Cafe Leone

 

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blogcast | 6 Comments »

For anyone interested in an “excuse” to read this winter, you should head over the Karlene at Inksplasher. You can read the specific details of the challenge here. Karlene is hosting an awesome reading challenge which essentially states that you sign up for the challenge and then make a list of books that you propose to read between December 22 and March 19.  This is about 3 months of reading during a normally vacation-free time with as few distractions as possible (children don’t count). Then you post that list on your own blog. You then agree to revisit the list and write and occasional review of the books you’ve read.

As Karlene states, this isn’t about work. If you find yourself bored with a book, you simply cross it off the list and begin another. You can adjust the list larger or smaller as the challenge progresses. You are not accountable for your list. It is up to you to do whatever you wish with it.

There are also prizes associated for participants. Please run over to Karlene’s site to read the rest of the requirements.

This sounds like a great opportunity to get some reading in, share your thoughts with your readers and get some ideas for future readings.

Once I was convinced that boys were “Alloud” into the clubhouse, I jumped on the chance. I would love to see other men join in too. Head on over and sign up.

My Reading List

One of the things that Karlene suggested we do is to go outside your usual genre and try something new. I will do that with my first book. Any of you who me, also know that I DESPISE most self-help books and all that pop psychology stuff. But I was told to read Mending the Broken Bond by Dr Frank Lawlis. So might as well get that one over with.

The second book will be Italian Stories by Josepha Papaleo since I am interested in the Italian story and am trying to write my own version of it. I found out one of the best ways to procrastinate from the act of writing is the read about what others are saying about the topic you are supposed to be writing about. You can always call it “research.”

The third book will be….ummmm….I don’t know yet. I am looking at my shelf (you can see the items from the top three books on my shelf by checking out my profile on GoodReads here. If you have any ideas what you think I should read nex, let me know. I even have a nice Barnes and Noble gift card burning a hole in my wallet.

More to come…

reading, uncategorized | 8 Comments »

It is unfortunate, but I look a lot better in ASCII! I just downloaded this cool (and open source!) app called ascgen2. You can download it here: http://ascgendotnet.jmsoftware.co.uk/

What this does is converts a digital image into text using only the ascii character set. The ascii characters are only about 128 printable characters including capital and lowercase letters, numbers, special characters like the pound, asterisk, ampersand and the space character.

With this application, you can change some variables such as brightness etc. Download it….if you are a geek like me.

Have fun!

open source/freeware tools I use | 5 Comments »

…or how to tell a joke like a 4 year old.

After telling my daughter her favorite  Knock Knock joke for the billionth time:

Knock knock
Who’s there?
An interrupting cow
An interrupting c…..
MOOOOOOOOO!

…my daughter decided to share some of her own with me. Here is just a representative, and completely true, sample of what she said:

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Honey cookie
Honey cookie, who?
HONEY!
(now fall down laughing…she did)

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Eyeball
Eyeball who?
Eyeball will you put yourself in your ear and then eat it after you are done putting it in your ear?
(now fall down laughing…she did)

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
I been.
I been who?
I been working on the railroad all the livelong pizza…
(it was supposed to be Ivan. It was supposed to be “day” and not pizza. Now fall on the floor laughing…she did)

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Puppy
Puppy who?
Puppy, will you be Santa because you are going inside my eye. I been working on the railroad…
(now fall down laughing…she did)

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Skeleton
Skeleton who?
Skeleton, will you pull down your pants please so we can see your butt crack?
(now fall down laughing…she did)

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
OK, knock knock, will you pull down your underwear on your oranges?
(combining different knock knock jokes into one is her specialty..now fall down laughing…she did)

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Pajamas
Pajamas who?
Pajamas, will you pull down your underwear so we can see your butt crack?
(now fall down laughing…she did)

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Elf
Elf who?
Elf! Will you take off your presents please and pull down your underwear so we can see your freaky underwear?
(now fall down laughing…she did)

This went on with variations on a theme. But essentially, they all included her looking around the kitchen, finding an object, making a knock knock joke about it in her head and then throwing the words butt crack into the punchline. Good times!

Baby Goats, funny | 7 Comments »

I sought, but I can assure you that I did not find Jesus.

He was nowhere to be found….I felt that I was ripped off! But I have been told that is how this whole religion thing works. You need to believe without seeing, feel without thinking, look without touching, seek without looking, right brain without left brain, submit without question, ask without begging …Or some variation of the above. Then and only then, Truth, with a capital T, will reveal itself unto me.

In the meantime, I still haven’t found Jesus.

