I’ve finally received a jolt of motivation and I have to say it feels good. I’ve been kind of low-energy/initiative for the past few months. Some of it stems from a bit of post-Dad depression, I think. Also, I’ve been hobbling around on a bum knee for several months. I went and got an MRI which revealed that I have two small meniscal tears in my left knee. Not bad as far as knee injuries go (better than, say, a torn ACL), but still no fun to deal with. The doctor recommended a rather simple relatively non-invasive surgery (arthroscopic). That really didn’t sit so well with me, so he gave me a shot of cortizone instead, which was supposed to help with swelling. It actually did help a bunch and let me go have a great time down in Mexico with Deborah. However, after about a month, the tweak sensation came back.Yay. So now I’m seriously thinking about the surgery. I really haven’t been able to get any excercise for fear of hurting myself. As a result, I’ve felt kind of sluggy. One positive is that I’ve tried accupuncture a few times. It’s helped with the knee a bit (more pain management than anything else), but I have to say the best benefit has been stress reduction. I love them needles! Which is funny, because I used to pass out when I got shots, so I’m a bit nervous around the needles. I neglected to tell that to the accupuncturist until she had sunk about four needles into me, heh. It went fine and I definitely plan to get treatment from time to time. The treatment definitely makes me feel good afterward. Almost stoned, actually.
Friday, Bill, Vadan and I went to a Guinness tasting in the Financial District after work. It was some semi-cheesy marketing thing that turned out to be pretty fun. Well, they were pretty generous about the beer anyway and had a small buffet of nibbles. We sat at large round tables in an oak-panelled banquet hall and listened to some guy yammer on about Guinness while we kicked back some frothy goodness. We took bets on how much/little the guy made shilling beer. It wasn’t a hard sell really–more of an infomation session. Learned a few things, like: Guinness is nitrogenated. That’s where the bubbles come into play and that’s what’s in the draft cans and bottles. Also–you are supposed to pour the cans into a glass and drink straight from the bottles. It has less calories than Corona or Heineken. The final "take away" was that I walked out with a few Guinness glasses for the home collection. Pretty fun time, all in all.
Made a quick stop at Cassanova for another drink before heading out to meet Deborah on the BART. We treked to Embarcadero Cinema to meet a friend to see Brick. I had seen the trailer some time ago and remember it being interesting. Well, it was interesting up to a point, but I can’t say that I’d recommend the movie. Of course, I was a little tipsy, so that might have a bit of an effect. The movie defiinitely gets style points and some originality points–it’s a total Noir film with a modern day high school setting. The kid from 3rd Rock in the Sun (who I loved in Mysterious Skin — that’s a great film), plays a kid who tries to unravel the circumstances behind his ex-girlfriend’s death. She had fallen in with the bad crowd (gang-bangers, drug dealers, etc) and was in deep. The movie starts with him staring at her dead body face down near a drainage tunnel and then re-winds two days. The dialogue is definitely noir-ish, which makes for some humerous moments–the Vice Principle’s exchange with Brenden is particularly funny, but I felt a bit too jerked between humor and serious to really get affected by either. Again, high marks for originality, but sticking so closely to such a campy formula lost its appeal to me.
Saturday, I puttered around on the computer for a bit (including setting up a blog for my niece-to-be). Sister’s due in August and they already have a name: Abigail. And here’s her blog–nothing fancy. I also spent some time on MySpace. We are gearing up for a redesign of Sega.com and wanted to see what kinds of things we might be able to include on the next version of the site. The site is pretty interesting–much more flexible than Friendster. Of course, that leads to some really ugly pages, heh. But I guess the key is letting folks do what they want. Even if it does sometimes assault the eyes.
Ok, signing off for now. Going to go try to swim…
Cheerio.