Ever watch a video and think, "They captured my essence in this short film!  This right here is the expression of my soul!" I felt that way when I watched the following video, which you should watch, especially All of You.

Herein we shall all be unsurprised that my soul is pretty violent and loves books.

Safe for work with headphones.  Safe for older kids but not little guys.

​

He's getting settled in awful quick. 

Not that it was easy. The minute we pulled out of the parking lot, he took a dump in the carrier.  He carefully turned around, folded his towel over the evidence, and meowed the whole way home. 

If one of us is in the room with him, he's snuggly and purrs a lot. If we're both in there with him, he's curious and playful. 

Squeaky busted in at one point. She headed straight for the food bowl. We told her not to touch it. Squeaky looked at us like, "oh, this bowl? This one right here?"

The cat waited, sniffed Squeaky's back legs, waited for Squeaky to look at him, and then EXPLODED into a whirlwind of claws and snarling. Squeaky ran toward the door. The cat hopped onto the chair, and back onto Squeaky, who cringed and whimpered in the corner. The cat circled around to block the door. We threw a blanket over the cat, and hustled the dog out the door. She refused to leave the room until Vince went into the hallway with her. 

"I haven't bitch-slapped a dog in a long time, but that doesn't mean I forget how." 

Anyway. It's going to be hard to get these two to peacefully co-exist, but this guy's so snuggly it's worth it. 

Also bitey. Very very bitey. 

P.S.: Jury's still out on the name. His personality suggests Thrym, King of Jotunheim, but Vince wants to name him Turd Ferguson. 

He says he looks like a Mr. Ferguson. Fergus would be a good name for him, but I think we're going to wait and see what name sticks. 

Lactase pills seem to mitigate my cheese "problem". Thanks Costco for having cheap lactase pills. And cheap cheese. I guess. Well, anyway, more protein sources is good. I just need to not eat all the cheese.

Breakfast this morning was dried cranberries, dried grapes, dried cherries, peanuts, and Sesame Snaps. No fresh fruit. Winter is here. 

Have had a couple bad mental health days in the past week. Anxiety, feeling trapped, feeling on edge. Walking helps. As does talking with friends. There are probably pills to help with this too.

Making great progress on the camera app this past week. Even working on it today. I've added coloured lens filters and paper tones. Need to clean up the toning a little still but I found the bug that was bothering me.

Lear performances this week. I'm finding the rehearsals somewhat confusing but that's good I guess. I'm learning things. Or at least getting direction. Either is good for the performance. 

Later today meeting with Shannon Dea, director of woman's studies at UW, about a short theatre piece I'm working on. Hope to get some good ideas and feedback.

Looks like we're getting a new housemate tomorrow. 

He's bitey, spunky, and fun. We filed the paperwork a couple weeks ago, and finally, tomorrow, we can pick him up. 

This means two weeks of Cat Introduction. Hope he likes us. 

We stopped by the Northeast Philly PAWS building today, so Mo could get her annual vaccines, and we could do the final paperwork. It's a beautiful shelter, lots of windows in the adoption rooms, very clean, lots of cat perches. I took Mo out of her crate and held her to walk around. She purred a lot, and sniffed at a friendly orange & white boy named Rubio, who was quite enamored of her. But we're committed to this stripey boy. 

We're planning to name him Thrym, The King of Jotunheim, although a close second was Benedict Thundercat. 

Too many emails from Hillary Clinton. I swear to God, she's stalking me. 

It is annoying to be about the same weight I was two months ago. I haven't been getting enough activity as the colder weather is settling in. Something must be done. I have some exercise bands on order, and I should probably go ahead and join a gym. Or find some actual reason to get out of the house every day for a long, long walk. If only I had to chop wood for heating. That would be awesome.

