Lesson 4: When life throws you some snowballs...

A half hour before I left work, a coworker emailed all of us in the Agency saying that Jenny, another teammate and good friend of mine who had left a few minutes earlier, wanted to warn us of an extremely slippery parking lot. The flurry of snowflakes I had seen caressing the windows of the West staircase at lunchtime had apparently amounted to more, or it had melted and then frozen as the otherwise clear day was blanketed by dusk.

The walkway lights outside glimmered in the sidewalk reflection. I put my weight into each step, remembering the lesson learned in my first tai chi class two weeks ago. Put your foot in front of you, and gently, slowly pour your weight from one leg to the other, like tea into a cup. No problem.

As I moved farther out, I realized that roadway in the first parking lot had been sanded. One of the dump trucks must have come by earlier spreading gravel from its tail-end sander. I then walked on the paths of dirt, laughing to myself. I don't know why Jenny left when she did, but clearly, if she had waited another 20 or 30 minutes, there would have been no need to heed us warning. I imagined myself texting her with mock ridicule, followed by a colon and lowercase p.

Before I could do so, my foot slid sideways. I was past the first parking lot, heading into the second. The muscles in the left of my back tightened in a sharp clench upward from my lower ribcage. I gained solid footing and took a breath. OK.

I noticed that this section of the lot had not been sanded. I walk slowly, more carefully this time. I was aware, then, that sometimes I walk briskly. But now, I was chugging along, taking another step, pouring another cup of tea. I looked across the crisp, dark, clear air at other people readying to leave.

I remote-started the car, wiped away the fluffy snow off the rear window, and scraped away a thin layer of ice on the windshield. A dump truck crawled by, its sander spewing gravel on the ground. As I got in the car and put the scraper in the back seat, I felt my phone vibrate in my coat pocket. I put on the windshield wipers to clear away the remnants of ice, pulled out the phone and saw a mobile message from my sister. We had talked the other day, on her birthday, about her yearning to sketch drawings like she used to do years ago. I had taken it upon myself to assign her to sketch a nose, one of the more difficult body parts for her to sketch. So I was delighted to get a snapshot of a sketch of a couple of noses. "Who KNOWS what you might come up with," I had joked to her the other day with encouragement. HAR HAR!

I then realized, in the dark of night, that it had become darker than it was a few minutes ago. I looked up and saw an obstructed view before me. I turned on the headlights. With the hedge now illuminated, I saw thick clumps of snow piling up on the windshield. I glanced out the driver's side window. I saw no ground, but snow, already a thick layer, and with the help of another car's headlights, I saw a great gust of wind bring down a billow of more snow.

"Holy shit," I said aloud. "It's a fucking blizzard!"

I had been in the car barely three or four minutes, I figured, looking at two noses, one a fairly normal yet somewhat gnarly nose, and the other a crooked one not unlike one belonging to a good friend of mine. Who KNOWS? Who knew a squall would burst through? Certainly not I, who doesn't check the weather online or have watched the local TV news — or TV at all — in the last two years.

As I backed out of my parking space, my mind darted back to two New Year's Eves ago, when my last car was totaled in an accident during a snowstorm. I hoped for the best, and crept along, arriving home just under an hour later. Safe and sound.

Some days nothing interesting happens, and some days the universe throws a snowball at you. Maybe it's just to keep things interesting, to knock the monotony off course, off-balance.

I heard later that my girlfriend had caught the last few seconds of the sunset today, harkening an orange glow over a beautiful blanket of snow, undisturbed, along the trees. I missed that scene by about an hour, but I caught a glimpse of something just as special. So, I cursed my way through it, caught by surprise. But the swears were followed by giddy amazement, a wide-eyed wonder at how impermanent life can be. One moment you're just walking along. Then you're suddenly pre-occupied by exquisitely drawn noses. Next, a freakin' snowstorm rolls through and it makes you think, "I totally did not see that coming."

Mind your head. The next curveball is coming your way.

Recipe: The "I Can't Believe It's Not a Brownie" Cake

I did it again, and it is glorious.

