Let me tell you something:
When something inside of you says that something inside of you isn't right, listen to it.
Men in particular, don't bother to pay much attention to our bodies when it tells us that something is bothering it.
The growth as it shall now always be referred to, has been around for longer than anyone cares to imagine. Like a good transient, no one knows when it arrived, how long it went undetected but my guess is that the growth must have moved in around the time that I was in China.
That is when the kidney stones started, which is a by-product of this thing moving in. I remember that day in China well (rather that evening). It caused me to spend a couple of days in a Chinese hospital, moaning for hours at the pain in my kidneys while the glass bottle dripped a saline mixture into my body.
Truth be told, it could have been going on much, much longer than that-- but it doesn't matter in the long run, because now its gone, sliced out Monday morning and sent down to Pathology to check for Cancer. He wasn't home this time.
They call it a parathyroidapidectomy or something like that.
You have four thyroid glands, which are about the size of a grain of rice, two on each side of your throat. These thyroid glands, for those of you, like me, that failed to pay attention to Biology, control a number of bodily functions and temperaments. My upper-left para-thyroid gland needed to be removed as it was causing my body to produce too much calcium, regardless of how much calcium was being consumed. The body, when it doesn't have enough calcium, begins to pull it from places in the body-- (think bones, teeth, etc)... so you can quickly see the potential issue here.
Regardless, it is now out. Special thanks to Dr. David Moore, the careful surgeon, Dr. Mozapharian, the Organist and good ole' Dr. Martin Cahn, the good 'ole doctor. :)
Special thanks to Lilifer, who managed to keep me in the best of spirits during the recovery process.
Things are moving back into its normalcy.
Read more!
12 November 2009
07 October 2009
Where the Wild Things are Benefit/Premiere
Tonight, Lili and I attended the 826 Seattle Benefit, which included a pass for two to catch the Seattle sneak preview of the children's classic book, Where The Wild Things Are.
My personal hero was there- Dave Eggers, with Max. You can purchase the book, The Wild Things, which was written for the screenplay. Buy the book here.
The film itself is nothing short of a masterpiece. I am still quite undecided if the film is appropriate for children. If your child is old enough to not read the book anymore, than the film will be appropriate for them.
If you are an adult and are going to see this film to recall childhood memories of the book, you will be surprised. This is a delightful, yet at times very dark film, but it doesn't bear much resemblance to the book. It reminds me more of being a kid, growing up in the snowy winters of Buffalo, New York as an only child. It reminds me that at times there was no one else to play with but your own imagination, whatever it may be at any given time.
For this, director Spike Jonze deserves the Academy Award.
The Wild Things carry their own level of power, both in their emotional content as well as their pure size and energy. Each character has its own personality and most of them are obviously in the dark funk when Max arrives--but these Wild things suffer from the same daily complexities that we, as humans suffer from--from time to time. There is lovers scorn, hurt feelings from a torrid past, worries of stupidity and rejection from the group and vice versa. These are Wild Things--fictional characters that in the end don't seem like they would have these kinds of problems in Max's head, but we can all relate to each and everyone of them in our skin.
This is what film is about my friends. Where the Wild Things are is the right mix of everything in life, the beauty, the depressing and the Wild. It's all there and like Max, we can't escape it--nor should we want to. Read more!
My personal hero was there- Dave Eggers, with Max. You can purchase the book, The Wild Things, which was written for the screenplay. Buy the book here.
The film itself is nothing short of a masterpiece. I am still quite undecided if the film is appropriate for children. If your child is old enough to not read the book anymore, than the film will be appropriate for them.
If you are an adult and are going to see this film to recall childhood memories of the book, you will be surprised. This is a delightful, yet at times very dark film, but it doesn't bear much resemblance to the book. It reminds me more of being a kid, growing up in the snowy winters of Buffalo, New York as an only child. It reminds me that at times there was no one else to play with but your own imagination, whatever it may be at any given time.
For this, director Spike Jonze deserves the Academy Award.
The Wild Things carry their own level of power, both in their emotional content as well as their pure size and energy. Each character has its own personality and most of them are obviously in the dark funk when Max arrives--but these Wild things suffer from the same daily complexities that we, as humans suffer from--from time to time. There is lovers scorn, hurt feelings from a torrid past, worries of stupidity and rejection from the group and vice versa. These are Wild Things--fictional characters that in the end don't seem like they would have these kinds of problems in Max's head, but we can all relate to each and everyone of them in our skin.
