Entries this day: Dream Kumi State_of_My_Life_Address

Dream

9:23am JST Monday 3 November 2008 (day 14103)

As I walked down the grassy hill toward the ship, I could overhear the instructions from the organizer:

"now we're going to give you some free time, but we'd like you to meet some new people while you're at it. Since most of you are twenty-something, for the older members, I hope you don't mind being with some slightly hyperactive kids. To that end, we'd like you all to contemplate how long you'd like to stay out: just write down the number of hours, or write down the hour you'd like to come back. Just make sure it's before we leave tomorrow at 7pm!"

Kumi

10:37pm JST Monday 3 November 2008 (day 14103)

Met with Kumi tonight to talk about the email I sent her saying "I love you, but not in the way most people mean when they say that."

Her basic reaction was, "well, nothing's changed so that's fine."

Before that conversation, we ate pizza and salad in Mark City, and then got dessert from the nearby dessert shop, and then headed to the roof of Tokyu Department store, but it was closed, so we headed to the "park" area sorta behind Cerulean Tower to eat our dessert and chat about meditation type stuff and Ami's mommy afer Ami called at 10pm.

When it was time to go, I asked if I could hug Kumi, and she demurred, asking, "aren't you conflicted?"

"Well, yes," and then I tuned into Clear Fountain for inspiration. "Thank you for helping me maintain clear boundaries."

Then, once I was no longer conflicted, I said, "can I hug you as a friend?"

She goes, "are you already unconflicted?"

"I am right now!" I waited, and then, "window's closing... five, four, three, two, one," and turned around to pick up my back pack and we back tracked to the tracks to head back.

On the way back to the station, I was like, "could you *feel* my conflict, or just infer it?"

Just infer it.

She told me a story of how this has happened to her already this year with another guy. At first I was thinking, competition, and then I realized I was no longer conflicted.

Weird.

State of My Life Address

6:03pm JST Monday 3 November 2008 (day 14103)

State of My Life Address

1. I've started building Marble Track Three. I plan to make a stop action video of its construction. To that end, I have

   1. cleared the top of my chest of drawers

   2. tacked up a backdrop: the blue cloth tarp given to me by Sara in Colorado

   3. started building a camera holder which will literally connect my camera to the marble track

   4. Taken 130 or so test photos to see how the animation could look

   5. Tried making a movie with iMovie

   6. tried google searches on terms like flash stop.action.animation and tutorial

   7. Called Will cause those searches weren't working

   8. tried Google searches on terms like 'time lapse' photos and came up with a list of stop-action animation software

   9. Downloaded Boinx IStopMotion, I Can Animate, and AnimAideXT to try making a movie with the photos.

   10. Couldn't open AnimAideXT. Didn't want to run the Installer for I Can Animate, so I dragged and ropped IStopMotion to my Applications folder. Its trial license is good for 5 days.

2. Started writing a novel called _My Dreams_, but at no where near the rate required to finish 50,000 words by the end of November. Plus, half the counter-widgets and stuff of NaNoWriMo aren't working properly, so I don't feel compelled to enter my data and watch my progress.

3. So I've 98% given up on writing a novel this year.

4. I started testing SweetCron in an attempt to get my lifestream on my site. It's pretty great overall, and definitely free. Haven't sorted out a way to get Facebook to show up there, nor quite how to list my posted vids on Youtube. (It will show my Favorited vids, but not posted ones. Silly Youtube).

5. It can do Vimeo, which has useability benefits over Youtube, but nowhere near as many vids of mine on there... So if I switch to Vimeo, my vids will be scattered about the tubes. Gar; that's an issue of the overall intarweb, not either of the services.

6. Haven't seen Ami much recently, as she's been chillin' with her cancer havin' mom. I can dig that, though I do miss her.

7. Have just arrived in Shibuya, and just about to meet Michael to get my ballot to vote for Obama. Closin' puter for now, but there's more to write in this SoML.

8. 6:50pm JST

   I have my ballot!

9. Tariq and I have restarted work on a flash game. Though it took me a bit to get used to the interface, my flash skillz are definitely improved now from the first time I worked on it. Though there are very few (4?) frames, I've got some objects moving around the screen in pre-specified (soon to be XML-specified) locations, and tracking clicks while they go. Should be able to make a pretty decent game out of it. I hope!

