so this summer, yet again, we are heading into the fray of bicycle riding. i am hoping to get Natalya really confident and mobile by the end of summer. this does not mean that i have anything resembling a plan, nor any great theories about bike riding.

does anyone have any thoughts?

we are open to just about anything. i'm going to come off as the mean overbearing dad no matter what i do on this, but i really think it is time to get her out on her bike. and get rid of those training wheels.

deja vu. i'll say it again, deja vu.

This morning i was sitting at my desk, just as i seem to remember doing most mornings.I suddenly had a moment of deja vu, somewhat based in visual stimulus and even more so based in auditory stimulus.

I was for a moment or two back in Bozeman listening to music while working on the Chisdak Surgery Center. I can't say exactly why the moment today and the moment almost three years ago paired up. But then who can say why deja vu happens.

Being struck by deja vu was not so unusual, i seem to find myself confronted with this more and more. I think it is a product of the similarity of my days, but then who can say why deja vu happens.

A few months ago i ran across an article about deja vu and its relatives. Most of them strike me as fascinating rather than terrifying. Who wouldn't want to constantly experience what they thought they would be experiencing later. In truth i am probably attracted to these conditions because of the way they warp time and poke holes in the assumption that time is linear and unassailable.

Anyway, here are the friends of Deja Vu and enemies of Time:

First there is Deja Vu:

• Associative déjà vu
  The most common type of déjà vu experienced by normal, healthy people is associative in nature. You see, hear, smell or otherwise experience something that stirs a feeling that you associate with something you've seen, heard, smelled or experienced before. Many researchers think that this type of déjà vu is a memory-based experience and assume that the memory centers of the brain are responsible for it.
• Biological déjà vu
  There are also high occurrences of déjà vu among people with temporal lobe epilepsy. Just before having a seizure they often experience a strong feeling of déjà vu. This has given researchers a slightly more reliable way of studying déjà vu, and they've been able to identify the areas of the brain where these types of déjà vu signals originate. However, some researchers say that this type of déjà vu is distinctly different from typical déjà vu. The person experiencing it may truly believe they've been through the exact situation before, rather than getting a feeling that quickly passes.

Then we have its Friends:

-Déjà vécu (pronounced vay-koo) is what most people are experiencing when they think they are experiencing deja vu. Déjà vu is the sense of having seen something before, whereas déjà vécu is the experience of having seen an event before, but in great detail - such as recognizing smells and sounds. This is also usually accompanied by a very strong feeling of knowing what is going to come next. In my own experience of this, I have not only known what was going to come next, but have been able to tell those around me what is going to come next - and I am right. This is a very eerie and unexplainable sensation.

-Déjà visité is a less common experience and it involves an uncanny knowledge of a new place. For example, you may know your way around a a new town or a landscape despite having never been there, and knowing that it is impossible for you to have this knowledge. Déjà visité is about spatial and geographical relationships, while déjà vécu is about temporal occurrences. Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote about an experience of this in his book “Our Old Home” in which he visited a ruined castle and had a full knowledge of its layout. He was later able to trace the experience to a poem he had read many years early by Alexander Pope in which the castle was accurately described.

-Déjà senti is the phenomenon of having “already felt” something. This is exclusively a mental phenomenon and seldom remains in your memory afterwards. In the words of a person having experienced it: “What is occupying the attention is what has occupied it before, and indeed has been familiar, but has been forgotten for a time, and now is recovered with a slight sense of satisfaction as if it had been sought for. The recollection is always started by another person’s voice, or by my own verbalized thought, or by what I am reading and mentally verbalize; and I think that during the abnormal state I generally verbalize some such phrase of simple recognition as ‘Oh yes—I see’, ‘Of course—I remember’, etc., but a minute or two later I can recollect neither the words nor the verbalized thought which gave rise to the recollection. I only find strongly that they resemble what I have felt before under similar abnormal conditions.”

You could think of it as the feeling of having just spoken, but realizing that you, in fact, didn’t utter a word.

-Jamais vu (never seen) describes a familiar situation which is not recognized. It is often considered to be the opposite of déjà vu and it involves a sense of eeriness. The observer does not recognize the situation despite knowing rationally that they have been there before. It is commonly explained as when a person momentarily doesn’t recognize a person, word, or place that they know. Chris Moulin, of Leeds University, asked 92 volunteers to write out “door” 30 times in 60 seconds. He reported that 68 per cent of his guinea pigs showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as beginning to doubt that “door” was a real word. This has lead him to believe that jamais vu may be a symptom of brain fatigue.

-Presque vu is very similar to the “tip of the tongue” sensation - it is the strong feeling that you are about to experience an epiphany - though the epiphany seldom comes. The term “presque vu” means “almost seen”. The sensation of presque vu can be very disorienting and distracting.

-L’esprit de l’escalier (stairway wit) is the sense of thinking of a clever comeback when it is too late. The phrase can be used to describe a riposte to an insult, or any witty, clever remark that comes to mind too late to be useful—when one is on the “staircase” leaving the scene. The German word treppenwitz is used to express the same idea. The closest phrase in English to describe this situation is “being wise after the event”. The phenomenon is usually accompanied by a feeling of regret at having not thought of the riposte when it was most needed or suitable.

-Capgras delusion is the phenomenon in which a person believes that a close friend or family member has been replaced by an identical looking impostor. This could be tied in to the old belief that babies were stolen and replaced by changelings in medieval folklore, as well as the modern idea of aliens taking over the bodies of people on earth to live amongst us for reasons unknown. This delusion is most common in people with schizophrenia but it can occur in other disorders.

