Pondering this often, I’ve come to observe that a great deal of my own personal satisfaction and perhaps a lot of my sense of self worth comes from perceiving myself as “good at” things. I want to be on the right hand side of the bell curve, at least on a small set of things where I have a certain amount of talent and motivation, I want to feel like I’ve built up a set of accomplishments and skills that put me pretty far out there to the right of the bell curve. I don’t know why I have this desire. I don’t know whether or not it’s ultimately healthy. I’m somewhat torn on that fact. There’s a part of me that thinks if you don’t get really “good at” a few things, you’re ordinary, ineffective, and unremarkable. There’s another small Zen camp in my psyche that thinks ultimately this doesn’t matter and it’s not important. One part of me thinks its latent indoctrination from grade school and my love of getting “A”s. And there’s another statistical camp in my psyche that says I should expect to be toward the middle of the bell curve by definition and there’s not much escaping that ultimately because it’s baked into how we compute the bell curve. But anyway, at least right now this notion of feeling motivated to excel is winning the overall debate in my psyche.

So now let me discuss each of these plateaus a bit, which I think will be therapeutic. Musically, my saxophone playing skill pretty much peaked on April 7, 2001 when I had my senior recital at the Oberlin Conservatory. After that I did make some additional progress, especially in the realm of live performances with Sunny Daze, altissimo playing, and some more chamber improvement from the trio and quartet playing I did with Chris, Alex, and Charlie. But the slope of graphing that improvement over time was much more horizontal compared to the steep curve during my conservatory training. After another six years of not much effective individual practicing and just riding that plateau, I sort of gave it up, moved to Colorado, and switched focus more to athletics. The good news is that my technical abilities seem to more or less self maintain. Were I ever to start practicing again, I think my speed and finger technique would quickly return, my altissimo capability seems to have been baked into my throat and does not seem to deteriorate due to lack of practice, which is actually pretty cool. My endurance however has completely gone to pot and my face muscles are exhausted after fifteen minutes of playing. That would take a few months to come back I think.

But the classical stuff wasn’t really my main concern. I felt like through school I kept up well enough with the classical sax players at my level. But my interest wasn’t strong enough for me to go onto the graduate school or professional level. I really like playing and studying classical saxophone music, but the truth is I don’t like listening to it. I listen to music voraciously still to this day, but I’ve never owned more than a dozen albums featuring classical saxophone, and there’s only a small handful of pieces that I will get in the mood to hear and actively go and play on the stereo. So graduating from Oberlin with recital performances I’m proud of and still enjoy listening to feels OK to me as the pinnacle of my classical saxophone experience. I loved the experience at Oberlin, but I didn’t have the motivation and interest to go on to graduate school or to due what it takes to play classical music at the professional level. So I feel very much grateful for that experience and at peace with where it came to a conclusion.

The jazz side is where most of the frustration and feelings of inadequacy reside. So given the choice, I would have majored in Jazz Saxophone Performance at Oberlin. I auditioned for both classic and jazz but got rejected from the jazz program and a nice scholarship for the classical program, so that settled that. However, I still took a lot of improvisation courses, and played in the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble big band as well as doing a few small jazz combos.

There was a time when the jazz majors had a period of accelerated growth where it became obvious that the woodshedding they were doing and the dedicated improvisation practice took them out of the student level and into the young professional caliber. I saw this with frightening clarity case after case after case. In most cases, it happened in their junior year. In the case of my friends Moppa and Kelly, toward the end of sophomore year we were all still playing pretty much at the level of really talented high school students. But there was an enormous and profound change that happened to them (but not me) in their jazz playing over junior year. By the end of junior year, they had learned to “get around on the horn” as Peter Dominguez would say and had developed individual voices coupled with virtuoso technique and a big repertoire of memorized standards. At that point there was still a voice in my head that believed I could do that too if I was able to dedicate the amount of time to it that they are since it was their major and for me it was just a hobby I squeezed in to my spare time as best I could.

