Monday, May 26, 2008
Two ducklings, three geese, and ten rabbits...
...today on the Interurban Trail. Only made it about 15 miles this time. I was just too tired, after working all day. I kept up a pretty fast pace, much faster than the last couple times. I STILL didn't have enough water with me. i think I need to have some extra in the car. Holy crap my legs hurt! I think I still need to make some adjustments to the bike. (hobbles off to the shower)
More Quotes I Like
All of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon - instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.
It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings.
Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don't put off being happy until some future date.
Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Dale Carnegie
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.
It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings.
Many people think that if they were only in some other place, or had some other job, they would be happy. Well, that is doubtful. So get as much happiness out of what you are doing as you can and don't put off being happy until some future date.
Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.
When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bustling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.
Dale Carnegie
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Favourite Quotes
From my favourite author Douglas Adams...
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear.
Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much, of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end.
My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.
Helen Keller
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.
I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
Albert Einstein
We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it (religion) should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.
Dogen Zenji
Not to study the Buddha way is to fall into the realm of shameless and erroneous ways. All preceding and succeeding Buddhas always practice the Buddha way.
A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.
Carrying the self forward to confirm the myriad dharmas is delusion. The myriad dharmas advancing and confirming the self is realization.
If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
Osho
If you are in the future, then ego seems to be very substantial. If you are in the present the ego is a mirage, it starts disappearing.
In your hopelessness is the only hope, and in your desirelessness is your only fulfillment, and in your tremendous helplessness suddenly the whole existence starts helping you.
Shunryu Suzuki
Real Practice has orientation or direction, but it has no purpose or gaining idea, so it can include everything that comes.
Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear.
Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it... anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Even he, to whom most things that most people would think were pretty smart were pretty dumb, thought it was pretty smart.
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place.
I really didn't foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much, of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end.
My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.
Helen Keller
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.
I long to accomplish a great and noble task; but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
We would never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world.
Albert Einstein
We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it (religion) should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description.
Dogen Zenji
Not to study the Buddha way is to fall into the realm of shameless and erroneous ways. All preceding and succeeding Buddhas always practice the Buddha way.
A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.
Carrying the self forward to confirm the myriad dharmas is delusion. The myriad dharmas advancing and confirming the self is realization.
If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?
Osho
If you are in the future, then ego seems to be very substantial. If you are in the present the ego is a mirage, it starts disappearing.
In your hopelessness is the only hope, and in your desirelessness is your only fulfillment, and in your tremendous helplessness suddenly the whole existence starts helping you.
Shunryu Suzuki
Real Practice has orientation or direction, but it has no purpose or gaining idea, so it can include everything that comes.
Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Gabe is 12!
On friday, Gabe turned 12. We went out for pizza, and all the while, I was thinking, "My god he's growing so fast!" I remembered the single happiest day of my life; the day I first held Gabe in my arms. He wasn't Gabe then, of course. I named him Colin Gabriel. It was a little later, that my stepsister held him in her lap and said, "I'm going to call you Gabe." That was it. Now he's only Colin when he's in trouble (he is almost never Colin).
I remembered Saturday, as we were driving around to comic book stores, that I named him wrong. At least, wrong according to my family. My dad took me aside at the '96 family reunion and said. "You spelled it wrong." He was referring to 'Colin,' a name I had thought about for a long time. "The family spelling is a c-o-l-l-i-n," he said. He didn't like my reaction.
"I didn't know there was a family spelling, Dad," I said. "If I'd known Collin was a family name, I would've picked something completely different."
My son is the first boy in all the known generations in my family that doesn't have family names for both given names. I guess I like to be different.
Anyways... after comic-shopping, we had lunch at Taki's in Seattle, then came home and read comics, played with new action figures, and of course, a new Transformer! (Rescue Ratchet).
Today we're going to the movies to see Prince Caspian, then have lunch at Johnny Rocket's (Gabe's favourite). I love birthday weekends!
I remembered Saturday, as we were driving around to comic book stores, that I named him wrong. At least, wrong according to my family. My dad took me aside at the '96 family reunion and said. "You spelled it wrong." He was referring to 'Colin,' a name I had thought about for a long time. "The family spelling is a c-o-l-l-i-n," he said. He didn't like my reaction.
"I didn't know there was a family spelling, Dad," I said. "If I'd known Collin was a family name, I would've picked something completely different."
My son is the first boy in all the known generations in my family that doesn't have family names for both given names. I guess I like to be different.
Anyways... after comic-shopping, we had lunch at Taki's in Seattle, then came home and read comics, played with new action figures, and of course, a new Transformer! (Rescue Ratchet).
Today we're going to the movies to see Prince Caspian, then have lunch at Johnny Rocket's (Gabe's favourite). I love birthday weekends!
Sunday, May 11, 2008
OK, forget that idea...
I was wondering if it was going to be possible to ride my mountain bike to work and get in shape while saving gas. For anyone who doesn't know, I drive 33 miles each way for my commute. Maybe some day I can do it on a bike, but not yet! I've been without a bike for a while now. My last one got stolen three years ago. This year, at my birthday, I got another bike. I've been waiting to get out and ride it, and finally did today. I went about 20 miles on the Interurban... and I feel like I'm going to collapse. I didn't realize how out of shape I'd gotten. Obviously I need to ride more.
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