Book of Sand

 Leo (Yiming Li) is leaving town this week finally for NYC, and his new job at Circle(?).  As a farewell, he invited us to dinner at Mandarin Wok, and ordered several entrees (crunchy skin duck, chicken kaarage, fried sweet tofu and some vegetable dish, steamed spinach leaves or something, with pork. He frisnd from NY was there visiting too, and weirdly it ended up being him and I talking and the other two kind of silent, which Yang remarked on.  he said he is usually pretty quiet and has a hard time maintaining conversation in English. He doesn't have a hard time with me, although he can be a bit quiet at dinners.  After dinner we came home and had some cuddle time.  I haven't seen him in a while, he says he is busy with work and flying, although he has been grounded due to weather lately.  Also, his stomach is still bothering him, and he is avoiding spicy foods. Leo is a sweet and lovely guy, I will miss him, and hope maye see him again in spring when his...

 It is Restaurant Week in CU and Sun Singer was having a prix fixe 3 course menu for $42, so Ben and I went for dinner.  I had the lobster nachos and he had the scallops avocado tostadas for starters.   I had the beef medallions with mushroom risotto and he had the lamb chops with pilaf.  Both had braised asparagus. For dessert, I had the pineapple upside down cake and he had the creme brulee. We really enjoyed the meal and discussed each dish. We also talked about the movie The Menu and many Wes Anderson films as well. Mentioned Triangle of Sadness, part of the eat the rich trilogy. We are both hooked on the Netflix show Physical 100, a new episode drops Tuesday and he is coming over with some bbq wings for a watch party. We need to talk about travel for spring break.  (Travel was a big topic with Leo and his friend, they travel constantly apparently. His friend is originally from Singapore, possibly. Yang thinks they must be very rich.) Its only two days ...

3 hours, 1 hr break, 3 more hours. I can maintain some energy for the first three, but by the third I am starting to ebb. (Had my usual breakfast, pButter Engmuff. Maybe try some time on the E-bike?  Get the blood flowing, or do some yoga? Maybe pre-workout for lunch?) I have one cup of half caff and a Ginsana/Ginko to start, then a protein shake for lunch.   Needed a second cup of real coffee to get through the last half.  View this as an endurance marathon challenge. Just sitting all day lulls me into a stupor but also makes me frazzled, trying to juggle so many tracks. By the last one, my eyes were glazed over and I could barely stay awake.  10 more weeks.

 Ben brought some chicken teriyaki from Trader Joe's and a bag of frozen gyoza for us to make at home.  He said he wanted to do more healthy, instead of BWW. It is always fun making food together, he is a really great guy to hang out with, easy to talk to, interesting, fun. We mostly talked about cooking, restaurants, recipes, etc. Making omurice, going to Sanmaru, watching movies, doing stuff this weekend. The food was delicious, really tasty for a two bag meal. The we watched the first two episodes of Physical 100, a Korean reality show about fit men and women competing in strength and endurance contests.  We loved it.  Cuddled on the couch for a bit, Duncan got involved as usual. He is very needy.  Ben called him a cockblocker. LOL Ben is hands down the most fun guy I have hung out with in ages.  We can go out for a fancy or a casual meal, go out to see a movie in the theater or stay home and watch Netflix, make food at home, and always have a really nic...

  'Entities should not be multiplied without necessity.'  (In Latin, Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem .)

 We got the Big Boy roll (fried), the American Dream roll and an eel lovers roll. We talked about stuff and then mentioned traveling, perhaps going somewhere during spring break or after graduation.  he said his parent went on a Caribbean cruise a few weeks ago and really loved it.  $600 per person is very affordable.  He mentioned an Alaska cruise too.  Also Hawaii. I picked him up on campus after my class and then dropped him off after. We were there from about 1 to 230. After I dropped him off he texted me: "That was really the pick me up I needed, thank you so much!"  Work and weather have been taxing and I now find out that I have a major vitamin D deficiency, which manifests as fatigue, muscle pain, hair loss, sour mood, etc.  He came over last Saturday and we went to dinner at SanMaru the Korean restaurant next to '83. I had the Beng Beng chicken and he had the Budae Jjigae and we shared the meat Mandoo.  Really excellent!  Then watche...

Legs day,  3x of 3 machines in the circuit area,  leg press 3x15 @195;  quad extends 3x15 @ 55,  ham ex 3x15 40-55 15 mins cycling (3 miles, 155 max HR, lvl 9 resistance)

 Mike is developing a RPG game scenario/setting called Into The Odd.  It has elements from China Mieville, Ultraviolet Grasslands and Gene Wolfe.  It features weird and surreal environments and encounters. One aspect of the gameplay is Expeditions into The Underground, which feels a bit like Stalker/Roadside Picnic by Brothers Stugatsky.  There are unique Artifacts in The Underground.  In Neal Asher's The Technician, there is a prospector-creature who is part frog and rides around in an Mudmarine (amphibious) vehicle. I propose something like a hybrid steam-powered Expedition rig called the Stoheim-Mannlicher Autonomous Reticulated Tractor. It would look a bit like a crab or spider from the front and have 4 articulated limbs that can be affixed with different appendages such as scythe, cutters, grabbers, stantions, paddles, or even flamethrowing torches. Behind the cab and engine box, there is a long tubelike articulated loaf, something like a Conastoga wagon tr...