Having been pondering this for almost a decade now, my current outlook is fairly bleak. The hard truth is my ear is not nearly good enough for me to realistically play high caliber jazz music. My ear has always been weak. When Andy Fusco first started working on it with me and trying to get me to do transcriptions, I was basically functionally tone deaf. He would play a note on the piano and ask me to sing it. It would take me a while to get it right and even when I did I wasn’t confident I was singing the correct pitch. With a lot of focus and training in high school and in my aural skills classes in college, it got much better. I was able to get through four levels of aural skills, which was pretty challenging, but for the most part I didn’t see a huge disparity between myself and most of my classmates, and I got “A”s in Aural Skills I-III. It was only Aural Skills IV which focused on a lot of atonal and twelve tone stuff where despite my efforts I couldn’t muster more than a “B” due to the errors I was making with my ear. That plus the “B” I got in a more advanced Jazz Improvisation class were the first “B”s I ever got where I thought that was the best I could do. In reality the “B”s were probably generous grades. I think conservatory teachers tend to go easy on students academically because the performance aspect is so rigorous.

Anyway so at this point it is clear to me that my ear is so weak that I just might not make it in jazz. I took extra ear training courses (from Neal Creque) as well as a private study with Tim Weiss. Sadly of course Neal Creque has an amazing ear as everyone on conservatory staff does, so I felt like it was the sighted trying to teach the blind to see. If it’s just an effortless sensory reality for you, I don’t think you can comprehend what it’s like when things just sound like undifferentiated notes. Tim Weiss I think was more sympathetic to my struggle and tried to teach me the “sound colors” approach. Anyway, I knew I had a challenge here and I was making a concerted effort to overcome it. I was doing extra ear training practice, buying miracle cures from the back of band instrument catalogs, walking around with A 440 on a loop in my mp3 player (the Diamond Rio, one of the earliest portable MP3 players ), and so forth.

But now when I think about this, it seems like an insurmountable problem. If you can’t hear and interact spontaneously to a certain level in jazz, you just “can’t hang” as they say. When I auditioned for the jazz program at Oberlin, Peter Dominguez checked my ear. He rightly detected major problems. I still remember it vividly. He asked me to play “Happy Birthday” and I said I didn’t know it. So he asked me to play it by ear and I couldn’t. I think I got the first three pitches but not much more and had to stop. My assumption has been this alone was enough to get me rejected from the jazz program. Not sure if that’s true, but part of me wishes someone along the way would have stopped blowing “you can be the first astronaut president” smoke up my ass and sat me down and said “look, kid, you’re 5’4″ and you’re ear is weak. Basketball and jazz are not going to work out for you career wise, really, and there’s nothing to be done about it”. (Not that I was in to basketball, I’m just trying to make the point that sometimes there are fairly obvious indications of a mismatch happening).

So that’s pretty much where I am today. I quit my band after several years of not making significant improvement, and having my improvisation limited to modal tunes with very few chord changes. I’ve now come to terms with this reality but I’m not really sure how to proceed. I’ve had a few thoughts on this over the years. First, stick to simple music, as in the Boston band “Morphine” that basically just jams everything out in D minor using a 2-string bass and calls it done. Secondly, I thought if I got into electronic music, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about intonation. I bought my Eigenharp hoping that would rekindle my passion for music, but so far it hasn’t caught on (yet). I’m still optimistic that some combination of a new keyboard or Garage Band or the Eigenharp might do the trick.

The other observation I’ve had is that while compared to the other students at Oberlin, my sense of pitch was very weak, compared to them, my sense of rhythm was significantly better than average. I’ve always been really good and reading complex rhythms from sheet music and transcribing them as well. Based on that I sometimes think about learning to play the drum set. I think I could be good at that. However, the problem is the music performances that really inspire me these days are all melodic and vocal. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try it for a bit and see how it feels.

OK, whew, it feels good to type all that stuff out. On to the next plateau: computers. Ironically, this is probably the complete opposite of my music experience. Here’s something that I seem to have significant talent at but I’ve not had much formal training or focused practice. The realization I had while I was attending the Henri Mancini Institute that being a professional musician wasn’t going to work out, coupled with realizing I really liked computer programming and I was effortlessly good at it was a defining moment in my growth into an adult. I say “effortlessly” not to mean I didn’t bust my ass working on it, but comparing working really hard in 16 credits of Comp Sci over 2 years to 10 years of relentless dedicated practice of the saxophone makes it seem comparatively effortless.

So with the help of one truly great and inspiring Professor Stephen Wong, using my remaining electives over my junior and senior year, I learned object oriented programming in Java and with the help of my CS lab buddies I learned a lot about linux systems administration. Of course, I didn’t have most of the mathematical prerequisites, so some stuff went completely over my head. But honestly, only once in my networks class where we did some graph theory equations and stuff did I just have to write “I’m sorry I don’t have the knowledge to even begin to answer this question at all. It’s probably something like 2n ÷ (n - 1) though.” All those problems seemed to involve 15 minutes of intense mathematical machinations, but the answer always seemed to be the same as far as I could tell.

