High School Days

I just had some high school days. I meet friends all the time the museum, the library and especially in the evenings but I only sometimes have high school days. They sneak up on me and stir up memories that I had always believed that I had matured beyond. It happens when I�m in my old neighborhood mostly. I find them everywhere and doing different things. I see them on transit a lot. They seem to be coming home from work or sometimes tell me that they are visiting parents. I somehow have friends in common and will often accompany them to events that I am participating in. I tend to meet a lot of them during the holiday season and they often are dressed nicely. I generally think that they super popular and am so happy that we got to talk. But that�s just me.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.

A Cup and a Paper

Last Sunday during the storm I noted that the rain�s arrival was oddly comforting. I had woken up at an early hour, which was out of the ordinary for me. When I can�t sleep I get a book out and read. Around 5 I heard an odd noise outside like a metal garbage can being moved. The lights flickered.

While the ocean is already amazing this close to the coast, the rain can be more so. Normally from my house almost a half mile from the beach I can hear the waves at night. It is like white noise in the distance. When I go to the corner of my block I can see them. In contrast, the rain and wind slam against my window and leave me wondering at their power.

At times this kind of weather can be suffocating. I can�t take the bike out for fear of accidents. The bus system always breaks when it rains. I don�t own a car. It is as if I am always stuck when it rains. That morning I got my (broken) umbrella and walked to the local caf�. I wore wool. The southern side of the streets was more protected from the wind and therefore less wet. The power was out all over the place. I asked the paper man in his truck for a paper. He told me to stay dry.

Yet for all its inconvenience the rain can be comforting. Sitting there listening to the locals murmur about recent gossip and politics I felt warm and dry indeed. I reflected on how I awoke thinking of an excuse to stay in bed curled up with my pillow. I realized that as the neighborhood woke up and assessed the storm damage there really wasn�t a better place to be than at the caf� with a cup and a paper.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.

Far Away Rumbles

It is the holiday season and this usually means friends and family. Ironically, I�ve decided to buckle down and get to work. Yeah, there are parties to go to and friends and family passing through town but every time I return to my desk I discover a mess to organize. There are piles of paper and laundry to do. Meanwhile, recent trips out of town have only dented my finances and the fridge has been looking barren as of late.

I�m listening to Flamenco Sketches as I write this. I think it complements the mood perfectly. Quietudes and far away rumbles aren�t too far off from the winds that stir the leaves in the park and distant rain clouds. The whole package is inspiring.

The waning light of the fall and winter always causes me to look inward. There are fewer hours in the day and I tend towards hibernation. I burn the midnight oil and when it gets wet outside I start contemplating my options for the easiest route home. I can tell that many of the people I would typically interact with in sunnier times feel the same.

The holidays are a time for discovery and reflection. A time for old photos I don�t remember taking and high school poetry. I look at the cluttered array of extra of maps and pictures on my walls and start looking for a place amongst the old magazines and knickknacks to store them. Everyday it seems that I find a new set of bike parts that I don�t need, like patched inner tubes and dimming blinky lights. I know I meant to give them away but it isn�t often that I find anyone as willing to ride home in the rain as I am.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.

Taking Privileges

Ideas are transferred from person to person and are more difficult to transmit if they are not easy to understand. This is a simple enough concept and by extension the idea, whatever it is, if it is too easy to understand isn�t likely to be much value to its creator.

I recently had a couple of ideas. One was (or is maybe) to be a retail item. I have a pricing concept for it. I rather like the idea. The other is more of a tool and I have some ideas on how to design and develop a prototype. However, I am not so certain about actually pursuing these ideas since I have never been very good at asserting control or taking privileges.

This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.

Pay for My Refills

I went to the Mission the night before to see a friend. His girlfriend doesn�t like him taking BART back to the East bay too late so he took off early. I had an appointment in morning anyway.  I woke up on time and made it out there easy coming back was fine too since it� a holiday of sorts. I hate it when I have to comb my thoughts for the solution to a problem. I had to do this all say. I sent that off as an email.  I go to the coffee shop a lot. Lately they have been telling me to pay for my refills.

This is series chronicles my life at regular intervals. This Memo series is meant to be a retrospective of what I have written and experienced. In each of these posts I use my notes in conjunction with memory, mementos and souvenirs to create a snap shot of my life.

Read my Blogs!!

I am doing things different lately and it has to do with my other sociality sites. I am trying to get you to be more interested in the other things that I am writing. For the past two years I have been developing two blogs that do different things. One is a busy site run off of automatic updates from groups to which I am a subscriber. It is called Newsletters and there are about thirteen contributors. I am constantly evaluating ways to make the postings more pertinent to my life and yours. The second site is called the Jobs Page and it contains sanitized emails from people that send me jobs announcements that I like. I say sanitized because I have been scrubbing personal data from these posts. While I am aware that this undermines the value of these postings, my reasoning behind it is to maintain the edge that they offer me while also allowing viewers to see what opportunities are out there.

I have been keeping the Red Phone Hot Line as a way to document my life and let others know what I am up to. These other blogs are useful in this regard and I make them better every day. As of this week I have begun posting to them and making comments about their content. While this complements my regular, incorporating sociality sites (FB, G+ and Twitter) has taken this process a step further because if my socialite network is aware of all the goodies that I have on my blogs it�ll boost readership.

I started writing this on 110512. This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.

�Octopus, why do you have so many arms?�

I wrote that I had had a horrible dream the other night. I was in a back yard but it was a class room. The school marm was absent. I was making a point so stepped into the hall (which was through the back door of the yard�s out-building) and grabbed Octopus. When I had gotten back, one of the students said �Octopus, why do you have so many arms?� I had to step away for something.

When I had returned the students and teacher were gone and Octopus had morphed into two people. They had completely rearranged the yard/classroom and were busily salvaging anything they could get their hands on. I noted that the teacher wouldn�t be happy. We looked at an old school photo where I could make out my own classmates from grammar school. I pointed at one and said I knew him but they were all older in the photo.

I went away again and this time when I returned the people in the yard had become one fat person lying prone. He sat up a little and a look of realization set in as he discovered that the left side of his body�face, arms, legs and torso�had been viciously ripped from his body; entrails all. He lay back down�dead? I suppose.

I walked away from the yard and heard the sound of what I figured were the perpetrators. I was leaning against something that occluded their view of me and looking across from me I saw another person doing the same. That person was discovered. The people (who may or may not have destroyed the body of the person in the yard) shot tasers with cube shaped darts at the other person. As they turned to do the same to me I berated them and discovered that they were only children.