Coffee Time Blog

You’d think by now there would be now way I’d allow myself to sleep in, especially because I know how shitty Atlanta’s traffic can get.

But I was super-tired this morning and could not get off the couch.

Side Note: I killed two more spiders in the house this morning some time around 5:00am when my first daily alarm rings.

I paid the price — 90 minutes of commuting — as I used every side road and detour that I’ve learned in my twenty years of Atlanta life in order to make it into the office. I would have thrown my hands up and taken a vacation day if not for the fact that I have this demo to give tomorrow.

Today’s Daily Challenge
Categorize two of your activities from last week as either important or urgent.

Oftentimes, we spend our days dealing with the most pressing tasks, and what really matters is put on the back burner. You may end each day feeling distracted and unfulfilled. When you separate urgent activities from the important ones, you become more aware of the time you need to carve out in order to achieve your goals.

Urgent: Paying bills.
Important: Getting work done to make money to be able to pay bills.

It’s The End Of The Quarter As We Know It
I planned to do a major summary of my first four months of 2014. I didn’t plan to be so busy and to have slept late.

Oops.

Rekindling A Relationship I Started Twenty-Two Years Ago
Confession: I used to live in Alabama, specifically Madison, Alabama, a neighbor to Huntsville.

For three years I worked for a company based in Madison writing Emergency 911 dispatch software. Even back then I was interested in seeing live music at small clubs, doing so at the Tip Top Cafe and some joint on Memorial whose name I’ve long since forgotten.

One night while leafing through the free entertainment paper of the day (before I had ever heard of Creative Loafing) I saw a small article about a band that was going to play at a bar called “Lanny’s Downtown”; that band was a new(ish) band from Louisiana called Better Than Ezra. If I remember correctly I went to this show on a Wednesday night am I am being generous if I say that there were twenty people in attendance with me.

I loved the band. On that night I purchased their CD (kids, this was how music was distributed in the 1990s) and thought little about it.

When I moved to Atlanta a few years later I heard Better Than Ezra’s song “Good” played on 99x (kids, this was a radio station in Atlanta; radio stations were how music was advertised for years) and I realized that I had seen something special that night.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Better Than Ezra since then (four, five perhaps) and still covet my green long-sleeve t-shirt that I purchased at a show in the mid 1990s.

Twenty-two years later Better Than Ezra is still around, never achieving the super-stardom I thought that they might, and are playing at Variety Playhouse tonight. It’s once again a Wednesday night and I will once again be in attendance, this time with probably 50x the amount of people that were at Lanny’s.

Side Note: Years ago I emailed Better Than Ezra thanking them for their music that I’ve enjoyed and they responded with a thank you email. Class act they are.

Today’s Personal Project
Get out of work in time to make it down to Variety Playhouse.

Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – nervous about tomorrow’s demo, a lot of plumbing (pun intended) needs to be fixed before my app can work properly.
Current Music – silence at the moment
Website Of The Day – While walking through Virginia-Highland last week I saw a poster for Boot Park Atlanta. Seems like a good idea to me.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – nothing
Morning Weigh-In – Arg, I keep failing to jump on the scale

Monthly
Foot Mileage – ~0.0 miles
Wheel Mileage – 0.0 miles
Gym Visits – 5 (5 cardio)

Marta Rides To Work – 0
Bike Rides To Work – 0

April Goals
– have European trip plans in place, if not carved in stone
– clean my basement to the point where I could have people over
– hire a plumber to fix all of the sinks at the ITP Estate
– walk no fewer than 75 miles

2014 Goals: Measurable
– Get my weight down to 190 pounds so that I can wear a 36″ waist pants comfortably
– Completely read ten books, audio books permissible
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Completely run at least one 10k
– Fix all (or at least most) of the things which are wrong with the ITP Estate
– Sell the ITP Estate (tentative)

2014 Goals: Unmeasurable
– Continue to Simplify, simplify, simplify
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
– Eat smaller portions
– Start, and continue, to make my own bread using my bread machine as well as using the technique outlined in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking
– Read and discard magazines during the month in which they arrive (even digitally)

Books I’ve Read/Heard In 2014

1. “Johnny Carson” by Henry Bushkin
2. “Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative” by Austin Kleon
3. “Chaos: Making a New Science” by James Gleick
4. “What’s So Funny?: My Hilarious Life” by Tim Conway

Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]