The result: our new “3-Guchi” Table. Since it was a lot of fun to bring together, I’m labeling it as #1 since I expect that we will be making more. Cheers.

On May 22, I was feeling overwhelmed by too many things on my mind. So I decided on a whim, I would give up a few things. Consider it lent for an agnostic.

So that morning, after getting dressed, I wrote on Twitter: “As an experiment, I’m trying to eliminate as many unnecessary distractions from my life as I can for a month. Including Twitter. So, cheers!” I posted the same thing on Facebook. I then unchecked all email notifications from both, deleted their apps from my phone, and went so far to block both sites from my browser, both at home and work.

Since I checked both sites several times a day, it felt very liberating to disconnect. So I decided to take it a little further. I then decried that I would not watch any sports on TV and, most importantly, would not drink any alcohol in that time. As an NBA fan and a connoisseur of fine beer, these were tough to greenlight. But I deemed it for the best.

The way I see it, most people are able to rationalize that as long as they’re not abusive about their vices, then it’s okay to indulge at will. But is watching sports every night needed? Is a beer or two every night necessary? Will the world end if I don’t know what funny comments or status updates were left in the last hour? The answer is no for all.

I’m writing now to say that the experiment was a success. For four weeks, I never logged onto Facebook or Twitter (even though my wife told me people had commented on my last status), never watched sports on TV (even though I heard that the NBA Finals were fantastic), and never touched a drop of alcohol (despite it even being offered to me).

What does this all prove? Nothing. Will I go back to engaging in all four? Sure, why not; I’m not a self-sadist. Then why do this? Just to remind myself that (a) I still have a choice about the things I do every day, and (b) despite feeling older and less energetic, I still can summon extended willpower whenever I should need it.

This is something to build on. And I plan on it. Now it’s time to do the work. Cheers!

Click on the map snapshot to the left to view the path I took. Cheers.

Check it out here: http://www.hermanmiller.com/lifework/inspiration-artist-mark-sahm/

If by chance you’re not familiar with them (but you should be!), Herman Miller is a legendary furniture design company (learn more here). We couldn’t be more thrilled to see Mark, his paintings, and part of the Somrod studio featured here. Feel free to take some of the positive energy for yourself! Cheers.

Somrod.com has been given a design facelift, most specificially the homepage. We’ve also updated other elements around the site, and added a new series of paintings inspired by classic design.

Please take a look if you haven’t already. Thanks for stopping by. Cheers.

Here’s the online round up of the exhibition:

• A full panorama of the exhibition with clickable slideshow for each painting.

• A fisheye video of the entire exhibition in 40 seconds.

• The press I received from the local newspaper.

Please join us at the opening reception for “A Third Second Chance“, an exhibition of creative works by Mark Sahm, on Saturday, July 17th at the High Street Gallery. Light refreshments will be served.

“A Third Second Chance” will be on display from July 11 – August 1, 2010.

Mark Sahm will be at the gallery every Saturday for the duration of the show.

Admission to the gallery is free and open to the public.

The gallery is located at 11 East High Street, Glassboro, NJ, and is open Wednesday through Friday between the hours of 3:30 and 7:30pm and Saturday from 12 to 4:30 pm.

All works are for sale.

Below is the massive summary of everywhere we went in New Orleans, LA (with links if you’re more curious):

• ate at La Bayou Restaurant (once for food, twice for drinks)
• put some money in a slot machine at Harrah’s Casino
• went to House of Blues (saw Zoso, a Led Zeppelin tribute band)
• walked around Bourbon Street (every night)
• had beignets at Cafe Du Monde (twice)
• had lunch at the Acme Oyster House
• took a class at the New Orleans School of Cooking
• took the Mardi Gras World tour
• ate at Deanie’s Restaurant
• stood in no A/C and standing room only for a set of old time jazz at Preservation Hall
• ate at Bourbon House
• visited the Voodoo Museum and went on the Cemetery Tour offered there
  
• took a dinner/jazz cruise on the Steamboat Natchez
• went on the Garden District Walking Tour
• rode the Canal St. Streetcar
• went to the New Orleans Museum of Art
• ate at Oceana Grill Restaurant
• souvenir shopping on Decatur Street
• had our last meal at Mother’s Restaurant
• and through it all drank a ton of Abita Beer and Southern Pecan Beer

There were a few things that we wanted to do but didn’t (Aquarium, Swamp/Alligator Tour, Strip Clubs… okay, just kidding on that last one, honey), but maybe on our next trip. All in all, it sure beat the hell out of going to Vegas or Puerto Rico again. Thanks for reading. Cheers.

So, because I care about the random folks who may be reading my blog, here’s my 2 cents— start your New Year’s resolutions… again. You know you already know them, and you know damn well that you haven’t done all of them. Or even any of them. Yes, fess up.

Because (and I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again) if you have something you want to do, then what is stopping you from doing it? Don’t wait for January—get to it already! You don’t know what the future will hold. You may think you have all of the time in the world, but unless that thing is playing shuffleboard in a retirement home and not remembering what the score is— then no, sorry but you don’t.

Of course, I’d be a liar if I told you that I didn’t say these things as much for myself as I do for anyone who reads this. But I’m right here with you, having a long commute and job that takes 90% of my daily energy, and then trying to cram the rest of my life and dreams into the leftover 10%. It’s not ideal… but we have to make it work. We have to.

