managing stress in a fast-paced world

Mike, Greg, John and I fished out at Pacifica last Saturday, it was the best fishing trip so far… which isn’t saying much.

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This week I bought a new lens, it basically doubled my expenses for this month. After just using the lens inside since it’s raining and gloomy here in the Bay Area, I have to say that this lens is worth the high costs.

It’s a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 Image Stabilizer Lens. They also make a f/2.8 non-IS and f/4 but I think the one thing I really liked is the IS, which neither of the other two have. Once the weather clears up outside I’m going to make good use of this lens!

Here’s some shots I took that I really liked…

Work has been busy, we’re interviewing for new people, I just got a bunch of servers this week that need to be setup, lots of meetings everyday, it just seems like there are too many things to do all at once. It’s strangely fun, but tiring too. I get in and before I know it, it’s time to leave. The days are too short, never enough time to do anything, work, play, relaxing, nothin’!

The past weekend was a good one. It’s not that I did a whole lot, but I did get a chance to just think about my life.

Friday after work I went out to my parents rental home to do some work on it, as I was finishing up and about to leave I remembered how much I like to work on a home. Tonight I was helping a friend fix her car, she told me how it’s strange that I would actually want to work on her car. After leaving her place I thought about it on the way home and that’s what led me to think deeper.

All the things I enjoy I life, fixing cars, home improvement projects, photography, fishing, biking, etc… it’s all because I have so much free time to myself. All this free time, it’s not good, I need to turn the free time into something productive. I realized this while comparing my life to others, they are too busy to enjoy life and do anything they really enjoy, or take up any hobbies.

People spend time doing what is important to them. The problem I have is that I feel my time is spent doing nothing important. I AM DETERMINED TO CHANGE THIS.

I saw a friends new Sony HDTV last night, it looked really good, I don’t know why I still bother with regular old plain definition. His set was nice, it had a built in HD tuner and it worked with the HD signal from the cable. It was so much clearer 1080i is amazing for TV.

Hehe, I found a hot deal on the net and it was great.

$7.00 for 4 Ragu pasta sauces
$6.78 for 2 Skippy peanut butters
-$3.39 (buy one get one free on the Skippy)
-$10.00 for buying 6 participating items
Total $0.39

I’ve been on a really bad shopping spree, yesterday I bought a new lens for my camera, today it was a tripod, I already bought the head for the tripod, and I also ordered 2 jackets from Nordstroms.

In total, it’s over $2,500 in just a few days. It’s a good thing my tax return looks like it’ll be a fat one this year.

For me, shopping is a 2-3 times per year type of thing, although when I do spend, I spend alot. I suppose that’s good & bad at the same time.

I hung out with John yesterday night, we tried to go out to eat, drove to a few places but ended up at Yiasso for gyros. We hung out and talked about all kinds of things, I think John and I have alot in common, he would ask me about something and it just so happens that I was just reading up on the same thing. Anyways, I had been wanting to go to the auto show in downtown san jose, good timing because John and some people were planning to go today.

I’m a cheap guy so I parked about 4 blocks from the convention center and although the student discount wasn’t advertized at the ticket booth, I am forever a student and got in for $2 less. Walking around looking at cars is tiring, the theme for our group seemed to be to test the seats in all the SUV’s and minivans. It was a fun time, we spent over 3 hours in there and then had lunch at the Sonoma Chicken Coop.

I must have had a really good workout today, all that walking and carrying all my camera gear. Afterwards I headed home and took a long nap, then I finally got up and worked on my car for a bit, changed one of the engine mounts. It really made a big difference in the handling of the car, much quieter over bumps, not as good as I wanted, but I hear it wasn’t so good to begin with.

Today was a good photo day, lots of neat pictures to play around with. Keeping the B&W theme, here are some from today.

There aren’t any solid plans for the weekend yet, I have some maintenance things to do on my car. Nothing hard, I’m going to try to do it this weekend. It’s bad that there isn’t any end to the rain in sight. My morning commute almost tripled today, alot of slow moving traffic… no accidents, but I guess people just don’t know how to drive in the rain.

I almost forgot to mention the photoshoot Mike, Mike, Geoff and I went on. We had originally planned to go to Treasure Island, but it was raining so we headed to Stanford instead.

I tried to shoot with B&W in mind, but since it was my first time out I didn’t so well… next time will be better!

My housemate left for France today, it should be an interesting few days with him gone… hopefully the place won’t get any messier. One of my new years resolutions is to be cleaner. I’ve already gotten off to a good start, the garage was a complete mess. I wish I had a picture of the before, but imagine about 6 large cardboard boxes, a few of those 40 quart rubbermaid totes, and 4 sets of tires.

Yes that’s right, there are 4 sets of tires in my garage… anyways, I went shopping for cabinets to store things vertically instead of horizontally. Turns out cabinets are pretty damn expensive. Like $400 vs. $70 for shelves, yea I got shelves and put everything in it’s place pretty quickly. The year is off to a good start.