I went to see The Dark Knight last night in Imax. It was a pretty fun experience. There was a ton of people there, as a matter of fact the were completely sold out. Those theatres hold quite a lot of people too.

Overall I’d suggest going, but be sure to get there early or wait for more of the interest to sure down some.

So last week I went to a Boston Young Professionals Association mixer that was being held at Croma over on Newbury St. It was a pretty good experience. We were introduced to a few of the people who run the organization and learned a little bit about it. Then basically we spent some time just going around the room introducing ourselves to other people there and just mixing.

All in all an interesting experience and I definitely recommend it. They have some other events going on this month that I’ll check out.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Slash Dot Dash" by Fatboy Slim

So, I was listening to NPR on the way home today and there was an interesting story about the Library of Congress. They currently have an exhibit with Thomas Jefferson’s library. After the war of 1812 when the British burned down the Congressional Library, Jefferson sold his personal library to Congress. It was, at the time, the largest private collection in the US. It contained somewhere around 5500 books/pamphlets. Congress gave him $24,000 (about $330,000 in 2008 dollars). His collection had books in English, French, Latin and Italian and he could read in all of those languages.

In comparison, my current library is pretty poor. I haven’t even read everything that I own. The vast majority of the books that I own are textbooks that I kept from college. Of all the other books that I have, I think the coolest is the 1934 printing of Canterbury Tales. I’ll get around to reading it one of these days.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Fame" by Gza

My friend 6th Sense, a Brooklyn based rapper, who I went to college with produced a song for the Obama Campaign. Check it out.

We’re a few days into Q2 2008. It’s time to reflect on my progress with my resolutions.

Bicycle 100 Miles: Well the weather has recently just broken. I haven’t yet started riding, but next weekend I plan to make my first bicycling excursion. I’ll update you on my riding progress.
Learn to Sail and to achieve the Helmsman rating: The sailing season at CBI has just started (April 1st) so either next weekend or the weekend after I’m going to head over there and sign up.
Read 50 Books: Unfortunately I haven’t completely read one new book this year so far. I don’t particularly foresee myself achieving this goal by the end of the year.
Deliver 6 Toastmasters Speeches: I’ve only delivered one speech so far this year. I’m trying to come up with a topic for my second.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Tomorrow Is My Turn" by Nina Simone

So the new Neighbors for Neighbors website is up. As I mentioned before, I assisted with just a few niggling bits related to modifying the Wordpress template and such. If you live in Jamaica Plain you should definitely check it out.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Air Traffic Control" by Louis XIV

I’m pretty open to the things that I’ll eat. I don’t think I could ever be this guy, but I’m moderately adventurous. For me, the most important part of a food is it’s texture. Foods that have a consistency approaching that of mush doesn’t sit well with me therefore I don’t eat liver. I also can’t stand foods that are difficult or time consuming to chew so I don’t particularly enjoy gizzards. I also have nothing but absolutely disdain for water chestnuts.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Feeling Strong Every Day" by Chicago

So a “blogging group” known as 9rules started a site called Quofda which is basically a site the poses a Question of the Day and bloggers respond to the question and then trackback the corresponding post. This is my first such post and I’ll try to keep up with it.

So today’s question is: Why aren’t you working?

For me there can be any number of reasons why I’m not working. It’s usually I’ve just hit a mental or motivational lull that I just need to take a moment to myself, maybe walk around, maybe browse around the web a bit, and then I feel a lot better and can get back to work. Lately however, I find it hard to work when I’m saddled with an “emotional burden” so to speak. A significant part of my social circle has informed me that they very likely moving to San Francisco at the end of the summer. They asked me if I wanted to join the Mass exodus (I made a funny) and frankly I’m torn. I’m not particularly skilled at making new friends. When they were handing out social skills I jumped out of line and went to the bathroom or something… Their leaving sucks because I’m going to have to try and find suitable replacements and who knows how well that will go. I also happen to really like the metro Boston area though I can’t articulate why I like it here as much as I do.

I wouldn’t really want to move to San Francisco. If I were going to move across country it’d probably be to the Pacific Northwest, most likely Portland, Oregon. If I’m going to make a life changing move it might as well be on my terms. If I were to head to the Northwest I’d be in the same boat as I’ll be in when they leave just slightly worse because I’ll know absolutely no one.
I’ve been running hypothetical scenarios through my mind the last couple of days about the possibility of diving head first off my comfort cliff and seeing what happens and whether I’ll come out all right.

Edit: Now I’m wondering why my trackbacks aren’t working

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Letters Home from the Garden of Stone" by Everlast

The last couple of Thursdays I’ve been volunteering at a program called X-Cel which helps people prepare for their GED exams. I helped the students with their math preparation as a tutor. The organization has it pretty well organized. Each room has a purpose which covers a particular aspect of the requisite curriculum for the exam. They start at addition & subtraction and work their way through to algebra. I’ve helped out in the Decimals room where the students learn to do addition, multiplication, subtraction & division with decimals with and without word problems.

Volunteering there is really quite satisfying and I hope to continue doing it for a while. It’s experiences like these that make me want to get into teaching.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "Moody's Mood for Love" by Eddie Jefferson

Last night, I met with Joseph Porcelli of the Neighbors for Neighbors project. He’s been working on a new site for the project and needed some technical support. I’m basically going to be helping him make some changes to the Wordpress theme and a few other tidbits here and there. The gist of the neighbors for neighbors project is to connect people who live within a community so that they can get to know their neighbors, do community related projects, and improve the general well-being of the community. Their “flagship” community is Jamaica Plain. I think that this is an incredibly worthwhile venture and am elated that I can participate.

• Awesome Song of the Moment: "2112" by Rush