This is what film is about my friends. Where the Wild Things are is the right mix of everything in life, the beauty, the depressing and the Wild. It's all there and like Max, we can't escape it--nor should we want to. Read more!
04 August 2009
Night Heat
--Timothy Hogg
The night that the heat finally cooled from the city, dissipating from the freshly tarred streets, the cool air provided an abundance of much needed sleep for most of it's residents. Dreams became clearer in the coolness of the night, less abrasive, more visceral. He awoke in the middle of the night, the last dream all too much a reality. This began during the heat, but the dreams themselves were less clear but more horrific. He would lie there afterwards, sweat glistening from his pores in the night glow, wondering what was causing these dreams of discontent. Not this night--the cool air brought forth a moment of almost euphoric haze, his body no longer trying to sweat out the badness inside of him.
There is something here and there is something missing, lost.
The stress from the days had been compiling into the night for everyone--people here need their slumber in order to rinse their sins from their minds each night. When the heat leaks into the night, there is no escape, no savior or solstice. It is a natural ebb and flow, much like the ocean that drives the weather--when there is no release of the hot air, the clouds begin to produce thunder heads, pent up angst, demanding a release.
His mind recants to a different time in a different place, the opposite side of the rock, a place where the heat is not controlled by the days, but by the season. There is never any escape from the heat, but the end of summer. Read more!
The night that the heat finally cooled from the city, dissipating from the freshly tarred streets, the cool air provided an abundance of much needed sleep for most of it's residents. Dreams became clearer in the coolness of the night, less abrasive, more visceral. He awoke in the middle of the night, the last dream all too much a reality. This began during the heat, but the dreams themselves were less clear but more horrific. He would lie there afterwards, sweat glistening from his pores in the night glow, wondering what was causing these dreams of discontent. Not this night--the cool air brought forth a moment of almost euphoric haze, his body no longer trying to sweat out the badness inside of him.
There is something here and there is something missing, lost.
The stress from the days had been compiling into the night for everyone--people here need their slumber in order to rinse their sins from their minds each night. When the heat leaks into the night, there is no escape, no savior or solstice. It is a natural ebb and flow, much like the ocean that drives the weather--when there is no release of the hot air, the clouds begin to produce thunder heads, pent up angst, demanding a release.
His mind recants to a different time in a different place, the opposite side of the rock, a place where the heat is not controlled by the days, but by the season. There is never any escape from the heat, but the end of summer. Read more!
27 June 2009
...on Michael Jackson
It is sad that M.J. has done has last moonwalk, but make no mistake: the real sadness is about to plague the media for the next couple of weeks. There will certainly be a special cast of characters brought out of the woodwork to showcase just how pathetic the "King of Pop" existence was. For the next several months, we will be constantly hearing about the wrongful death, how the doctor is to blame and how people like the Reverend Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are there to aid and assist the family in their time of need.
We will allow grow pathetically tired of it.
Brining out people like Jesse Jackson and Sharpton do nothing but kill any sense of reality that this story had.
However, they do seem to serve as the most ideal representatives of a family that has mooched off of Michaels extreme wealth and good fortune--and they seem to be the ones to blame for Jackson's condition.
Michael Jackson was in a very special group of Hollywood's most elite, Liz Taylor, Liza Minelli and all the rest of the plastic population spending their good fortune obsessed with never growing old, yet looking so far away from the human condition that they don't appear young, but moreso Alien.
Jackson, like most Pop artists, had a moment in time where he was a talent, a prodigy, a hero--but something seems to happen when you get as big as he did, some of the minds internal wiring came undone -- so many friends, yet no one seems to care that you are killing yourself slowly inside--and they just stand by, waiting for him to unravel in front of their eyes--that must be the most sad thing about all of it--was that it very could have been that everyone in the world was his friend, yet no one could save him.
...and now, all we get to do is simply stand by and watch the vultures circle around his carcass, seeping each droplet of blood and gold that they can.
This is what makes the world such a sad place.
Read more!
22 June 2009
the dust is beginning to settle
....fragments of everything have come together.
yet some grow further apart.
Lili has been here for close to a month and we are finally beginning to feel somewhat settled into the place and things are beginning to come together. I feel like I will once again be able to take up this blog and writing again as soon as I can get my head out of the work I am engaged in and begin to think about the next steps of what were going to do for the next couple of years.
We watched a little No Reservations this evening, with Anthony Bourdain and it made us both linger for the open road-- specifically Brazil. Although finances do not allow for such a trip just now, it is on our minds and we will eventually hit the road again, this time as a married couple, our lives connected in every possible legal way... It will be a nice way to travel and I look forward to spending many days wandering around this earth with my wife.