Only the fourth iteration within the last 1.5 years, what began as a hasty, emotional solution to a culinary accident has turned into a sensation. Manifesting itself much like the blue moon or Haley's comet, when only a few have tasted the goodness and have extolled its virtues far and wide, the "I can't believe it's not a brownie" cake is a precious site to behold. The thickness has to be seen to be believed. The warmth that emanates from it is surprising every time. Oh, just look at it!



It is, without a doubt, the best, truly the best, thing I have ever made.

You don't have to take my word for it. Just ask Debbi or Amy or Shane. Or Elizabeth and the sangha when they try this Wednesday night. Or you can try it for yourself, if you dare.

Plus, your vegan friends will love it, and so will you. It's dairy-free, gluten-free and wheat-free. (It's so free of gluten, that the lettering for it on the package is bigger than the description of the actual product.)

I Can't Believe It's Not a Brownie Cake

Dry ingredients

• Bob's Red Mill GF Brownie Mix
  
• Bob's Red Mill Chocolate Cake Mix
  
• Trader Joe's semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)
  
• walnuts or pecans (optional)
  

Other ingredients (as listed on the mix packaging)

• 1-1/4 cups melted butter or margarine (such as Smart Balance light)
  
• 3 large eggs (or a flaxseed meal alternative; see below)
  
• 4 tsp. vanilla extract
  
• 1 cup milk (cow, soy, rice or nut; I use Rice Dream)
  
• 3/4 + 1/3 cups warm water
  
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
  

Directions

This is really easy. Essentially, all we're doing is following the directions on each of the Bob's Red Mill mix packaging simultaneously. I've done this slightly differently each time I made it. The last time, I mixed the two powder mixes together first, then added the liquids, etc. Today, I added the powder last.

1. Generously grease a 13"x9" Pirex pan. This will give you a THICK cake. (If you want a regular brownie thickness, you'll want TWO 13"x9" pans!)
   
2. Place the butter in a VERY LARGE mixing bowl. (I actually didn't notice it was supposed to be melted until I started typing this, but if it's whipped or at room temperature, it's OK.)
   
3. Add the eggs. (Or if you're vegan, or bought a whole package of flaxseed meal once like I did and need to use it for something as delicious as this, grab a cereal bowl and put 3 Tablespoons of flaxseed meal and add in 9 Tablespoons of water. Mix and let it settle for a few minutes.)
   
4. Add vanilla and lemon juice.
   
5. Add the (3/4 + 1/3 cups) water.
   
6. Add the milk.
   
7. Now add the flaxseed meal mix if you didn't add eggs earlier.
   
8. Use an electric hand mixer on the lowest setting, and mix these liquids together, just a little bit. Try not to splash a lot on yourself.
   
9. Now add BOTH the brownie mix and the chocolate cake mix.
   
10. If you want the room to have chocolate dust float in the air, turn on the electric mixer. If not, best use a big spoon to blend the dry with the wet first, until you see a typical wet chocolate batter.
    
11. Mix with the electric mixer for a few minutes, on the lowest or second-lowest setting. (There may be more batter than the mixer beaters can handle. Use your best judgment on how to overcome this obstacle.)
    
12. Add the optional chocolate chips. (The brownie mix recipe says to add 1/4 cup, but I added just about 1 full cup! Mmmm. And I'm pretty sure Trader Joe's chips are vegan-friendly. Crossing fingers.)
    
13. Add the optional nuts, and perhaps whatever else you dare to. (Today I didn't add nuts because I'm not sure if my recipients are sensitive to them.)
    
14. Pour contents into the pre-greased pan(s). (Women or small people may need a helper to hold the bowl for them while they scrape out the batter.)
    
15. If you're a chocoholic like I am, sprinkle some more chocolate chips (or nuts, etc.) on the top of the batter.
    
16. Bake for 38 minutes. Best to check it at 30 minutes to be safe.
    
17. Let it cool for awhile, but do try a piece while it's still warm. That is when it's the yummiest.
    
18. Refrigeration is not recommended. Group consumption is.
19. Keep in pan under cling wrap to hold in the moisture.
    

Cross-section of yummy goodness!



