Just a spoonful of nostalgia helps the medicine go down..........

I just finished reading my entire old xanga and a lot of old e-mails from various friends and family.
It's so weird how one paragraph of text can take you back to a certain time, to a certain place, to a familiar smell and a familiar warmth and safety.
It's also weird reading letters i wrote years ago, I'm a completely different person now to what I was then. This is the nature of life. Change is inevitable.
I get depressed a lot these days, it seems to be getting worse. I can't sleep a lot of times. In fact I can never sleep naturally. I miss natural sleep.
I don't think I've slept really good since college days.

I'm listening to the old Unwed Sailor - Firecracker Ep. Really makes me think of sitting in my college dorm room by myself with my headphones on. Good old Conger Hall. For some reason everytime I listened to this album I would think about Heaven a lot.
Maybe because I know that heaven will have a sound like no other.

Well I was thinking today about how i used to blog all the time about anything and everything. I really kind of miss it. It is good to get stuff out of my head sometimes. Even if its just silly trivial stuff like "man that new M83 album is one of the best i have heard in forever"
So i'm gonna attempt at blogging again on a regular basis even if it just may be a recap of the days events. I love being able to go back and read about what I did 6 years ago on some random afternoon in college.

Our memories make us who we are.

Leah and I took Milo (our chocolate lab) this evening to the Greenbelt (a huge park of various trails and creekbeds through an 8 mile hilly stretch of Austin) It was fun to walk through all the trails, its really beautiful and it's quite shocking how it is literally just around the corner from where we live. I'm gonna have to start going and exploring all the trails, there are even small waterfalls.
Afterwards we went to eat at the Italian Bistro Cipollina where Jonny the Humble is a manager.
We each had a greek salad and split an arugala, bacon, gorgonzola and red onion pizza.
Pretty good crust. I like the place cause its small and it has huge mirrors around the entire space. Really simple which is pretty much the direction I'm headed in.

We then walked down to Cafe Medici and got some hot chocolate. Pretty delicious in fact.

We got home and I've never seen Milo so exhausted, he even threw up. Poor guy must have gotten dehydrated from all that walking and attempts at attacking the tiny little blind dog on a leash.

Top 10 Films of 2007

My Favorites: of the films that I saw in 2007, obviously I haven't seen em all .

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Honorable Mention:

Top 10 Albums of 2007

My Top 10 :

1. Spoon - GaGaGaGaGa
2. Battles - Mirrored
3. Radiohead - In Rainbows
4. Low - Drums and Guns
5. Blonde Redhead - 23
6. Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs
7. The Octopus Project - Hello, Avalanche
8. Feist - The Reminder
9. Okkervil River - The Stage Names
10. Iron and Wine - The Shepherd's Dog

Honorable Mention:

The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
The Go Team! - Proof of Youth
Jose Gonzalez - In Our Nature
Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
The Sea and Cake - Everybody
Minus the Bear - Planet of Ice
Band of Horses - Cease to Begin
Maserati - Inventions for the New Season
The National - Boxer
Do Make Say Think - You, You're a History in Rust
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Baby 81

So long Jaspers, So long 2007

So last night I quit my job. For quite a number of reasons.
Too much driving, too much expected, too much corporate and too much b.s. were the main ones.
What started out as something great started heading in the complete opposite direction.
I kind of have a job lined up, i hope. More on that when its 100%.

Either way I will never work up north again. I hate it up there. I hate the Domain, would never work there ever again.

I will miss some people and some aspects of Jaspers but as a whole I am glad I have finally decided to move on. I have been unhappy for quite a while now so it was only a matter of time.

I just want to work at a smaller fine dining restaurant downtown that is independent. I hope this one works out. It honestly sounds too good to be true in a lot of ways, maybe it will be and maybe it won't. Only time will tell if it works out.

Leah and I went to Mosaic last night. Sam said the most comforting thing I could have heard. All that matters in this life is love. Everything else will fade away. Love for God and love for people, thats pretty much it.

Happy New Years Everyone,
I wish you all the best in the new year.

