It's been a long time....

Last time I wrote here, it was last year. New beginnings have come and passed, lives have been changed, things have been learnt. I, however, am still here, I promise!

Without further ado, here is a quick rundown of the past eight months in 5 breaths or less:

December hit us with a fair amount of snow, nothing major, and it soon melted. February through April it was all allergies and couples getting married, allowing me more 'me-time' that I did not want,as everyone seems to be busy with this thing called "married life". *shrugs* The saying about May flowers coming with April showers was wrong this year, and up till now everything melted, and summer seemed to arrive faster than expected, the heat melting May into June. This was the month the heat peaked, and it held stead all throughout July. A few family vacations happened somewhere in there (yes, I actually left the house for more than 4 hours at a time), and next thing I know, its August 1st. For those who do not know, my birthdate happened to fall on the 26th of August, 21 years ago. My birthday approached, and with it came the storm clouds. I don't blame poor April, August can be a bully and steal things, like in this year, all the rain. Java was picked up, as well as French (again), Italian, German, among other things added to my //TOLEARN list. That double slash was a reference to Java's //TODO comments, if you didn't catch it. My birthday stumbled upon me, nothing different than usual. a few "OMG HAPPY BIRTHDAY!"'s from friends online (thanks for nothing Google >_>) and a couple presents, the usual "thoughtful gifts" from my mom, and the "practical gifts" from my step-dad. I did, however, get a jar of nutella :D. And now we find ourselves here again, August 27th, back at the blog. I'll be moving a few of the writings I've done in this period of absence over to here somewhere, so keep an eye out for that!



-Octo out

"week unplugged" day 1

This is it, friends. My "week unplugged". yesterday I decided that my life had too much in it, and it was time to get my time back, so I opted with the hardest thing for my techie life. Unplug myself from the internet. electronic devices were ok, such as for music, and note taking, but anything outside my local home network is strictly prohibited. Here is how day 1 went:

Friday     09:45pm - made the decision to go unplugged
               10:00pm - started meditating, trying to clear my head. what felt like 10 minutes later....
               12:27am - realize I had been meditating for 2:27 hours. O_O dang.
               12:30am - do 20 mins worth of pushups right before hopping in bed by 12:50
Saturday
               01:28am - (rough time estimates from now on) tasker checks for my gps location, and given I was home, turns on my wifi and connects to the home router, letting 20+ notifications through, waking me up.
               01:47am - tasker disconnected, as well as anything else that would be automated.
               08:00am - sun starts rising, I've been drifting in and out of consciousness for 8 hours.
               11:58am - (exact time here) wake up, full alert, reach for the phone, set it back down.
               12:40pm - take a shower listening to some glitch mob I have in my computer upstairs (listening though the home network to my phone, plugged into my bathroom speakers)
               01:45pm - realization that I don't have my mind palace developed enough to remember a week's worth of occurrences, and that I need to start writing things down.
               02:25pm - finally caught up to the daily happenings, wanting to make cookies, since its a saturday. Of course, I dont know any recipes from the top of my head, and can't look online, so off I go trying to scour the house for recipe books that my mom didnt take with her when she moved out.
               02:38pm - found a "Cooking for 2" magazine, with four pages of sweet-tooth recipes from cream-filled chocolate rolls to tiger butter candy (whatever that is).

From then on, my day became a blur as I went with 2 friends for some parkour fun at the nearest playground, followed by a trip to Golden Corral buffet, and then a movie (walking with dinosaurs, and sneaked into 47 Ronin afterwards). the day is over, it being 6 minutes past midnight, and I have a massive headache, but managed to remain unplugged. Time to see what tomorrow brings.

PS: I did go online to publish this article on the blog, but did not check notifications on phone or email.