Just woke up

Just woke up. But not in this bed that you see pictured here. Where the hell did I get this photo? Hrm

I’m doing my morning routine breathing exercises and such. I’ve kind of given up on meditating (I know, super lame).

Soooo I wrote that two hours ago, and then immediately realized I was gonna be late for an appointment. Haha whoops!

Some outstanding posts that I haven’t written – ny trip recap, skiing trip recap, individual albums of the year recap (though I might let that one go).

I’m just sitting in bed right now. I can hear sportscenter in the other room. Reading online news and such, dealing with e-mail etc. gotta figure out something for lunch. Ugh leftover mediocre pizza? Hmmm maybe.

I really want upper crust. Am I just gonna hafta suck it up and get upper crust? It’s a distinct possibility. I’ve sworn off upper crust for a couple years right now, but I haven’t had a good slice of pizza in forever. I wanted to get pizza in ny, but all I really had the opportunity for were those $1 a slice places, which I passed up. I had a pizza at Fiorella’s in Waltham a couple months ago that was good, but it had a ton of ricotta on it. Like, huge mounds of ricotta. It was good, but I don’t think I’ll be getting it again.

Hmmm I miss blogging and writing. Gotta rally and do it more. I think if I get some momentum that I can keep on doing it. Gotta be meta. Meta meta meta.

It’s raining outside. Flood watch is in effect. Floods are super annoying. More annoying than snowstorms in some ways.

I’ve been watching a ton of movies. I just watched “The Next Three Days” with Russell Crowe. I liked it. Russell Crowe looks fat. It was a prison break movie, which I’m a sucker for, so I had to watch it.

Let’s see, what else. Almost too many to list. I watched “A Single Man” with Colin Firth. Also good. During the ski trip we watched “Chloe” and “Unstoppable”. Good times! I wished I could remember some of the other flicks I’ve watched recently. Gah I can’t remember. I’ll just have to fill you in as we go along.

Banff mountain film festival was Wednesday night. I missed it for the second or third year in a row. Massive bummer, but I was able to give my tickets to jeff, so he went with pat, and it’s all good. Banff mountain film festival is so dope, check it out some time.

Ok here’s my last impressive thing for this post. It’s called https everywhere. What it does is it forces sites to use the encrypted version of their site, which starts with https instead of http. A bunch of sites, including google, have https, but unless you type it in it will just default to http. So there’s this awesome firefox plugin. Use it, and be more secure. Later, Dave

HTTPS Everywhere -- electronic frontier foundation

Back in Boston need to blog more

Got home tonight. Skied Bretton Woods today. I skied glades for the first time. Didn't break myself (though came close). Feelin good. Need to write a recap about it.

Glad to be home and bloggin again.

Out skiing in Vermont

Hey everyone, what’s up? I’m in vermont, skiing. Or, I’m going skiing tomorrow.

Today we just kinda took it easy. Slept in (somewhat), cooked breakfast, that sort of thing. Then went home cross county skiing, checked out this reservoir. I’m in Ludlow, VT, by Okemo. Pretty awesome! I love it up here. It’s been cold, sunny, windy. Tomorrow it’s gonna snow some. I’ve got enough gear, just gotta make sure that I wear the right stuff.

So I’m very happy to go on a little trip and get out of town a little. I miss everyone back home, but I needed a break. I’ve got this whole room to myself, and while it seems a little lonely, it’s worth it. Downhill tomorrow, and then we’ll see what pans out the rest of the week.

I missed the dunk contest. Will have to see it when I get back.

Ok night.

-D

Dichotomy

Folks – what’s happenin. You been listening to the new M.I.A. mixtape? I guess it’s a couple months old. Relatively new.

It’s called “VICKI LEEKX”. Get it? Wikileaks, Vicki leekx. Clever huh?

So I was reading one of the like eight recent boston college sports blogs that have popped up recently and I read the quote below. It started off with talking to scott van pelt from espn who gave these guys advice on how to do a good blog. He pretty much told them not to be negative. I then read the below which I really liked:

“Bloggers in general have very little concept of how much time and effort many sports figures put into training, coaching, and developing game strategies. Athletes and coaches put in countless hours during the week and many bloggers think they have the ability to ruthlessly critique them after watching a game for five minutes on the couch.”

So, I’m obsessed with sports and sports blogs. But at heart, I’m an athlete. Fans are very, very quick to criticize. In terms of college athletics (which are amateur endeavors, not professional ones, which we all seem to forget half the time), I feel justified in commenting on the athlete/fan dichotomy (ugh I hate that word).

People that haven’t been a college athlete don’t understand what it takes. I rowed crew, which I still think is the most demanding sport in existence, so I feel extra qualified to talk about how hard it is to be a student athlete. Here are some challenges that come to mind:

1. Travelling. You have to go to competitions around the country. This means that you’ll miss an exam and have to retake it, you’ll miss the big party weekend of the term and only hear stories from your friends, and you’ll leave your girlfriend for a week because you have to go to California (pretty sure that all these things happened to me, some of them multiple times).

2. Exhaustion. Imagine that your class is on the third floor and it’s 9:55 AM. You had practice at 7:15 AM. You start walking up the stairs and your legs hurt. They hurt the whole way up and the whole way down. Not only that, but you’re so tired in the evenings that you might not go out, you might not have enough energy to do all your reading, and you will probably have to go to sleep early because you must get 8-9 hours of sleep, otherwise you’ll be a wreck at practice the next day.

3. Isolation. You spend hours a day with your teammates. You practice together, eat together, compete together, go to spring training together, go to winter training together. Some guys live with each other, some guys only hang out with each other. If you’re too busy with your sport and classes, then you might not have much time to meet other people in the school, which stinks. You might also not have enough time for other extracurriculars that you’re interested in.