So I learned enough about web development and Java to pass Sun’s exam and eventually get my first job out of school doing programming at CodeFab. Nine years later, I’ve built a handy little career here. I’ve worked with lots of the biggest companies in the world, gotten some good travel experiences, been through a big acquisition, and been inspired by some really talented coworkers. But again I think I’ve hit something of plateau here. It’s not as flat as the music plateau as there’s always a certain amount of growth happening, but basically now there’s so much awesome community happening on the Internet that my scope of my peer group keeps expanding and expanding. I’m reasonably comfortable saying that even with a very large peer group of about 14,000 software engineers at HP software, I’m probably well to the right of the center of the bell curve. Not sure exactly how far right, and probably not the extreme right, but somewhere along that descending slope. That is, considering overall effectiveness at making software. I’m definitely not the most whiz-bang programmer and I’m not going to be winning any awards for algorithms in C, but at the end of the day I can get shit done and it usually comes out “less bad”, let’s say, than average.

So now I think I’m ready to expand my peer group to the Internet at large and work toward becoming a legitimately world-class programmer. I may need to go back to school or at least take a leave of absence and do some focused self-training to fill in the gaps in my education and broaden my skill set. I’ve made a pretty good mind map of this stuff, so I feel like I know what I want the end state to be. I’m not clear yet on which of several alternative paths I’m going to take to go in that direction.

What’s not clear to me is what is the right balance here in terms of how much time/effort I put into the computer stuff versus the reward and sense of accomplishment and self worth I get out of it. I think clearly if I double down a bit and level up a notch and overcome the plateau, I’ll enjoy that. It’s not clear just how much higher the next plateau has to be for me to feel satisfied. I think in my mind I’m pretty ambitious but in my life experience I’ll probably be satisfied with any plateau that is noticeably higher than my current level.

So the third area of athletics is more straightforward. I’m not deeply committed to athletics but I enjoy exercising and rock climbing has become more or less my primary hobby these days. I’ve had pretty good commitment to exercise since January 2009. I’ve been doing something active at least three times a week continuously since then, with a few intense periods of even more than that. I’ve been stuck climbing around (barely) 5.11 in the gym for probably 6 months now. I took a bunch of expensive personal training sessions last winter and worked on it a bit, and I got a bit better, but I seem to progress pretty slowly. Most of my climbing partners progress much faster than I do, sometimes to the point where I’m dumbfounded and I literally have no explanation for how they are doing it.

Also, it’s not even clear to me that I like rock climbing outdoors that much. I still haven’t done a ton of outdoor climbing, but whenever I go I’m always looking around at my buddies skeptically like “do you guys really like this that much?”. It’s logistically kind of a pain, and constantly worrying about the gear and the weather makes it pretty stressful for me. I might just need to get beyond the red zone here, but I’m a bit skeptical and maybe taking sort of a South Butt approach to it. I suspect ultimately I’ll end up wanting to spend less time exercising and choose some exercises I can do quickly at home so I can focus on my other two big areas of interest, but I guess time will tell.

So that’s what I’m thinking about now. These plateaus and whether or not I want to try to level up. And how much of that desire is healthy. Comments from family and friend are welcome!

So Janet played mostly instrumental on a “prepared” acoustic guitar. “Prepared” is the term used in conservatories for when pianists put stuff onto the strings and otherwise futz with it under the hood. Janet had some really cool effects with hooking small metal bands onto the strings as well as tying a loose guitar string around one of the strung strings and then dragging the loose string along the regular string. She played in a bunch of unusual tunings and her songs had lots of nice crunchy harmonies while still being tuneful and sonically very interesting. It was also cool to watch how relaxed her left hand was and how lightly she pressed the strings to the frets. Definitely an unexpected pleasure especially since I’m primarily listening to melodic pop bands these days. It reminded me of my days at Oberlin.

The space is a small 60-seat theater in a recording studio, so it was very intimate and the sound was terrific. This reminded me of when I got to hear Charlie Hunter upstairs at Mo Pitkins in NYC. The audience was quiet and attentive with the one exception of one very young girl who was there at the beginning for a few songs before her parents’ delusions about this being an appropriate place for a five-year-old finally wore off and they carried her out.

