Shirts for Christmas

The king of the Christmas gifts I received this year was the Nikon D70s that my wife gave me. Some other highlights though were some really cool t-shirts.

My dad bought me a very cool shirt from Blue Note:

Amy knew that I had finally given up on my favorite Himmelman shirt and tossed it after 13 years of use. And for the surprise gift of the year, she presented me with a brand new replica of the original. Of course, the shirt isn't available on picture day. It's in the washing machine, but here's what the old and tattered one looked like:

Today I opened a package from my friend Leesa. She knows me so well. My man Buk and one of my favorite quotes of his: "I don't hate people, I just feel feel better when they aren't around." Love it. Just last night I was reading his excellent Ham On Rye again. It's just about perfect. And the shirt is awesome.

Nice View

From her kitchen window:

Nice Price for iPhone

Not that I could afford it right now at any price, but the prospect of buying a refurbished 8GB iPhone for just $99 intrigues. Of course, I think that the monthly plan would cost more than my current one, so I'll have to keep that in mind.

Anyway, it sure is nice to think about.

Also, read Arik Hesseldahl's recent column, "Tech Trends to Expect in 2009." I like the idea of "the cloud" as my personal assistant.

Why You Little...

Fernandina Beach

I messed up and took a lot of pictures at the beach with the camera on a ridiculously wrong setting. Instead of deleting them from the camera, I played with them a bit in Picasa and ended up liking the results. Flawed but kind of cool, I think. (At the very least, it's apparent that I need to clean my lens.)

I Marked All As Read

Those of you who use Reader and who sometimes don't check it for a week know what I'm talking about.

We're back in town and happy to be home. The apartment is a wreck. Clutter, clutter, everywhere. We need either a feng shui expert or a thorough thief with no discerning taste. In the absence of either, we'll settle for tackling the task ourselves in the morning.

With that said, I'm off to bed. It's good to be back.

Sweet

Thanks to my wonderful wife and her friend who sold it to her, I get to learn how to use a brand new (to me) Nikon D70s.

Sweet.

The Gender Role Stereotypes Are Firmly In Place

My wife told me that the kids were sitting at the Christmas tree the other day and pretending to open presents. Joshua "opened" one and excitedly exclaimed, "An iPod! I've been wanting one of these for so many years!" Ari then reached for her imaginary gift and feigned similar excitement. "Oh my goodness! A real live baby! Just what I've always wanted!"

Kids Get Excited About Philanthropy

“I've never forced my kids to do this,” said Will’s mom, Carolyn Nunn. “I've always given them the choice of a real birthday party versus a charity birthday party and since second grade, they've always chosen the charity party every time.” ... more>>

Also, Sam Davidson talks about United Way Nashville's wonderful Give 10 project. It's inspiring.

Translate This

I'm talking with my New York friend who saw "La Bohème" at the Met last night. She told me about the beautiful translations from Italian to English that scroll across the seat backs. Beautiful.

If I may quote her. "The words in English run across the seats. I wanted to grab each one to savor, astounding poetic beauty, expressions of how it is to be struck by love."

I smiled to remember my own Italian-to-English translation from last night. My family treated me to the most wonderful meal for my birthday at DaVinci's Gourmet Pizza. While in the restroom, I noticed some words on a sign just above the toilet. "Gli impiegati sono tenuti a lavarsi le mani." I was intrigued. I tweeted the phrase and then translated it when I got home.

In English: Employees must wash hands.

Expressions of how it is to be struck by germs. I take my poetry where I can find it.

I Live Vicariously Through My Internet Friends

The lovely NellyWaits attended "La Bohème" at the Met last night. While I would have loved to have been there as well, it was good to come home to this picture that she took from her seat. Ain't it beautiful?

I dream often of spending more time in New York City. I dream of sitting in one of those seats at the Metropolitan Opera. Until then, the above suffices nicely enough.

Through the kind generosity of a local blogger, I will be seeing the Nashville Opera presentation of "La Bohème" in April. Maybe I'll take a comparison photo for my New York friend.

Eight Months of Twitter

Twitter: What are you doing?

