I need to get to work, creatively speaking…

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I’ve kind of been in a bit of a rut lately.

If you’re a fan of my creative works, you may have noticed that some of them haven’t been updating lately as they should. Basically, I let myself fall behind on some stuff over the last month or so in order to focus on some other entirely different projects, and now that said projects are officially behind me, I’m just having a really hard time getting back into the swing of things again.

In a way, I am glad that I did it because it was a project that I really needed to get done earlier in the year so that it has time to build momentum on its own, though I wish I hadn’t had to sacrifice my timeliness because now it feels like I’m underwater with my other stuff, which I think sometimes makes it even harder because seeing a dozen columns to work on is a lot more daunting than saying, “I guess I’m a week behind or so…”

I just need to power through it – quarantine off one or two things at a time and just focus on those, then keep going until I get through the entire pile. It’s tough to tune out all of that background work because sometimes it makes it that much harder for me to get into the creative mindset that I need to be funny, but it’s really the only way! I need to get going and I need to plow through the things consistently so that I can actually finish up and move on to other stuff before the next week’s column just adds itself to the pile! A little at a time, but a lot at the end of the day and even more by the end of the week…

In fact, I could probably be working on one of those things right now!  😕

Thin Post : Focus!

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So back to looking at things a week at a time, I didn’t really do too well this week.

In short, I gained a pound back.

It’s not tough to decipher why – I had a lot of snacks, including Cold Stone, two nights out for sushi, a stuffed crust pizza day, and of course, a huge peanut butter egg for Easter … plus, I probably haven’t been pushing myself with exercise nearly as hard as I should be. I mean, I’m still keeping up on my cardio, but I haven’t done my push-ups in over a month now and I haven’t been feeling as sore from the walking as I used to when I was pushing harder last month.

And as relieving as it may be to not be incredibly sore all of the time, that’s not really in my best interests at this point, now is it?!

I’m trying to remain calm about it, however, and instead of beating myself up even more, just trying to establish a plan to re-focus myself and get back on track so that I can resume the losses that I need to hit my goals by this fall.

  • Diet – I will stay under 2,000 calories every single day this week, even if it means writing down my calories on a piece of scrap paper as I go through the day to keep track!
  • Exercise – I will push myself harder to do more exercise, both in keeping up with my nightly walks as well as reintroducing push-ups into my routine. I’m also going to try to add some swimming now, too, because the water in the pool is beginning to get somewhat bearable if I go in the dead of the afternoon while the sun is still out!
  • Sleep – I will fight tooth and nail to get at least 6+ hours of sleep a night, and if I can gradually slide my bedtime back so that I can start getting up at a somewhat reasonable time again, too, then that’s all the better.
  • Relax – I will continue efforts to spend less time working and more time having fun with Sara because stress relief is important.

Tall order, I know, but let’s try it for a week and see what happens…  😐

Caine’s Arcade

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This is such a neat story – I just can’t share it around enough…

When I first watched it this morning (via BoingBoing), it already had about 68k views and they were approaching $10k for the kid’s college fund. Now when I just refreshed it half a day later, the video has been watched almost 400,000 times and Caine’s college fund has surpassed $44,000!

I chipped in five bucks this morning because the story really made me smile and I feel like an imagination like that needs to be encouraged as much as possible.

And the thing I love about the nature of the Internet is that thousands of other people felt exactly the way that I did and by the end of the week, this bright, little 9 year-old is probably going to be able to go to whatever college he wants in the country.

Just watch the video and I think you’ll agree that it’s a pretty good investment…  😉

Make It Count

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I got a real kick out of this video – it kind of reminded me of the big road trip that Sara and I took a couple of years ago, minus the worldwide travel aspect, of course! Seriously, how cool would it be to just take like ten grand, a week, and a map, and just wander around seeing all of the wonders of the world?!

Just to name a few off the top of my head, my list would probably include Egypt, London, Paris, Germany, China, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Where would you go?

Lots and Lots and Lots of Sushi

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I cannot emphasize enough that I still find it incredibly weird that I’ve taken to sushi like I once took to Chinese food so many moons ago. You can ask my wife – I think I parrot the same phrase every single time that we go out for sushi, which as of late has literally been more than once per week. I think a big part of it is simply that we found a place early on that is really, really good – if we were choosing from random sub par “sushi parlors” around our neighborhood, my guess is we wouldn’t be halfway out the door already whenever the slightest hint presents itself that one or more of us doesn’t really feel like eating at home on a given night…

I mean, seriously – look at these beautifully delicious rolls!  😯

(In full disclaimer for the sake of our regular place, that last photo was taken somewhere we’ve never been before – it was kinda dark and their goods were ok, but not necessarily of the caliber to which we’ve quickly become accustomed…)

(Prediction: By the end of 2012, it will probably be safe to consider us “sushi snobs” by most standards recognized on the Internet today. And at the rate we’re going, I think I’ll be ok with that.)

The Future is Soon, and Its Name is Google…

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Anyone who reads this blog a lot knows that I sometimes romanticise about how far technology has come even just in my own little lifetime, especially with regards to the endless incredible marvel that is the Information Superhighway. Admittedly, a lot of the recent strides have been from companies like Google and Apple, and here’s another great example of exactly why it’s just really exciting for me to be living in a time like this!

I mean, sure – there are obvious questions like whether you actually want pop-ups springing forth into your field of vision at any random moment and please keep in mind that this is an extremely early prototype that the engineers at Google are playing around with, but it’s still pretty neat to see all of the social and location-based tie-ins that can be built into a device, whether it be a pair of glasses or even just your smart phone, to further enhance whatever else it is that you happen to be doing at the time. It’s kind of crazy for me to take a look at something like my iPhone – a device that I absolutely love and couldn’t imagine living without, even having only had it for a little over a year, and then seeing the next generation beyond that as we continue to build on the live maps and always-on mobile connectivity that we’re already enjoying today!

Now that said, there’s one other link that I wanted to share that’s equally cool, though I also just found out about this one pretty recently, too. Google Maps Street View – I always thought that it was kinda neat if you wanted to get an idea of the building that you’re looking for or maybe just to further stalk your ex, but I had no idea some of the very cool and different applications that they were now introducing to the technology. Like, you know, if you say wanted to take a virtual tour of the Amazon rainforest, just to name an example… 😉

Google is now using this 360 technology that they perfectly with the initial launch of street view to now offer tours of the White House, the Swiss Alps, Sea World Orlando, Hollywood Boulevard, and just all sorts of random landmark-type places will literally allow you to simulate walking down the street (or jungle path) as if you were actually there for yourself! And here I thought it was cool a few years ago when they loaded all of the data from the Mars rovers and the moon landing into Google Maps … well, that’s still very cool, but now so is this!

I guess I just love seeing tech companies actually innovating like this because what these guys are doing is so much more than just giving us new stuff to goof around with on our cell phones. These are tools that will grow to enhance our lives in ways that we probably can’t even predict yet, and that’s just very, very exciting to me.  😀