Don't deny it. You want it. (Thanks to my roommate Shane for the photos.)

Alternatives (as if you need any!)

You may want to do the Fudge topping recipe on the Brownie Mix package. I haven't done it. The same package also suggests going a step further to create Cream Cheese Brownies. With the "I Can't Believe It's Not a Brownie" Cake, that would be an interesting next step in the evolution. Try it and let me know how it goes.

There is also a cupcake option on the Chocolate Cake mix, but I believe the "I Can't Believe It's Not a Brownie" Cake is too dense for cupcakes. Perhaps a lover of cupcakes can try it and report back.

Comments welcome!

Dreaming in iambic pentameter

Bert and I were late for class, and we started running.

We were already inside a building, which looked strangely like a fancy hotel lobby. We slammed open the gold-rimmed double doors and ran up some stairs. It soon became clear that all this building had were stairs and short hallways. Most sets of stairs looked like it was from Fallon Memorial School in Pawtucket. One set looked like it was from the Harvard T Station.

With Bert to my left, we kept running and running, and we looked like cartoon characters, our heads and bodies leaning forward, our legs converted into a circular blurred wheel of motion.

"214... 214..." one of us said. There were no sign of doors anywhere.

I looked back at Bert and was surprised to see him replaced by Jenny, the most beautiful girl from our high school class. Her face was looking forward, determined not to be late, with a half-smile, as the background of the staircases and hallways whirring by.

I did a double-take. "YOU'RE going to poetry class, TOO??" I said.

"Come ON!" she said, encouraging us to go faster.

I laughed and wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Our feet were still going and going up the stairs. Soon our wheeling feet were sharing the same axis, as if she was riding a bike and I was riding the back wheel with my hands on her shoulders.

Finally we came across a sign at a T-intersection at the top of the stairs. It had two arrows pointing left and right, each corresponding to a range of room numbers. 214 fit the range on the right. We ran in that direction, where there were more stairs.

We realized we had lost Bert. "He must have gone the other way!" I said.

The stairs here weren't that wide, more for single-file use. Then I realized it felt like we were on a roller coaster, and we changed from the warp speed of our blurring feet to the clunking, inching forward up a spiral tunnel. We sat together in our car, her in front of me, facing forward. I held her close. I saw her neck, partially bare from her blonde hair, and I started to nibble. More playfully than anything else. In mid-nibble, I stopped and opened my eyes in shock. What was I doing? She's just a classmate!

Luckily, coincidentally, I noticed something outside the staircase window (the whole wall was glass). To distract her from the nibbling, I said, "Hey, look at that rainbow!" The sky was a sulfur, dark brown, and cloudy, and the rainbow could only be seen if you looked hard enough. It was fuzzy. A double rainbow started to appear next to it.

"Are you sure it's not us?" Jenny said. At first I wasn't sure what she meant, but when I looked back at the rainbow, I noticed our reflection superimposed, stretching across the curve in the window.

The roller coaster completed its turn around the spiral staircase and leveled out. Our car was suddenly floating in water. I was aware of other people also half submerged, in their own roller coaster tracks, in this dark cavern.

There was a way out on the other end. When it was our turn to exit the hole, I realized we were high above ground. I could see we were on the other end of the Orono campus, near Public Safety and Chadbourne Hall. We were high above ground. The water emptied us out into a parking lot. It was just after dusk and drizzling.

I found a parking spot far away from the building, from the one that was where Chadbourne Hall is located but it was an altogether different building. It was to the left of the spout we just came out of. We stepped out of the car and collapsed on the gravel ground. We were exhausted. I tied my shoe in the rain, with Jenny slumped over in a dead-tired pose.

I heard a rumble of an engine and looked up to see a black F-150 pickup truck pull up and park on the grass, on the edge of the parking lot near the building. Bert got out of his truck, and I could hear the "more power" grunt he liked to do. I don't think Bert actually grunted, it just happened. He looked over at us slumped in a pile near a puddle and laughed.

"Let's go!" he said. We were probably late.