I have a week of work left before getting laid off, but I can't seem to start freaking out about it. The last 9 months of work have been good, easy and fun, but all things must come to an end and this job was beginning to get overly boring and mentally taxing, so I am not all that sad that things are coming to an end. We all like money, we all need money and there is a certain level of comfort one has from having the same old job, but there wasn't much of a future in the team I was in-- I need something that continues to have some level of excitement in it, along with a sense of accomplishment, mixed with the greater good.
I do wish that we did have a small nest egg left over, mostly because we need to travel during this free time we have, for there soon will not be that shared time that we can both enjoy at the same time. This is the way of the world. Read more!
yet some grow further apart.
Lili has been here for close to a month and we are finally beginning to feel somewhat settled into the place and things are beginning to come together. I feel like I will once again be able to take up this blog and writing again as soon as I can get my head out of the work I am engaged in and begin to think about the next steps of what were going to do for the next couple of years.
We watched a little No Reservations this evening, with Anthony Bourdain and it made us both linger for the open road-- specifically Brazil. Although finances do not allow for such a trip just now, it is on our minds and we will eventually hit the road again, this time as a married couple, our lives connected in every possible legal way... It will be a nice way to travel and I look forward to spending many days wandering around this earth with my wife.
I have a week of work left before getting laid off, but I can't seem to start freaking out about it. The last 9 months of work have been good, easy and fun, but all things must come to an end and this job was beginning to get overly boring and mentally taxing, so I am not all that sad that things are coming to an end. We all like money, we all need money and there is a certain level of comfort one has from having the same old job, but there wasn't much of a future in the team I was in-- I need something that continues to have some level of excitement in it, along with a sense of accomplishment, mixed with the greater good.
I do wish that we did have a small nest egg left over, mostly because we need to travel during this free time we have, for there soon will not be that shared time that we can both enjoy at the same time. This is the way of the world. Read more!
02 June 2009
Alligator Pie
Finally, a moment to write.
So much to talk about, so many things to discuss and its almost midnight, so allow me to just puke it all out and put it into it's right place later.
Special thanks to Jason and Apple for opening up their house to me and making it possible to pay off some bills and save a few dimes before Lili arrived.
Since I have just used arrived in the past tense, this means that she is in fact, here. Lili arrived Wednesday afternoon, which I must say is one of the most exciting and strange moments of my life. It was the moment where it all became a reality, all of the waiting, all of the phone calls, all of the stress, worry and everything else you can image came to a closer as she called me on her cellphone and said, "I'm down at baggage claim."
The details of that are for another time...
The last several weeks leading up to this moment were gradually getting busier and busier, both in my professional life as well as my private life. Work at Microsoft has been fast paced and higher stress as Windows 7 comes closer to release.
Apartment hunting was also total choas. Jason and Apple wanted to get the place ready for when her brother moves here from Thailand and I decided it would be better for us to move into our own place and not have anytime in the basement while we looked-- so I started to look...
and look...
and look...
Seattle has had some definitive times where it has really had a building boom-- you can see it in the design of places (Hello brown 70's cabinets!!)
..and along with that comes the new modern, green, green look-alike over-priced postage stamps .. Searching and searching to find the right place in the right neighboorhood-- Fremont (nothing good for the price), Ballard (Old and New, see above), Magnolia (Too Goddamn Far, train tracks) Green Lake (nicer places) and Ravenna (where we settled).
The place is perfect-- right near good places to see and hang, third flood with a deck, tiki torches, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms... perfect-- especially after looking at other boxes of crap throughout the city-- Lili instantly feel in love with it and each day it is becoming more and more our place.
All of that, mixed with a glorious couple weeks of some well needed sun and a new Dave Matthews Band album to boot!!!
Anyway, I will get into more details later-- just wanted to put an entry in because the office I have been waiting years for and the wife I have waited decades for are all here now, so you will be hearing a lot more from me than before.
Hope all is well, wherever you happen to be on the rock.
Abidingly... Read more!
So much to talk about, so many things to discuss and its almost midnight, so allow me to just puke it all out and put it into it's right place later.
Special thanks to Jason and Apple for opening up their house to me and making it possible to pay off some bills and save a few dimes before Lili arrived.
Since I have just used arrived in the past tense, this means that she is in fact, here. Lili arrived Wednesday afternoon, which I must say is one of the most exciting and strange moments of my life. It was the moment where it all became a reality, all of the waiting, all of the phone calls, all of the stress, worry and everything else you can image came to a closer as she called me on her cellphone and said, "I'm down at baggage claim."
