um... i need to go pee?

sunday morning

staying warm

notecard

sleepy but won't close his eyes

"In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true." ~Buddha

It's disconcerting when, after you come back to work after a week of being sick, your boss asks with a smile, "Oh, do you still work here?"

occupy san diego

be incompetent

I read somewhere that one of he most stressful experience for a person is to be thrust into a situation where one does not know anything. Or worse, be responsible for something one does not completely understand. If this is so, then I must have been living under stress for the last 6 months or so. Proof to that is the increasing number of gray hair on my head. Getting more salt than pepper. Less spicy, more salty.

One thing that I've noticed at work is how responsibility for is not dropped upon your lap. It's more like cobwebs or molds. It creeps in. The last time you looked they were not there. You don't have the slightest clue when and how they got there.

One day a coworker who was in charge of a computer application taught me a couple of functions so that I could "take care of it" while he was gone on vacation. Suddenly after he left, I was the expert on that app, regardless of the fact that all I knew how to do was unlock people's accounts and replace their passwords with temporary ones so they could log back in.

Another time I became involved in a big side project. The way it was explained to me, I was chosen because of my knowledge in A, the second guy for his knowledge in B, and the girl for her expertise in C. Before I knew it, I was pretty much the only one attending the meetings, and I had become the expert in B and C! This is not to say that I actually knew more in those areas since we started the project. I didn't.

There are a few important thing I learned through all this: never get your name associated with anything, never look like you are all together and your ducks are in a row, never excel in any particular area, never stand out. In short, be incompetent. And bring food to work all the time. Like donuts, or bagels and cream cheese. Volunteer to do the Starbucks run every morning. Offer your car when the office goes out to lunch. Your coworkers will love having you around. They will probably prefer not to work with you, but they will adore you.

dental cleaning

Eli's tartar and plaque are gone but he's still heavily sedated. It's a little unsettling to see him without his tail wagging...

steve jobs

I thank you with every call I make, every song I listen to, every picture I take, every webpage I view, every message I send, every game that I play.

refueling at westmoreland

We couldn't drive up Banner Grade Road to Julian from Borrego Springs because of the Grade fire (somehow the press started calling it the "great" fire). Instead of finding a mountain detour, we went east to El Centro. Westmoreland was our first stop. A different country...

one of the 129 galletas sculptures

caballero

palm

facing east...

looking west at sunrise...

...light and shadows converging west. Early morning walk in the desert.