-Fregoli delusion is a rare brain phenomenon in which a person holds the belief that different people are, in fact, the same person in a variety of disguises. It is often associated with paranoia and the belief that the person in disguise is trying to persecute them. The condition is named after the Italian actor Leopoldo Fregoli who was renowned for his ability to make quick changes of appearance during his stage act. It was first reported in 1927 in the case study of a 27-year-old woman who believed she was being persecuted by two actors whom she often went to see at the theatre. She believed that these people “pursued her closely, taking the form of people she knows or meets”.

-Prosopagnosia is a phenomenon in which a person is unable to recognize faces of people or objects that they should know. People experiencing this disorder are usually able to use their other senses to recognize people - such as a person’s perfume, the shape or style of their hair, the sound of their voice, or even their gait. A classic case of this disorder was presented in the 1998 book (and later Opera by Michael Nyman) called “The man who mistook his wife for a hat”.

So with these in mind, go out and have a surreal day!

Meek\, a. [Compar. Meeker; superl. Meekest.] [OE. mek, meoc; akin to Icel. mj?kr mild, soft, Sw. mjuk, Dan. myg, D. muik, Goth. mukam?dei gentleness.]

1. Mild of temper; not easily provoked or orritated; patient under injuries; not vain, or haughty, or resentful; forbearing; submissive.

Not the man Moses was very meek. --Num. xii. 3.

2. Evincing mildness of temper, or patience; characterized by mildness or patience; as, a meek answer; a meek face. "Her meek prayer." --Chaucer.

Syn: Gentle; mild; soft; yielding; pacific; unassuming; humble. See Gentle.

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during the middle of the week i had a conversation with my manager, in which he told me i need to display more confidence in my professional knowledge and myself. apparently i am coming off a bit "meek" his word, not mine.

i have been rolling this around in my head trying to decide what his observations and statements should mean to me. i am pretty sure that he didn't mean either of the two definitions of meek above, perhaps the later part of definition one, it felt though like he meant something more along the lines of:

overly submissive or compliant; spiritless; tame.

i didn't realize this about myself. and i am not sure what to do with his evaluation. when i am at work i try VERY hard to not overstep my knowledge or place. i work under people. and ego is a very big thing in my profession. rather than getting in and causing angst of the ego i tend to defer in front of clients or consultants. i had never thought of this as meek or submissive. i thought of it as playing a very diplomatic role.

now i am thinking perhaps i need to forget what i thought was proper and perhaps begin being more assertive regardless of who is present or what the situation.

i work with two people presently that both have WAY TOO MUCH ego and confidence for their present experience and ability. both of these two individuals have caused large problems on the project that have directly affected client confidence as well as profit margin by overstepping and in their confidence either doing or saying something that could not be recovered from.

when i see them, acting in this manner, and then i am told that i am meek, with the understanding that meek is not a good trait, i begin to wonder if the office/profession is happy with the performance that these two other workers are providing. i can't imagine, but apparently there are more things in the office than i imagined.

i'm going to digress here for a while. at a previous job, i was criticized for asking for oversight. i would complete a portion of the work or a design and then ask for it to be looked over. my boss complained that i should just do it without the need for review. he felt that i was needing too much direction. i told him that i could do as much or little as he wanted me to with or without direction. i didn't need the oversight. but i wanted to make sure that the directions i was going were in line with his thought and intentions, being that ultimately the license and liability were not mine. they were his. anything i did was not going to reflect on me, it was going to reflect on him. the conversation went on for some time discussing the idea that what we were producing in the end came back to bite him and not me. worst that could happen is that i could loose my job. he on the other hand could lose his license or be held financially responsible far beyond his means. the end of the conversation was that if he didn't want me asking for review, he had to tell me in exactly those terms that i was to continue working self-directed. this didn't really turn out so well in the end.

i bring this story up, not to bemoan my state or anything of the sort, but to show that i have been struggling with these issues for quite a while. my inclination is to do good work that is beyond criticism. if i am working for someone, i want them to have the benefit, in front of the client, of being the voice and in charge. i had always thought that a client valued a singular voice from the group they were employing. now i am questioning that assumption and wondering if i would have found a better match in my previous firms if i had more openly shown confidence and bravado.

i'm not sure what the end of this ramble is, it has been on my mind alot of late, and i suppose it will continue to be...

Today is my birthday. It has shown itself to be a very good day.

*Chewbacca agrees*

I am more and more convinced that being in a profession, most specifically my profession, is not so much about becoming knowledgable in the subject matter, but of knowing the right people and professing knowledge to the right people.

Recently i have found that a position i was assuming was mine had been snaked from under me by a disgruntled intern. It was something of a nepotistic move. I had been promised the construction administration for the project i have been working on over the last year. This intern deciding he wasn't being challenged enough went over me and talked to his "friend" about the situation. Friend decided that the intern could use the opportunity for growth and pulled me from the project. Then the intern promptly quits. The only way i found out about the whole thing was the project lead talking to me the other day and asking if i would be willing to do the CA now that the intern was gone. I'm a little put out over the whole thing. But...

...on the other side of the coin, i found this week that i am one of five bodies in my firm being called out as experts on multi-family housing.

Rather amusing to be called an expert on any subject these days.

I, with these four other bodies, am being put on a panel for brainstorming about new multi-family projects. The opportunity is exciting and could be a real step in the right direction for my career, after all my thesis was a conversation between the dwelling of Heidegger and the commodity of Baudrillard. The reason i bring this up is that one of my friends sent out the announcement telling about this opportunity and at first i wondered if i had gotten the opportunity because a friend had put in a good word for me.

When asked she told me that she hadn't done anything instead it had been one of our bosses. Just so happens to be the boss i fell into an interesting conversation about dwelling with a while back.