I have resumed BattleStar Galactica, after two false starts on the fourth Season.  Given that I had no such problems reading the stillborn  Sword OF Truth Series which required a great deal more investment,  that I was having such a hard time resuming the FINAL SEASON of a tv show seems damning, but it's something less, I assure you.


Yes, I have little good to say about the show, and feel that people who do are studiously obtuse: They are suffering the same  problem as a  geek who occasionally receives the attention of the cute girl who is really using him for answers to the math homework.

The attention is nice, but the relationship is pretty one sided.

It's the same kind of tension over and over again. Are you A cylon or arn't you. Should I obey the law or my conscious.  If it isn't one it's the other. If it isn't Tango, its Cash.   Oh, there is the meta conflict, about finding earth or surviving the cyclons, or whatever, but without any longstanding character development arch I really don't care.

So yeah, it has its weaknesses but....   

I don't know what the "but" is.  At least its Sci-fi?

And while I am 'catching up' I should also add that in addition to people listening to my dietary advice,
everyone is reading SOIAF now.  Weird.


I watched two good movies this weekend. In Bruges, and Let the Right one in.

"Let the right one in" is an afterschool special on Lonliness, abuse and eating disorders.
"In Bruges" is hard to describe so snarkily, and I am not up for a serious description.  
Think Snatch (Violence) and Lost in Translation (travelogue) plus a healthy dose of
that one movie where an elder hitman saves the soul of the younger one.

Well , that's not exactly right, but I didn't know anything about either of them before I watched them and you shouldn't either.    They are both good but not for the squeemish.

and don't even try to act like Dogs Eye View isn't a number band.

So I figure I missed some stuff on my recap for the last four months:

I so saw the broncos collapse coming.

For some reason people started listening to me about nutrition, and having great results.  Don't know what changed.     Basically, we arn't supposed to eat Grains. Our bodies are not designed to eat them.  Are bodies are designed to get fat when we eat sugar, so don't eat any carbs except the low sugar low starch ones and you will not gain weight. The whole notion that Dietary Fat causes Body Fat is on par with "Sleeping through my alarm" (Scroll  down a few posts for that reference). Every time you say something like "at least the dressing is low fat" imagine yourself saying "I don't eat white things because I am trying to tan" or "At least it carcinogenic" or "At least the game was in jacksonville".

And finally, exercise has so very little to do with it. I'm talking 5% . Maybe.  And it's maybe 5% in the direction you don't want to go (Clinicians back before the low-fat hypothesis started killing people recorded this fact time and time again.  Ever heard the expression "Working up an appetite"?).   Exercise to get fit.  Eat right to control your weight.   

That's it folks.


Lets see, I am sitting in "yoga chair" (google:  rocking balans kneeling chair), eating filet mignon roast, with a small walnut spinach cranbery asparagus salad and a sweet potato (trying to gain weight over here). When I am done I will probably drink some coconut milk for some extra fat and have some fish oil to balance out the o6 in the roast. Fairly typical meal.

OH so, I was going to have to forfeit 500 dollars  that I too well squirreled away in an FSA account, so instead I went to a general practitioner for a checkup, and hopefully a note telling the FSA bean counters that I needed the fish oil for medical reasons.  . He turned out to be out, and so became a She.  An attractive She.  Still, I declined the prostate exam, but insisted on the cough test.  As I remembered  it (Paraclete high-school 1989) an older guy sticks his hand down your pants (Catholic School).  Now days, SHE sits in a low stool right in front of you and you drop your pants and underwear. Fondling ensues.

Anyhow, all the tests came back very negative except high albumin  <sp?> which I am attributing to the 3 eggs I was averaging per day in the preceding weeks (I have since reduced to 1 on average, in anticipation of a retest.   High Albumin, due to Eggs, isn't bad if your sure its from the diet and not the liver failure.  Well, that's me talking, not the Doc). I also had high bilurubin <sp?> which is common amongst crossfitters.    Both levels were exactly on the cusp, so I don't think I am being obtuse here..  I'll get tested again early summer once my diet cleans up (no more sweet potatoes and slightly less booze)

ok , that's it.