We quickly walked up the stairs to the building, and when I arrived to class, Bert and Jenny were already seated and engrossed in the class's lesson.

7 relatively obscure things about me

My friend Kate tagged me in November with the challenge to come up with seven random or obscure tidbits about myself.

I usually don't care for this sort of thing, but truth be told I have been reflecting on my life pretty heavily since the summer, and this gave me the opportunity to determine to see what about myself I obscure from other people. I tried to come up with seven aspects that NOT ONE person knew about me, but that was tough. So, finally, I've settled with these. (And part of the challenge is to ask seven people you know to do the same. Their/your names are below.)

1. No one in my family calls me Stan or Stanley, except for my mom's new husband. Everyone else calls me Stasiu, which is Polish for Stan. It's pronounced STAH-shoe (with each syllable sounded short, not drawn out).


2. My interest in writing began early, with a two-page story assignment in fifth grade. I picked the title "The Burglar and the Bear" out of a hat. I wrote and illustrated it. I then wrote three sequels in the eighth and ninth grades. I wrote a lot of fiction in high school and then in college, where I became a journalist, whose focus on reporting and accuracy helped shape my writing style. However, the first time a story of mine was published was when I was age 16, in Echoes magazine, for my profile of an elderly man and family friend in my town.


3. You know how sidewalks are comprised of square blocks? For the longest time, walking on a sidewalk required me to step in each block with my left foot first, which meant I could only do two steps a block. This started when I was really young. Sit back for a moment and imagine a little kid doing that.


4. For a full decade, my family lived in a cellar. We moved from Rhode Island to northern Maine because my father wanted to own a slaughter house. That deal went sour, and my father ended up starting to build a house on one of the two pieces of farmland he had owned. The basement was built in the autumn of 1988, and we lived in there during the winter. We started building the rest of the house in the spring but we didn't have enough money to finish it. We stayed in the cellar while the upstairs remained an unfinished skeleton. The cellar was unfinished, and there was no sense of privacy. There was a bathroom, a kitchen area, and the rest of the home as one big room. Our bedrooms were separated by bureaus, dressers and racks of clothes. Thus was the environment of my formative years.


5. I have never been grounded by my parents. I think perhaps it never occurred to them to try that form of punishment. That, or the way in which we lived was punishment enough.


6. I joined Kappa Delta Phi, a small but national fraternity, in my second semester of college. Even weirder, I was known among them as "Demon" or "Sir Demon" because up until one night during the pledging process, I was a quiet, shy guy. Then one night I spoke my mind. I think I sent the pledgemaster a quick verbal (but funny) jab, which took everyone by surprise. They joked that obviously someone had taken possession of my mind and body. My mom never liked that nickname. But nicknames stick around for a long time. I've had two others: DANK and STANGO.


7. My hearing is within normal range, but I sometimes have a hard time processing what I am hearing. I have not been diagnosed with central auditory processing disorder, or CAPD, but I need no more convincing. My ears work fine and my brain works fine, but the auditory connection between them is at times faulty. In a conversation with you, the first few words of your sentence simply sound like noise, and I either have to ask you to repeat yourself, or I have to figure it out based on the context of what I did understand. If we are anywhere with a lot of background noise, then the background noise is the same volume as you and will thus cancel your voice out. If you're a mumbler, God help me. So if you ask me a question and I'm staring at you or look like I don't know what to say, it most likely means I'm still processing what you're saying, or still processing what I want to say in response. This is why I do not enjoy the bar scene, cafeterias or socializing in group settings of three or more. (I enjoy the crowded dance floor at tango milongas specifically because I don't need to talk, and when I do try to, it feels awkward even to me.)
   

Now I am interested to know seven random or obscure things about the following people. Answer in your blog, and if you don't have a blog, reply to this post here at dankoski.com/blog.

1. Krystyna Emmons
2. Kasia Landry
3. Teresa Ngunyi
4. Jenny Bergman
   
5. Josh Nason
6. Amy Beaudet
7. Ryan Robbins
   

More tango, and random minor updates

In my attempt to keep this updated at least once a week, here's this week's entry. Not much, but I've thought of another relatively deep topic but will need some time to process my thoughts on it.

