So the new Neighbors for Neighbors website is up. As I mentioned before, I assisted with just a few niggling bits related to modifying the Wordpress template and such. If you live in Jamaica Plain you should definitely check it out.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Air Traffic Control" by Louis XIV

I’m pretty open to the things that I’ll eat. I don’t think I could ever be this guy, but I’m moderately adventurous. For me, the most important part of a food is it’s texture. Foods that have a consistency approaching that of mush doesn’t sit well with me therefore I don’t eat liver. I also can’t stand foods that are difficult or time consuming to chew so I don’t particularly enjoy gizzards. I also have nothing but absolutely disdain for water chestnuts.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Feeling Strong Every Day" by Chicago

So a “blogging group” known as 9rules started a site called Quofda which is basically a site the poses a Question of the Day and bloggers respond to the question and then trackback the corresponding post. This is my first such post and I’ll try to keep up with it.

So today’s question is: Why aren’t you working?

For me there can be any number of reasons why I’m not working. It’s usually I’ve just hit a mental or motivational lull that I just need to take a moment to myself, maybe walk around, maybe browse around the web a bit, and then I feel a lot better and can get back to work. Lately however, I find it hard to work when I’m saddled with an “emotional burden” so to speak. A significant part of my social circle has informed me that they very likely moving to San Francisco at the end of the summer. They asked me if I wanted to join the Mass exodus (I made a funny) and frankly I’m torn. I’m not particularly skilled at making new friends. When they were handing out social skills I jumped out of line and went to the bathroom or something… Their leaving sucks because I’m going to have to try and find suitable replacements and who knows how well that will go. I also happen to really like the metro Boston area though I can’t articulate why I like it here as much as I do.

I wouldn’t really want to move to San Francisco. If I were going to move across country it’d probably be to the Pacific Northwest, most likely Portland, Oregon. If I’m going to make a life changing move it might as well be on my terms. If I were to head to the Northwest I’d be in the same boat as I’ll be in when they leave just slightly worse because I’ll know absolutely no one.
I’ve been running hypothetical scenarios through my mind the last couple of days about the possibility of diving head first off my comfort cliff and seeing what happens and whether I’ll come out all right.

Edit: Now I’m wondering why my trackbacks aren’t working

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Letters Home from the Garden of Stone" by Everlast

The last couple of Thursdays I’ve been volunteering at a program called X-Cel which helps people prepare for their GED exams. I helped the students with their math preparation as a tutor. The organization has it pretty well organized. Each room has a purpose which covers a particular aspect of the requisite curriculum for the exam. They start at addition & subtraction and work their way through to algebra. I’ve helped out in the Decimals room where the students learn to do addition, multiplication, subtraction & division with decimals with and without word problems.

Volunteering there is really quite satisfying and I hope to continue doing it for a while. It’s experiences like these that make me want to get into teaching.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Moody's Mood for Love" by Eddie Jefferson

Last night, I met with Joseph Porcelli of the Neighbors for Neighbors project. He’s been working on a new site for the project and needed some technical support. I’m basically going to be helping him make some changes to the Wordpress theme and a few other tidbits here and there. The gist of the neighbors for neighbors project is to connect people who live within a community so that they can get to know their neighbors, do community related projects, and improve the general well-being of the community. Their “flagship” community is Jamaica Plain. I think that this is an incredibly worthwhile venture and am elated that I can participate.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "2112" by Rush

Screw the Giants.

So Wednesday has come and gone and unfortunately I wasn’t able to make it to last weeks Toastmasters meeting so I wasn’t able to get the DVD of my presentation. I’ll get it at the next meeting however.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "You Give Me Something" by James Morrison

I finally got around to delivering my Ice Breaker speech for Toastmasters. I had been putting it off for entirely too long. I also responded to two table topics questions since no one seemed interested in going up and saying something. I’m actively trying to get over some of the nervousness that goes along with speaking. There were definitely some aspects of speaking that I still need to work on as addressed in the evaluations that I received from other members of the club, but overall it wasn’t too bad and I think that by the time I get around to giving my sixth speech I’ll be more seasoned. I hope to finish the manual by early next year at the latest.

I’ll get a DVD with my speech on it at the next meeting in two weeks. I’ll rip it and put it online for all to see when I receive it.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Show Me" by John Legend

The dawn of a new year and the end of an old one. 2007 had it’s ups and downs just like any other year is expected to have. I graduated from college and am employed. I’ve finally been abroad and on my employer’s dime. Some other stuff happened and then the year ended.

As we all know, it is traditional to present resolutions for the new year. A nice list of all the fun things that we want to do this year to better ourselves and so I give you mine.

Read the rest of this entry »

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Burn My Shadow" by UNKLE

I’m finally finished, for various definitions of the term “finished”. I’ve got the bulk of the paper off my walls. It took all day, but I managed to get the remaining two walls done today.

I’m exhausted now. I could just fall over and not wake up until some time tomorrow afternoon. Unfortunately, I have some clean up to do before I can pass out. Some time during this week I’ll have to take a utility knife and a scraper around the edges, around door frames and such (because the intelligent person who painted the door frames had never heard of using painter’s tape and so they got paint on the walls and so now there is a lot of latex mess around the edges of the room) and spend some time getting the paper from around outlets and such. And then I can hopefully move on to the next step: patching the cracks in the plaster and applying the skim coat.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Passing By" by Zero 7