(Of course, I am playing around and not trying to offend. Just revealing my own ignorance….again! My devoutly Christian wife and I took the kids to see this display in my hometown and thought it was funny that Jesus wasn’t in the manger. The point here is that he wasn’t born yet as Christmas was two days away. I didn’t realize that someone sneaks in around midnight and drops off the albino Jesus with his plasticized goodness for all to see on his “real” birthday)

atheism | 10 Comments »

I have spent a lot of time studying how to be more productive. The latest in Geek Chic is the system of getting things done called, interestingly, Getting Things Done…or GTD for short. If it is you struggle with staying organized in your professional or personal lives, then I would recommend looking into it. You can read an introduction to the GTD methodology here.

Now, just because I have spent a lot of time studying productivity doesn’t mean I am a productive person. It is sort of like a geologist. I am no closer to being productive than a geologist is to being a rock. But one of my key procrastination strategies is to spend a lot of time learning about how not to procrastinate. That is why I have become so good at not writing my novel.

But I came across an interesting strategy that might come in handy, especially for those that like to make New Year’s Resolutions. You can read the entire article here: lifehacker.com.

In it, we read about a technique Jerry Seinfeld uses to motivate himself to write everyday. He takes a big wall calendar and a red magic marker. He commits himself to writing every day and when he does, he then marks the calendar with a red X. After a few days of this, he has begun creating a chain of these X’s. This now becomes his motivation to keep the chain going. The whole point of this exercise is to not break the chain.

It is is such a simple, beautiful visual representation of keeping you consistent. That is the one area where I fall apart…CONSTANTLY. I have consistency for a brief period of time and I fizzle fairly quickly.

I can see how this can be helpful for so many of the New Year’s Resolutions I am sure we are all making. In addition to helping maintain consistent writing, it might be used for exercising, reading and dieting to name a few. I can even see it being used as a negative reinforcement. For example, you could put a red X for days that you go without watching TV. I could use it to put a red X for every day I don’t swear at my Baby Goats.

Anyway, simple, little “tricks” like this can be a useful tool to not only jump start a new habit, but may also be useful to sustain you when you you inevitably hit a slump.

My only mod to this system is that I won’t need to buy a Year-at-a-Glance calendar. I can just tear out January from the calendar and hang that on the wall because if I can maintain over 14 days of consistency, I would be shocked!

Question for BoMR: Whether or not you have a New Year’s resolution, what techniques do you use to maintain consistency in your life? 

getting things done | 9 Comments »

Christmas Card Attempt - FINAL

This was the best picture of the bunch!

Rule 1: Don’t have kids!

Rule 2: If you ever find yourself thinking that YOUR kids will be different than everyone else’s, then refer to Rule 1.

Rule 3: If you have to have kids, then don’t have 3!

Rule 4: If you have to have kids, then DON’T have a 10 year old!

funny, parenting | 12 Comments »

Have a nice day!

funny | 12 Comments »

It is an amazing feeling to be the tallest in the room! I went to a dinner party last week with my parents and some cousins at my godmother’s house (yes, even Atheists have godmothers) . This is something I have not done in over 20 years and it was fun to see my family and have adult discussions over wine and awesome Italian food and pastries. Here is a group of us in the world’s largest kitchen! Holy crap, my cousins have a kitchen bigger then my entire house! It was something like 8 billion square feet. There were 6 more people around the stove at the same time this picture was taken.

We made polenta, which is a delicious peasant meal made with cornmeal. Traditionally, the way we have it with my family, is that we make it in a giant pot and pour the cooked polenta out onto a giant wooden board and then it is covered in a rich meaty tomato sauce. Everyone eats off the same board with nothing but forks working our way into the center while the kids trace out some path or try to make a map of Florida in the cornmeal. It is such a community affair and I always miss it.

At my godmother’s house, we did it slightly more civilized. We ate off plates instead. This didn’t diminish the ritual or the relevance for me. It was a great time.

Of course, the 400 pound gorilla in the corner was actually a 160 pound Italian guy, my father, with ALS. As his disease progresses, it affects (or is it effects? Can you remind me Terri?) his speech, breathing and swallowing. This is very different than the kind of ALS that affects the extremities (ala Steven Hawking). He was virtually non-verbal and had obvious difficulty clearing the food out of his mouth which frustrated him, I can tell. I was sad but it was certainly good for all of us to get together like this.

On the left, is my cousin (for Italians, EVERYONE is a cousin and I have no idea if he really is) Rafael. Then there is yours scruffily, me. Then my dad, my mom (who hasn’t let go of him since his diagnosis and then my other cousin Nazzareno (spell check wants to call him Mozzarella!).

