Caffeinated Gonzo!

Looking for advice on personal time management?  Check out the time-tested advice and strategies from dozens of writers and participants in inspiration bit’s 2007 Group Writing project on Time Management.  Quoting:

These 33 time management strategies will cure every workaholic in the world, will motivate any procrastinator and encourage the utmost pessimist to get things done in no time and still have time left to enjoy life.

There is some good advice here for all of us human-types.

Read more at: inspirationbit.com

Struggling to explain linear equations to our son.

Why, oh why did I insist on studying ART over math in school?

Oh I remember now:

Math…

Today is definitely one of those days when I guy like me can relate to the sentiment expressed in John Mayer’s song “Gravity.”

I am sure that just about anyone can relate, particularly on what happens to be here in Buffalo at least ~ yet another in what promises to be a string of bitterly cold January days.

Enjoy and stay warm.

Some times you have to be patient and good things will happen to you.  Case in point: today, a pull-over that just happens to be a favorite of mine turned up (almost) out of the blue after I had all but given up on finding it.  You see I lost it more than a year ago.  Tonight, my wife found it hanging on a coat rack at the fire hall while she was there to pick up our son from his Explorer Post Meeting.

Now if only this “be patiently and good things will happen” vibe will rub off on my long enough to land me that new job I have been waiting patiently to hear about since the week before Christmas…

After suffering through [waiting time watching] loses by all my favorite sports teams playing this weekend, I’ve found myself in some serious need of cheering up.  Thus, I find myself, listening to Jet Lag Gemini, and in particular their song “Run This City” in heavy rotation.  Check out their video for yourself:

It just might cheer you up too.

It’s a scientific fact that if you search long and hard enough (and scarify having an actual life enough…) the time will come when the most embarrassing moments of your childhood will come back to haunt you.

Case in point? Songs that I used to be forced to listen to back in 2nd, 3rd, and fourth grade elementary school have now found a home on the Internet, just to haunt me and frighten my children.

Witness: “It’s a Scientific Fact” by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer immortalized on their Singing Science Records LP “Space Songs” produced in the 1950s.

You can listed to “It’s a Scientific Fact” here in glorious MP3 format. For more on the Singing Science Records go here.

Historic San Felipe de Neri church, originally uploaded by caffeinatedgonzo.

The historic San Felipe de Neri church is the standard by which I measure all historic churches that I visit. This 300 (plus) year old Catholic parish is located in the Old Town section of Albuquerque, my old home town.

Long before I became Catholic myself, San Felipe represented to me what a Catholic church was meant to be… old, yet dignified… somber, yet uplifting… close to God, yet the closeness and color of earth.

There are a lot of places I want to take my family to see here in Albuquerque while we visit, and some we just won’t have time to get to, but visiting the San Felipe was something I hoped to share ~ more importantly had to do for myself. I am glad that we made it here.

One of the goals that I have set for myself this year is to wake up earlier. I don’t want to just wake up, stumble from bed to my coffee, to my shower, growl at my family and the dog, and stumble again out the door an hour later; I want to be up, productive, energetic, and happy to be alive at sunup.

The trouble I am having with this goal is my lifestyle. The key to accomplishing this goal, it seems to me is a consistent sleep pattern. Getting a solid block of sleep is not always possible for me, as I am on call all-hours as a volunteer fireman. As a firefighter I am often responsible for getting up at all hours of the night, leaving home, going to the fire station and responding to emergency calls any time the fire radio or pager alerts. Some nights we don’t get any calls, or maybe one or two, and other times we are slammed. Last night for example we had three calls: the first beginning around 10:00 p.m., a second at 11:30 p.m., and a third and longer call at 12:30 a.m., which I did not get home from until after 2:30 a.m. So much for getting up early today… Fortunately it was holiday, but I didn’t get up and do anything productive until almost 11:00 a.m.

My grandfather was up every day at 5:30 a.m. and the tasks he set aside for himself for a day were half accomplished by 11:00 a.m. I am still looking for my second cup of coffee by then.

I can get up for a job and be there at 8:00, 8:30, and 9:00a.m., like everyone else; I am just not myself until almost 10:00 a.m. or 11:00 o’clock in the morning. It would be great if I could figure out a way to exist on cat naps and be able to approximate being human at sunup; if anyone has any advice on how to do this (legally) I would appreciate hearing from you.

See more progress on: wake up earlier on 43things.com 

More often than I would like to believe lately I find myself being or saying something negative or angry before I realize what I am doing. I don’t always know where the negative energy is coming from on these occasions, it just seems to be there under the surface and escapes when I am not on guard.

I am better at guarding against the behavior in public, but find myself too easily slipping into this behavior at home with family. I would really like to find a way to stop. My family deserves better. Although I know that I love them and they know it to, they do not deserve to wallow in my negativity any more than I do.

See more progress on: be less negative and angry