In other news I went code complete on a major release as well as a subsequent patch release this week so there’s a good ten months of work or so that is done and done. Now it’s on to the next big project full steam ahead as always. Got some fun plans for the weekend as well. I was glad to be back to climbing and exercising this week as well after lounging around eating Oreos on vacation last week. Chris Wall turned it up on notch on his Group Fitness 2 class on Tuesday and made us do 12 sets of each exercise instead of the usual 9. I’m still a bit sore in the thighs and shoulders from that. I also did some lead climbing on Wednesday and tried out my new rope. Just need to wait for my backordered carabiners and I’ll be fully equiped for outdoor sport climbing.

After climbing I met up with Michale and her friend Cecilia who was in town. We wondered around the Pearl St mall a bit and eventually headed home for a nice meal with broiled salmon and some good veggies. Of course we played some Guitar Hero as well.

Sunday we had a big pancake breakfast and then had a lovely drive out to Golden to hit the Heritage Square Alpine Slide. It was pretty fun, you get a really nice view of the whole surrounding area from the ski lift that takes you to the top, and it’s just $7, so overall worthwhile if you’re passing through. Then we headed back to Boulder, grabbed some loaner bicycles and some eats, and then headed over to Scott Carpenter Park for the B360 Bike Ride. We had fun riding all around Boulder with a big crowd and lots of free yummies from vendors at the end.

Finally got back to the Level 2 Group Fitness class at BRC last night and then rested for an hour before my climbing partner arrived for another ninety plus minutes of climbing. Next up is a highly anticipated Imogen Heap concert on Friday in Denver, and then Saturday morning it’s off to Hilton Head for the Pizzi family reunion!

Tonight Michale and I are headed to a friend’s house in Denver for games night. Let the weekend begin!

Last week after the big snowstorm (hopefully the last one this season – we’ve had snowstorms for 6 months now), my cousins Ed and Mike arrived for a long weekend visit. We did a bunch of fun things including skiing Copper on Friday, rock climbing, watching Elise play soccer, tennis, two big yummy dinners at Bill’s, two big yummy breakfasts at my place (pancakes then crepes), and watching Point Break. We took over the rock climbing gym with six climbers and three spectators in our group. It was a really fun visit.

Pizzi visit photos are here.

We had our second YouFilmFest party with the theme of TED talks. They are really amazing. We used youtube commercials as interludes between the talks. I still need to figure out the theme for next time.

I skied Copper with Big Wave Lew three weeks ago on a Friday. It was a gorgeous sunny and calm day and the snow was great. We got really lucky and had a great day. I’m working Sunday to Thursday now so I can ski on Fridays and avoid the weekend traffic and crowds. Two weeks later Les joined us and we had another good day. I was glad to have Les driving so I could rest up to go out that night to celebrate Michale’s birthday. We had Thai food in Denver (OK, well she did because I wasn’t feeling well as has been the case a lot recently), then went to see the play “Good Girls Don’t, But I Do” at the Packing House Center for the Arts. It’s really in an old packing house and deep into an industrial zone that made me question whether I had the right address. Michale says that makes it “fringy” though. The road narrowed as we approach the address and a group of scary looking biker dudes were there screening cars as they slowly passed through the narrow gap they had left. Apparently across the street is a biker club and these guys were making sure everyone was either A) a member of their motorcycle club or B) going to see the feminist comedy play across the street. It was funny, and the director of the theater mentioned that security was top notch. The play itself was well done, clever, and funny. There was a good mix of narrative, song, and dance. It was also refreshingly short which delighted Michale and I since we are hopeless 30-somethings who struggle valiently but unsuccessfully to make it to 11pm on a Friday.

Michale and I had a bunch of other fun dates as well, and now we’re in the final preparations for our trip to Belize in less than two weeks! We did a bowling birthday party as well as a trip to Denver’s weird Disneyworld type Mexican restaurant Casa Bonita. I’m taking a scuba refresher course Saturday. The winter does feel a bit long this year, so I’m looking forward to the hot weather and wearing sandals.

I haven’t blogged in a month because I’ve been going at pretty much full speed. I’ve been working very long and exhausting hours trying to get my biggest project to date ready for release and otherwise just hopping from one thing to another without very much time to unwind. But it’s fun to do that and a nice vacation is nearby.