9 - 4 pm, with an hour for lunch. I did it without coffee, somehow.

 #5 at Planet Fit, spending about 15 hours per session, doing arms or legs, but not core yet.  Include 15 mins of upright cycling and then 3 or 5 stations in the circuit area. 3 sets each of 12-15 reps.  Arms day includes lat pulldown and upright row, plus bicep curl, overhd press and chest press.  Weight mostly around 30-50 lbs. Whatever I can do comfortably, without too much straining, for the start.  Eventually will start to put on more resistance.  Arms day is causing a lot of soreness in the biceps, triceps, chest and lat areas.  Legs day, no real noticeable stiff or soreness, so probably under on weight. * Saw Alex earlier.

 About 24 enrolled, but only about 20 showed up.  I kept them there from 11 to 1220 but most of that was on administrative and structural stuff.  Spent the last 20-30 mins talking about DeepMind AlphaGo, etc.

 Had a meeting on campus at 11 to meet with the new practicum team.  It went fine.  Six projects is a lot, hard to schedule, hard to manage. Especially all on Zoom. We have a canvas website, but there are many many busywork kinds of things to upload, verify and grade every week. Not to mention 6 straight hours of Zoom calls in a row on Friday plus all of the additional stuff during the week. 4th session at Planet Fitness, did a hard set of legs in the circuit area - only 3 exercises (press~90lbs, quad x and ham x, ~50-60 each), 3 sets (12-15) each, except press where I did 4 sets of 15 reps.  

 Grey, rainy, miserable January day.  Still sore from work out yesterday.  I have a hard time gauging the weight on the machines, or maybe I just am pushing myself harder.  Seems like my arms are quivering when I am done.  Tried some pre-workout, but it was too late and I ended up staying up til like 1 a.m. Just goofed off and wasted about 7 hours on Empire TW. Playing GB again, but their position is really difficult to start.  Not doing too badly.  Big time waster tho, but fun.

Workout #3 at PF (arms and back) 5:30-6:40pm 13 minute cardio (upright cycling) 5 exercises - 3 sets each - 10-15 reps (all in the 30 min circuit) lat pulldown bicep curl overhead press seated chest press upright row 10 min - massage chair 12 min - red light therapy

finished both seasons of Singles Inferno and the second season of Busted! with Li Seung-gi. Started watching Hot Skull, a Turkish show about a semantic virus pandemic! Kind of like Children of Men meets Pontypool. Trying to enjoy the last remaining scraps of my vacation before the real work hits - this is going to be a very front-loaded semester. 6 practicum projects and my ML class with 28 enrolled already! ======================================== Don't forget about ChocoMilkShake, Ajin: DemiHuman, MIU404 with Hoshino Gen, and "Love and Fortune" (Koi no tsuki) on Netflix about a 30 yo woman who becomes involved with a 15 yo high school boy, sort of a depressing, unconventional love story, but the male lead, Fûju Kamio is beautiful, and actually 24. He has been in several other movies I want to see now - Intimate Stranger, Shinmitsuna tanin, Kanojo no sukinamonowa, etc.

Workout #2 at PF (legs) 5:30-6:40pm 13 minute cardio (upright cycling) 2 exercises - 3 sets each - 10-15 reps (all in the 30 min circuit) quad extension ~50 lbs ham extension ~40 lbs leg press machine was occupied 10 min - massage chair 12 min - red light therapy

Would You Like a Cup of Coffee? Original title: Keopi Hanjan Halkkayo? is a 2021 Korean TV series, about a young man, Go-bi, who becomes a rookie barista for Edae Coffee, run by Park Seok, an artisan and craftsman with 20 years experience and a vast knowledge of coffee in all aspects of its preparation.  The show includes info dumps about various coffee related things, such as where the beans are grown, how they are roasted, how different beverages should be prepared, espresso, latte, afrogado, etc.  There is a regular character who plays a coffee expert critic blogger, Choi Heart, who occasionally comes in to give them lessons on how things should be done and chastises the newbie as well as the customers for their lack of appreciation of the master. It has some of the same beats as Midnight Diner but with the added dynamic of there being an apprentice who is full of passion and desire to excel in a field that he truly loves coupled with a master who is a bit gruff but patien...

Workout #1 at PF (arms and back) 5:30-6:40pm 13 minute cardio (upright cycling) 10-5 min yoga/stretching 3 exercises - 2-3 sets each - 10-12 reps (all in the 30 min circuit) lat pulldown ~50 lbs overhead press ~50 lbs seated chest press ~50 lbs 10 min - massage chair 12 min - red light therapy

 Had two frustrating and annoying conversations (one with mom and one with Mike) that put me in a bad mood for most of the rest of the day. Let's use this as a teachable moment to try to learn some lesson. Spoke with mom in the morning and she had a lot to say, most of it negative, about Gary, Hope and Tom.  She was just relating as she often does, but managed to work in stuff about how noisy the downstairs contractors were being and also complaining about Jenny, riding in the car, and George and someone at her book discussion group, and also how difficult it is to volunteer at the Atheneum to take down the Christmas decorations, ("which is even more work than putting them up.") The annual oddysey about returning all of the Christmas gifts that she doesn't want that she gets from people like Sloan or Jenny or even gifts that Hope gets fromo her relations.  Who the fuck cares if you got slipper socks that you didn't want and why in TF would you spend a whole day dr...