Anyway, I had to vent a little. Being a college athlete was really, really hard, and I sometimes get the impression that these sports bloggers and fans and commenters were not college athletes, so they are a little unclear on what it even takes to graduate in four years while being a varsity athlete the whole time.

Aright the rant’s over. Spring’s comin everyone, I can smell it.

-Dave

Goin to ny for the wknd

Folks -- I'm going to ny for the weekend. catch me there. i'm behind schedule at this point, so i gotta scoot.

ps i got really good news yesterday. get in touch with me to here.

pps i'm happy for egypt and i hope that everything works out.

gahhhh i need capitalization. must...open...microsoft...word

too late. adios

Get on board with Google Art Project

Art Project, powered by Google
Pretty cool eh? Google art project. Google is nuuuuuuts. Wow they do a lot of stuff. Gonna hafta spend some time checking it out. I might have been drawn in because the lead in new york times article had a botticelli painting. Good stuff!


oh yeah and here’s a link to this cool looking exhibit at tufts. I gotta go! I still haven’t been to museum of fine arts to see art of the americas. I gotta go to that so bad! Sheesh.

Tufts exhibit showcases women of the Pop movement - The Boston Globe

Well everything’s good here. Weather is nasty. Rain snow slush, rain snow slush, cold wind sun, you get the idea. Kinda nasty outside.

I read an article this morning about plow drivers and snow companies. It was about how a winter with a lot of snow doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of money for snow removal companies. Apparently the reason why is that some of the contracts that these companies have are fixed rates for a whole season. I read that and I was like “huh?”. They’re pretty much gambling every winter – if it doesn’t snow that much they make money, if it snows way too much (like this winter), they might end up losing money.

I guess they have contracts that are per snowstorm, but boy they should change it up and get rid of these fixed rate contracts. I feel for these guys and the drivers, workin 80 hour weeks and insane stuff like that.

Going to new york this wknd! I’ll let yall know about that soon. Peace

Egypt

No joke.

So I've been steadily reading about Egypt. It's absolutely crazy. Tough to say what will happen next. Just hoping for the best.

Here's how Egypt shut the internet down. I've been reading the stories and it sounds like for a lot of people living in Egypt it was profoundly isolating to be shuttered up inside with no internet access.

How Egypt did (and your government could) shut down the Internet

The photos and stories coming out of Egypt have been crazy. One link that I am not going to post is the link to all of the stuff broken and destroyed in the Egyptian Museum. That stuff was horrible. I mean, I read that the experts said that it could have been a lot worse, and that stuff could be restored, but it's still horrible.

But then I was reminded of what happened in the Iraq War, with the National Museum or whatever being completely ransacked and destroyed. That was so, so much worse. And for a war that never should have happened in the first place, a war where the American people were fooled into believing something that never came true -- that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But that's another story for another day.

Did you see the broken artifacts in Egypt? Some of the things and objects were so beautiful it was so upsetting to see them messed up.

How to deal with the Snowpocalypse

If you don't have an ark (or a giant snowmobile, or whatever the winterized version of the ark is), then you're gonna have to rely on these techniques:

How to Stay Productive During the Snowpocalypse

Jeff says we should go to the gym tonight. I should def rally and do that. He can drive. It will be good to get out of the house. Hopefully there's no ice.

Hmmmmmmmmm. I've got the humidifer on full blast here in the dining room. Need it so bad. I think it's working. I gotta bleach that bad boy. Freaking bleach. What the hell do I know about bleach...

Gotta go to the grocery store or CVS or something and buy some new air refreshener thingies. Those things are critical. Prob some other things too. Oh, and bananas too. I'm out of bananas. Code YELLOW.

Blogging a storm

Blogging up a storm. Or, blogging a storm, depending on how you look at it.

Hold on I need to do a little more breathing exercises, just a second. Ugh I feel so wired right now. Like, not caffeine wired, but technology wired.

Just think if the electricity went off! I would just be stranded in this 68 degree (read: warm) apartment with only books! Well, if I had some serious lanterns or candle light I would totally read books. I got no fireplace, and no hot cocoa, but maybe I’d fish up some apple cider.

Weird storm right now. It’s changed to like rain, at least here. Only question right now is whether or not it’s going to turn into freezing rain. I wanna drive my car cause it doesn’t look that bad, but I should probably hold off. Omg I need to eat breakfast, that’s my problem right now. I gotta put some toast in.

Reminds me of one of the best comics of all time, I gotta go dig up the name of the comic. But it’s the one with the little girl talking to her dad as she’s making toast – “Daddy, the toast comes out, but where does the bread go?!” haha, still like that one.

Wow for the first time I’m looking at the number of posts I’ve had the last couple of years. It’s not that high. Disappointing. I think I should start thinking about this blog more. Or no, not thinking about it, acting on it, and writing more.

I got some good inspiration last night from a close one, so that’s awesome and invigorating. I wanna hit you with some links and such, but for now all that’s really on my mind is the raindrops I’m looking at collect on the one window that isn’t blanketed by an insulating/light blocking curtain. Many raindrops. Freezing rain is the threat. Jeff’s out driving right now but I dono if I’m gonna make it out. I hate, hate, hate skidding, and that was happening yesterday. Even though my car is four wheel drive it still skids in these bad conditions.

I’m listening to the new DJ E-V mixtape. This is the guy that’s from Cleveland and reps Cleveland real hard. I’m digging it. good mixtape.

So there’s so much snow everywhere. Like, on porches and roofs it’s really added up. I actually preemptively shoveled part of our front porch a couple weeks ago because it just seemed like so much weight. Roofs have been threatening collapse, it can happen, just glad ours is sloped.

Aright well I’m probably gonna be pretty busy today, but I’ll be in touch.

-Dave