I’ve been saving up for some time now for a Mini Cooper. I’ve mentioned my lust for this vehicle before and it hasn’t waned in the least bit. I had to turn in my Jeep Cherokee when the lease ended in November and since then, Holly and I have been functioning with one vehicle – her beloved Turbo Beetle. It’s been a bit of a cramp on our lifestyle, but the savings have been kind of nice. Only having one car note is nice on the pocketbook. Well, this warm comfy feeling for being thrifty ended today.
Today is one of those crazy days. Holly needed her vehicle and we need to be somewhere shortly after she gets off of work, so I had to be near her office for when she got off work. Normally, I would just meet her at her office in my own vehicle and we’d leave hers there until we got done with whatever we had to do. Since we only have one car, that idea was out the window. Luckily, I didn’t have any appointments with any clients, so I decided that I would go to the library and work there for the day.
Comcast Took My TV And I Can’t Complain
On Monday a nondescript van pulled up in front of my house. What alerted me to its presence was that I heard the sound of a ladder being extended. As I looked out the window I noticed that there was a man climbing the ladder up the pole that houses my Internet connection. I’m connected via a cable modem through Comcast, so my initial opinion was that the next door neighbor was getting high-speed Internet installed at her house. As I made my way back to my desk the thought occurred to me that he could be up to something more “sinister.”
I’ve been very lucky. I haven’t had to pay for basic cable TV for the past 5, or so years. Did I purchase one of the descrambler boxes you read about in your SPAM? No, I acquired my television signal through much more benign methods – I sweet talked the installer. If you don’t have cable TV and you order high speed Internet, they put on a governor that blocks the TV signal and only allows the Internet data to pass. When the installer came to my house close to 4 years ago, and to my apartment 2 years prior to that, I chatted him up and nonchalantly asked if he HAD to install the governor. In both installations, the installer left the governor off. As a result I’ve enjoyed basic cable free of charge. 🙂
Riding The Rails Of My Mind
I’m really opening up my mind to a lot of new ideas and concepts here recently. I’m awash with new prospects and ways of thinking about things. Seeing “The Passion Of The Christ” was a large part of that, but there were things moving in my life shortly before that as well. For some reason I opened myself up to thinking parts of my life differently and because of that new energy is coming in directly related to that. I know this sounds esoteric and somewhat verbose, but my mind is still gelling on these thoughts and I haven’t formed a concrete thought process yet. So I can’t write about it in a clear concise manner. These actions and ideas are still “swirling around the bowl” as it were and I haven’t been able to flush out an easy explanation of what’s going on with me right now. I’m undergoing a change of sorts and I don’t know that I can share with anyone what the change is exactly until I’m done changing.
So right now my mind is just jumping from subject to subject and none of my thoughts this morning can really get around one concrete idea to write about. So, if you’ll permit me, I’ll just sort of do a stream of consciousness entry today and share with you everything that’s running through my mind.
What’s All The Fuss About “The Passion Of The Christ”?
I never really understood just what “The Passion” meant until just a few years ago. I’m not a “cradle Catholic” and the Protestant churches I went to never performed Passion plays, so the term was a little lost on me. I knew the story about Jesus being crucified, but I just didn’t know that there was a term for it that encompassed that period of time. It wasn’t until we moved to Nashville and began attending St. Edwards that I was even exposed to it. For me it was like an ambush. It was Palm Sunday and as I sat in the pew, ready to participate in the Mass, a drama unfolded right before my eyes. In this little play, Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem and his eventual crucifixion was played out. It was shocking, horrifying and gut wrenching and this was just a little community drama done in church. What Mel Gibson has done with his movie, The Passion Of The Christ is take it to a whole new level.
The “Passion” existed before Mel Gibson decided to make a movie about it. It is a staple of the Catholic faith and of many other Christian faiths. But why? Because it’s easy to forget, that’s why. As we go through out daily lives and deal with all the issues that face us, it’s easy to lose sight of why we believe what we believe. Every faith has some form of “refocusing” where you’re supposed to turn your attention to your faith for a period of time. For Catholics, this time of year is called Lent and it’s the time of year where you’re supposed to remember why you’re a Christian and what being a Christian means. On Palm Sunday the Passion is the focus of attention and forms the cornerstone of the Christian faith – Jesus was the son of God and he died for our sins. He died to absolve us of Original Sin and to provide us with everlasting life.
A Few Notes
Just a few notes regarding the weblog that I thought I would share.