Trust me, my pants were not as parachuted as they appear.

my father | 6 Comments »

Nothing I write below is meant to insult anyone’s beliefs or belittle them. Both of you readers are extremely important to me and it is never my intent to alienate you. This post was written as much for me as it was for anyone interested.

I have often been asked how I can celebrate Christmas when I have no belief in God. In fact, I remember a debate I got into with a marginally religious friend. In this debate, he stated that I had “no right” to celebrate the holiday since it involved celebrating the birth of a figure I do not even believe existed. Don’t get me wrong, this was a friendly debate. We all enjoy those from time to time. Typically I stay from more vigorous debates where people stop using their intellect and resort to name-calling, judgments or pointing to books that mean nothing to me.

If you will allow me a few minutes of your time, I would sincerely appreciate it.

Here are a few basic assumptions that I am making to form the basis of this post:

1. God does not exist. I do not believe in the Christian, Hebrew, Muslim or any active creator of the universe. This I call “First Cause.” An argument that doesn’t address this first point, isn’t an argument.
2. The all too common habit of relabelling this active creator into more marketable (and capitalized) terms like: Love, Spirit, Source, Self, Higher Self, The Truth, The Word, The Unknowable, The Light, Mother Nature, Eric Clapton, Gaia, Mother Earth, etc is a nuisance and completely sidesteps the question of the existence of a deity that created the universe and has an active stake in it.
3. If God doesn’t exist, then The Bible is pointless to me as a source of “truth.” The Bible does not prove the existence of God in the same way that a book of Greek Mythology does not prove the existence of Zeus, Poseiden or Hades.
4. The fallacy of the Bible does not mean that there are no stories in it of value or even beautiful and inspirational stories in it (though we all need to ignore many horrific stories in the Bible in order to find a good one, especially in the Old Testament).
5. Whether you think that not believing in God is a bleak or depressing outlook on life, means nothing to me. EVEN if that were true, I do not find the alternative, blind faith, to be less depressing. I can’t believe in something only because it makes me happy.
6. Knowing that all I have is myself, family and my friends and that this is the only lifetime I have to live and that there is no one judging me based on my ability to blindly follow is most certainly NOT bleak.
7. Morality exists without God.
8. It is not “safer” to believe in God (Pascal’s Wager).
9. There are good Christians and good Atheists. The converse is true too. Neither side has a monopoly on goodness.
10. This is important: It is OK to talk about religion. I have trouble with the argument that religion is a taboo topic. Every time I mention religion in a post, I will get one comment that states something along the lines that “you are entitled to your opinion, Dan, but religion is so deeply personal, you really cannot discuss it.”
11. Many of the people I love are devout Christians (many of the people I love are also homosexuals, conservatives and have myriad other opinions that don’t agee with mine). I don’t love people less because they are Christians or love them more for being an atheist.
12. My wife is a Greek Orthodox Christian and my children are being raised in that faith. This doesn’t bother me, but I would be happier if they were not indoctrinated until they were old enough to think for themselves. My children know I am an atheist. They sometimes still love me.
13. I love many of the traditions of religion. Many people decry the ritualism of Catholicism and I have found myself craving them. Of course, this does not mean God exists, but the traditions of religion is a very powerful tool to bring families together.
14. I think many of you will agree with me that Christmas has almost nothing to do with the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. This saddens me as much as it does you.
15. If you have regular two way conversations with God, then good for you. You would have to forgive me for not latching onto your conversations as proof of anything. I have a friend that says she was abducted by aliens when she was 12 too. What do I do with that information?

So, here we are. How can an Athesist celebrate Christmas? I am looking forward to bringing the kids to the IHOP parking lot to buy a tree, bring it home, decorate it and put gifts under it. I look forward to watching the kids open their gifts and cebrate with a delicious Italian and Greek feast. How is this possible if I don’t believe in Christmas? Well, please notice that nothing I said has anything to do with Jesus. More importantly, in this crazy life, a few moments of calm, peaceful, reflective togetherness as a family, is so rare, that I cherish these occasions, regardless of their relgiousness.

Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for being my friends. I sincerely wish you and your families a wonderful holiday…however you celebrate it.

Question for BoMR: How do you maintain your traditions, religious or otherwise, during the holidays year after year?

atheism | 17 Comments »

If you were born March 20 1976, you will be celebrating your billionth second alive on this planet today!

Because I have way too much time on my hands, I was playing around on this website all morning and have been utterly fixated on figuring out that stupid fact and sharing it with both of you.

Just plug in your birthday and get depressed as the seconds tick away! I have to run now as I just spent 327 seconds writing this post.