Meanwhile, I've had an energy-rising weekend: Among other activities, I walked for about seven miles at Fresh Pond on Saturday just after lunchtime, and then went to Providence Tango's penultimate LongaMilonga (an all-nighter dance) and danced almost nonstop for six hours, from 10pm to 4am! Luckily I had a cool carpool going with some good conversation and laughs, which helped me stay awake for the drive. I got home just before sunrise and woke up just in time to get ready for the three-hour tango practica in Cambridge.

Can't wait for tango/camping this weekend!

Oh, and perhaps the sudden increase in Argentine tango in my social life lately has helped me to lose more weight. Just today a woman at the practica said that every time she sees me, she thinks I've lost more weight. Tonight I stepped on the scales (before dinner) and was surprised to see it pointing to 180 pounds. That's a far cry from the 210 pounds in 2000, and undoubtedly much more in 2002, a year after college graduation (I didn't really pay attention to my weight since then, until now). Woohoo.

For the most part, I'm generally happy lately. It's a nice change of pace.

Graveyard shift

This week has gone by so fast, yet last Sunday, or even Monday, seems like it was on the other side of the universe.

Events that were once a supernova of negative energy are now just a small blip, a dim twinkle of light among many, something pleasing to appreciate and admire when a glance is thrown in that direction.

Nevertheless, the future is uncertain, and that can be scary.

When I told someone this week about an opportunity that had seemed to present itself, and my small twinge of anxiety surrounding it, the guy got excited. He gets that way when he is about to give sage advice.

"You know, that's fear," he said of my anxiety. Then he told me how he conquers fear.

Find a graveyard, a really old one. Find a really big gravestone that has a description of what the person was like, preferably a firefighter or officer or someone similar who was heroic or otherwise lost their life before his or her time. And then think, what would this person say of your troubles? What advice would this person give you?

"They would tell you that what you fear is so insignificant," he said. "They would tell you to live your life. You know, you look at their gravestone and think about what they accomplished. But they're dead now! They'd say, take those risks! Live your life!"

Interesting.

I live close to Mount Auburn Cemetery, so I decided to go there. It's a big cemetery, so at first I thought the burying ground on the intersection of Mount Auburn and Arlington streets in Watertown was part of it. I went there and soon realized it wasn't. It must be a family cemetery. A really old one, too. Not many BIG gravestones, other than one tall and proud one for the only Watertown soldier to have fallen in the Battle of Lexington. There were many old slabs from the 1700s, the 1600s and even the 1500s. So old that the typography of the letter "s" looked more like the letter "f", and abbreviations for some words were unfamiliar (although decipherable).

Back in the summers of late high school through early college, I worked at the local church doing maintenance, including burying people. A backhoe would remove the earth and place it on a pile close to the grave on the morning of, or the day before, the funeral. A concrete box would be lowered in, to house the casket. After the funeral, my supervisor and I would shovel back in the dirt, packing it in as much as possible. Somehow, more often than not, all the dirt impossibly fit back in place.

And here, in this family plot, where there were no concrete blocks, these slabs were commemorating those who had not lived for 300 to 500 years. They were dead. They were no more. They were dust.

But I am not. I am alive. Upon reflection, the anxiety I had was just laughable. It really was insignificant. Had I let it get the better of me, I would have continued to rot in pessimism. Because I shifted my perspective and was able to shrug the anxiety off, I was able to enjoy the rest of the week. And take a risk. And live.

Busy month

I wish I could say I was on an actual vacation for most of this month. I haven't actually written a real post here for most of July, as I've been unusually busy. Not really with busy work here and there, but I feel I'm occupying my time, for the most part, more wisely. There is a better sense of purpose. So here, I will try to do a brief (haha) synopsis of my month, picking up where I last left off.