And now for one of my rare touchy-feely paragraphs where I depart from the safety and comfort of mundane chronological narrative! So back in September I blogged some goals. Without much difficulty, I’ve achieved them all except for the “more music” one. I seem to still be in a “waiting for the muse” phase with regard to music, although I was still able to bust out the bari to seranade Michale for her birthday last week with an impromptu Happy Birthday meets bluesy funk noodling piece. So music is still simmering on the back burner. However, the rest are all in full effect. I’ve asked for a mentor at work and have had a few meetings with him and we’re starting to get beyond the initial information dump and into concrete action items, and it’s feeling good. Overall, I’m feeling a really nice balance of identifying goals, putting in some competent effort toward them, and seeing positive results pretty quickly. I think yoga has already made a noticeable improvement in the curvature of my spine and posture. I say “already” even though I’ve been doing it on and off for years, but I thought my posture was beyond repair when I started. However, the thing that was really great and palpable over the weekend was the feeling of having recently arrived at a new level and feeling immediately ready to go for another higher level without spending much time at the current one. I think my overall confidence at life in general is at its highest. I think I’ve also come full circle with my essence. By this I mean I’m deeply a left brained, type A, engineer. I’ve been this way from at least grammar school. For a while in my post-college years, I put a lot of effort into balancing this out and trying to grow in other directions. I feel now like I have an awareness of the places where I’m toward the edges of the bell curve. I feel a certain comfort level with enough non-type-A things, and now I’m ready to accept my talents and who I am more fully. I haven’t quite gotten clarity on what the means in concrete terms yet, but there are some inklings there.

Climbing is going pretty well again. I’ve been to three different gyms this month with four different climbing partners and have been getting back up to my personal best. I attempted another 5.11a but was defeated. Hopefully I’ll conquer it next month. Speaking of which, I’m planning on doing some personal training next month, so hopefully I’ll make some fast progress with that extra help. Yoga has also been going pretty well and I’ve been practicing fairly steadily this month (except for a few days when I got sick), so that’s been nice. It’s time to learn a new set of asanas though.

I had a bunch of fun dates with Michale this month including a big breakfast I cooked here for her and the Pizzis, dinner at Bill’s, a birthday party at a friend’s house, a CHAOS pot luck, Avatar, and a few others. So that’s been fantastic. My dental woes are complete now I think and I’ll hopefully enjoy a full year before having to go back again. I’m still feeling some anesthetic wear off from today’s filling triple header.

All the stuff I shipped out here did make it out although it was an adventure getting it at the post office. I had to make three trips and wheel out a giant cart to my car to get it all. Much of it was pretty banged up but it all made it out here. I set Maggie to work on the big project of assembling somewhere on the order of 700 CDs where the discs, linear notes, and jewel cases were all separate. She and her husband worked on it for about fifteen hours. She’s researching some shelving options and I am very much looking forward to having full access to all my CDs once again.

Almost all of the Christmas shopping is done now and I fly out to NJ Wednesday for a brief visit, then back here on Saturday and on the slopes Sunday.

The week of work was both disappointing and exciting. We did a bunch of planning and realized we would fall quite short of the mark for our next release, and a formal procedure was started to notify interested parties that we would be dropping features from the release, so there was some stress and frustration associated with that. However, almost instantly after the announcement, the team started making huge strides of progress, so that got me excited that maybe A) we could still deliver the main functionality we were shooting for but B) people might not be constantly panicking about it.

Bernie and I took a very nice run at Rancho San Antonio park Tuesday morning. We saw some wild turkeys and enjoyed running on the curvy, hilly dirt trails. I met up with Ed one night to do some rock climbing. I gave him a crash course in belaying and he took the test. Administration of the test took longer than it should have so I figured he was probably not quite passing it, but apparently he was good enough to be permitted to belay me that night after some additional instruction from the gym staff, but not convincing enough to get the permanent “OK to Belay” card. We did some fun climbs though.

I was set to come back Friday night but a bit of snowy weather in Denver caused United to cancel my flight and reschedule me for Saturday morning. I ended up booking a rather weird and appealing hotel called the Domain Hotel on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale for that final night since my original hotel was full. It was dirt cheap – $50 – so I expected it to be basically a Super 8 type setup, but I was surprised to find it fully remodeled in a modern high-tech but weird decor and nicely appointed with sleep number beds, a fancy office chair, and actual wired ethernet. I’m not particularly skilled at describing the weirdness of the hotel, but let’s just say it was weird and odd and I liked it. However, I had worked from 6:30 am to 11:30 pm that day, scarfed down a turkey sandwich at the Denny’s next door, and had to gas up the car, return it, and get on an early flight so I went immediately to sleep.