I poked around TweetStats today and gazed at my navel a bit. It appears that I type out 14.8 tweets a day and that October was very busy for me as I tweeted 566 times.

The words that I most often use are: good, thanks, tonight, time, and love. Fifty-three percent of my tweets are replies to others and I reply to monstermash40 more than anyone else. (All of my top ten replies are to women. I wonder why I rarely talk to dudes.)

While I follow a lot of people who I already know from the local Nashville blogging community, there are quite a few people I follow who are not. I have no idea how I came across some of the Twitter users who aren't from around here. NellyWaits is one example of someone whose tweets are always wonderful, but I can't recall how we "met." I wonder if there's a stat for finding out who was tweeting about what when a follow was made.

Anyway, I tracked back to find my first tweet ever and was surprised that it was as recently as April of this year. I thought that I had started my account as early as June 2007 when Bad Bad Ivy was telling me about it at Flugtag. I first heard of the service when Drew of The Dawn and Drew Show made mention of Twitter on the podcast.

So it was April 2007 for me and how in the world do I have over 200 people following my tweets? Technology and trends are always so interesting to me. My first tweet is pictured below. I think it represents the type of stuff I share perfectly. Not necessarily profound, just that little slice in 140 characters or less.

Search for happiness, refresh

(I like this screen shot. Consider me inspired.)

I read the other day about happiness and the studies that state the obvious. We watch too much television and we stare at our computer screens too much. We love these things and with good reason as they do bring many cool things into our lives. What they don't bring, however, are the levels of happiness to our lives that we might think.

The social networking claims of many of our favorite sites can be quite awesome when fulfilled. But—and maybe I'm just talking about me here—if we don't take advantage of the actual "social" part of the equation, then we're still just staring at a computer screen and not achieving happiness the way that we really could.

For unrelated reasons, I turned off my phone's Twitter updates for a couple of days. At first, it was tough to feel so "out of the loop," but within a few hours it was hard to imagine anything of value that I was missing out on. (No offense to my valued friends. I caught up on your tweets later on in the evening by perusing your feeds at home.) But certainly, I missed out on nothing that required my immediate attention.

Anyway, I think back to a simpler time, the nineties, and I remember that I had no computer for most of that decade. I don't think I even had a cell phone. But I was always out socializing. Clubs, bars, movies with friends, in my free time, I was maximizing my opportunities for fun. I know better than to blame the Internet for my change in lifestyle. Aging plays its role in slowing down the need to be out and about. I'm married to the love of my life and we are raising a five-year-old boy, a three-year-old girl, and another baby girl is on her way. If I'm not working, I'm either sleeping or resting on my couch and "socializing" through your wonderful blogs. It's not quite getting out and maximizing my opportunities for fun, but I'm on a budget and, forgiving the cost of Internet access, this is cheaper than meeting friends at a bar.

Still, the happiness I seek isn't being found here. I need to get better at making friends and spending time with those friends. I joke with my wife that I was "awesome in '93" and that she should have known me back then. There's no reason I can't show her that awesomeness in 2009. It'll be the year that these Beziats get social again. That's the plan anyway. Happiness. Refresh.

Peter Himmelman's Furious World

I would like to see more artists using streaming technology like Ustream to webcast concerts for their fans from their living rooms. Peter Himmelman brings to us another installment of his Furious World tonight at 9:00 CST. (For the Twitter users, he now tweets as well: Twitter.com/PeterHimmelman)

Click here tonight to watch my favorite artist perform with special guest and longtime friend Kristin Mooney. I met Kristin once and was mesmerized by her beautiful spirit. She has three excellent CDs available to listen to and buy over at CD Baby.

Tonight's gonna be awesome. Now if only my favorite Himmelman shirt (pictured below) hadn't finally fallen apart after approximately thirteen years of heavy rotation. I miss wearing it.

Missing Patient

From a very touching blog post this morning:

"Don't bother. You won't find that patient."

"Breast-feeding class?"

"No. Just gone. That was the Code Indigo."

"Oh! I thought I heard an all-clear a while back."

"Yeah, because the patient's definitively gone. Baby's still here, though. Wanna see?"

 

Read the rest at Notes of an Anesthesioboist.