My weekend getaway.
On July 4, I saw my friend and his wife, and caught up on life over the past year. I have grown so much in the time since we had last met, at their wedding, and it was good to hang out. Then it was off to an undisclosed location, which, by a number of readers of my blog had figured out from my photos, was in Rockland, Maine. I had hoped for a beach to lay out and just vegetate, but I ended up getting a ripe red farmer's tan (burn) just walking from my motel to the Rockland Breakwater, and beach time lasted only nearly two hours, tops. I got a free four-day three-night stay at the motel for resisting buying one of their timeshares after taking a tour of one of their condos. I decided to drive back to Massachusetts via Route 1, but after four hours and STILL in Maine, I hopped onto I-95, which ended up having worse holiday traffic. Six hours later, I landed in my neck of the woods and went straight to the last hour of the Cambridge tango practica, before heading home. All in all, it was a good trip, but I realized I could really do with a two-week vacation, which I haven't done since my trip to the U.K. over eight years ago during spring break of 2000.

Staples | Corporate Express acquisition (I mean, integration) website
Just before going to Maine I started work on the integration website of Staples and Corporate Express. And when I came back, I was working full-throttle on getting it done. One week I actually got an hour of overtime. It took me and a number of people on my team (I'm currently a contract web developer at Staples headquarters, for those who don't know) the better part of three or so weeks to get done what normally would have been months of work, according to one higher-up who applauded our efforts once we were done. I did most of the HTML, CSS, javascript and a dash of ASP (someone else did the Flash and design). I had some help on the javascript part from one former contractor who has gone full time. The Staples Corporate Express site is now live, but you need to have login access.

Then it is on to a new, big project, which I am knee deep in now. And once that's done, my duties will completely change. Sounds like good job security for now.

Life is a one-man play on a stage
One evening earlier this month, a friend of mine from New Hampshire and I went to the New Rep Theatre in Watertown to see "According to Tip", a one-man play performed by Broadway and TV star Ken Howard. I don't know anything about Broadway, or Tip O'Neill, but my friend is a political junkie. And because the New Reperatory Theatre is in my neighborhood, and because I am interested in the arts (even though I haven't done much with it), I thought what the hell. Ken Howard was great. Because he sang a handful of Irish drinking songs, does it count as a musical?

Howard has been around for a long time, and apparently he is sometimes in the U.S. version of "The Office," and he was in the (fantastic) movie "Michael Clayton," which starred George Clooney. I'm the type of person who can't do movie quotes to save my life, and therefore I cannot remember who Howard was in the movie. I'd have to watch it again.

Life is a one-man play on a stage, Part 2
The same night as "According to Tip" there was an Argentine tango milonga in Brookline. The play was done at 10:30pm-ish, and the milonga still had at least two hours left, so I decided to go. That was the most interesting two hours at a milonga I've had in a long time, if not ever. And that's putting it lightly. I saw my ex arrive there with a guy friend of hers, and I (apparently?) jumped to conclusions and had to step outside for a while to clear my head (see more about meditation, below). I stepped back inside and ended up having incredible dances with some of my favorite dancers, and with those I haven't danced with before (they were added to my list of favorites).

There are the types of good dancers who are so pre-occupied with doing a particular move RIGHT, as in pointing the foot at the correct angle to floor and juxtaposed to the leg blah blah blah, and there are the types of good dancers who move with feeling -- it may not be 100% correct but it FEELS goooood. I lean toward the latter, and I love dancing with those types of dancers too. For a while, I lost sight of that, and I'm comfortable with where I am. (I do know that if you combine both of those types of good dancers, the precise with the feeling, then your eyes roll back into your head with bliss. Been there, done that. That happens when the stars are aligned just perfectly.)

Hosting practica
In other tango news, I had been asked to be host to the Sunday practica in Cambridge. I was host on July 13, and will be host this Sunday. Basically, all this means is that I'm responsible for bringing water for everyone, ensuring that the vibe of practica remains friendly, be welcoming and dancing with new faces on the scene. I have no control over how freaking hot and muggy it gets in there, even when all three air conditioners and industrial fans are on at full blast. Thankfully, I don't need to mop up the drops of sweat on the floor. But I am responsible for having enough money to cover the rent.

