then i ate at the wallingford pizza house, the home of the dome. followed by dessert at molly moon’s just down the block. i boomed some blox, finished off the beer from this weekend, and then came home to watch the west wing and update my blog template a bit. observe the newfangled twitter link and slightly cleaner interface!

yes, indeed, my birthday week marched out triumphantly.

once you get that song good and stuck in your head, you’ll probably be looking for some other, non-musical auditory enjoyment delivered directly through your cochlea to your brainstem. might i suggest listening to one of the newfangled internet podcasts that are available for your listening pleasure?

at the top of the list i narcissistically must place the rulezero.org podcast, featuring none other than myself, jon safety monkey grover , and paul the blogless springer. i know i’ve pimped it out before, but we’ve shortened up our format and we’ve got a few new episodes up for your listening pleasure. check out episodes 9 and 10 – you don’t even have to be obsessed with video games to like it now as much, although it still helps to like nerdy crap.

next up is the podcast that has (somewhat ironically, given the title) been hurting my podcast self-esteem since i first started listening to it. you look nice today brings the “three guys chatting about whatever” game to a whole new level. it even features interludes with john hodgman between the humorous lols from their twitterin’ principals: lonelysandwich, scottsimpson, and hotdogsladies.

lastly, and you kind of have to be a real nerd like me to like this one: the penny arcade podcast. it’s fair to say that this was one of the two biggest inspirations for my own podcasting desires (the other being the now defunct daily affirmation with kris and scott (scott and kris)). it’s a rambling look into the minds of creative folks as they sit around working.

if you’re interested in hearing more, less-talented audio, might i direct you to episode 01 (nee 00) of the rulezero podstravaganza. in it, you will hear the poetic waxings of myself, jon “safety monkey” grover, esquire, and paul the websiteless. we discuss a few things about video games and d&d 4th edition, make some dick jokes, and generally banter about like you’ve probably seen us do in real life. we’ve got one more episode already in the can, and a halfisode made with too high of a beer-to-content ratio that will hopefully show up on the commentary track for the rulezero podstravaganza premium boxed set remastered platinum extended edition.

today is a day of feeling like a slacker, because christmas break is right around the corner. tonight if you’re in the greenlake area you should come by to cheer on the contestants in the third annual greenlake race of champions. and then tomorrow i’m gonna shake off my hangover and fly to bfe western oregon, and christmas break will have officially begun.

i saw snakes on a plane tonight. it was not too bad. it’d have been improved with a slight change in company, but i guess you could append that to the rest of my week as well. here’s trusting that next week will hurt a little less.

notably i really like this panorama i took from the top of the marquam bridge, aka i-5:

i feel like i have so much more to say here but i don’t know how to say it. stupid words, why must you be so inadequate? i would like to go back to a simpler time. a time when i could sit on the swingset and be entertained. a time when happiness had fewer complications and felt more solid, more easily embraced and less likely to slip away. all i know is that i don’t want to be here anymore, but i don’t have any clue where would be better.

i’m trying to draft up an article (or perhaps two) about community for cranked magazine and though my brain contains a dozen or more ideas and stubs thereof somehow my fingers only keep typing out insipid crap.

lame.

this is made worse by the fact that community and cycling are two topics that i am passionate about, and on which i think i have a good amount to contribute. in fact, i delivered a ten minute spiel to leah at lunch the other day. unfortunately, sitting down in front of the computer it comes out drier than week old dumpster bread.

i’m not the sort of person who has really consciously thought about the things they’d like to get better at, i’ve simply learned by doing. my cycling has improved because i’ve been cycling constantly. same for my computing skills. in school my writing improved because i was writing regularly. now that i’m not being forced to practice regularly, these writing muscles have weakened.

once upon a time i fancied that i could become a writer of sorts. i could follow in the footsteps of those writers i admired. it’s not looking too likely these days. i can scarcely put a sentence together adequately, much less reach into my bag of ideas and pull out the right words to express what i’m really thinking.

hopefully writing here has flexed at least a few of the relevant mental muscles, because i’d really like to get this stuff out of my head and onto the computer.

the simplicity of this mission – kids are sick, let’s try to take care of them – is so clear in it’s delivery. i’m still awed by the photos from the first year of the container truck full of toys unloading at the hospital. it’s such a simple thing to help, what would the world be like if we all did something?

things that google returns for “lee needs”:

1. fresh challenge
2. love
3. hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend himself
4. to get match fit
5. to muster the political courage and vision to tackle these issues

okay, so amazon.com wishlist, it’s not.

i hope you’ve all been reading my back-dated greece updates, i’ve only got four or five more left and then i’ll post a nice roll-up link so you can click through all of them more easily. martin also promised to eventually find web hosting for his photos.

i’ll be linking them into my journal entries as well so you can get some more good shots, katharine definitely took alot more photos than me and has some really brilliant ones. she also has some swell photos featuring yours truly. yeah, i didn’t shave in greece.

also on the meta front i’ve modified the greece category to display only one entry per page and in chronological order. hopefully this will make it easier to read and make sense of.