The details of that are for another time...
The last several weeks leading up to this moment were gradually getting busier and busier, both in my professional life as well as my private life. Work at Microsoft has been fast paced and higher stress as Windows 7 comes closer to release.
Apartment hunting was also total choas. Jason and Apple wanted to get the place ready for when her brother moves here from Thailand and I decided it would be better for us to move into our own place and not have anytime in the basement while we looked-- so I started to look...
and look...
and look...
Seattle has had some definitive times where it has really had a building boom-- you can see it in the design of places (Hello brown 70's cabinets!!)
..and along with that comes the new modern, green, green look-alike over-priced postage stamps .. Searching and searching to find the right place in the right neighboorhood-- Fremont (nothing good for the price), Ballard (Old and New, see above), Magnolia (Too Goddamn Far, train tracks) Green Lake (nicer places) and Ravenna (where we settled).
The place is perfect-- right near good places to see and hang, third flood with a deck, tiki torches, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms... perfect-- especially after looking at other boxes of crap throughout the city-- Lili instantly feel in love with it and each day it is becoming more and more our place.
All of that, mixed with a glorious couple weeks of some well needed sun and a new Dave Matthews Band album to boot!!!
Anyway, I will get into more details later-- just wanted to put an entry in because the office I have been waiting years for and the wife I have waited decades for are all here now, so you will be hearing a lot more from me than before.
Hope all is well, wherever you happen to be on the rock.
Abidingly... Read more!
10 April 2009
Ashes of America, thoughts on Wilco...
Tonight, Neil and I went to see the new Wilco film, Ashes of American Flags. It was playing at the Northwest Film Forum, up on Capitol Hill, where the arts are. I have been looking forward to this release for quite some time, looking forward to going to the cinema and taking a few moments out of my life to enjoy a documentary. This is something I don't do enough of, yet I, like most of you, spend time in front of the tube, trying to gain enjoyment from shows like Lost, 24, etc... Let me tell you that we are wasting our time. That become evident tonight as I was watching this band, this Wilco band, play and discuss life in Hi-Definition. It felt good to be alive.
There is something about this band that I just have this connection with-- it's difficult to explain if you have never gotten that experience from music. The high comes from the simple fact of being in the aura of greatness. To be with a group of people who are on that journey of righteousness, where what they do is coming together so perfectly that it really doesn't matter who's watching or paying attention because they know that the music itself speaks more collectively and timeless than they ever could.
The film just makes you enjoy that moment, sitting with a great friend, living it together.
The film, out on DVD on Tuesday, features a number of performances across their trip through the southern US, last summer. Places like Mobile, Alabama, New Orleans, Tulsa are all featured as the band blazes through the south. Lili and I had the pleasure of seeing them in the early summer last year and it was very similar to what you see on this DVD.
The main focus is on the music, with a little documentary style conversations blended in. The combination leaves me wanting to hear more details about what really makes this band tick so well-- such a dizzying array of musicians working together in what appears to be unison-- it almost seems to good to be true-- and maybe it is. Tweedy alludes to the possibility of another switch in the band being possible, "but not John", a reference to bassist John Stirrit, who I think is the only original Wilco member now, sans Tweedy.
Regardless, this band seems to be at the peak of their performance--it doesn't seem like it could get better, but as Tweedy's Dad says at the end of the film, they just keep going and getting better and better.
Well said.
If only there were more moments like this one.
Hope you're all well.
08 April 2009
..thoughts of Iran...
..Iran, a country that is so hated and feared by the U.S.
Like most of our enemies, we know nothing about who these people are or what they are about. Even in all the studies in College I took regarding the Middle East, we didn't spend much time on Iran.
Tonight, Rick Steves shows his trip to Iran. 15 days of carrying around a high defination video camera, people fearing him as much as he feared them. What comes out of it is really good glimpse into a county that we know nothing about.
"Here is a country that seems so conservative to us, but they are just trying to keep their youth from being Britney Spears!"-- ok, maybe that is a little crazy, but the point is well made.
What a stimulating, visceral show this is-- touring through Tehran-- a crazy city that reminds me of cruising through Beijing-- a city that has the same stereotypes, but since we do business with them, we see them differently than those crazy Iranians....
Just something to ponder... Read more!
Like most of our enemies, we know nothing about who these people are or what they are about. Even in all the studies in College I took regarding the Middle East, we didn't spend much time on Iran.