Creative writing update
I haven't done much writing this month, other than writing prolific late-night (into early morning) entries in my journal after a long day (see "Life is a one-man play," parts 1 and 2, above, for example). Other than that, I have submitted a very small slice-of-life story as an entry to Grub Street's new literary magazine, the Rag Mag, which will debut Sept. 1. The story is labeled as fiction, although it's definitely based on a true story. In fact, I wrote it during a Grub Street writing class in early June, and it became one of my early blog entries, The revenge of the mysterious green plate monster. I hope it will be published in the Mag in one way or another. So far, I know that two people in my life have read it and that they loved it. I hope the rest of you do, too.

Crowning achievement
I finally got my second crown put in. This time porcelain instead of gold. I waited awhile to get it done, and therefore there were slight complications. I was under nitrous oxide (laughing gas) for about three long hours, and coming out of that consious yet coma-like state was rough. I had to sit down and drink some water to let my convulsing body iron out the shakes. Really weird.

Think twice about asking me to fix your computer
I messed up my computer bad. It actually happened the end of last month, and I let my computer whiz-kid friend up in Maine make a diagnosis. Yup, I lost all my files. Had I actually looked for my Windows XP setup CD, instead of using the PC Recovery Disc, I would have been A-OK. But the PC Recovery Disc reverted my computer as if I had just bought it this morning, taking me through the tour of Windows. Bizarrely, all my programs were fine, even Firefox 3, which I had downloaded a week before my computer wouldn't load. All the files that were stored in the My Documents folder? GONE. All the free videos I got from Amazon Unbox that were stored in a separate shared folder, videos I downloaded but don't have time to watch, and probably never will, were SAVED. Family and friends' photos? Gone. Budget spreadsheet I painstakingly built over the last year? Gone. Website source files for my previous clients? Gone. It's high time I invest in an external hard drive to back all my shit up. Now I'm re-building my budget with Google Docs (read: online).

Meditation and mindfulness
In many ways this should be first on this list. This has been one of the most important things I have done in a long while. It has been occupying most of my free time, when it's not spent dancing Argentine tango, surfing the Web, or taking walks. So because this section deserves more attention, and rightly so has turned from a brief synopsis on the list to a lengthy description of where I am at, "meditation and mindfulness" has become its own blog post.

One more week
There's still one more week to go for July. What more could possibly be in store for me?

On my way to getting away

The previous blog posts are proof that my phone has a shitty built-in camera. Where there were Canadian geese swimming and flapping their wings in the Charles River, all you saw was a murky midnight-bluish-gray. Those were taken just a few steps south of Watertown Square, on the bridge near the Galen and Watertown streets intersection.

I had surrendered my car to Sullivan Tire to fix a blown blower motor around 8:30am, sat on a park bench and wrote for a couple of hours, went to Napoli Pizza for a small one (the guy repeated my order, "Hamburg, and broccoli?" but in a tone that said, "Seriously?"), and then decided to take a walk. I could only eat half the pizza, so I carted around the take-out pizza box, my journal, my eyeglass case and water bottle around in my hands. As I crossed the bridge, I snapped those photos. (Actually the first photo is OF the bridge, taken from the vantage point near where I wrote on the park bench, on the deck where old men cast fishing lines and families feed the geese, even when the signs say to keep them wild.)

My goal was to check out a new set of walking/bike paths in that area. If you hang a right after the bridge, the trail is right there. Turns out that corner is the start (or end) of a particular section of the Charles River Reservation, where there lives many small wildlife in addition to the geese. These include a type of sparrow, dragonflies, and a variety of fish, among others. Nothing that seemed out of the ordinary, in my view. However, it was really nice and somewhat calming to watch a family of geese float by and admire their legs paddling themselves around.