MT-Blacklist
Posting an entry regarding comment SPAM really opened the floodgates. Every hour it seemed that there were more and more comments that were SPAM. So I went ahead and installed the MT-Blacklist plugin. Although version 3.0 of Movable Type will dispense with the need for using MT-Blacklist, I needed something in the meantime that would eliminate the current flood. The plugin was a piece of cake to install and 5 minutes later everything was up and running. If you’re having to deal with comment spam on your weblog, definitely give this a try.
Smileys
With St. Patrick’s Day over, I switched the smileys back to regular ones. I updated the original entry to display the Leprechauns so that the entry would make sense. In case you’re wondering what other sets I have waiting in the wings, you’ll just have to wait and see. 🙂
Oh and if you noticed the “[updated]” notifications in the right navigation, that’s because I updated the smileys, not because there’s new content. Sorry. :s
Status Of Series Entries
There are two “series” that I started that I haven’t yet completed. There’s the Grazing Across Louisiana series and the The Matrix Saga. I’ve received comments from many people asking where the next installments are to each of these series. Rest assured that I haven’t forgotten about them. The reason there haven’t been any new posts in these series is that they take a long time to write. Each remaining entry has been started and I work on them as time allows, so thank you for being patient and for letting me know that you appreciate them. That means a lot to me. 😀
Quoted In The Paper
I’ve been meaning to post this, but it just didn’t fit as an entry all by itself. Anyway, I was quoted in a local paper here in Nashville, called the City Paper. It’s a daily publication that “is a civic-minded, public-spirited newspaper devoted to exploring issues relevant to Nashville readers.” I was contacted to comment on some recent announcements made by PalmGear and you can read the article at this link.
Settling In With SuSE
You may have noticed that in past entries, I’ve referred to the fact that I’m running SuSE9 (Linux) on my laptop. In the past, I’ve always referred to Red Hat as my preferred distribution of Linux, so why the change? Well, Red Hat announced that they were no longer going to provide a free distribution of their software. Technically, you could still acquire a copy of Red Hat, but without paying a support fee, you would not be given access to the updates to keep your Operating System updated and secure. In a nutshell, Red Hat has gone corporate and it makes perfect sense for them to do this. At the end of the day, no one wants to see them go out of business and if this is a necessary step for them to stay profitable, then so be it.. However, there are a lot of home users and small businesses that were disappointed that Red Hat was no longer going to be available for free and I was one of those people.
So what version of Linux was I going to switch to? Red Hat isn’t totally getting out of the free Open Source market. They have a version of their desktop called Fedora. This is an open source, free desktop whose goal is “to work with the Linux community to build a complete, general purpose operating system exclusively from free software” However, the impression I got when looking at Fedora was it was too new and a bit of an unknown at the moment. So I decided to look around and explore a few other distributions and see if there wasn’t something else that could fit the bill. If I’m going to have to swtich my OS, I might as well trying something new.
Making Time For Yoga
I was real close to skipping working out yesterday. I wasn’t as productive as I would have liked to have been and the temptation was to keep working and just blow off working out. It was a strong temptation, but in the end I opted to go workout. 🙂
The yoga class starts at 6:00pm and there wasn’t time to do anything treadmill, or any other activity before class. The class fills up very fast, so you want to make sure you get a place by getting there early. 15 minutes before the start of class and the room was nearly full. I laid out my mat and then went to ask Bliss, our instructor a question.
On April 10th, she’s teaching a class about integrating yoga into your daily life. In it, she’s going to create two 10 minute routines and a 30 minute routine. The longer routine is for when you start your day and the shorter 10 minutes ones are for throughout the day when you need a boost of energy, etc. It sounds very exciting and I would REALLY like to attend, but NPUG has it’s regular meeting on that day and I won’t be able to attend. I asked Bliss if she would be teaching this class anywhere else and unfortunately she said she didn’t. She did say that the topic would probably come up again in a few months, so at least there’s hope for me down the road. I went back to the mat and relaxed for about 10 minutes until class started.
Bliss announced at the start of class that she had just returned from an instructor’s workshop where they focused on the belly and everyone let out a collective “uh oh” and then we all laughed. Class was tough, especially on the stomach, but it wasn’t as tough as some of them have been. Maybe I’m getting better? I do notice that my stretches are going deeper and that I’m closer to my toes that I’ve ever been.