Back in October when I went to hear the Kronos Quartet Cynthia and I got Boba Tea. I have a fascination with Boba Tea, and some of Cynthia’s friends that we met at the auditorium asked why I liked it so much, and I wasn’t sure, but I said something like “I don’t know. It’s just yummy and Japanese and weird”. And that made me realize that Boba Tea is just strange and random enough to be weird and delightful and I think these days I am quite delighted by things that are pleasantly weird.

Michale picked me up in Denver and came with me that evening to the Imogen Heap concert at the Fox Theater in Boulder. It was an odd show at 7pm because apparently they had double booked the theater so they gave Imogen an early show and had a second show afterward. It was fun to see Immi in person and enjoy her fetching stage presence. As with most of her live performances though, it was fairly lackluster. Her opening act had technical difficulties that prevented him from doing anything at all. And sadly the new Ellipse album is just not stellar. It’s certainly got some good tracks, but nothing more. Just some good tracks.

Sunday evening I had a meal with Jennifer in Denver and then took a swing dancing class at The Mercury Cafe. The band they had was called Impromptu Musique and they were “gypsy jazz” and quite good, especially the trumpet player.

This past week I had two fun climbing sessions Wednesday and Thursday with Stephanie and Safia, respectively. I’ve been working a lot and not doing much else, although it was good to do a little yoga now that I was back home. Last night I went with Michale and her friends Tollie and Zack to an America Indian Fry Bread Taco place and then to the Bindery | Space theater to see a very funny black comedy called “Big Love”. It was really quite great. It was a modernization of an ancient greek play and there was some great acting, singing, riding around on roller skates, and a constant swing between the macbre and serious grandious and the silly and humorous and humble. I go to very few plays, so it has been quite a while since I have enjoyed one this much. I also really like being very close to performers, and the theater had seating on three sides of a square stage at floor level, so it was very up close.

I’m composing this post on a flight to Newark. I’ll be in the NJ area until December 1. Tonight Marc is getting me at the airport and we’ll have Thanksgiving The Prequel with the band crew. I haven’t seen most of my old bandmates and their families in two years since last year I got a cold in transit and had to cancel the visit while I was contagious, so I am very much looking forward to it. Tomorrow it’s up to Mom’s for a big Italian Pronzo meal which I am also very much anticipating.

Work has been going pretty well. We’re finishing up a release and also knee deep in code for the next major release. My team had a strong demo for our second phase (“sprint”) and although we’re behind on our estimates, we’ve delivered enough working code to keep most folks optimistic I think. Also on the work front I attended about half of the developer day they had in town, which was pretty amusing and informative. The really interesting part was it was held at the offices of a tech startup incubater company call Tech Stars. I didn’t know there was enough activity locally to have such a thing, but I guess there is, so that’s encouraging. Also on the same day I ran about 13 blocks in the snow to attend part of a Python Unconference at the Google Boulder office. They have a rock climbing wall in the freaking lobby for Christ’s sake. There was a cool vibe in there and it was clear that lots of the folks in the room were smart and technically sharp. I also got to meet and hang out with Bruce Eckel, who has some widely used books on computer programming out there and (including my first ever computer programming text book Thinking In Java) and a very popular blog that I enjoy. Plus, he’s a burner.

In terms of fitness, I hit two personal bests. I wanted to also add a third personal best run, but it didn’t fit into the month, partially due to 24″ of snow. But I swam 65 laps in a 25 meter pool and climbed a 5.11a route, so things are going well there. I deepend my yoga practice, as they would say, up to four or five sessions a week. That has been working really well. I enjoy my little yoga room I have set up and the consistency has made noticeable improvements to a few poses and my balance in general. I also got in one or two good mountain bike rides as the warm weather and evening sun were fading into winter, which I enjoyed a lot. I biked with a big group up around Dowdy Draw and Spring Brook loop, which was September 30 so technically not this month, but close enough.

On the music front, as previously blogged, I heard the Kronos Quartet perform early in the month. Also this month on the music scene was a very good Galactic show at the Fox Theater. I didn’t know this ahead of time, but Stanton Moore is their drummer. He’s a great funk drummer and I have some of his stuff as a leader and sideman, so it was a bonus treat to unexpectedly hear him live. He did a big solo where he took his snare drum off the stand and went up to the front of the stage, which, although gimmicky, was still pretty funky. It was fun to have Erin there too contributing her sarcastic remarks occasionally.

