managing stress in a fast-paced world

It didn’t feel very festive this year. My office didn’t do anything for the holiday. I left early to go pickup fishing supplies at Tri-City in Fremont after work. Afterwards I stopped by ATI for their holiday party, much more festive, people dressed up, they had contests and raffles. That was alot of fun.

On saturday a bunch of us went biking at wilder in santa cruz. I’ve been there before and it seemed easier this time for some reason. After all that exercise John invited everyone over for BBQ. Earlier this month for John’s birthday I bought him food from Omaha Steaks. The food was surprisingly good.

Then on Halloween Day, Greg, Mike, John, and I went up to Benicia for the Salmon run. We didn’t catch anything at First Street, but we did start kind of late and the sea lions had already moved in and were stealing all the fish! We headed back home pretty late, it was pitch black and we didn’t catch a thing. Dinner was at Zachary’s in Albany, Greg really likes thick crust pizza. I had a good time hanging out with the guys, fishing was fun even though we didn’t catch anything.

Yesterday after work when I got home I really wanted to go out. Either to the bookstore or just out biking, just to get out of the house, instead I fell asleep.

This morning I took BART again, the bike really speeds up things. I can now take a train leaving Fremont every 7 minutes and bike to work in Oakland in about 5 minutes. Completely comfortable and carrying the bike on BART is not a problem. It fits under the seat!

Mike, John, Leeya and me went to the old Dumbarton Pier where we tried a bit of fishing. It wasn’t so great, next time we’ll bring some real bait. I think we need to go farther too, there isn’t any good fishing in the south bay.

Sunday night I went to Campo di Bocce for Cindy’s birthday. It was fun, the game was pretty hard though.

Today I got my folding bike, it did take a bit of assembly to put it together, mostly small parts, the pedals, pumping up the tires, adjusting the bars, seat, etc. It’s one sweet ride!

Almost all of my friends now have nice high end mountain bikes… it’s a strange thing, when I got my current bike I was pretty much the only one of my friends to bike. It’s funny how things change, we met Jimmy and Greg who bike alot more and alot harder than me. A few months ago Mike bought his bike, then John just got his bike and last weekend I went with the other Mike to buy a brand new bike.

I also got the itch and ordered a folding bike… you know for riding on the BART Maybe I went a bit overboard, but I got a pretty high end folder. So I ordered a Dahon Helios SL there are some better specs here. I tried to find a local shop to order it from, but the better deal was online.

Lets just hope that the weather clears up soon, I also bought a fishing pole the other day too.

I’ve decided to sell my car, it’s just time. I’m going to clean it inside and out and then I’ll post it up somewhere online. Hopefully it sells quick!

My 2000 VW Passat

Traffic this morning started out fine, then as I got closer to work, there was a auto carrier trailer on fire. I took a detour around it and my commute still only took 50 minutes. Not that bad, must be because of the holiday.

I didn’t go camping this weekend with Mike, Greg, John, Cheng, and Elaine. On friday though, they came to pickup my rooftop cargo box and hitch mounted platform. It took almost all night to drive around and put everything on the car. They got back pretty late Sunday night, I’m kind of glad I didn’t go. It gave me time to relax and do some things I’ve been meaning to take care of.

On Saturday, I woke up and had lunch with Nelson, Leeya, and Mia. We headed over to a tapioca place where I busted out my laptop and started to work on a friends website. Leeya and Mia suddenly decided to go shopping, Nelson and I went back to my place to do some work. First we rotated Nelsons tires, while the wheels were off the car we washed them too. Once that was done we washed his car, I noticed alot of crap in his paint. Anyways, then we washed my car and I took pictures to sell it. Eventually we decided to make some dinner, we had a spinach salad, vegetable kabobs, and some NY steaks. I invited Dardy over for dinner since I don’t usually get to hang out with him.

After dinner we didn’t do much, Dardy left first, he wanted to go to sleep early so he could watch football the next day. Nelson stuck around and we watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind I really enjoyed this movie, much better than I expected.

Nelson and I talked about stuff the rest of the night, mainly about work and investing.

Sunday was a cleanup day since I made a mess almost everywhere the day before. I hung around the house all day and eventually went out for dinner at The Fish Market

okay so I’ve been busy for the past few weeks…

I spent one weekend fixing a bumper, torching it to soften it, and hammering it back into shape and then finally some bondo and paint to cover it all up. The whole process took almost 3 days, lots of drying and sanding in between.

For my sister Tina’s birthday the phamily kids went out to Straits Cafe for dinner. It was probably the cheapest dinner I’ve ever had there. Have to thank Jonathan for a great night. The biggest surprise was probably the seafood paella, the food there overall is pretty good. It’s funny how that place in Santa Row is more like a nightclub sometimes rather than a restaurant.

There was supposed to be a dinner saturday at my parents home, but Tina got sick and so they cancelled it. I went mountain biking with Greg and a few people, it was fun, but really hard at the same time. I checked out the Rivermark pool the day before, swimming really wore me out, I stayed home that night and didn’t do anything.