Question for Both of My Readers (BoMR): When was the last time you were painfully reminded that you are getting older and realized there is not a lot you can do about it?

funny | 8 Comments »

I was a senior in high school before I learned to spell Massachusetts correctly. By the way, I live in Massachusetts.

For my whole life I spelled it Massachusettes. Those were the days before spell check and I don’t know the last time I ever really needed to spell out the whole word before. It was always Mass. or MA.

There are other examples; as a child, I believed I had a SEVERELY narrow type of dyslexia. You see, every single time I read the word “pigeon,” my mind’s eye reads this as “pig one.” For years, I did not even know what a pig one was. Luckily, there are not many pigeon-centric children’s books out there.  But I literally read this as PIG ONE…two separate words. What kind of dyslexia is that?! Can I have a single word dyslexia? Perhaps it is called “monolexia” or “unilexia.” This happens even to this day!

You are among a very small group of intimate friends here . You can tell both us anything.  So, go ahead, fess up: What assumptions have you been carrying around with you that ultimately proved to be wrong?

funny | 9 Comments »

As I have written about so many times in the past, I have very few rituals in my life.  I envy people that wake up at the same time, or eat the same breakfasts (breakfastses?) , or drive the same route to work. I am especially envious when these people have positive rituals, such as exercising etc.

There are a couple of small rituals that I have managed to include in my life over the past few years. One of them, as you know is that NYT Crossword Puzzle. I typically wake up before the rest of the Leone clan does. I will  crank out today’s puzzle plus one archived puzzle. This keeps my brain flexible and keeps me humble because I almost never get through Thursday’s puzzle without help from my little friend, Google.

The other ritual is that I use Google Reader to read a list of what I categorize as “My Daily Reads.” I have approximately 30 blogs that I can’t live without (don’t worry, I count both of you as among my most important). These blogs range in scope from the light-hearted, to Mommy and Daddy blogs, to Pinko-Commie Left Wing Propaganda, to some work relevant blogs, to harcore scientific, skepticism and atheist blogs). These blogs, your blogs, are as important to me as the books on my shelves. Everyday I laugh, I think, I learn and sometimes I bleed tears. What I especially love is that most of you don’t make a dime from your efforts. You have no stake in this other than a sincere desire to share yourselves with tens, hundreds or possibly even thousands of readers that share your corner of the internet. I love that! I sometimes feel like I write just to be included in your worlds.

As you can see, I am really good at making a short story, long. As all I wanted to say here was that I just checked this morning and noticed that in “My Daily Reads” I have 116 unread posts! I feel like I am missing something in life if I even go one day without reading your words and now I have 116 posts I have to catch up on.

Doesn’t it suck when life gets in the way of living?

There is so much happening in all our worlds and my world is no exception. I try to deal with the day-to-day stuff to the best of my ability but I still need to RSVP to a Boston College alumni dinner invitation, make copies of my son’s progress report, write a letter to his teacher, deal with my dad’s terminal illness as he slips further away from us every day, get estimates on cutting down a tree that is dangerously close to my neighbor’s bedroom window, console my mom as she becomes a patient herself, research health insurance options for my mom as she decides to leave her job, fight a traffic ticket, fix my son’s laptop, make my home network a little more robust, fix the bathroom faucet that has now dripped to a continuous stream, work on not over-reacting when the Baby Goats are busy being Baby Goats, hang photos that are still un-hung after 6 years, find a lawyer and an accountant to look over my parent’s finances, cancel my barber’s appt for Thursday because I am volunteering at a PBS telethon, call my doctor for some blood test results I had drawn two weeks ago, determine a Christmas budget and SHOP for a holiday I have NO belief in! Phew!

As bloggers, there are at least a few different “responsibilities” we have taken on. We need to:

1. Come up with relevant content for our own blog
2. Design our blog and maintain it
3. Join and actively participate in various communities of bloggers
4. Read other’s blogs for our own pleasure as well as to get ideas for our own blogs
5. Grace other’s blogs with a thoughtful comment

I am a stuck at Step 1. Please allow me some time to come up with creative ways to sweep my list of stuff to do under the rug. Once that is done, I will work on making my world interesting enough to justify your precious time visiting and in the meantime, I will sneak into Google Reader to catch up on what all you REAL writers are up to!

Question for Both of My Readers (BoMR): HOW THE EFF DO YOU GUYS DO IT?!

blogging, blogs way better than mine | 17 Comments »

I am not proud. My behavior the other night was not one which I would want my kids to emulate. I should be disqualified from the whole parenting game full stop. My license to parent should be revoked (I say with a glimmer of hope in my eyes).