My daughter got married in North Carolina this weekend. I wasn't there because obviously I would have had to go to the US. And I won't do that for any reason that I can presently imagine. Also, even if I didn't have an attitude problem about crossing that border, driving a thousand miles to be socially awkward with a bunch of Republican gun nuts for a few hours while my daughter is rightfully focused on her new husband doesn't strike me as a good use of my time. I would, however, be very happy to have them come up for a nice chill visit where we can really catch up on the past few years. You may think I'm a monster for not going. I just think of it as weighing costs and benefits. 

It's a beautiful fall weekend, and Thanksgiving in Canada. We don't have any plans for the day. We might have chicken soup. Maybe some potatoes. Certainly a nice long walk, and d is going to vote in the advance polls. (I'm going to wait for the day.) Some video gaming. Maybe another episode of the Korean soap opera. 

La.​

It's called Two More Eggs, it's Disney, and it's like a Soviet knockoff of Homestar Runner from 1986. In a good way.

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/6/9460439/homestar-runner-brothers-chaps

My friend... I was like you. I had over 9,000 messages in my inboxes. Plural.

I am currently doing inbox zero for both my personal and professional inboxes. That means that on a daily basis I hit zero messages in my inbox.

But alas, during a recent upheaval in my personal life, I let this go for my personal inbox for a while. Then I reinstated it. So the memory of how I did that is fresh in my mind, and I have the opportunity to share that with you.

Inbox zero is not a new idea, but everyone has their own ways of staying there. What follows is my own bag of tricks.

How to transition to inbox zero

1. Set aside an hour or more, just this once, to skim through the last 7 days of email and act on anything important. Important is defined as "if you don't reply to it today something bad will happen." Otherwise... no. Ignore it for now.

2. "Archive" everything. Absolutely everything. Hit "select all" and "archive," not delete. (*) This gets you around the anxiety of Maybe Deleting Something Important. You're not, you're just archiving it, okay? You can search for it later if you really want to.

(If you are not using gmail, fix that, or use something else which offers an "archive" button just as good and convenient.)

Instantly, you are in a much better position to act on the next truly important email that arrives in your life. But you can do better than that. Here's how I stay there on a daily basis.

How to stay at inbox zero

1. Once a day, sit down to do your "inbox zero," as described below. Make this a good time. You've got your coffee and a few minutes before you have to dash off; interruptions are as minimal as you can make them.

If this is your work inbox, just take the time. Your coworkers want you to be on top of your email. (**) If this is your personal inbox and you're a stay-at-home parent, I sympathize with the level of interruption you're dealing with, but again, it's an investment in you that your family ideally will willingly make.

2. Every time you get an email from a mailing list, political cause, etc., either read it right now, delete it on the spot, or unsubscribe. If you are disinclined to read it now, during your designated email time... what do you think the chances are you'll read it, ever? Absolutely friggin' zero. Unsubscribe. Every time you unsubscribe an angel gets its wings.

3. Every email should be replied to, forwarded to someone who can better handle it, acted on right now, deleted, archived for reference, or turned into a TO-DO.

Hint: if there is any extra information you need before you can act on the email, reply and ask for it and hit "archive!" That thread is gone from your inbox until they reply. You've just bought yourself one day, in most cases, before you have to do anything with this again. If the other party never replies, it was not important to them either. And you have documentation of that. You're the responsible one. Move on.

Most things can either be acted on right now, during your inbox zero time, or are unlikely to get done ever, and keeping them around is pointless. The exceptions... the reasonable tasks that take multiple days to complete or require something you won't have until later... belong on your TO-DO list.

4. Do not use your email inbox as a TO-DO list. You need a separate TO-DO list. Paper works surprisingly well, but there are innumerable TO-DO list apps. Even gmail has a little built-in TO-DO list feature tucked away. It's a choice on the "GMail" menu at upper left. There are third-party mobile apps that can work with it, too.

Hint: you can create a simple TO-DO, then archive the message, and search for it later when you need the details to act on the TO-DO item.

I also use calendar reminders in my phone for time-sensitive TO-DOs.

