Three Month Report Card

I realized last night that I've been "gainfully unemployed" for about 3 months now, a quarter of a year. An interesting quality of this period in my life is my sense of time. I feel like I've been much more present-focused recently. In some ways this is great. I like having and taking advantage of the freedom to just do whatever the heck I feel like at any given time (well, most given times). It has its downsides too, though, such as the fact that I couldn't focus at all on planning for my Romania trip. (Luckily it worked out anyway.)

But it's not completely a goldfish's life -- I still have goals and to-dos and things like that, and I still like to look back and see how I've been using my time. I had originally posted a list of stuff I wanted to do, so let's see how I've been doing on that:

• Music. For a while I was practicing harmony singing a lot, which was really good. I should get that habit going again. I haven't been playing much, but I did at least write a couple tunes.
• Art. Not much yet, though I have a few little things that need to be put up on the wall project.
• Writing. Again, not much. I still have various blog posts that have been meaning to get written for a while. I started a story at one point, until my conscious mind realized where my subconscious had stolen the main idea from and called it quits.
• Volunteering. I'm recording fairly regularly for Books Aloud now, and still giving a few hours to Project Read each week. Fewer HOBA events right now, but I'll keep an eye on them, too.
• Travel. Romania wasn't quite the trip I'd imagined, but it was interesting in its own way. It did at least sooth the travel bug for the time being.
• Meditation. The meditation retreat has to be one of the best things I've done in a long time, and it was a good time in my life for it. (Not that I don't wish I'd done it 5 years ago when Eric first told me about it.) I'm still managing the recommended two hours most days, which sounds like a lot at first, but is absolutely worth it.
• Cooking. Haha.
  
• Outdoorsiness. Some, though I'd still like to explore more state parks and maybe go camping or something.
• Dancing. Plenty so far. Mostly the usual suspects, though I've been meaning to get out and learn some hustle at some point.
• Reading. Interestingly, for a month or two I was hardly reading at all, which is weird for me, especially when I'm unemployed. It's picking up again, though, and I'm working on speed reading a bit, too.
• Redesign my blog. Nah, haven't really felt the motivation for it yet.

In addition to all that, there have also been things that weren't on the original list:

• Music editing. I've started learning to do some basic editing, since there's a lot of good music around that I want to dance to but is too long, or the wrong tempo, or whatever. It's kind of fun and can have some interesting challenges sometimes.
• More blogging. Over on the Social Dance Music blog.
  
• Exercising. The running and workout habits got a bit screwed up by my two trips, but are starting to come back together again.
  
• Investing. Well, I do this anyway, just not super actively most of the time. Right now, though, CNBC is running their Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge (an investing contest with fake money), and I'm playing along with that, just for fun and education.
• Love life. Um, yeah... there is one now. It's nice. :-)

And some new things to add to the "coming up" part of the list:

• Stuff-purging. Not as drastically as Lacey, but she has been inspiring me to get rid of a bunch of possessions that I really don't need to keep around.
• Mini road trip. In about a month I'm going up to Oregon to drive back down with Lacey. Small, as trips go, but sister-visits are good.
• Stanford Dance Weekend. The web site doesn't say it's sold out yet, so sign up if you want to join me.
• Family history projects. I still have a few boxes of various family artifacts (e.g. old photos, journals, letters, etc.) that need processing. I've been remiss in my role as junior family historian (apprentice to uncle Jim), but I've been meaning to work on it.
• Another job? It'll happen eventually, I'm sure, I just don't know when or what. Part of me does kind of want to find something interesting for new "real" work, but it's still decidedly in the minority. I think unemployment suits me. :-)

So anyway, that's how things are now. Maybe in another three months I'll do another update and see where we are then.

Clean Up Your Energy Bill

Antonia recently gave me a $5 gift card from Renewable Choice Energy. What that modest amount of money lets you do is basically convert a month's worth of the energy you use to wind power. (Though for me, the 250 kilowatt hours is more like two average months.) You still pay the same amount on your same electric bill, but 250 KWH of wind power energy gets added to the national power grid, chipping away at the 98% of the energy that's coming from non-renewable sources like fossil fuels. They estimate the impact of that as equivalent to not driving 429 miles, or planting 4 trees, or not burning 187 pounds of coal. In addition to the gift cards, you can also sign up for subscription plans on their site.

While I was thinking about that, I went to PG&E's website to check out my actual energy consumption, and I noticed a program they have called ClimateSmart. If you sign up for this, a small amount gets added to each electric bill, calculated to offset your energy usage by investing in projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Their estimate for me, based on my last bill of $15.27, was $0.33 or about 2%. At four bucks a year, I think that's worth doing.

So that's two easy things most of us can afford to do to improve our energy usage and our environment. Anybody have other good suggestions?

Triple Triple Big Dance

This last weekend was the 15th annual Big Dance, and my own personal 9th year in a row making it all the way to 6 AM, which makes it my "Triple Triple Crown" year. (Now that I think about it, that puts Richard at his Quintuple Triple, for being there all 15 years. Wow.) The dance felt a bit smaller than usual, though we still had 144 people make it all night.

The performances were all really good this year; I even enjoyed Los Salseros quite a bit (nothing against them in general, but salsa's not usually my thing). Danse Libre did a great job kicking off the 1920's theme early on, though the guys must have been dying in their tuxes with that heat. Decadance rocked, as usual, and I especially liked their new country piece to "All Things Considered." Swingtime didn't have a very clean performance, but they did have some of the most entertaining Cat's Corner solos I've seen in a long time. Good stuff.

The competitions were mostly okay, though I think I would have designed some of them differently. I also think it's time to retire Swing-with-Props and Tacky Tango, at least for a few years. (I know, I know, don't complain if I don't want to be on the committee.) Bob and I were all set to completely trounce everyone on the schottische race when we found out it was a three-legged schottische race. Since they used wimpy little streamers to tie our legs together, everyone was hobbling around like geriatrics trying not to tear them. Oh well. And here's a tip if you ever find yourself in a cross-step waltz freeze-tag competition: pretend to be frozen until the very end, then start dancing again just in time to not get tagged for real. Credit to Rowyn for that bit of brilliance, though unfortunately it came too late to save us.

I was very happy to not only get a good set for the Dawn Mazurka but to remember all the figures, even at 5:20 in the morning. Thanks to Jeff for explaining the Tiroirs figure on Thursday -- I had been confused about that. And thanks to many other people for all the other good dances, especially Rowyn for the lullaby gauntlet, the last waltz, and many others.

My Romanian Tunes

Okay, one more post from the trip. Since I had my mandolin with me and a fair bit of downtime at the orphanage, I ended up writing a couple tunes. The Rowan Tree and The Carpathian Foothills, both in F# minor, a key I've been wanting to do something with for a while. Here they are, if you're interested.




I also made a quick recording of them (MP3, 3.2 MB). After messing around for way too long trying to get my computer to record nicely from my microphone, I didn't feel like doing a ton of takes. But it does the job.

Romania Trip, 2008

Now that I've got everything posted, here it all is:

• Volunteering with Pro Vita
• In and Around Valea Screzii
• Excursions in Prahova County
• Bucharest
• All the photos
  
• The tunes I wrote