skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do. - Shaquille O'Neal
I was hoping for a more noted scholar than Shaq to make my point but most quotes on habits are about breaking bad habits. Which I've had less success with over the past 240 days than establishing some good ones. That I am going to highlight here.#30 - Change sheets 143 times. The 143 times breaks down to once per week for the 1001 days and I'm 34 weeks in. So with 17 sheet changes I'm a little over 50%. That is accounted for by a slack period around May & June. But I've got a streak of 15 weeks going at the moment. This lets me talk about Remember The Milk which is a fantastic online task manager. I started using it at the end of June and it has really affected my life positively. I use it to implement Getting Things Done and I've had pretty good success. Just writing down a task really motivates me to check it off - this is how I managed to eat breakfast almost every day for the past two months. I've also got all my cleaning tasks (like the sheets) on a repeating schedule so they don't all pile up. Rather than feeling hyper-scheduled I actually feel in control - in a rhythm. As you know I had been attempting GTD for awhile now, but I've finally found a system that clicks.#31 - Weekly reviews. One thing that has helped the GTD is getting into the weekly review habit. Again I wanted to do 143 of these, and I slacked for a good long while. But again I'm in a new rhythm: streak of 14 for a total of 20. Which is a bit over 50%. That gap will close - every Monday I take two hours - I empty the inbox, plan out tasks for the week, decide on new projects to tackle - like which of these 101 items to move out of "Someday/Maybe" and into active status. It is a great opportunity to re-evaluate my commitments. #67 - Contacts. I have disposable contacts which should be replaced every two weeks. I've never been really consistent about replacing them on a schedule. Sometimes (like many other things in my life) I let it slide. But again thanks to RTM, GTD, and TIM - streak of 8, total of 12 out of the expected 17. Not too bad.#81 - Leave the house.
I've managed to be pretty good about this one. Since I started keeping records on July 1st, I've only missed three days out of the 101 days since then. And maybe one or two days before that - so I'm calling it 5 missed days for the 239 days so far. Now you might say going to work makes this an easy task to do - but I was unemployed for a month - this task really helped me mentally. Also, it is nice to have a "gimmie" task occasionally.I won't focus on the items I haven't been keeping up with. Check out the updated list and you'll see them enough. Today is Positive Encouragement Day at The Ballpark.
Update: Not sure why I didn't notice this straight off, but Shaq is paraphrasing Aristotle. More Shaq-love on the ancient Greeks: "Our offense is like the Pythagorean Theorem: There is no answer!"
End of Post Period P-U-R-E-U-D Period.
A lot of this list was designed to get me into new habits. Well, I'm proud to report that I have ingrained the breakfast habit. Now, occasionally it is simply a banana when I am running late for work (might have to make bounce out of bed New Habit #2). But that is better than the handful of cookies I used to have or not having anything at all.
I've been on the breakfast train for about two months now and it feels good.
I'm also eating healthier overall and exercising more. Found some good non-HFCS cereal and joined a physical fitness program.
The next couple posts will be some positive updates to a few of the new habits I've instilled.
List of Netflix for September - so I can count them towards total.
Blue Velvet - Weird-ass movie. Laura Dern is kind of hot. Does make me want to see more David Lynch though.
Spellbound - Documentay about 8 kids competing in the National Spelling Bee. Interesting to watch - the kids are fascinating and the parents are fun to watch as well. Surprisingly none of the parents seem hyper-competitive. Mostly the kids push themselves. And you want them all to win.
Windtalkers - Pretty good war movie. Not a lot of depth, but nicely done battle scenes.
The Hours (Oscar) - Good Oscar pick though I'm not sure Nicole Kidman was that good (other than make-up). The character I really remember was Ed Harris as the gay friend of Meryl Streep.
The Thin Red Line - Didn't like this one too much. Set in the American invasion of Guadalcanal during WWII it was a very slow-moving and very mystical. Which just didn't work for me. Also, it is a big ensemble piece and hard to keep track of everybody. Though bits of it are memorable and I think some performances like John Cusack's and Nick Nolte were really good.
Adaptation - Mind-bender about a screenwriter who writes himself into his screenplay while trying to adapt an un-adaptable book. Pretty good and more brilliant writing from Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind).
Monster (Oscar) - Charlize Theron as a female serial killer. Definitely created a character you won't soon forget.
The Secret Lives of Dentists - An excellent little movie with Hope Davis and Campbell Scott.
American Splendor - Chronicle of the life (or lack of same) of Harvey Pekar - creator and star of the underground comic American Splendor. Coincidentally another Hope Davis - great actress - movie. Good work by Paul Giamatti as Pekar, a depressed, frustrated little guy.
Election - Entertaining satire/dark comedy with Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon. Witherspoon is perfect as a overachiever obsessed with winning student body president.