 Bowie Song came over yesterday (Friday) afternoon. (MS CEE, Chinese, 23) I had met him on grinder in early Fall perhaps, but we never met - too busy - or something.  I have his Snapchat.  Anyway, he asked to come over and hang out or just chat - we watched a show about Chinese Hotpot on NetFlix and kissed and made out on the couch. The first episode was about the city where he did his undergrad in China, Chongqing! I asked him how he selected his English name - he said it was literally the English of his Chinese name - Bao Yi, I guess.  I think he had fun, we might meet up again.

 The dog woke me at 4:41 am vomiting, but after I cleaned up the mess and got him settled again, I could not fall immediately back to sleep.  Hee are some of the thoughts I can remember having Titter makes a good case for why infomation platforms should be nationalized.  Why let one deranged billionaire control the information channel with no public disclosure of what algorithms they are using.  Well becuase it would be inefficient to have tit be a public resource.  Why is it considered efficient to have vast marketing and advertising deparments working to figure out how best to monetize everything for the benefit of a few shareholders?  If it was a public corporation, like PBS for example, it could open and transparent governance practicies and work to ensure fairness as opposed to profit.  Well,,, we don't really want that do we?  What we want is to suppress certain "wrong" opinions and promote other ones.  But that is always the case and r...

What would you say are the main themes of this piece:  A man is shipwrecked and washes ashore on a deserted island. For a long time he wanders in the dark jungle, searching, but is rewarded only with cuts and bruises. At last he returns to the shore, alone in the dark. He contemplates the remorseless waves of the infinite sea. His exhaustion, hunger, thirst and loneliness are unbearable. He contemplates ending his suffering in the cool embrace of the deep. Then he spies a box further up the shore. As he approaches it, he can discern it is a smooth metal box with a sealed lid. It doesn’t yield easily, but after some time wrestling with it, he finally succeeds in prying it open. He is dazzled by the brightness inside, the sunlight reflected by the polished mirror interior of the box. Shielding his eyes, he can just make out a small bottle and a tiny parcel of food. In his hunger and despair he devours the contents and is, for a moment, sated. The glow from the box fades and he shuts ...

 I have been binging two Korean shows - Singles Inferno and Busted! (Another one I watched, Korean No. 1 stars the same two leads as Busted! and is more about culturally relevant challenges; weaving traditional cloth, making traditional sauces, etc.) Singles Inferno is like The Bachelor meets Terrace House. Singles are sent to an island resort, forced to play games for advantages and win prizes like a dinner together or a night in a luxury hotel (Paradise). The end result is to form mutual couples and leave the island together.  In some ways it is like Squid Game.  It is weird watching models, fitness trainers, entrepreneurs, chefs and business owners compete for anything. It is also hard to relate to young and pretty people suffering over rejection.  Yet, I still find myself liking the underdogs. Update: The comparison to Terrace House may be wrong, that show featured a lot more introverts whereas SI has a lot of hunky plastic surgeons and Navy Seals to compete. ...

The ancient city of Petra is in modern day Jordan. It is iconic and recognizable, just from the view of what is called Al-Khazneh (The Treasury), as shown in Indiana Jones.  But at its height it housed 20-30k Nabateans.  Desert merchants who became fabulously wealthy from the sale of frankincense and myrrh.  Nomads who carved a city into the sandstone rock.  In 312 BC Diodorus Siculus records an expedition sent by Antigonous (one of Alexander's succesors) during the Third Diadochi War, by 50 BC a vast city in the desert, by 106 AD conquered by Rome, by the fourth century forgotten and empty. In the 12th century fought over by Crusaders and Mamluks.  Rediscovered in 1812 by Swiss traveler, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. --------------------------------------------------- I had the barest hint of an idea of something I would like to write. I started with a young Roman Questor or subaltern leaving Rome for his first assignment.  He is posted at the border of Empire...

 Binged all of ANDOR (season 1) today, the Star Wars series about Cassian ANdor, the protagonist from the Rogue One movie. Better than The Madalorian (which is still pretty good) because it never tried to be cute. (No children, droids or plush dolls/Baby Yodas). Also, no Force, no Jedis, no magic, no BS. It feels much more like a spy film set during the Nazi occupation of Paris, about the French Resistance, or perhaps Casablanca.  A significant part of the show (like 3 episodes) is set in a prison after Cassian is imprisoned for 6 years, not for being a major agent of the rebellion, but for being a tourist in the wrong zone without papers.  There are no interrogations, instead he is put to work in a factory making parts for the Death Star. (This is cleverly revealed in the after-credits scene at the end of the finale). Unlike in Rogue One, nothing got nuked, there were no space battles, there was one big train robbery/heist thing, but nothing too over the top. Lots of mut...