Tag: Life

A trip to Seattle with my dude

Kris FreedainLeave a comment

Once we got through Ian’s graduation, he and I got to take a short overnight trip to Seattle. (and, bonus, Dawn got some much needed quiet time)

We stayed at ‘citizenM Seattle’; the decor was fun, the location worked really well for us, and the room was a great mix of minimalism meets Stanley Kubrick. We’d stay there again.

Once we checked in, Ian and I walked over to the Spheres. I’ve wanted to show him the inside for a while now but it had been difficult to schedule. With some time off I just took my badge with me for our trip and I could escort him in for a tour.

For dinner, we walked over to Taku and ordered a ‘F**k It Bucket’ of Japanese fried chicken and furikake fries, and it was amazing. (We’ve been watching Top Chef Portland and had to try Chef Shota‘s place – hopefully we’ll get to try a few more of the restaurants from this the chefs of this season)

That evening, we just hung out, watched TV, and it was pretty great.

Started our day with Top Pot Doughnuts – a favorite of mine up there. (We took some home for Momma too)

Made a trip to Pike Place market to look around and Ian found ‘The Purple Store’ so we had to check it out. Fish n chips from Jack’s Fish Spot and we were on our way.

Last stop was Gas Works Park. Dawn and I had visited it before and I wanted to show the dude. From there, we jumped on the freeway for our long journey home. I really enjoyed spending time with my best buddy.

Taking time

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So I realized something recently; what I truly love about Portland is a sense of ‘not-doing’ I have come to accept. Not necessarily a non productive not-doing, but a sense of less rush, taking my time, observing the clouds. The realization that sometimes, it’s okay to do that.

California never really allowed too much of it, but that’s okay. The place just moves constantly. Although I grew up there and loved the busyness of it for most of my life, I ended up truly needing to get away from that once I entered my 40’s. And yes, I have fully accepted being an old man. Get off my lawn while you’re at it.

But here in the Pacific Northwest it’s okay to watch the trees, see them turn colors in the fall. To watch the clouds just float by while sitting on a park bench; almost in a monastic sense of just being.

It’s only been a few months since we’ve lived up here but I feel like I’m home.

But maybe not forever.

Who knows. I am beginning to wonder if one of the healthiest lessons we’ve learned when we moved away is simply that we can and everything is OK. Home is what you make of it. Family and friends are who you choose to become close with. Distance from someone never changes that.

Maybe this ‘not-doing’ is really just more time to reflect. I’ll take it.

Sweetcron

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As many of you may know, Sweetcron has been released into the wild. Yongfook (Jon) had been working on this for quite some time; even had been running his own site on it for a while before announcing it would be released.

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I’ve installed a ‘beta site’ with it, and am continuing to play around; time permitting.

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The installation went fairly well, but I did run into one unfortunate incedent. Some of the files use upper case as the first character in the name. The FTP client I used decided to not pay attention to that on certain directories, and a good deal of searching and replacing had to happen. While I personally would like to see them as lower case characters, it was easy to figure out, and not a huge deal.

So far, it updates rather well, and adding new streams into the items tab is easy enough. I would like to see the ability to change my password, but Jon is working on that in a new version. I anticipate updates to come quickly; he did well with 8apps. (I was a fan of the site, but understand why he did not take it forward. Well written, beautiful to use, but I’m sure something of that nature would have turned into a full time job.)

I agree with the concepts of lifestreaming; I know Sweetcron is not the first, but to me, it does the bext job I’ve seen in solving the issues. Those of us that spend a lot of time online have data scattered everywhere. It was something I’d been thinking about for quite some time. Pownce, Twitter, Flicker, & YouTube accounts that we post to. But no real way to connect them. Sure, there is FriendFeed, but in my opinion it just add to the problem. It’s still just another account with your data. Having your own domain for this to collect upon just seems proper.

Jon makes a good point in the beginning of a recent talk he gave (I’ve not watched it’s entirety, but plan to soon). How many of us update our blogs daily? HAHA ya, exactly, not unless we essentially are out to make money in doing so.

While I do plan to keep my WordPress blog around, I imagine it too will become just another feed in my Sweetcron lifestream. Yes, I know Sweetcron has a notes area, but for now the blog is staying — we’ll see long term. I do however, see this becoming the main page on my domain, blog taking or subdomain. I do post many places, and presenting this, on my own domain, is wonderful. (and Jon, if you read this, kudos again on the release of Sweetcron; you did not disappoint in the least — keep up the great work)

Threadless

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Took a picture of Little Man at the Star Wars exhibit we went to this weekend (I’ll try to post more on that later) and submitted it to Threadless. We were both wearing our ‘Dark Side of the Garden’ shirts and he tried on the Darth Vader mask. Had to get a picture.

Here’s the link on Threadless.com
…and yes, we match sometimes. Hey — I have to get away with that as much as I can now. I’m sure the day he tells me I’m a nerd and he doesn’t think it’s cool to match it coming soon enough.

What does ‘rich’ mean

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A friend of mine sent this a while back and I thought it was quite amazing. I wanted to share:

— — — — -

It was a busy morning, approximately 8:30 a.m., when an elderly gentleman in his 80’s, arrived to have stitches removed from his thumb. He stated that he was in a hurry as he had an appointment at 9:00 am.

I took his vital signs and had him take a seat, knowing it would be over an hour before someone would be able to see him. I saw him looking at his watch and decided, since I was not busy with another patient, I would evaluate his wound. On exam, it was well healed, so I talked to one of the doctors, got the needed supplies to remove his sutures and redress his wound.

While taking care of his wound, we began to engage in conversation. I asked him if he had another doctor’s appointment this morning, as he was in such a hurry. The gentleman told me no, that he needed to go to the nursing home to eat breakfast with his wife. I then inquired as to her health. He told me that she had been there for a while and that she was a victim of Alzheimer’s disease. As we talked, I asked if she would be upset if he was a bit late. He replied that she no longer knew who he was, that she had not recognized him in five years now. I was surprised, and asked him, “And you still go every morning, even though she doesn’t know who you are?” He smiled as he patted my hand and said, “She doesn’t know me, but I still know who she is.”

I had to hold back tears as he left, I had goose bumps on my arm, and thought, “That is the kind of love I want in my life.” True love is neither physical, nor romantic. True love is an acceptance of all that is, has been, will be, and will not be. The happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything; they just make the best of everything they have.

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I’ve also found myself very fortunate to be able to relate to this story………