Enjoying every day...

Interesting.....

How weird. As I sat slouched in my uncomfortable desk chair under the fluorescents, drawing AutoCAD elevations to the tunes on my headphones, my mind wandered to regrets of the past. I don't often regret my actions that are history, seeing how nothing can be changed; only lessons can be learned. Eventually I became conscious of how my thoughts were out of character. After a few seconds I became more tuned to the music pouring in my ears. Audioslave was singing....

And on I read
Until the day was gone
And I sat in regret
Of all the things I've done
For all that I've blessed
And all that I've wronged
In dreams until my death
I will wander on

It's amazing how awake I can be on a Monday morning if I go to bed at 10:30.

Only a little over a week until Matrix Revolutions.

Work's been dull. I can't wait until the synagogue lifts off. I spent a good part of Friday looking through the CAD files of the other synagogue that we did a few years ago (and opened the door for us to get this one). This will be my most challenging project yet... by far. Lots of unique construction and detailing.

Da Bears won. Woot!

This entry is exciting. Not.

Sweeeeettttttt. I'm glad one city is smart.

Quote of the day from Discover (Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's widow)

( following questions about religion)
"There's nothing wrong with having a sense of wonder about the things you don't understand, but I think it's wrong to commit to a belief in the absence of evidence, especially when what you believe is transparently a palliative for your fear"

( How's this for a dramatic and exciting transformation.... )

Tonight is the first time the A/C has been off since the spring. Finally. I'll sleep well with the windows open tonight.

There's lots going on, but I'm not sure I'm ready to write about it yet; perhaps this weekend.

I feel so bad for the Cubs and their fans.... with the debacle in game 6 and now it's not looking promising in the 7th inning of game 7. I can feel the fervent excitement melting away. At least they can still say they are the best pro sports team in Chi-town.

(no spoilers)
Kill Bill was awesome. It was completely Tarantino, yet so different than anything he had done before. Overall, it's not funny in an over-the-top way like Pulp Fiction, but then it's a movie that is rooted in Revenge. Too much humor would make the movie lose focus. There are a few scenes that are hilarous when you least expect it. I made a lot of observations during and afterwards.

He is very good at weaving together extreme action / adrenaline pumping scenes with slow moving conversation that is interesting simply because of the conversation and the characters involved.... in Pulp and Kill.

Music is critical to his movies.... especially in Kill Bill.... and oh-so-catchy. You can't help but notice the music or absence of it, which is unusual for me in a movie.

This movie is totally Japanese anime. Not literally.... only one portion is actually anime. But the whole movie is anime brought to life in its action, gore, cinematography, mood, settings, characters, etc.

He creates a contrast between how he deals with pain & suffering between the main character and the other characters. This works beautifully to get us to sympathize with the protagonist and cheer when she kills the antagonists.

As with his other movies, he slipped in jabs at pop culture... such as the Matrix.

One oddity was that her name was bleeped out throughout the movie. Perhaps that's something that will be revealed at the end as something profound? Or else Tarantino's just being silly by implying that she's an anonymous assasin.

I can't wait until volume 2! February 2004.

After months of talking about it, I finally got H to watch Pulp Fiction. I thought she might not be a big fan of it, but it's still a movie everyone (over 18) should see. I think she was a little scared because of Resevior Dogs. What finally piqued her curiousity enough was her intrigue in seeing Kill Bill, which is starting tonight. She's pretty excited to see it, so it only made sense to see if she liked Pulp Fiction as well.

After watching it again, I had difficulty in describing why I like it, other than completely non-descriptive words like it's "fun" and "hip." It's a rather deep movie in some ways, but not like Mulholland Drive. It's a funny movie, but not like Princess Bride. It seems to be the jack of all trades, but master of none. Except maybe in its casting and acting. I do think it excels there. Perhaps we should have watched Jackie Brown before Pulp, because it's more likeable to the mass audience... It's a little like watered down Tarantino. Actually I might have to buy that one. It was highly enjoyable. I'm due for a DVD.... I've only bought Adaptation in about the last 6 months.

Kill Bill tonight. I'm psyched.

A couple new books on my reading list. One recommended by H (We're All Doing Time by Bo Lozoff) and another I picked up out of the Discover I'm reading now. I always enjoy that magazine, but this one seems to be especially interesting. There is an interview of Scott Atran, who has studied the psychology and background behing suicide terrorists. That's interesting in itself, but also mentioned in the interview was a previous work by him, In Gods We Trust. What caught my attention was a question and answer in the interview:

Q: In your book In Gods We Trust, you call religion an "evolutionary riddle." Why?

A: All religions require costly sacrifices that have no material rewards. Look at the Egyptian pyramids. Millions of man-hours. For what? To house dead bones? Or cathedrals. Or just going to church every Sunday and gesticulating. Or saying a Latin or Hebrew prayer, mumbling what are to many people incoherent words. Look at the things that religion is said to do. It is said to relieve people's anxieties, but it's also said to increase their anxieities so that elites can use them for political purposes. It's supposed to encourage creativity. It's supposed to stop creativity. It's supposed to explain events that can't be explained. It's supposed to prevent people from explaining them. You can find functional explanations, and their contraries, and they're all true.


Nothing I like better than questioning the status quo.

I've heard a few songs by Rush in my years, but never this song, at least to my memory. Its appropriate lyrics were just pointed out to me by someone in the industry.

Rush-- Subdivisions


Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone

Nowhere is the dreamer
Or the misfit so alone

Subdivisions ---
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions ---
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars

Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to smooth
The unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe
The restless dreams of youth

Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights...

