Phillip had the car yesterday evening. So, in addition to walking a mile and a half home from work, soon after I got home, I walked another mile, uphill, to yoga class. That's a lot of walking, even for me. Then I did some strenuous yoga.

We did the Bakasana (Crane Pose) yesterday. I still can't quite do it, although I did get both feet off the ground and hold it for about a half a breath yesterday. Then I fell. It was what Lisa calls "yogi down."

Phillip picked me up at the end of yoga class.

Last night, I watched the film Dead Presidents, which I think is an excellent film, even when edited down for TV. It's a masterful piece of storytelling and character development. After Dead Presidents came the remake of Shaft, which I didn't expect to be very good, but I wanted to see it, out of curiosity. It wasn't very good, but once I started watching it, I wanted to see how it ended, out of curiosity. So, I didn't get to bed until one in the morning - after a long afternoon walk, and a strenuous evening of yoga.

I slept until 10 o'clock this morning. Normally, I'm up by eight on weekend mornings. I probably would have slept longer if Phillip hadn't woke me up to see if I was sick.

Somehow, my family's plans to help my mom move have gotten all mixed up. First, I thought it was last weekend. Then I thought it was this weekend. Then yesterday I learned that it's this weekend, but only tomorrow. The combination of sleeping late and thinking I had plans made me feel like I wasted this morning, even though I don't believe in the concept of wasting time. If I had known earlier that I had no plans today, I could have taken the car in to get the oil pan fixed.

Writers' Group is tomorrow, at the same time as the move. I'm choosing Writers' Group.

Phillip and I have signed up for a new social group at church named Centralites At Play (or CAP). CAP members sign up to plan a purely social activity - one each month - that has nothing to do with church business. Phillip and I are planning a day of miniature golf in July. This afternoon, we started out search for a good miniature golf course.

We went to a bowling/casino/indoor golf place in Skyway. It was not a bad little course, but not what we are looking for. This course had nine challenging holes, with greens and "sand" traps and rocks. We like a course where each hole has a theme - windmills, lighthouses, dinosaurs, etc. This course had an overall "pirate" theme, which was well planned, with a rope bridge over a lake, a waterfall, and a skeleton. There was a pirate ship painted on the wall. But the scenery needed to be maintained better. The water was scummy, with trash floating in it. Part of the tavern had fallen down. We'll keep looking.

Es un día brumoso en Seattle.

Today is the first day of Muharram. It's the beginning of the year 1426, according to the Islamic calendar.

I haven't made a new year's resolution yet, but now is a good time to make one. At times, writing those Church Council meeting minutes may seem like a chore, but I need to remember that the sooner I start the task, the faster it goes. The meeting is fresh in my mind. I will start typing the minutes as soon as possible - preferably the day after.

The down side to writing the minutes while the meeting is fresh in my mind is that it's fresh in the other Council members' minds, too - and their corrections come easier.

I received an email from Yahoo! today, offering to sell me "personal web space" at GeoCities. I didn't know that GeoCites was still around. It took me back about ten years, to when personal web sites were in vogue. I, too, had a personal web site. It was called "Beatnik's Page." (I know that ten years from now, I'll be saying, "I, too, had a blog.")

I kept Beatnik's Page going long after the fad faded. Then I ended it. I didn't just stop updating it, though. I didn't close it, either. I formally ended it. The site is still there. I still get junk email from the host site, 0catch.com, from time to time. I revisited Beatnik's Page tonight. All that remains is my closing statement and a whole lot of annoying pop-up ads. I was pleasantly surprised by what I wrote back then:

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Beatnik's Page is no more.

    In 1997 - a long time ago, by internet standards - a coworker named Chuck encouraged me to start my own personal web site. I bought a book on HTML and Beatnik's Page was born. (Beatnik was my character on a pre World Wide Web BBS named King Of The Cats.) My friend, and coworker, Ron created his own personal web site. We made an interesting trio. My philosophy was that HTML and Javascript are so easy that web design software, like FrontPage, was an unnessary expense. Beatnik's Page was 100% hand coded. Chuck felt that web design software was so easy that hand coding was a waste of time. Ron was in the middle - he felt that web design software was great for basic page layout, but to get a site looking just right required tweaking the code by hand.

