tjameswhite.com

Well, here it is, the last day of 2003. Seems like only a couple of months ago we were celebrating the turn of the century. How time flies.

Now that the holiday shopping is over, I’ve done a little bit of updating to the site. Sarah and I now have seperate Wish Lists and I’ve dumped my Amazon.com list in favor of this. (I received some duplicate books due to the Amazon list not updating my changes prior to Xmas; plus, why maintain two lists?) I’m planning on more additions and tweaks as time goes on (you may notice that the font size is now slightly different), especially once I start ready my two Web development books.

We did receive a Nikon Coolpix 3100 from Sarah’s dad. It’s a nice little unit and will get it’s first real workout tonight. Yesterday at Costco I picked up a Sandisk 256 Mb Compact Flash card for it for $48. It’s pretty amazing that a little 1″ square holds 50% more than my first computer’s hard drive.

See you on the other side in ‘04.

Not much has been going on - and I like it. Sarah and I have just been sitting around reading, playing games, whatever.

Christmas was good to us. I received a bunch of new tools and books. I think the next books I’m going to read are Jeffrey Zelman’s Designing with Standards and Eric Meyer’s Eric Meyer on CSS. Sarah gave me a bunch of t’ai chi related books I had on my list and I’ll probably hit those as well (they are all pretty short and easy to read).

It was also an amazingly calm Christmas. The Eve was spent with Sarah’s mom’s side and was quiet and nice. The Day was spent with her dad and his family; and for the number of people there it was very pleasant and not a chaotic mess. We had my parents after Christmas for a couple of days. We went to see the Edsel and Eleanor Ford house in Grosse Point Shores. It is a very beautiful and livable home.

That is mostly that. Sarah is trying out some of her new Pilates stuff, I’m going to play Icewind Dale some more. Later today I think we are going to see The Last Samurai.

I love having the holidays off. I haven’t actually left the house since Sunday. Yesterday (and today) have been dedicated to Icewind Dale. I might actually make some good progress.

Saturday Sarah and I met Kristen and Patrick for a matinée of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. That is a fabulous movie. For me it was certainly the most emotionally invested movie and I needed all of the endings. I needed to see the hobbits return to the Shire; I needed to see Aragorn crowned; I needed to see the elves, Gandalf and Frodo set off into the sunset. It completed everything for me in a way that Hollywood just doesn’t do. (Nowadays, they always leave movies somehow incomplete, just in case they decide to make a sequel.)

I’m actually looking forward to when the full, complete, uber-box edition with all three movies with extras and more extras and etc. is released so we can have a complete movie marathon. It won’t be as good as the marathons some theatres showed, but it’ll have to do.

My only complaint isn’t with the movie, but the industry. We had 10 full minutes of commercials before 20 minutes of previews. Movies, the last commercial free place, are gone. It is a sad day.

Last night during t’ai chi I reached a euphoric state. It was a very strange experience. We began the night as always - doing the full form. I didn’t feel particularly comfortable and was tight and frustrated and sweating like mad. Kim (our teacher) had us go over the 1st third of the form several times focusing on different things - our connection to the earth, the heaven/sky, air, the surrounding chi, all of the above at once, and finally trying to feel our center and everyone around us.

During the final round I felt like a fever broke. I stopped sweating, I stopped feeling tight, all the soreness in my muscles disappeared, all of the effort melted away. My body became a bead on a string that stretched between heaven and earth, the surrounding air provided motion. I could feel the earth take all of my weight, yet there was no pressure on the soles of my feet. I could feel heaven take all of my weight, almost like I could fly.

During the next couple of rounds of the form I was still giddy (can’t think of a better word) and completely lost. I had only a vague sense of where we were in the form, but it didn’t matter. My body was so light and relaxed and I was so plugged into the surroundings that everyone else’s movement moved me and I stayed right with them, position-by-position, move-by-move.

I also had no center. Or my center was the entire world. Either way, for an hour or so I was completely relaxed, happy and invulnerable. It was amazing.

Kim asked me why I was laughing, but I couldn’t tell her. At the time I had no words, no real idea of what was going on. I could feel it, but it had reached a state beyond metaphor, beyond these tight words. Later during the evening, as some of the lightness wore away, I could process what I had experienced. This entry is about as close as I can come to describing it. I now need to work at (or maybe not work at, but again I’m restricted by words) keeping that feeling when I do the form. Class is over for a couple of weeks, so I need to be vigilant in my home practice.

Time for me to try it again now.

I feel a little nervous - my mom is reading my blog, and making comments. I feel like I need to behave or that wooden spoon will come flying my way.

Hi mom!