Taking a little Anusara Yoga now an then. Learning a lot there.

Tara is engaged.

i'm out of stuff to talk about

Well, he was damn near supernatural.   Vic Chesnutt passed away. I've had it up to pretty high with musicians killing themselves,  but with Vic at least you got the sense he was doing his best.  This was no cry for help. Dude was sad, and in debt.

Thing is, he was friggen incredible.  I was hard on myself for nit picking Mcmurty, but there are numerous guys who put a higher bar on the quality of their work, and Vic's was the highest. Even the drunken "DRUNK!"s on Drunk were   purposeful. I suspect.  Damn his songs were so good every one who covered one of his songs sounded great (See sweet relief II). Even my boy Townes can't claim that.    Vic had number-bands sounding insightful.

Here is a dashed off playlist you have to listen to. It is no way definitive. In fact, it draws from far less than half of his catalog.

Supernatural 
When I Ran Off And Left Her  
Dodge
Naughty Fatalist 
Kick My Ass   
Onion Soup   
Guilty by Association   
Bug   
Florida    (And he hates florida too!)
Stupid Preoccupations 
Panic Pure  
West Of Rome
Flirted With You All My Life 
Giant Sands  
See You Around

So yeah.  Go  buy those tracks online somewhere and feast.

If I don't receive emails about his awesome enunciation, I know you haven't obeyed me. And I'll just say, as 'onion soup' just started playing over here,  that a lot of his songs are uplifing in their own way, and I am not just talking about the turn yourself inside out and so low that everything else is an improvement... no, sometimes he just nails quiet optimism.  Well, I won't call it optimism....

See you around Vic.

I spent Saturday and Sunday driving across the country in my new 08 mercury Mariner. In anticipation of the drive I bought 10 new Cds, 9 of which belonged to bands I had never heard. I listened to Each CD exactly twice. Oh, and in case you were wondering,  I picked 7 of these CD's by reading Pitchfork's top 50 for 2009.  This year I had only discovered 1 of the 50 on 'my own', I preserving  my indy credentials by a thread.

TV on the Radio. Dear Science.
This is the one CD by an artist I was familiar with, and it is clearly their best work. A perfect synthesis of the immediacy of Desperate Youth and the challenge of Cookie Mountain. This is the must have CD of the three for anyone with a modicum of patience (It won't take much, but some people with short attention spans may need a heady dose of Staring at the Sun, off their First CD before plunging into this)

the XX, eponymous
Not having the perfect sound system, and also due to the call and response duet format in a lot of the songs I questioned this bands depths after the first listen.  Oh, I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed it even more the second time around, but I was feeling a little guilty.    It's something like that Jesus and Mary Chain song that featuring Mazzy Star. Rememebr that song? Come on, I think it was called. It was good right?  This is like that but with sultry beats throughout.  I listen to this last night on my stereo and I can't imagine someone not liking this. Compared to almost everything else I bought for the trip its very simple and light, but that's everyone else's problem, not theirs.

Animal Collective. Merriweather Post Pavillion.
If it weren't pitchfork's album  of the year I'd call it Shins on Avery Island and move on. Oh, I'd keep listening to it, when noone was looking, in hopes all the flourish and layers might crystallize into something more triumphant, because as it stands now, it's giving me very little to get behind. (And you thought Shins + Neutral milk = good review?   I should clarify that I was referring to the bad parts of that band and that album). We'll see, it's probably a great album and this time next year I'll proclaim it the new OK Computer.

Grizzly Bear.  Veckatimest.
Like Animal Collective, this guys are a bit too precious. They are slightly more linear, especially when they get all pastoral, like on the opening track Southern Point. And were my last four years only ventures into indy music not Fleet Foxes, Midlake, and Tallest Man on Earth, I'd be more impressed with that song.  Still,  I'm looking at Grizzly Bear as the gateway band for Animal Collective, although I am convinced yet by neither.    Somewhere between Nashville and Chattanooga I worked on an analogy of using one beer bottle to open another but I couldn't make it work... you try

Mos Def. ecstatic.
His Quiet Dog bite Hard is my official theme song for this ski season.  It was the song of the drive. I don't listen to a lot of rap, so I can't relate this album to much... Slick Rick makes an appearance, which was cool.  Most rap albums seem uneven to me, and this is no exception, but I find Mighty Mos compelling.