Tonight, Rick Steves shows his trip to Iran. 15 days of carrying around a high defination video camera, people fearing him as much as he feared them. What comes out of it is really good glimpse into a county that we know nothing about.
"Here is a country that seems so conservative to us, but they are just trying to keep their youth from being Britney Spears!"-- ok, maybe that is a little crazy, but the point is well made.
What a stimulating, visceral show this is-- touring through Tehran-- a crazy city that reminds me of cruising through Beijing-- a city that has the same stereotypes, but since we do business with them, we see them differently than those crazy Iranians....
Just something to ponder... Read more!
18 March 2009
Approved!
It's been awhile.
This is mostly due to working a full-time position, trying to get back into shape and not really having much to report. Since coming back from my latest trip, which I blogged here, I have not been doing much other than working and working out.
I am happy to share that we rec'd notification from the Visa Center that Lili's application was approved, so now we are just waiting to hear the date of the interview, which they only schedule in the second week of every month, so we missed March and will have to wait until April... which means May is the earliest possible date to get Lili here, but it could also be anytime later than that... but it looks like it will be May-- and just in time for Sasquatch Music Festival, which hopefully I will blogging about at some point.
So that's great news.
I am also in the process of working harder on the book that I have in before. It's coming together--working through the parts that don't connect so well is the hardest challange for me right now.
So, there's the updates...
Hope all is well and I promise to write more as I have time. Read more!
This is mostly due to working a full-time position, trying to get back into shape and not really having much to report. Since coming back from my latest trip, which I blogged here, I have not been doing much other than working and working out.
I am happy to share that we rec'd notification from the Visa Center that Lili's application was approved, so now we are just waiting to hear the date of the interview, which they only schedule in the second week of every month, so we missed March and will have to wait until April... which means May is the earliest possible date to get Lili here, but it could also be anytime later than that... but it looks like it will be May-- and just in time for Sasquatch Music Festival, which hopefully I will blogging about at some point.
So that's great news.
I am also in the process of working harder on the book that I have in before. It's coming together--working through the parts that don't connect so well is the hardest challange for me right now.
So, there's the updates...
Hope all is well and I promise to write more as I have time. Read more!
04 January 2009
back from the Isle of Wight...
Travel during the holidays can be a challange-- especially when the travel is about 40% around the world. This travel time I seemed to have gotten out of Seattle just in time, as the airports experienced hellacious delays and cancallations just hours after my flight from Seattle to Dussoldorph.
There is something very special about Germany during the holidays-- with the open Christmas markets, loaded with one of a kind trinkets, plenty of gluvine and some of the most delicious delights known to man--freshly cooked waffles with Cherry toppings, backfisch, potato pancakes, thuringer sausages--just to name a few things. It all feels very merry indeed. This is the second Christmas we have spent here in the Weimar Republic and each of them were very special and relaxing.
The one minor thing about spending the new year in Germany is the time between Christmas and new years-- the country literally shuts down during this time of the year, which can proved to be a little bit dull. Lili and I were both aware of this slowdown and started to consider places to go during the time--and since it might be the last time that I am here for a while, we considered both Munich and England--and decided to go and visit my Dad's Cousin Andy, his wife Mandy and their three lovely children, Jacob, Jemma and Ben Furbish (or Furbirino, as he prefers to be called).
It was nothing short of a brillant stay-- we arrived late Monday night and stayed until Saturday afternoon-- 6 nights and 5 days in all and most of it was simply spent getting to know a part of the family which I have always loved from afar-- Jacob and Mr. Furbirino I had never met before in person.
The highlight of the trip was the 70's New Year party, held at the local Community Center.. As you can see by the pictures, we had a wonderful time!!
The best part of the trip was seeing a side of my father that I have never known. I had always wanted to visit the areas where he grew up, but was only there when I was a young kid. Seeing and understanding that community where he is from helps me understand things from his point of view-- as we get older I think all of us has a harder time to understand other peoples perceptions--we see the world through our own rose coloured glasses and that is it, sometimes. Travelling to the Isle of Wight allowed me to see and hear the stories of my father and his family before he moved to the States and to walk the same streets he walked as a child, which was an important thing for me to do.
It was also good to spend time with family, something I don't really get to do very often as my family has become split over the years and doesn't communicate as well as they should-- over the years people change and too much tension builds up over the years and people lose touch. No matter how much I want to battle against this kind of thing, I know that I will fall victim to the same problem when the years go by. It's an easy thing to happen, we all get busy in our lives and if the rearview mirror doesn't look so bright, we don't bother to look back at such things.
Anyway, thats my two cents for now.
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