What was the best thing that happened?” and then further distinguishing the answer from an abstract sense by explicitly asking “to you.” The answer is then not small talk, scripted or someone else’s. It’s their own.
This is a multipart post, in N stages. Kicking it off with the obvious:
P-Thugg and Dave 1 make sweet, sweet music at Daryl Hall’s house.
There are times when I wish you could favorite something multiple times. Legos! NES! Contra! Rrrreverting to childhood momentarily.
(via FFFFOUND!)
The best part of the day was before the city woke up, Potrero silent, the air smelled like North Dakota. Black-clad commuters huddled at the Muni stop on 17th and De Haro, cars and trucks meekly stuttered their way towards the Mission.
Uncertainty is a bitch.
Sometimes minor transitions are palpable, sometimes unnoticed. The evidence is stacking—the derelict PlayStation and Xbox 360 on my shelf, my PSP long loaned out, and the aging PC sitting next to me. Games no longer play an important role in my life—I neither play nor build them anymore. Is it a shift in interest to things more serious or worthwhile, a simple lack of interest in games or is it a lack of interest in perceived purposelessness? Does every moment spent need a goal? I’m not sure. Part of me is sad, part of me is relieved at the honest assessment, or at least the exploration.
Thinking about the role possessions play, the reasons for their existence. This PC, built specifically to code first-person shooters two generations—eons—ago. Today it sits mutely next to a desk, barely deep enough to stay my laptop, where most of my work is done. This bicycle, built to cross Japan, now hanging from the railing. Turntables, a milestone at 24, mixer and Ortofon needles a coming-of-age, also mute, subservient to Ableton and trick USB audio devices, coughing dust next to decade-old vinyl. This house, rented because it had allowed dogs and had parking and a beautiful kitchen. Now the kitchen is the only thing that’s relevant.
Do I hate stuff, and love space? I know I’d rather fill this space with joy and friends than another anonymous electronic box.
Burning a CD of wedding photos for Steve and Kendal, the numbering looked funny—newer photos were before older photos. I realized the camera had rolled over on the image counter, and had started back at zero. I’ve had that camera since mid-December of last year, so it works out to about 11,000 photos total this year. Add another couple thousand from other cameras, and my average is approximately 50 photos/day, or a couple rolls of film. That’s crazy.