if you don't know, i love listening to and collecting music. i have lots. i have lost almost as much.

i'm not necessarily an audiophile. i can't really afford the toys involved in that preoccupation. it is less a quality of sound and more a quality of content to me.

towards this interest i have no end of frustration with Winamp and iTunes and whatever other music/media player you can mention. they all have issues that annoy me to no end. the most obvious with iTunes and Windows Media Player is their preoccupation with DRM. i have albums that have been purchased or ripped legitimately and yet the DRM thinks that they don't belong to me. making them near unplayable. i have looked at lots of different fixes for this, none of which have been satisfactory, until Songbird.

now don't run out and get Songbird. it is still in development, as is much of the web. but at the moment i have decided it is my favorite option. roughly six-months ago i was all ready to make this statement, and then it started eating my computers. seriously. launch songbird 0.2.5 and it eats all the available RAM and processing power. never found this a good thing, so i stopped using it.

then after a recent iTunes fluster i decided to dig into why Songbird was making me crazy, only to find out that they had a new build, 0.3pre. and it works wonderfully. well almost. the ipod plugin is broken until it becomes an official release, but it is working wonderfully on memory and processing usage, as well as dealing with ultra-large libraries.

that i have a viable alternative makes me happy. and though it is not complete and almost broken at some points, it still seems to be less broken than iTunes.

when i was nine, through connections with Boy Scouts and Ranger Rick, i became a member of the World Wildlife Federation and Greenpeace. i was a radical... umm i was nine. i'm not sure if radical had much to do with anything about me, save my haircut and my parlance.

still i had my bumper stickers and my t-shirts. i was a card carrying liberal and it bothered friends' parents almost as much as my earring that i got as i turned eleven.

living in Texas in the very white, very protestant suburbs, i am not sure that much of my t-shirt wearing did anything to save a whale/gorilla/farmland/Tibet/anything of value. i felt i was on my way to becoming a liberal with an agenda, a picket sign and a goatee.

two things got in the way. 1) i was shy and 2) i couldn't grow a goatee to save my Lily-white... that said, i still kept a little bit of hope somewhere deep inside. never really embracing the dirty hippie, as my mother would have lost it had i stopped bathing.

it is with a certain amount of pleasure and relish that i announce i am now working for, not "the man" as my friend Josh admits to, but SUPER-hippies. not a whiff of patchouli can be found in the office. and i would hazard to guess that everyone has clean feet, we are professionals after all. none-the-less i work in hippie central.

taking this new job, i was aware that the company professed green or sustainable leanings. in fact it was part of what was drawing me to them. i liked the idea that maybe i could get in touch with some part of my inner nine-year old.

that nine-year old and the adult i have become, occasionally talk, working to find better ways of being a good steward and a more responsible human. i don't always have the finances or gumption to undertake the things that my "Robbie" suggests in his naive position of non-existence. my wife and i have taken strides. we buy organic most of the time, when looking at produce. we only drive one car. we walk, we take the train, we try to recycle. and lets face it, living in Portland makes the attempt to be a greener human both easy and socially acceptable.

now, finding a better path for my career has run headlong into the inner raving-liberal. my office of 95 people has a single trashcan. normal sized kitchen can. other than that, everything is reused, recycled or composted. yes, there are 4 composting cans in the office, as well as encouraging literature about how to properly compost at home. the office is day lit, with overheads on sensors and timers so that if you are being to sedentary in the evening you will find your self sitting in the dark.

the firm is aggressively involved in the greening of the architectural landscape. they hold the ethical position higher than the desire for money. if a client wants to work with us they will work for a holistic solution that will both meet their needs and not just "not harm" but better the planet. compared to my last employer this is overwhelming. a small group in the firm is working with architects without borders designing a school in Ethiopia. another small group is working as a pro bono architect for an organisation that cares for and helps the homeless youth of Portland.

in this office of 95 over half the people ride their bikes to work. the other half are a mixture of feet, trains, buses, carpools and single-driver. if you are going to a meeting in the downtown area the office offers up its bicycle. yes the firm has a bicycle rather than a car. it sits in the front entry and is encouraged as a way to get around or get some exercise at lunch.

every partner we work with from the caterers we use to the consulting engineers we employ are encouraged to be more sustainable in their practices. if they won't move towards us we cease to give them our business and find someone who will offer the same service and will care for the world.

i keep feeling like i am a nine-year old at summer camp. expecting at any moment to be told it is time to pack up and head back to my home. if my home was the business world i was working in prior to this i am reticent to go back. i want to stay here. this feels good to me. i feel enlivened. i feel like i have found a place to explore all the many things i have wanted to as an artist/architecture/human.

madeleine l'engle talks about the loss of magic and the loss of expectation of magic in her novel walking on water. i have wrestled with this topic for many years. i have been more and more jaded by the things that happen to me and those i love. magic or even optimism have seemed not only non-existent but ridiculous to have ever believed in or possessed.

not to even suggest there is a magic here in this office, but there is definitely an optimism that i have not felt for many years. a renewed hope that i can both make a difference in my workplace and through the work i contribute to.

i am going to stop now, as i don't want to nauseate anyone further...