Pains of Being Pure of Heart. Eponymous
You can taste the early nineties pop wafting off of the New Yorkers.... Once I tuned the stereo to balance out the washed out tinny production on my CD (It could be my ipod connection) I started to appreciate that these guys sounded like bands I knew, but whose names I probably never learned.  It's melodic pop...circa My Bloody valentine?  Yeah, you knew of them, but who can say what they sang?  Given the only vague familiarity I have with the source material (Ride?), these guys are are going to have lots of aural room to manuever.  I need to listen to it with headphones though.

Anthony and the Johnsons. The Crying Light.
The perfect album for environmentalists who like Buckley's Lilac Wine and his Edith Piaf impressions. That's not fair though, because as quick as I am to flush an artist  for purveying cheap environmental sentiment, these guys aren't cheap in any way. (The score now is 2.5 to 345,342 with bright eyes and cowboy junkies providing the other 1.5 points)). So yeah, it's chamber pop.  A guy in a gayed out falsetto singing over a spare orchestra about the environment. And you like it.  I did, anyhow, by the second listen. Well, it's good, else can I say.  I wish it weren't?

James Mcmutry. Life at the Aught/
I spent the 8 hours between listens coming up with a bunch of mean things to say about this album.  And then I realized I was doing what Rich always does with bands not Named Dave Mathews: making stoopid comparisons against my idol. So yeah, lyrically, he's not townes. He's not John Prine or Guy Clark, or Mike West either. That second list makes for better comparisons anyway since they all rely heavily on humor, as does James.  But James actually sounds more like Alejandro Escavedo, in that the music is at least as important as the lyrics as the mood, and it's made for the bar crowd.  And I'll go ahead and say that musically, this guy is more consistent than all those others.  The band kicks ass, and I wish I was at the show.    but yeah, he gets too complacent with the lyrics on some songs.... I had to say it.

Phoenix. WolfGang Amadeus Phoenix
Easily the most accessible of the bunch,save maybe The xx. I found myself clapping along, or thumping parts of the car on even the first listen. They're French, but what are you going to do. It's pop, it's catchy, its got a lot going on.  If the drive were a contest, these guys won it.

Yo-Yo Mah; Unaccompanied Bach Concertos
I dont' think I am in love with unaccompanied cello concertos, period.   The guys is good, and I listened to his Christmas album, and that little bit of familiarity was all it took to make me enjoy that album. But this album, in my situation, was suboptimal. I'll need to listen to it a few more times, in the background hopefully, before I can find something to latch on to.

Not only have i not been writing here much, I haven't been writing at all.. Except for the odd email to some of my company's new hires:


You are not the first bootcamper to cite alarm clock issues since arriving on their projects.

There was absolutely no harm done by you coming in forty-five minutes later than usual this morning since you still beat the client in,   so don’t take any of the following personally,  but just for the record (and to be perfectly clear) The "Alarm Clock malfunction" excuse, and all of it's permutations ( "Wake up call didn't come", "Slept through my alarm")  carry absolutely no weight in the real world.

There is no excuse for over-sleeping during the work week. What I mean by 'No Excuse' is that not only shouldn't it happen,  the whole idea of it should be scratched from existence.  Serengeti plainsmen have no word for Snow, and adults  should have no word for 'overslept'.  I am not being fanciful here,  I submit that our parent's never never considered Getting Out of Bed On Time a herculean task, much less considered proffering  it as an excuse.   No,   sleeping too late shouldn't even be an option. I repeat, so that it sinks in,  SLEEPING TOO LATE SHOULDN'T BE AN OPTION.   I am tempted to suggest that you make it a point of pride that no matter how drunk, or how little sleep you got, you are going to wake up and get to work on time and in the right frame of mind, but I am reluctant to encourage pride in something YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO.

