Meeting Adjourned

Sunrise over the London Bridge

English Malarkey

The essential staples of British living:




Gents enjoying a night on the town:

You're never too far from home...

Sometimes it's just right there in front of you.

Hyperliving, where art thou?

A bit of time tending to the tomatoes, from last week's "Gardening Week"

Hyperliving is, obviously, on a bit of a hiatus. I am leaving for England tomorrow for work and will be gone until June 29. The recently exhaustive amounts of work i've been doing have been wearing me down and cutting into my ability to focus on anything resembling blogging. This is the first week in 2008 when I haven't even had the pretense of having a "Hyperliving activity"--but, as you might guess, that is mostly because this week's Hyperliving task has been "Do your job because it all comes down to next Monday, buddy!" However, I do hope to regroup when I come back and get Hyperliving back into gear.

But regardless of where Hyperliving heads, now or later, I think that most importantly I can say that I appear to have achieved a relatively stable level of happiness over the past few months that is almost unlike anything I've ever known. For the first time in my life, I feel like I have some perspective on what I'm doing and where I'm going, and what I might be trying to get out of life. It's sort of amazing. I am not suggesting that I feel constantly ecstatic, but simply that things seem all right and in order and that I feel generally confident that I am making decisions that I feel good about, which represent new directions in life that I've taken.

Though this year i've struggled my way through some of these Hyperliving activities (not to mention getting past my own personal demons and misfortunes), but there is just no question that they've done wonders for me, and that many of them have lead me to change small and large parts of the way I live each day of my life.

I'll check back in again in a few days but rest assured, there will be more Hyperliving.

-JB

Week 23, Gardening

I've been gardening this week, but also working a lot... i will post on gardening soon. Lots of work distractions lately, which will culminate with a trip to England for a week next Friday.

More info to come.

Week 22, NY Times Crosswords Day 6/7: Saturday and Sunday

Both the Saturday and Sunday NY Times crossword puzzles come to NYC residents in the Saturday paper, as the Sunday section is split up and half included in Saturday's paper. This means that, as usual, Sunday's puzzle can be in the NY Times Magazine, and the Saturday puzzle is.... where? I spent a long time flipping through the two Arts sections of the paper looking all over for the Saturday crossword, but it was just nowhere to be found, so I just started working on the Sunday puzzle first. I finally found the Saturday puzzle in the Metro section, but by then it was kind of late and I knew that my efforts at solving it were doomed.

Saturday: Pathetic (though seriously, Saturday is ridiculously difficult)


My work on Sunday's puzzle though was pretty solid and I got a solid 2/3 of the way through the puzzle before running out of time. Not so bad for a first week of puzzling.

Sunday: Coming along (still not finished)


Note: I have specifically NOT looked at the answer keys because some part of me hopes to return to these puzzles and completing them.

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Overall it was a great week and I am now ready for puzzling on a more longterm basis. For fun, I signed up for the a month subscription the NY Times website and did Monday's puzzle:

Week 22, NYTimes Crosswords Day 5: Friday

I actually managed to get what I feel is was an almost astonishing amount done on Friday's puzzle, though admittedly with some choice help from EmJo here and there to help keep me moving.



Not bad at all, I feel--there were basically only a handful of clues left when I finished, which is awesome for the mega-toughness of Friday.

Week 22, NYTimes Crosswords Day 4 Thursday

For the rest of the week, Thursday through Sunday, the puzzles became significantly more difficult. I made it through only aboout 1/3 of Thursday's puzzle, but I also did it entirely on my phone, which I feel good about.



Yeah, lame.