i started off the day blogging about books, due in most ways to my wife commenting on my absence on the blogosphere of late. now i will take a couple minutes and comment on other literary women and a thought that occurred while reading on the train this morning.

books are an interesting way to express a love, hate or confusion about/towards women (or anything for that matter). the statement made becomes forever. if in later life you come to understand, or love or conversely hate that which you were confused by, hated or loved, the words of the first still exist, out of time and without an ability to be washed away.

think men are from mars, women are from venus for a minute. the author will never be renown for realizing men and women are from earth, because he has so verbosely commented on their alien natures, no matter what happens in his future.

there is a monumental act in publishing. think Bukowski. can anyone even conceive of a tender or beautiful moment between him and a woman after reading one of his novels. he is express in his absolute lust for the soft and pink bits of women while being, what i would argue, one of the most misogynistic writers ever.

DeLillo seems to take a much more worshipful approach to women in general. in the first couple chapters there is a wonderful description of the main character's wife, in all her middle aged glory and then a following monologue by a character about the love of complex women and their minds.

when i was 21, a publishing house came to the small town in which i was living and unceremoniously "dumped" something on the magnitude of 100,000 books that were "cut-covers". (i'm going to stop using quotes now, as it feels all too much like air-quotes).

they let word of mouth spread the news and location. and slowly the small town i was living in descended into the literal mountains of literature. i personally took home boxes upon boxes of these books. everything of philosophy to how-to to classics to comics.

this event was a watershed in the growth of my personal library, and while the books have only half their intended cover, i am continually reminded that i don't really care.

the following summer while at home visiting my parents and working for the USAF i found time to read almost non-stop while i wasn't sleeping. getting hefty doses of Ayn Rand, Herbert, Tolstoy. i read at a rabid pace. for the next several years i was rarely without a paperback cut-cover within arm's reach. i can attribute hundreds of titles to this period and jackpot.

there are however many others that i have still to get to or that i begin and begin and begin without ever making progress. this in itself possesses me with a certain ferocity. i continue to go back to these same titles and authors over and over. beginning with noble intent and setting aside yet again, not because i am so lacking in foresight that i can't understand i won't read it yet again, but i once danced this dance with Camus. never quite being able to make headway in either the Plague or the Rebel. and then, upon something like the bazillionth approach, i found my favorite author. for years now Camus and i have had a brilliant dialogue and exchange of ideas. i would have missed one of the most interesting literary relationships i have found if i had not beat my head bloody on the matte finished covers of his works.

i fear missing another important discovery by letting these false-start books remain shelved, boxed or mutely piled in closets...

...for this reason i have yet again picked up White Noise by Don DeLillo. i have heard from many and varied sourced that this book merits a read. i have tried probably ten or more times to read this book and for whatever reason i have let it fall from my hands within a chapter or two each and every time.

this morning on the train i let myself fall into the book. and reading it i found a very easy rhythm backgrounded with mixtures of the Cure and Alkaline Trio. and i read.

i almost missed my stop.

so maybe i have found the moment to read this book finally, these ten years later.

i'll let you know how it turns out.

cutting to the chase and being honest, i am an awful employee... when it comes to my last week.

i generally find things to do and opportunities to remain engaged even when work is thin. i have to admit thought that this week, having just come back from vacation and preparing to leave this friday, i am worthless. i have completed all the tasks that everyone has asked. but i have no giddy-up. preferring to sit and clean out my mailbox and my computer.

i can't wait to be at the new job simply to know that i am no longer wasting my days.

so, for the last 6 to 8 months as i ride the train in the morning i have watched the very "interesting" interaction of a middle aged man and woman. each day when i get on either he or she is on the train. very rarely are they already together. when we reach goose hollow, whichever one is on the train steps off and looks timidly around the platform. if no one is there they find a seat and let the train pull away from them.

on the days when the other is waiting on the platform, both their faces light up like they've just seen their first corvette. in a manner not unlike a junior high dance they walk to one another and embrace. and finally, they step back onto the train, together.

once on the train they whisper to one another and almost timidly touch one another. on the face, on the hand. they both wear wedding rings. and i am almost certain that they don't belong to one another.

it is a very strange thing to be a participant in a very public affair. personally i would think that the two would find a better way to meet than on the train at the same place over and over. a mate might happen to ride the train one morning, out of curiosity. or what about the chance that someone you know might spy your liaison.

i am not in anyway condoning a dalliance, much to the opposition i believe in marriage and the commitments professed between help-mates. but let me say, at least be smart if you are buying you milk in town. people are not blind, nor are they idiots. a tryst such as the one i watch is ASKING to be caught.

...i really don't know what sparked that rant.

we are back and in one piece. a surprise considering we drove through torrential rains and floods as well as wild fires, not to mention the three days of driving in one stretch.

all i have to say is that i am blessed. my wife, my daughter, our life. all of these are amazing blessing from God. the longer the trip went the clearer this became. it is not as if i didn't know this before. but when you spend 2 weeks on a road trip in a fairly small car you don't expect to see the blessings.

even today as we came into Portland i was reminded of how rich my life is.

i was humbled.