    In those days, everybody, it seemed, had a personal web site - even if it was just a page saying, "Welcome to my site. Check back later for updates." Ron had a very good site, but it didn't last long. He discontinued his site about the same time that the whole personal web site fad ended. I sometimes wonder if Chuck would still be maintaining his site if he was still alive today. But Beatnik's Page kept going for five years - growing and changing long after it was fashionable. Beatnik's Page lasted longer than most of its Free Web Space hosts.

    The thing most responsible for keeping Beatnik's Page going was the very thing that told me it was time to call it quits. It was Ron who suggested I devote a section of my site to "Links Of The Month." For most of those five years, I'd maintain a backlog of interesting web sites. I'd have next month's links page written two weeks in advance, and I'd fight back the impulse to upload the page too early.

    These past five or six months, however, I've found myself, on the 29th or 30th, scrambling to find enough links to make it worthwhile. I'm getting disillusioned with the internet - which has come to mean the same as the World Wide Web. I still do a lot of web surfing, but mostly on old favorites, like The Internet Movie Database, Neopets, the City Stories project, and The Fray. The Information Superhighway became a shopping mall, and then turned into a strip mall. It's all starting to look the same. It's all "best viewed with Internet Explorer 6." There's no adventure anymore.

    I'd sad about closing this site down, but I just don't have the motivation for it anymore.

    December, 2002
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Here I am, still posting stuff on the 'web.

I've just discovered the University of Washington Department of Research's "Science Forum Colloquium Series." There are some interesting topics listed. Last month's subject was Chemistry, and the topic was: "Computation as a Route to Progress in Chemistry." On the 18th of this month, the subject is Computer Science, and the topic is: "Google and Beyond: The Future of Web Search." In May there's Mathematics and "String Theory and Mathematics."

The problem is that these colloquiums are held on Fridays at 3:30. I'd have to skip work to go.

In addition to being an old hippie, I'm also a science geek.

Last night, at the Church Council meeting, I got re-elected for another year-long term as Council Secretary. Just like my first term, it was not a position I pursued. Writing those Council meeting minutes has felt like an obligation (as opposed to a pleasure) at times, but as obligations go, it's not a bad one.

Last night, as I was driving home on I-5 after helping Mom get ready for the move, I had the radio tuned to KMTT (The Mountain). A program was on called "The Chill Side Of The Mountain," which is a late night collection of ambient and acoustic music - mellow tunes, in other words. I cranked the volume up when Dead Can Dance's "Tell Me About The Forest (you once called home)" came on. That was really nice. Dead Can Dance was a great band.

I really am an old hippie.

I am very intrigued by Boogeyman. I keep thinking about it, and reading reviews of it (all but one of them negative, so far). I mean, I've seen plenty of bad movies on The Sci-Fi Channel before - with clichéd plots, poor acting, gaps in logic, cut-rate CGI effects, etc - but Boogeyman went beyond incompetence. All those loose threads in the story, and that amazingly sudden ending, makes me wonder if, besides being a poorly made movie, there was some studio interference involved - like maybe it was a three hour movie edited down to an hour and a half, or something. That's why I keep reading the reviews. I do love a mystery.

Then, this morning, I read a posting by some person in the Internet Movie Database message boards who called the movie a "metaphoric masterpiece." This person was serious, too - judging by his or her responses to people who enjoyed his or her "sarcasm." This person had this whole theory about how the movie is really a metaphor for homosexuality. The main character is afraid of closets, but can't avoid them. He rejects his father and bonds with his uncle. He ignored the advances of the girl next door, and has a rich girlfriend who he doesn't bond with. And so on. Personally, I think the person is wrong - he or she is just reading too much into a terrible movie - but it was interesting to read a well thought out minority opinion.