Every time i wear my open-backed Sketchers, I end up walking around the office in my socks. I wonder if that's bad. No one's complained about any odd smells yet. hehehehe

Note to self:

Some other time when eyes are not closing, write about my tendency to use optimism as an excuse to avoid associating myself with negatively charged issues. Is disassociation from newsworthy yet saddening or upsetting topics for the purpose of maintaining emotional simplicity and happiness a bad thing? Living in a pretty bubble does not change the color of the world outside.

I had my orthodontist consulation today. The guy didn't take long to give me the lowdown on my "open bite." Braces could likely help some, but not completely. Surgery would probably get the open bite fixed better, but there's a good chance that either path would not fix the problem permanently. My mouth could find its way back to this shape, even after surgery.

So if I went the braces route, it would have to be more for the traditional reasons-- with any correction to the open bite as an added, possibly temporary bonus. The new clear plastic invisible braces would be about $5200, while the normal wire ones would be about $4600. I'd have them about a year or so.

One of the most surprising parts of the discussion was about the history of my problem. Apparently my grinding as a child might have been a result of the early stages of the open bite forming. At the time I had no idea that i even had an open bite. I first remember realizing I had a problem when i went to a different dentist as a teenager.

And.... this sounds odd, but one of the biggest causes of the open bite might be my difficulty breathing through my nose. I think now it's mostly just a habit, but I spent a lot of time growing up with a stuffy nose due to allergies. I seem to have outgrown most of the allergies, but am still more of a mouth-breather than most people. That's why I tend to snore a little and breathe-right strips work so well for me. Perhaps it's just the shape of my nose itself? So what the hell does mouth-breathing have to do with an open bite? He talked about how little habits, twitches, quirks, etc can have a larger than expected impact on the growth of one's mouth, jaw, and teeth during the maturation process.

So basically, I walk around with my mouth hanging open all the time, and therefore it grew that way. I'm lucky I haven't swollowed dozens of flies in my lifetime! Haha. I'm not sure how much I buy that theory, but he's the pro. And regardless of whether I have this problem because my nose is stuffy or just because my genes told my body to grow this way, it's not easily fixed. That sucks. My heart sunk when he told me some of these things. In reality I knew I couldn't afford any changes anyway, but i still clung to some hope that it could be fixed for good someday.

It would be really cool to be a high school architecture or drafting teacher. But it must be nearly impossible to get that job. How many of those jobs can there be? less than one per high school. Maybe .5 per high school? And that would mean a sizable pay cut immediately. Would be hard to adjust to that, with the current bills. But it'd be nice to know I wouldn't have to go back to college or take the ARE. That alone wouldn't be a good reason to do it. But it really sounds enjoyable.

The Bears are losing again in the debut of the brand new Soldier Field. It's great to be able to watch them, so I don't even mind that they're losing so much.

Hilary and I were talking the other day about where we could live. We both miss living farther north.

Autumn leaves changing

Snowflakes flying

Family gatherings

Bundling up in warm clothes (that in Florida stay stashed in the back of the closet about 360 days of the year)

Exhiliratingly cool autumn drives with the windows down

The holidays feeling like the holidays

Hills. Hills are good. You never appreciate them until you live in Florida.

Chicago. Never loved it until I moved 1300 miles away.

.......sure seems like a lot of this revolves around the weather.

Both of us could get similar jobs in any decent sized city, theoretically. But it's scary to move across the country. And it's even scarier to do it when the future plans are unclear. Moving for a concrete reason such as college makes it easier to be decisive. And life is relatively good now, besides the aforementioned laments. So it seems like a needless risk. But what if things could be even better?

I managed to avoid injuries in Ultimate today, although another guy wasn't so lucky. It was pretty hot out there, but I did alright on energy. Still can't wait until winter.

I also can't wait until Ron Zook's ass is canned. Well I shouldn't hold it against him that he's not qualified to do his job. I should be more pissed at Foley for hiring someone who's under-qualified. And for not booting him already.

Saw two movies about lonliness this weekend-- Lost in Translation (in the theatre) and One Hour Photo (on DVD). Neither was wonderful. I'd give the former a B and the latter a C. May write more details later.

Probably won't be bored at work any longer... I've been recruited for the synagogue. It seems like forever that I helped with the renderings... but it was put on hold for a while. Now it's ready to roll... and I'll be helping Merrill on it. It's going to be great back with him instead of the idiot John.

Thinking about getting an air cleaner like this to keep down the dust and cat hair/dander. Purely by luck, the current Consumer Reports compares air cleaners, and this one was second highest (and half the prices of the number one). i'm glad we didn't get the sharper image one ("ionic breeze")... it's basically worthless shit according to the comparison.

Jeremy needs a snack.

I've been online and on computers at home for about 10 years now. Just for kicks, let's list the history of computers I (the family for the first one) have owned:

1993: 486sx-25; 4 MB RAM, 120 MB h.d. (jandyf confirm?)
1995: 486dx-100; 8 MB RAM, 500 MB h.d.
1996: Pentium 133 mhz; 32 MB RAM, 1.6 GB h.d.
1999: Celeron 366 mhz (laptop); 128 MB RAM (upgraded to 256); 6.4 GB h.d. (upgraded to 20 GB).
2003: Athlon 2000+; 768 MB RAM; 60 GB h.d.

So I have a small welt on my nose from a frisbee yesterday. First time I play ultimate a week ago: sick from heat exhaustion. Second time: knocked in the nose bridge at point-blank range. Third time.... what next....lose an arm?! It's not supposed to be a rough sport! Ah well, it's all worth it because i'm having so much fun. The nose didn't even really hurt anyway. I must have a hard head.