5. If you really, sincerely get emails you don't have to act on right now but would love to read later, create a "read later" folder for fun and edifying things only and move those messages there. This is not for actionable stuff. Actionable stuff, you should act on right now, or create a TO-DO. It is your cookie jar of cool things to read when you feel like it, not guilt trips you really must read. Those... you read. Right now. Or you don't mean it and you should archive them and move on with your life.

6. Accept that you're going to archive some things that turn out to be important later. It's OK. If it really matters to the other party more than you thought, they will ask about it again. In this case you are no worse off than you were before you got on top of your email world. And you're going to do this much less often than you did before.

7. When you get an email in the middle of the day... relax! You can reply to it now, and sometimes you should. But you could also just wait until tomorrow's inbox zero time. The absolute worst case is that you'll deal with it in one day. And that means you don't have to panic and jump on it right now.

Benefits of inbox zero

I hardly ever freak out when I get an email in the middle of the day, or at 3am for that matter. I never have that anxiety that comes from worrying that if I don't act on it this very millisecond, it will be lost forever in my inbox.

Instead I know that I will act on it during my daily inbox zero time.

My friends and coworkers took a little time to adjust to this "once a day" rhythm, but they like it soooo much better than the old "sometimes miraculous, sometimes totally unreliable" Tom.

My anxiety level has dropped because I know I'm responsible. I don't think I'm on top of my shit, I know I am.

And I really like not being a flake.

Plus: bragging rights.

(*) With gmail, "select all" will initially select the current page's worth of messages, but there's a little prompt asking if you want to select all the messages in your inbox. Yes! You do!

(**) Yes, I have the luxury of a job where my coworkers behave rationally, and you may not. My condolences. But I still think this will probably be a net positive for you in terms of Not Getting Fired, as compared to being 6 months behind on email.

Grr. Well, this past few days has been mostly occupied by recovering from an annoying head cold.  So I dunno what my weight is doing. Fortunately the cold was only coming on Wednesday, my last rehearsal, and it's mostly faded now and should be gone Monday, my next rehearsal.

Well, the last two "rehearsals" haven't so much been rehearsals as workshops; basically excerpts from Kristin Linklater's Freeing Shakespeare's Voice book. 

Monday, we started with a warmup exercise, starting below the diaphragm and exercising resonances and sound production from there up to the top of the head, and back down again. The same sort of stuff one would learn from a good voice coach, but focused more on clear & emotive speech production.

Then he gave us words to think about, like "stone" or "sea", and then asked us to feel the sounds that made up the words and then speak them aloud at our own pace. Then asked questions, like "what does it feel like?" or "what colour is it?" and had us use our answers to those questions to modify how we said them. Exploring emotion and thought and how they modify sound production. 

Then he gave us nouns and verbs excerpted from a sonnet, and asked us to say each word by itself, and after that, to start stringing them together and seeing how their proximity modified each other, but still allowing each word to be its own sound.

Wednesday he gave us a monologue and had us start by reciting it silently, but moving our lips in a very exaggerated way. Then we had to whisper it. Then we had to recite only the vowel sounds -- no consonants, exploring the emotion and feelings. Then again just the consonants, exploring the meaning and intellect of the words. (It took much longer to do the consonants.) Then to put everything together a word at a time, then a line at a time.

Then we went into iambic pentameter, and how it should be thought of only as a heartbeat, not a rule. And we worked on some new monologues, taking turns reciting each phrase, and sometimes more than one person at a time, and that was really cool. And that was about all we had time for.

Tomorrow we do our first read through of the play itself, and the two other professional actors will be there also. (The cast mixes three seasoned pro actors [one of whom is also our director] with us community and student players.) It should be very, very interesting. I'm learning a lot.

I've had the new iPhone for a week, a 6S+. It's very, very good. I'm working on my photography app, which I believe I've mentioned in this space before, and hope to get it out before the end of the year. I was also chosen to receive one of the new Apple TV developer kits. I'm not sure what I'll do with it, but I have some ideas.