pledge

I spent the whole afternoon watching a KQED pledge drive. It reminds me of my desire to travel. The opening lines from a Tuscany episode awakened another desire. Italy is the size of California. I don't remember how many times I have heard Northern California compared to Tuscany. I have yet to really explore.

I'm spending the rest of the day resting up and recover from my 10k. Tomorrow is a rest day by design. Rest from exercising yes, but I will be (hopefully) doing lots. I plan on going to the farmers market tomorrow to pick up some fresh produce and artisan food. I have heirloom beans grown on the San Mateo Coast soaking on the stove. I think it warrant some locally grown produce. I haven't had Acme bread for a long while and I think I need to pick up a baguette for lunch. I'm hoping for some pastry and cheese as well. We shall see.

I have to finish at least three more things off my projects list before Friday. I need to get at least five things off my list by the end of the month. I have a thing or two that are already checked off the list that are sort of cheat items. They are mostly chip off the on-going projects. Things such as reading a specific book and organizing my photos are certainly thing I had to do at the first place. So many things to take care of. I need to come up with a few more projects as well. I love having a large amount of things to do with no specific time limit. It makes me feel productive.

I am writing this while I am watching Game 5 of Sharks vs. Ducks. I have faith. They are looking like they want it so far.

I need to work on the list of places I want to go. I think I will start it tomorrow. Perhaps I need to make a separate page for it. I'm thinking a list of region, country, city, quarters, etc. Delving in various places I want to go. Just like my projects page. Another segment of the show also reminded me of another thing I like. I need to read into the history. It is so much better to understand the history of a particular place before visiting it. When I was in Paris I did not know enough of the history of the place. I spent nine days in the city that I knew next to nothing about. The Latin quarter was called as such because that was where the university was and scholars only spoke Latin. I stood in front of an obelisk at the spot where the guillotine once stood. I didn't know any of that. This seems like a great time to assemble my knowledge and figure out where to go next. In the mean time I will have to explore Northern California. I want to see the coast, the city, north of the Golden Gate. I want to really know how to appreciate it.

I think this is also linked to my first love. I want to go places to take photos. I want to know what I'm looking at.

I ran a 10k today. That is 6.21 miles. After reading the marathon book I had many good ideas. I did it in a run/walk fashion and my body feels like I only ran half that distance. Run 4 minutes and walk 1. I repeated that cycle until I was done. I toughed it out, and my knees do not hurt. I added another tool after reading the book as well. I got myself a new heart rate monitor. It helps to know how hard my body is working. I have to keep myself at about 160 to 170 bpm to be at the optimal fat burning point. In the past I have been working way too hard. I come out from the workout hurting. I learned how to make myself be patient with my body. I can't take the kind of work out I thought I was suppose to. I'm in the slow group right now and that is that. For now I need to take the run/walk approach. It feels like the interval amount is working well for me so far. I will have to add minutes to the run interval gradually until I can run the entire way.

Finishing a long distance run makes me feel like I can do anything.

wind

This weekend was excessively windy, but it was great. I did not get much done, but it was still great. I feel rested and I finished a book. I feel accomplished.

I did a bit of rearrangement. The macchiato daily blog is not just my mug shot any more. I made it into a blog of random photos and daily projects. Most of these photos are going to be from my phone and not of the artsy blog quality. I think it's a good place for me to just show off what my days are like and random observations.

I finally finished another book and I'm craving for more. When I first started out on this quest of reading, my goal was to try to clear out the huge amount of great books I have accumulated over the years. I have been reading, but mostly downloaded classics off my phone out of convenience. Meanwhile I had been rewarding myself with more books. I'm in a bit of a paperback deficit here. I'll work on it.

I won't bore you

I realized at some point in time that one of the things that went wrong with my previous incarnation of the blog is that I started putting my projects on here. Inception, progress, ranting, and reiteration. I often can't remember what exactly it was I put on here and inevitably the ideas get lost.

I got myself a notebook with the intention of writing them down. Didn't happen. I don't feel like lugging around a notebook and such. I'm online all the time. Why not just start a blog and use that like a notebook or something? This way I can share it too. So came macchiato projects.

It's pretty self explanatory. I made it so it is easy to navigate between projects and various updates.

