Wednesday, May 01, 2024



Highlights: A quick coffee roasting effort following the same conditions yielded a dramatically different result. Maybe the forms are right about a visual assessment and a "hard stop" ending. Is there something more to test? Maybe. I have to pick my obsessions with time and priorities in mind. Speaking of "the Forum," we held our 3ʳᡈ Death cafe at the Forum in Los Altos, and it was the best so far. I am very encouraged by the experience and feedback so far. There will be more. I had a sincere and relatively open conversation beforehand with a good friend whose significant other has found themselves facing some daunting and potentially life-threatening medical issues. It's a complicated scenario for a wide range of reasons. It was a good, honest discussion. I felt grateful for the trust and the opportunity to hopefully use my exposure and experience to inform a friend who might benefit from my doing so. As for my mom, she thankfully did get sleep and is seemingly rebounding from the recent issues. She'll be getting the cat ( "roarshak") back Friday. I expect that to be a game changer for her daily routines in a very positive manner. Cat ladies need cats. It's as universal as all the other laws of physics. But for all of the moments that made today a positive one, hearing from Lauren that she had signed up for the Fall semester and would not take a semester off after all filled me with a great deal of relief. It sounds like more details may come when we have a visit again in mid-May. Of course, anything can and might change whatever has changed, and I plan to accept it as a path, not a destination. Our bi-weekly card game met with technical difficulties, but we managed to utilize the time to catch up. I managed to catch up on a few lingering tasks for Jikoji. It feels like forever since I last visited, and I look forward to doing so soon. I was planning on going on Friday, but Tommy's scheduled his wisdom teeth removal then, and I want to be available for that.

Insight: So much of what we experience is a perspective we adopt. 'Good' or 'Bad' is a choice. We define it as such and make that our reality.