Also, since I don't want to write a separate post: Network which is an Oscar winner not through Netflix. Excellent movie, every time I see Faye Dunaway in a movie I remember that I had forgotten what a good actress she is - this, Bonnie & Clyde, Three Days of the Condor, The Thomas Crown Affair, etc. Oh, and Chinatown. William Holden is perfect as always, and the movie itself holds up well as a satire even though the infotainment complex of today has surpassed it in some respects.
FeedFliks is at $1.31 per movie over last 3 months.
Round-up of some plays that I've seen over the past couple of months. Like I said before it has proven easy to see plays once I made a commitment.
Nerve - When I first committed to the list, I wanted to see some plays I dubbed "modern, arty, freaky". I wasn't entirely sure what that meant but figured I'd "know it when I see it". Well, after seeing Nerve by Adam Szymkowicz, I can tell you part of the MAF formula is wondering - "um, are these people going to have sex on stage right in front of me?" Luckily Nerve wasn't that freaky - all sex in the play takes place (loudly and graphically) offstage. You know - it is a family show, after all.
Not quite kid friendly but Nerve is a very funny, and very quirky play about two people on their first date after meeting online. It is pretty clear pretty quickly that the two (and only) characters - Susan and Elliott - are a couple sandwiches short of a picnic. Elliott is obsessive, neurotic, falls way too quickly for Susan, and at one point pulls out his puppet - and no - that is not a clever euphemism. There's a puppet. Susan is best described as "suicide-y". She cuts, still has many unresolved issues with her ex, and does interpretative dance of her emotions in her head. Which we the audience are treated to see. I told you this was modern.
But it totally works. The play itself is full of laughs, and the actors here (Colleen Backer and Charlie Barron) were great. If you have a chance to see Nerve then go. The play only runs an hour but it packs in a lot. This production was at Echo - a shoestring theater company here in St. Louis. In fact TL & I are going soon to Echo's next play - The Secretaries. About a "a murderous cult of Slim Fast drinking female office workers". Sounds like fun. :)
The Drowsy Chaperone This was another Stages St. Louis production. Same place as Little Shop of Horrors. I had never seen this one before either and again I was pleasantly surprised. Again, the acting was great and I liked the songs and the play-within-a-play-within-a-play setup worked for me. I liked how it all fit together and yes some of it was phony and artificial but it was supposed to be.
Doubt, A Parable - This was an awesome play. I had liked the movie with Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman but this was better. I think it was because the play is sparser - i.e. no kids, just the 4 main characters, and no set changes. Also this was at the HotCity Theatre location which is very small and intimate. Man, that confrontation scene between Sister Aloysius (Kim Furlow) and Father Flynn (Jason Cannon - who directed too) is intense. And I think Furlow gave the Sister a dimension that Meryl did not - you got a sense of why she has such a stick up her ass. And it is a legitimate reason.
This was the first production of the Dramatic License Productions company. It will move out to the theatrically underserved West St. Louis County (my part of town). Looking forward to it.
Prodigal - My other criteria for "modern, arty, freaky" was imagining my parents watching the play and going What the F**k is this? Well for Prodigal I didn't have to imagine. We attended together this "Unprecedented Fusion of Movement, Music, and Media That Explores the Parable about Family and Self-Discovery". Or so said the subtitle. And my family's review (myself included) was indeed WTF! The whole thing was 90 minutes of dance, with no dialogue - and hence no character introduction, no exposition, and no resemblance that I saw to the Prodigal Son parable. I admit I didn't always know what the heck was going on. And it was very slow-moving. Very conceptual. Very pretentious to be honest.
Not that pretension is an entirely bad - I tend to be quite good at it myself. And the open air setting in Forest Park was pleasant. And I admit that dancing is a skill, even if it is not very bankable (see what I mean about my being pretentious & snide?).
If art is about provoking a reaction then I guess Prodigal succeeded.
Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom - Another HotCity production. 
Typically great. This one was about a suburban neighborhood (rows of houses that are all the same - to quote The Monkees). All the kids are playing this hot new game about zombies. The game's hook is that via satellite technology the zombie battleground is your neighborhood. The game is so absorbing that reality and game blur (maybe?), and the zombies start looking like (are?) your parents. When you destroy them in bloody fashion it is only a game (right?)
This was a really simple play (much like Doubt) with only 4 players and 1 set. Though each actor plays multiple parts here. I really liked Maggie Conroy as "Girl Type".
As those noted philosophers continued - "Mothers complain about how hard life is and the kids just don't understand". That is true in Neighborhood 3 - at least until the Final Level - but then understanding comes too late.
Guys and Dolls - Finished out the season subscription at Stages St. Louis with this classic. First time seeing this on stage - of course have seen the Brando/Sinatra movie. Excellently executed production - good songs - I love Nicely Nicely and Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat. Not much to report otherwise. Except for definitely renewing the Stages subscription next year.
BTW - I bumped the MAF category to 5 total since I'm up to 2 already.