I don't know what went wrong in the last thirty-some years where even the PHRASE 'sleeping through an alarm' has entered the lexicon, much less the act itself,  but my hope here to impress upon you that the phrase should be rendered NONSENSE on par with "French Resistance" and "Honey, it's alright if we miss kick-off lets pull over and help those fat chick's fix their flat tire".

I do recognize that the phenomena, however alien to me, does exists, and I can appreciate the difficulty in putting the cat back in the bag, but I encourage you to do so.

Here are some tips that might help.

1. Redundant Alarms DO NOT WORK.  I believe they cause more harm than good because they introduce the idea that the Alarm might be optional.  

2. Get more Sleep. Seriously, the 6 or 7 hour of sleep standard that has become the norm is a travesty.  Get your 8 hours (or more!).  The theoretical-goal is that you should wake up naturally without an alarm, and amongst people who consider health and performance sacrosant, this goal is practical and pragmatic.*

3. In general it’s better to  start your work day before the client  so if something happens, like traffic, or car issues, or whatever, you have time to recover.

4. If you wake and realize that you are going to be late for something, immediately call or email ahead so your lameness doesn't affect others.

5. If you do "oversleep"   you are better off just offering a brief and sincere "Sorry I am late" and withholding your excuse until you you have a private moment where you can own up to  your shameful wussiness.   I mean c'mon, you wouldn't apologize for missing a conference call with "I was about to break the high-score on Ms. Pacman so I decided to finish the game instead" , so don't try "I didn't hear my alarm". You're a grown man. Grown men have been getting to work on time since there was work to get  to.

It's what we do.


*Having won the debate about carbohydrates, and currently winning the debate about the relative ineffectiveness of exercise as a way of managing body composition, I have turned to my eye towards sleep, and a major pillar of health , longevity, and fitness. More to come on this in later posts I am sure.

There is no way to recap the last 4 months without spending all day writing, so this has to done dirty…

Not Drinking that much, last post aside, but the following drinks sit atop the stack: The Sazerac, Old Fashioned, Aviation, Last Word, A Perfect martini with Bluecoat gin and orange and grapefruit bitters.

The Camaro was stolen. Its ok though because two guys in my building watched it happened, even exchanged pleasantries with the thieves. They told me as much. I told them they were heroes for doing that much.  Someone else called security, be security can’t be bothered to check all 3 floors of the parking deck.   We caught the thieves own license plate number on camera, but even that doesn’t constitute an actionable lead to the Atlanta Police Department.   I mean, even if there was some way to magically track down the address of a car (hah, the thought makes me laugh it’s so absurd)  what’s to keep the guy from saying, “ I didn’t do It” and foiling the prosecution.  Did I mention we caught the thieves on video too?   The Sergeant who called me a couple of weeks after the event was clearly just shuffling papers: When I asked him about these leads he got very defensive, asked me how I knew about them, and then accused me of trying to tell him how to do his job.  He clearly had not read anything about  my case,  had no idea that the car was a classic (for instance).  


I spent the summer in Austin teaching 10 New Hires how to be consultants.  It was tough but I learned a lot and decided I would do it one more time, next summer.  In fact I was thinking about moving to Austin. Have been, this whole time, though the cost of selling my condo scared me off somewhat. This week Big Blue bought my company so I don’t know what the future holds now.

Oh well, I have my insurance check. I come out about seven grand light in the whole affair.  

The Cabin is done, and is awesome. I haven’t been in months though. My Client is in town, and that, paradoxically makes it harder for me to get up north (I have to work Fridays).

About not drinking too much: I did Gluten Free, high omega three paleo-diet for two weeks, but just sacrificed it on the alter of holiday convenience.   I will get back on it as soon as I get back from Kansas next week.  Can’t say I noticed any benefit:    Less acne I think.  Maybe less knee pain, but I that was about to go away anyway. The downside is I cut myself shaving yesterday and nearly bled out.  

Oh, I am hovering around 200 pounds, which was damn hard to accomplish while eating strict paleo. Milk is the key there though it is a violation of the theme.