10. I've been working full time for the past threee payperiods for a paltry 150,000 yen per month (250,000 is the minimum required by law for full time, but I'm officially doing contract work). BUT, this month I'll get 170,000, and hopefully sooon soon soon a mo' betta' than 250,000 yen amount.

11. Signed up with peraperaworld (I think), which is like findateacher, but slightly easier to use interface. Only bad thing is I've been getting spam (in the strict sense of 'unwanted messages') from students who write, things like "can you teach on Monday morning?" and "can you teach kids in shanty-town?" and "can I get a free lesson?" when my profile specifically says I teach non-beginner adults on Tuesday and Thursday *nights*, near Kawasaki or Shibuya, and offer 1000 yen off first lesson.

12. In related news, though I offered to teach Ami for free, if only she'll do homework, she hasn't done any homework for me to check.

13. In related news, I haven't done much Japanese study recently.

14. In related news, I'm planning to switch my journal encoding from Shift-JIS to UTF-8, so I can more easily write in other character sets as well. Not sure if I need to tweak my Mac, or just Emacs to do the encoding when I write. Not sure how to re-encode files in a batch, but I'm sure I can sort out a way.

15. In related news, because PHP seems to be the most popular scripting yatsu for websites, and I've grown a bit fond of it since I've had to use it for 15 months for work, I may write a new journal indexr for my site.

    I want the site to still feel the same, but I want some better/additional functionality:

    1. search by tags, people, etc (this will require more careful data entry on my part probably (oh wait; I could just give a list of names to search for and slap em into a DB))

    2. better RSS feeds

    3. better commenting. (might outsource this to something like disqus)

    4. easier integration with various photo sites: smugmug, facebook, picasa, imgserv, my wiki, my images directory

16. 7:15pm JST

    I'm on the roof of Tokyu Dept Store (as indicated by the large neon sign) for the first time. I was chillin' on the floor on 2F, but a security guard invited me not to sit there. He suggested I sit on a bench. I told him I had looked for benches, but couldn't find any.

    (That's cause they're on the roof.)

17. Fred is considering visiting Tokyo during winter break. That'll be great if he can!

18. Haven't been playing ultimate frisbee recently.

19. My basic weekly schedule: go to be early, wake up without an alarm, do reiki charging, do neti in the shower, do 20 minutes' meditation, get ready and go to work, work, and then any of some assorted activities:

    • Monday: i-group or work late

    • Tuesday: teach Reika or work late

    • Wednesday: meet Ami

    • Thursday: teach Yurika or work late

    • Friday: Meditation or meet Kumi or work late

20. I haven't worked a lot on Colleen's painting, although actually I did a couple hours worth of work on it recently. It's thinking about being done soon.

21. Haven't heard from Colleen since she was pulled off the rig to take care of her friend's funeral.

22. The past couple of weekends, I've seen Ami sporadically, worked on flash game sporadically, other computer stuff, usually not porn.

23. Kevin called me back recently, and because I (had already sent an email related to the reason I called him, and) had him on the phone, I asked him a bit about meditation, and my thoughts "taking me away."

    He suggested that I don't try to control the thoughts. He's like, "you aren't your thoughts. You don't look up at clouds and think they are you and try to ride away on them.."

    "Hmmmm; that's true," I agreed, "but, I *do* sometimes get carried away by my thoughts."

    "So do I!" he assured me.

    Oh.

    As a result, for the past two days, I've had better meditation, meaning, I've had more continuous awareness that I'm in meditation, even as my brain relentlessly recites Eminem's "Rabbit Run," (yesterday) or something else today.

    Thank you, Kevin.

24. I want to add a bit to the analogy: I don't see clouds and try to stop them; I just let them float by.

25. My subjective experience during this 'new type of meditation' feels something like a relaxation of my temples, and my awareness centered in my brain, just below the surface of the crown of my skull.

    Though this state of awareness often results in my outer mind becoming quiet, even if it doesn't, I can still maintain awareness while it babbles.

26. Haven't seen Kumi in a couple of weeks, but about to meet her in Shibuya. I'd like to talk a bit about a late night crazy email I sent her.

27. 10:36pm JST

    Just said bye to Kumi as she departed the train in Nakameguro.