All things considered 2007 was a pretty good year.
Leah and I moved into a new house
Things got better at her job
I got a new job that all in all was pretty good.
We got a dog named Milo who is asleep now on the couch

My hopes for 2008:
start fishing with my new fishing pole
start going camping more often
start attending mosaic on a regular basis
attend SXSW and ACL
get involved in some way with the local community either through mosaic or otherwise
have a more flexible job that is closer to home
read more often
start exercising in some way
learn everything I can about French cuisine
either get my car running or get a new used one
become better at saving and worse at spending

The Times they are a Changin..............

I remember I left Slaton, Tx early in the afternoon.
I drove as fast as I could with only one thing on my mind.
Get to Austin as fast as possible and leave west texas in the dust.
A new chapter was starting and I think I smiled the entire drive blasting Damien Jurado as loud as I could thinking I needed to drive faster to ensure my arrival to Austin as early as possible so I could find my way down to Emo's to see Mr. Jurado.
I literally had been in Austin for less than an hour and had stopped by Noah's apartment where I would spend the first night before I sped downtown and parked somewhere on Red River with my car packed so full of stuff I couldn't see out the back window. I literally ran down red river to make my very first entrance to the one and only Emos Alternative Lounging where I saw Damien Jurado perform. Literally my first hour in Austin and I was already seeing one of my current musical favorites. I was bewildered.
I was so excited to finally live in a real city for the first time in my life. I didn't sleep a wink that night at Noah's old apartment in North Austin where I now currently work. I woke up early the next morning or I got up should I say, to speed down to get the key to 615 camino la costa, our loft apartment 10 minutes from downtown and 5 minutes from the community college where I was going to attend culinary school.

Well fast forward 2.5 years later and here I am living in South Austin in our new home, working somewhere doing something i would have only daydreamed of working 2.5 years ago. Milo our dog is asleep on the couch. Leah is in bed.
Some days I forget that my life is pretty much perfect. I forget about the little things. The small things that we seem to forget in our day to day hectic lives.
I just got home from work a little over an hour ago and I have to get up to go back to work in less than 6 hours. But thats ok. Life is good. God is good.
I forget how lucky I am sometimes. I forget how lucky all of us are sometimes.

When you really think about it, life is not about the big things, its really about all the small things. If your 15 then Blink 182 can sum it up for you.

So take some time, try and enjoy the small things in life, the insignificant things that really are very significant. Everyone remembers the big things, graduation, marriage, death, birth, salvation, etc. but not many can remember those small details.


The big things take up only a few moments of our lives but its the small things that make up the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and decades of our lives. It's these things that have made us who we are and who we will become.

Redacted

I just watched "Redacted" the new independent film by Brian de Palma. It is based on the events surrounding the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl and her family by 3 U.S. troops in Iraq.
BBC Article

It did a very good job of portraying collateral damage as well as unspeakable crimes that are committed by soldiers and are never brought into the light or to justice.

Faster than a click

I just read an article that said that it is estimated that by the end of 2009, two years from now, that broadband speeds of up to 100mbps up / 50mbps down will be available.

So here's what that would mean.
If your average download speed was your full potential, unlikely but possible then:
2 hour xvid or avi movie - 7.5 seconds
2 hour HD DVD - 44 seconds
2 hour Blu - Ray DVD - 88 seconds
Any game you can think of - less than a minute for most

4 minute song - 0 seconds
1 album with 15 songs - 0.5 seconds


I do think this is awesome but very scary at the same time. I love technology but at the same time it seems that my very life is dependent on it.
I don't want to be dependent on anything. Except for food and water.
If my internet connection dies for 5 mins i start to hyperventilate.
Its so silly. I want to be free of all these things but I never allow myself to.
I get so wrapped up in technology sometimes that when I stop and think about it, I just have to laugh at myself. And at the society this technology has created. Everything has to become more efficient, including the people.
If your not speeding us up then your slowing us down.

Somehow a balance needs to be found between technology and society. It needs to be the tool and not the master.