The main area of awesomeness this month was the social scene. I went with Erin to a family party since she’s got three family members that are all pregnant now. I did a CHAOS full moon hike with Mags, which was really pleasant (another one coming up tomorrow night). I met a really sweet and fun new friend named Michale and hung out with her quite a lot. We had tea and watched lots of Six Feet Under and had some yummy meals. I hosted a CHAOS pot luck that was pretty well attended and seemed to do a good job of introducing seven or eight new folks to the group. I also hosted the first YouFilmFest party where I asked some friends to choose a few favorite youtube videos and then we hung out and watched them all including introductory comments. It went over very well I think and I think most folks will come back for the second one, which I’ll probably plan for sometime in January.

Michale and I went to Elise and Josh’s for a fall festival party where we played Apples To Apples (well, everyone else played while I protested and grumbled about what a terrible pathetic game that is) and Cranium (yay). Josh melted some caramel and we dipped apple slices in it. Yum. Also had a few good family visits. Cousin Dr. Annie and her boyfriend Ryan flew in from Chicago and we had dinner with them, which was nice. Uncle Eddie came out for a visit which included a stop for dinner at my house and lunch at Lucile’s this afternoon. I’m writing this post from Eben G. Fine Park in gorgeous sunny 60 degree weather while Eddie reads his New York Times.

Halloween was a big deal this year. Jennifer and I researched some awesome costumes and had a fun evening a week or so ago driving around to costume stores, hobby stores, and Home Depot to get everything we needed. She ordered a few new items and I had some essentials shipped out from NJ. We dressed as the music group The Dresden Dolls in their costumes from the video Coin Operated Boy.

The costumes, when all put together worked great. Next time we’ll opt for a higher end white face paint since the cheap stuff doesn’t look properly opaque and smooth. We went to a party in Denver where we were mistaken for Charlie Chaplin, Marcel Marceau or generic mimes. Although I think two people knew of the band when we told them. We gave out little candies with the description so people could google it later if they liked. More Halloween photos are here.

I also had some fun home improvements this month. I hung a Metolius Slim Gym rock climbing exercise board over the door frame in my office. I’ve been enjoying working on pull-ups while gripping the slopers instead of a nice bar. I hoping to get some other cool equipment hung in my basement similar to what they have at The Spot. I hung the great big saxophone painting that my parents bought for me and kept in their house until I got my own place. You can see it behind the Halloweeen photos.

So yeah. It’s pretty cool to be sure you’ve just lived your best month yet. There was one minor bummer. I chipped a tooth (ironically while flossing) last Thursday and had to spend two and a half hours in the dentist chair getting a crown early Saturday morning, but overall it wasn’t too bad. Oh, and my lawn sprinkler exploded two hours before the guy showed up to winterize it, but that was just a minor busted part. I’m looking forward to a trip to Cupertino for work and a long trip back to NJ over Thanksgiving next month. Plus a live Imogen Heap show!

I climbed at The Spot again today and felt strong for the first time since August. I climbed a bunch of 3-spot intermediate problems and did some yoga while I rested my forearms. There is always a motley crew of outcasts at The Spot. It gives it a funny vibe. The strength training class was there climbing while wearing weighted packs. They also were giving away their old Chris Sharma King Lines posters, so I got some schwag for my yoga room. Yes, I have a little room in the basement just for yoga. I bought some candles for in there and I’ve been putting it to good use. Noticeable improvement in my crow pose, wheel, and other inversions. I’m hoping soon to install some gymnastic rings and a chin-up bar in there soon too.

I’ve got some very fun Halloween plans set up and all of a sudden have made tons of social plans for the coming days. Oh and on Tuesday I did a CHAOS full moon hike at night that was a lot of fun. The air has that yummy fall crispness now. It’s cold here and will be snowy over the weekend. I got my season pass (I think this is my first ever legitimate unrestricted season pass, another mountain milestone) and A-basin is opening up this weekend already.

Saturday there is a Developer Day conference in Boulder as well as a Python Unconference hosted at the Google Boulder office. I’m signed up for both. I’m going to have to overlay the schedules. I’ll bring my BMX bike so I can cruise back and forth to the interesting talks. They are just a few blocks apart. I’ll be curious to see what the attendees are like.