I'm tired. I should have been asleep two hours ago. Then I dragged my tired butt up to the house and am in my other bed. 4.59 miles is a lot any way you slice it.

pictures

I finally looked through all my pictures in flickr. I pulled all the ones I like into my favorites folders. I went ahead and queued up all the pictures of just myself on the daily me tumblr as backups. I now need to work on putting those new "favorites" into the queue of my photo blog. I've been meaning to do this for a very long time. As time moved on it got more difficult because of the sheer amount of photos I have.

I've been meaning to document the projects I want to work on. I realize I've been working on it unconsciously. Revising my various blogs, reorganizing my room, picking through my photos, and queuing up my photo blogs. Next I need to update my library thing catalog and sort through my scrap book stuff. Everything is connected.

As soon as I figure out what pieces I can use to put in a layout, I can start printing out the best pictures for each and vice versa. I don't know how much more layouts I can work on. I honestly think I do a much better job at making little crafty things with my craft supplies then making layouts. With the investment I made in art supplies, I almost feel obligated to create something.

I need to get back to reading. I really lagged behind. I also need to finish up the throw I'm crocheting. I think I need to make some sort of schedule. I need to work all my projects and workouts into my lazy days. As a matter of fact I spent an hour making a huge rubber band ball. Great use of my time. But at least I know what I need to do. Some things are rolling along.

I like how everything in coming together.

HGTV

I'm addicted to HGTV. I spent the whole day watching HGTV. It's fun. It makes me feel so good about my room. Besides that I actually got a lot of things done. That mess of stuff on my shelf is finally sorted. I did my taxes. The laundry is put away. Uploaded some pictures. Reorganized my blogs. Crochet half a yarn while watching the game. I think that's pretty good.

My favorite show so far is Design on a Dime. One of the main thing all shows does is paint. I'm already well ahead on that. I have purple walls and an offsetting red chair. Dark wood looking furniture gives it a sophisticated look. I'm thinking about painting my bookshelf. It's an old white plywood shelf, but I think it might look good in black. Maybe I will finally finish my unfinished wood utility shelf.

I have so many things I want to do.

so what do you blog about?

A coworker walked by during my break, saw me messing with my layout. "Ohh, what's that?" "My blog" "So what do you blog about?" I didn't have a good answer. It is not quite an online open diary, a random collection of stuff I find interesting, mindless writing to convince myself of things, or a chronicle of the happenings. "Musings, Rantings, Bulls and Such" What does it amounts to anyway?

I've taken interest in a few blogs thanks to twitter (that's another story). Not many out there are good, I can say with confidence. Most of the better ones I like has a focus. I want to be more interesting to the run of the mill reader, but I have so many things I'm interested in.

I've come to a conclusion that a catch-all blog is the most horrific thing to exist alone. There needs to be sections and focus. No matter how little material there is to support each section, it is still much easier to navigate then a plain old catch-all. I'm thinking about sectioning off my posts into different sections and have a "catch-all" to highlight recent postings.

dreams

I've been having some really weird dreams lately. Mostly in the morning a few hours before I have to get up. I think I get most of my adventure when I'm asleep.

Speaking of dreams, there are ones when I'm asleep which I don't pay much attention to, then there are day dreams that rattles around in my head all the time. I've been thinking about working on my website lately. I gave myself a somewhat fresh start and have been thinking about the different things I could be doing. I am terrible at getting anything done without laying it out. There are so many different things I want to do that I think the best way for me to get around to it is to start with the website. The logic is simple. If I have a place where I have to showcase my work, I'll be more motivated to do it.

This is obviously easier said then done. I was going to start working on my requirements document this weekend. Didn't happen. I did get around to migrate this blog and start fresh. I don't feel like erasing three years of work but a lot of things does not belong. It's suppose to be a fresh start after all. I backed up a couple of my other project blogs and took them out. I'm trying to figure out what to do with my tumblr. I really like its cellphone friendly features. I want to keep using it, but strictly as a supplement to my main blog/page/whatever. One of the problem with it is hard to manage it's content. I really want something that can give me the flexibility of blogger and the accessibility of tumblr. It will take me a while to build it. I will have to take what I have for the time being to get things working.