The particular portion of the reservation extended from Watertown Square through Newton, up into Waltham and back down to Newton. I'm not entirely sure how far I went. The trail meandered fairly close to old buildings and was at several points practically in the back yards of many homes. It's a fairly windy day today, which was great in the shade while writing in the park, but it also allowed many twigs and branches to fall on the trail, so it wasn't as clean as, say, the trails along Fresh Pond in Cambridge. Soon I came across an outdoor barbecue consisting mostly of young Asians who had set up white tables on the grounds. Then the trail stopped at an actual road, but blue and yellow heron tracks painted on the sidewalk showed me the way across the street to where the trail continued. Shortly thereafter, Sullivan Tire called to say my car would be ready in an hour, so after continuing for a little bit more, I back-tracked my way to the starting line, and I had my car by 2pm. (As a side note, walking in Birkenstocks today has been a much more pleasant experience than I had on the first day.)

This has pretty much been my first day of "getting away from it all" on this long holiday weekend. I have so much on my mind lately, and just when I've started to sort things out, more gets added to the plate. I know that I could travel all over the world, but I won't "find myself", as it were, until I look inside. Nevertheless, I am traveling to Maine, with a tentative plan to find a beach to just relax and reflect, maybe do some meditating and more writing. Along the way, I'm going to see a friend who has offered to try to fix my home computer. That's really an excuse, as if I needed one, to chill out with an old friend for the first time in almost a year. Then it's onward to the crash of the waves and the hot sandy beach.

Websites by people I know

List of links to acquaintances, friends, colleagues and people ... I've ... met.

• MJ Acharya
• Alena Allegretti
• Lisa Allen
• Carolina Arentsen
• Bert Audette
• Amy Beaudet
• Tom and Lani Beaudet
• Holly Bedard: (1) (2)
  
• Debra Bell (Bell Imaging & Design) (1) (2)
  
• Cameron/Kim/Saskia Bennett (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
  
• Jenny Bergman (1) (2)
  
• Ben Bogart
• Jeff Brown
• Mary and Matt Burch
• Ernesto Burden
  
• Camilo and Andi
• Don Campbell
  
• Elmira Cancelada
• Mark Connolly
• Jim Curran (1) (2) (3)
• Wesley Denaro (1) (2)
  
• Stanley Dankoski (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
  
• Lia Davis
• Misty Edgecomb
• Mike Emond
• Sheila Erimez
  
• Mike Escutia (1) (2) (3)
  
• David Evans
• Allyson Fauver
  
• Adam Fogg
• Sam Gong (2) (3)
  
• Darrell Halen (1) (2)
  
• Shawn Handyside (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
  
• Efren Hidalgo (2)
• Debbi Hobson (1) (2)
• Emma Holder
  
• Becky Holt
• Travis James Humphrey (Band)
  
• Niki (Dobbyn) Jamieson (1) (2)
  
• Dan Johnson (1) (2)
  
• Jessica Kiela
• Ginger Kozlowski
• Thuy Lam
• Paul Landry
• Steve Lastnik
  
• Kimberly Leonard (1) (2) (3)
• Barry McCarthy
  
• Miles
• Shaun Moynihan (1) (2) (3) (4)
  
• Josh Nason (1) (2) (3) (4)
  
• Kim Neff-King (1) (2)
• Erin O'Connor
  
• Suzette Paradis
• Danielle Pettengill (1) (2)
  
• Adriana Pinto
• Bruce Preston (1) (2) (3)
  
• Fred Reisman
• Derek Rice (2)
• Jennie Riley (and, sometimes, Ethan Plunkett)
  
• Ryan Robbins
• Adam Sadowski - Not by him, but that is his face superimposed on the famous Adamses.
• Julia Schiptsova
• Bill Share
  
• Scott Shelton (1) (2)
• Kirill Shklovsky
  
• Alex Shyrokov
• Michael Simborg (1) (2)
• Vineet Sinha
  
• Pamela and Steve Slavsky
• Joanna Stokinger
  
• James Sullivan (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
• Switchblade Suicide (Geoff Jewett and Brian Hoffman)
  
• Julia Tenney (2)
  
• Kate Tsui
• Kim Tsui
• Sorin Varzaru (1) (2)
  
• Diane Wasserman
  
• Bryan Waterman

That's it for now! If you don't see your name here, or if you do but need to add or fix a link, please leave a comment. Thanks!

STAN