Let me preface this story by telling you that we live in a shoe box. We are on top of each other when we sleep; literally due to the fact that we are ALL IN THE SAME EFFING BED! OK, maybe it is not that bad. But it is bad. Another important point to remember is that I am not a drunk! I enjoy a drink here and there but nights out are far and few between.

So, when I got home last night around midnight after a dinner party with some coworkers at a local sushi restaurant, I needed to tip-toe. My Baby Goats will manage to wake up at a blink so it is important to be quiet. I was also just a little bit inebriated, and I definitely did wantwant them to see me stumbling in. The Goats are still young enough to believe that I am a hero. They will learn soon enough that I am merely a mortal who fails more often than I suceed at this parenting thing.

I showered the night’s events off my body and sat at the laptop to type some wonderful Japanese sake-induced account of my evening to share with Both of My Readers (BoMR).

But before my fingers hit the keyboard, my head hit the pillow.

Imagine the dreams I had. Imagine the wasabi-based dreams that floated prettily in an out of my head. Now imagine the sound of Winnie the Pooh emanating from the Goats’ toybox at 2AM. As parents, we are way too familiar with toys that talk only in the middle of the night. We all know that the only people that would ever buy a toy without an OFF button are our single, childless friends.

Now imagine, my sashimi-induced rage as I launched myself from the couch and proceeded to disassemble the toy box all the while Winnie laughing maniacally; taunting me with his honey pot sweetness.

I finally found the sucker and removed him from the box, leaving the remaining toys on the floor. The Baby Goats hardly stirred. It was a Winnie the Pooh key chain that somehow managed to escape my cleaning rampage when we no longer had 6 month olds in the house. I flipped this Winnie key chain around in my hand trying to find an OFF/ON switch. Nothing. I then looked for the battery and proceeded to stick a steak knife into the miniature screw that so securely holds the 400 AAA batteries. The knife tip broke. Meanwhile, Winnie seemed to be getting louder and my eardrums felt like they were going to bleed.

I pride myself on having good judgment and remaining calm. Apparently, Calm Dan went out the window, which is where Winnie should have gone and left for the raccoons to tear into him. Instead I decided… on second thought, it actually wasn’t all that logical, it was more like I “reacted”, by filling the bucket in the sink with water and throwing Pooh into it. I told you I wasn’t being rational! At 2AM, this made a whole lot of sense to me! I thought the best thing to do to stop the blaring was to drown Pooh!

I almost felt sorry for this bear as the gurgling sounds diminished. Except for the fact that the gurgling sounds never ended! Pooh was caught in a loop of final agonal breaths and all I could do was my best to ignore it. This was my digitized version of the Tell Tale Heart, written by Edgar Allen Pooh!

Ignore it, I did; until my 6 year old woke up at 5:00 and heard the sound coming from the bucket. He looked inside and you can imagine what went through this kid’s brain. He began wailing. I woke up and I tried to comfort him as he held the waterlogged key chain in his hands. I told him that this was an infant’s toy and we had no infants in the house. He said this was his “FAVORITE” infant’s toy. I then told him it was an accident, despite the CSI-inspired crime scene sans the blood and yellow tape. He keeps looking at me like I am the very definition of evil..perhaps I am.

Clearly, the rule of thumb here, is stay away from Sushi Night Out with coworkers!

Baby Goats, funny, parenting | 13 Comments »

As both of you know, I am addicted to the New York Times Crossword Puzzle. This does not mean I am good at them. Typically, I can get to about Thursday’s puzzle before I come to a grinding halt. The remainder of the week is spent just feeling stupid.

I haven’t had any time to work on the puzzles this week so I was very excited to wake up early this morning, make some tea, ready to chip away at the week before my baby goats woke up and began their job of being goats.

I usually time myself on Mondays and Tuesdays, but the reality is that I am almost never done in less than 10 minutes. When I am on the clock, I usually do not think a lot about the clues or the answers.

As I was working through Monday’s puzzle, I came across a clue that made me stop and I spent more time considering if this would be a good one to add to my list of Imponderables. Imponderables are those stupid little things that we take for granted.

6 Down clue was [Stand up on hind legs, as a horse]. The answer, of course, is REARSUP.

My imponderable: Why is it called “rears up” when in fact it is the rear that goes down and the front goes up? Should it be renamed “fronts up?”

[Oh, and if you are the commenter that I write about in my previous post, please don't take this question seriously. I fully understand that the verb"rear" is not the same as the noun "rear" and may not even have the same etymology. You see, I am actually almost as good as you are at using Google. ]

Have fun out there!

imponderable | 5 Comments »