It's hard to believe another year is already coming to a close. Although in some ways it feels like I accomplished very little over it all, I think I have a better idea of what I want out of life...which is a Very Good Thing (tm). Frankly, it's something I don't think I could've done by myself, and I'm grateful that I've had such good friends and family to help me along the way. My eternal thanks to all of you.

Here's to the death of a year! May the new year be all you hope it should be!

Burning the sugar syrup so it has that nice medium amber color makes a big difference when making the caramel sauce for créme caramel.

After a few weeks of "vacation" after first starting it up, I'm back on the yoga bandwagon again. Hopefully for good this time.

Recently, I've started to do my own routine: two rotations of downward-facing dog, extended side-angle pose and proud warrior, holding each pose for about a minute with a resting pose in-between. Those are followed by a cobbler's pose and seated forward bend. After that, I deviate from the yoga world to do some held sit-ups and held push-ups. To finish things off, I do a relaxation pose to cool down.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how the workout feels. I feel taxed while doing it, but I don't feel overly dead afterwards. (The proud warriors still make my bent leg feel like jelly after a while though.) I think I need to watch the pose instruction on the DVD a bit more so I can get the breathing and phases of body movement correct. Eventually, I'd like to take classes or at the very least find a partner so I have someone to critique me.

Small updates on a myriad of topics:

* Vacation is good. You can really burn out if you don't consciously take the time to relax.

* Portable Emotion is very good. It's rapidly become my main machine. It's just so much more convenient compared to firing up the desktop. Why bother powering up the big rig when I can just flip the screen up and go about my business in less than 10 seconds?

* Like other people, I'm trying to get on the yoga kick. I bought a beginner's kit - mat, block, strap - and a starter dvd - Yoga For Beginners. So far I really like it, but unfortunately that I was distracted by visiting people offering grand excuses for food and booze hedonism. Mmmm...Delirium Tremens.

Like some other compatriots in the bloggosphere known as THE META, I have joined the Mac owning world by becoming the proud owner of a 12" PowerBook.

Over the past few months, I've realized that it would be good to have portable computing power at my finger tips - either while on trips or for the occasions where I would like to be seated where my computers aren't. After a bit a deliberation, I ended up settling on the 12" PowerBook because I wanted something different than another Windoze machine. Although I was initially attracted to the 15" model, the price, portability and problems with the first revision turned me towards the 12" I have today.

The actual machine itself is quite a piece of art. The aluminum case is a nice contrast to the plastic used to house most computing devices. There are nice little lighting flourishes on the latch and the Apple logo on the back of the LCD. The keyboard is very functional for a notebook of this size. In general, it's rather sleek - everything fits together into an aesthetically pleasing yet functional package.

Even though I've had the beast for a while, I'm still getting used to Mac OS X. Everything pretty much works the same as in Windows, but it's the little differences that get you. e. g. Cloverleaf-O instead of Return to run programs / open documents. The other part of the ramp up period is finding functional equivalents of the programs I normally used on the PeeSee side. Thankfully, everything I use is either free or Apple provided so I'm all good in that regard.

Probably the most amusing/gratifying aspect of my purchase has been the gawking I got from my co-workers when it first arrived. Given those reactions, I fully intend to exploit the seXXXiness factor to the maximum extent possible under the law. FEAR THE POWERBOOK.

PS. This is my first blog entry with the PowerBook.