The only new drinking spot on my list is Leon’s Full Service in Decatur. It’s pretty sweet. They serve “bacon in a glass”.  Drove the other guy out of business.  There is a ‘speakeasy’ style place called Prohibition over by Easy Andrews,  that just didn’t do it for me.  Too well lit and trying too hard.  And I usually am very forgiving about trying too hard… I had to listen to two spiels about classic cocktails and how what I want might not be on the menu, for instance.  I should have been afforded a chance to bypass that cocktail safety lecture.

I am most looking forward to Cakes and Ale, which is also in Decatur.

I should mention Drink Shop too, which is my local dive.  Eric, the head bartender, is good barman.


I haven’t had a car for a while, but have made due with Marta. If I can get to Trader Joes with 300 dollars I can last 3 to 4 weeks. The freezer stores more than Ice and Ice cream it turns out.

No new music.  Lots of recommendations… hmm, I am going to download something right now….  I know I missed some stuff, so I will be back  soon to revise and extend.

Oh yeah,  everyone had a kid or got pregnant: Alex, Rich, Trent, Andy, Dave.    A big collective congratulations!     Next post I'll reveal whose child is the best looking.

I've played with variants of this.. or rather, I think I have tried the drinks that this is a variant of:  The Diamondback and the Brooklyn. and the fancy free..  off the top of my head...   let me go check.

Diamondback

• 1 1/2 ounces rye whiskey (Rittenhouse bonded strongly recommended)
• 3/4 ounce applejack (Laird’s bonded apple brandy strongly recommended)
• 3/4 ounce Chartreuse (yellow works, but green works better)*

Nope, I was wrong about the diamond back, its way different.


THE BROOKLYN

2 ounces Bourbon whisky (I prefer Maker's Mark)

1/2 ounce Maraschino liqueur (I use Luxardo)

1 - 2 dashes Angostura bitters

1 - 2 dashes orange bitters

Ok I was pretty close here... too.

I give myself  a B.

hmmm. this smells like a whiskeytown post

Broke up with Corrie, and spent the last 6 weeks or so in Austin.  I probably will be back in  Atlanta in 6 weeks, working local company for 6 months, maybe with a new-hire in tow.   There are some other, terrorizing possibilities out there. Things have calmed down, but I put in ~80 a week for 4 weeks.

I ended up getting a half-caf cappuccino shorty after posting yesterday and my headache went away in 3o minutes.

I know I have always been caffeine sensitive, but only in that it would push my usual sleep time back an hour if I drank it in the afternoon.  However,  these withdrawal headaches probably came to be because not only had I been drinking two strong cups every day for the last couple of weeks, but also there were a couple of days where I had three. On those days I knew I had drank too much.   I think I'll probably revert back to 'only on the weekends' for a while, and then gently up the dose to a 8 ounces a day once I hit Austin. I ought to find a good decaf, since most of the time its the delicious bitterness I want, not the pep.But I have been chasing drip perfection for so long, I can't stand compromise.  Then again, I am half set on using Austin to get into the mythical BSOML (Best Shape of oh nevermind), so maybe I will ditch the caffeine and go full-on zone.  Who knows.


Congratulations are in order to Trent and Patsy, for having a beautiful baby Girl. I need to  heed my own admonishments, and spend more time with friends like these.
Speaking of Trent and Being busy:   Work has me teaching a Bookcamp, and as I was preparing I got to thinking about great consultants. And though I suspect he has weaknesses, I have never found Trent's.

Also, congratulations to Mike G for qualifying for the crossfit games after all (insert Backdoor joke here, or the  go-to "sliding into cougar's spot" quote).
The combination of events looked particularly grueling.

My own training is dogedly surviving new york: Last week I Pulled 475lbs 5 times and could have done more, except I was playing around with this new concept called responsibility. Today I pulled 450 once, quite easily, and 475 once uglywise, because I responsibility is for grumps (If you can't lift the horsepower of your muscle-car, you have too much car..... Trent).   The Cabin has a Medicine ball, jump rope and Olympic rings, so last weekend I did 5 rounds of 20 double-unders, wallballs, ring-pullups, and pushups (19:55).

Of course, after dead-lifts I can never fall asleep, so I  am dog food today (That's right, I blamed the Dead-lifts, not the Sazerac (did I mention that) or the Cappuchino. Internal consistency is for poofs)