One interesting, yet odd thing happened towards the end. We were doing a pose and I was getting tired of holding it. I’m panting like a dog in heat and Bliss is saying “… and breathe…”. She saying that was should just be relaxed and breathing as deeply as if we were lying down resting. I’m taking many shallow breaths because I physically can’t breathe any deeper. Then all of a sudden, I felt myself give. It felt as if I had been hanging onto a ledge and just let go. I was relaxed, yet my pose was solid as a rock. I felt like I could have held that position all day. Breathing became much easier too. It happened a second time in one of our final poses. That pose is typically very uncomfortable and hard to hold, but again it felt like I just let go and it became very easy. I don’t know what this means, but I certainly hope to reach that place again.
Ground Control To Major Mike
Spring is just around the corner. I can feel it. In fact, I’d have to say that watching the world change is one of the fringe benefits of writing this weblog. I have a routine on most mornings and when I write my weblog entry, I sit at the kitchen table. I bang it out on the Dana Alphasmart Wireless and as I look up to ponder my next thought, I can look out the bay windows that overlook our backyard and the pasture behind it. The view reminds me of the Bliss Wallpaper found on Windows XP machines. You know the one with the green hill and blue sky behind it? It’s not exact, but the pasture behind my house reminds me of that and I have to admit, I do feel blissfull looking at it.
Right now the trees are still stripped bare of their leaves. The wind kicks up and the trees shake as if waving their fists demanding that their clothing of soft green leaves be returned immediately. “Where I my leaves?!”, they shout. To whom I don’t know, but they’re tired of being naked, that’s for sure. Behind the trees lies the pasture, which is one big hill that stretches up until it’s bathed in the blue of the sky. From my perspective, clouds can drift behind it like boats sailing behind a levee. For the first time in a long while the hill looks green. It’s been brown for so long, seeing the green is a bit of a surprise. Although it didn’t appear overnight, it seems like it has.
Gym Time
Since I started doing the South Beach Diet, I’ve begun going getting back into the gym. This may be the first time I’ve written about it here in the workout log, but I’ve been fairly consistent. The first week I went to the gym three times, but then it fell off to two times a week, then one and there were a few weeks where I didn’t go at all. 🙁 At this stage of the diet, I would say that I average two times a week now.
On Monday’s I start with 30 minutes of treadmill. If I’ve gotten to the gym early enough and if there isn’t anyone waiting on a machine, I’ll go another 30 minutes if I can. I choose a program that varies the elevation of the treadmill as well as the speed so that it varies things up a bit. Last night I cranked up the speed to 7 and I was flat out running my ass off for 3 – 4 minute stretches and then I’d kick it down to a fast walk. It’s the hardest I’ve gone on the treadmill yet, but it felt good.
When I’m done with the walking, I usually walk around the gym a bit to cool down and then I hit the machines. My legs are pretty well defined from my years of soccer, but my upper body could use some work. Holly really like muscles and she hasn’t had any to speak of since we’ve known each other, so I’m trying to pump up my arms and chest. On each machine I do two sets of 12 reps. The machines I hit last night were: bicep curls, lat pull down, butterfly, bench press, and a higher bench press. I’ll have to write down the names of the machines next time I go.
When it comes to weights, I go until I’m exhaustion, but not until failure. I remember hearing somewhere the you should do it until your muscles can’t do anymore. I did that my first time on the machines and I couldn’t move my arms for a week, so I stop when I get to the point that I’m exhausted. When I finished last night my entire upper body was shaking.
On Wednesday, I do the treadmill for 30 minutes if I get to the gym on time and then I do an hour of yoga. You wouldn’t think it, but yoga is my hardest workout! On Friday I basically do the same routine as Monday’s, but I’m thinking that I may start swimming on Friday just to be different. Every swimmer I’ve ever seen has a killer body, so it couldn’t hurt. 😉
A Little St. Patrick’s Fun
With St. Patrick’s Day just two days away, I thought it might be fun to replace the smileys I normally use with a set entitled Leprechauns. This icon set was made by Jason and thanks to his hard work, I’m able to easily include them on my site. Thanks Jason!
While I was updating the smileys, I noticed that there are a lot more in Jason’s set than in my default set, so I added them to my Smiley Module Template. Since there’s some new ones, I thought it might be helpful if I listed what smileys are available when you post a comment. Enjoy!
= :) or :-) (Smile)
= :D or : -D (Big Grin)
= ;) or ;-) (Wink)
= :P or :-P (Tongue)
= :( or :-( (Frown)
= :O or :-O (Eek)
= :| or :-| (Mad)
= 8) or 8-) (Cool)
= %) or %-) (Roll Eyes)
= :,( or :,-( (Cry)
= :x or :-x (Kiss)
= :# or :-# (Lips Sealed)
= :s or :-s (Undecided)
= LOL (Laughing Out Loud)
= ??? (Confused)