Thus, in the neverending pursuit of how to transform Jack Shit into Hot Shit, it appears to me that waiting for the New Year and the fresh start is just an illusion. Time goes on no matter what, it won’t stop for you, and it won’t even be courteous and wait for you if you woke up 5 minutes late.

So get to it. Now. Cheers.

"The Peace Keeping Lie" - Silhouette

There are words that lick the frosting off of your cupcake fucking world. Words that throw golden gates into the bridge of your nose. Words that rock the pants out of themselves.

There are words neatly laid across the ironing board, pressed and steamed so you may present them on yourself to your world of one. Your suit of cashmere lies, ready to assume a fashionable persona that may or may not be who you once were. As you walk in public, words begin to fall off and others pick them up.

So the word on the street is that you have caught the Twitter disease and no longer think in streaming madman thought processes, but rather in 140 character tweets. The word is that you can no longer be the happy clichéd doorframe that everyone wanted you to walk through.

It has been widely believed that you should check with your doctor to see if you qualify for a pharmaceutical to make you a whole egg again. Who needs horses and king’s men if only chemically happy words will put you back together again?

Who needs anything anymore? You don’t. You only need 140 characters. You only need amusing mottos of self loathing. That’s what you need. You need instant oatmeal memory. Popcorn paragraphs. A grand old basket of superfried clever rings.

You are fast food function key, baby. You make a respectable dent in a noisy metropolis machine. You burn headbanger hot, blow the fuckgasm up, blast the head off of a photo of yourself at half speed.  Whatever anything gets your 140 characters, who really cares.

There are words that show you who you could have been, words that melt away your candle wax face, your cotton candy eyes that got wisked away by the valley birds, your sugar in the dead wind.

There are words that prove you may still have a chance, a blind hope, a vibrating fist in the sand. But no. You don’t need any of that. You only need characters. Characters that support you. And characters that leave you somehow and strangely.

Silent.

2. Someone on my train is eating bacon. This type of inconsiderate behavior should be outlawed and… PLEASE PLEASE share some of your bacon!!

3. Of course, too much giving in to bacon will lead you to the fat side of the Force.

4. In lighter news, the man across the aisle is wearing a really ugly tie, mostly bald, and makes me look skinny. Ah, that made me feel better.

5. My sister @bethcardwell is retiring from her day job of 14 yrs today to do her photography FT. I’m so proud that I couldn’t be more jealous.

6. It’s refreshing when you see someone chase their dreams. Of course, most times, they have to be a little cuckoo. But very refreshing to see.

7. Somewhere along the line, all of us will have to choose between what we want to do and what we have to do. There’s no way around this.

8. I personally want to drink beer, eat bacon, and make psychedelic art. But I suppose I have to do something more constructive. Sigh.

9. I could lie & tell you that you’ll be maximizing your weekend, but the universe knows better and you’ll be back to the grind soon enough.

10. This morning’s SomBlock is sponsored by the last Red Bull in the fridge, because like Rambo said to the Big Bad Wolf, “Your ass is mine!”

*** Every weekday from 8-9am while traveling from Stamford to Manhattan, Mark Sahm writes a block of thoughts on his Twitter account (@Somrod) via his iPhone.***

As chronicled back in June, I knew the Mac Pro model I wanted to buy would eventually get discounted once they introduced newer models. Did I figure that it would take nine months for Apple to update? Hell no! (Although it did allow more time to save up.) But when Apple updated their Mac Pro line on Monday, the kicker suddenly became: did waiting save me nearly a grand? Hell YES!! Here’s how the comparison broke down in the end:

Sahm’s Mac Pro Specs 6/11/08 – Price: $3,549.00

• Processor: Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-Core)
• RAM: 4GB (4×1GB)
• None
• Hard Drive: 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• None
• None
• None
• Graphic Card: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
• Two 16x SuperDrives

Sahm’s Mac Pro Specs 3/05/09 – Price: $2,689.00

• Processor: Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-Core)
• RAM: 2GB (2×1GB)
• None
• Hard Drive: 320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
• None
• None
• None
• Graphic Card: ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB
• One 16x SuperDrive

Sure, there were a couple sacrifices in the details (less pre-installed RAM, slightly less graphics card, one less Superdrive). But in the end, we’re psyched that the Somrod workstation will be so significantly upgraded. Podcasts, graphics, web graphics, networking— everything will benefit. While I won’t go so far to say we’re going to become super efficient (because we’re highly distracted), it will help… A LOT!

Alas, it does signal the end of an era for my loyal Power Mac G4 Quicksilver, which has served me well since 2001. For a computer to last 8 years is unheard of, so I will only hope this Mac Pro can last as long. Cheers.

.

So what if it wasn’t a banner year for us? We still got a lot of little things accomplished (updated our websites, finally finished our basement renovations, did 4 podcasts, and regenerated S.Rod’s spine!). It just was not the BIG things we’ve been planning for so long, those projects that we like to call “life-redeeming”.

But we will choose to be optimistic in our prognostication for 2009, because well, what the hell— what do we have to lose for trying? Nothing. But our adage is NOT to make resolutions. After all, resolutions are for people that give up in 40 days or less, because aerobics are actually kind of hard.

Instead, we’re going to make “Goals That Must Be Accomplished Immediately”. This is also known as the self-fulfilling prophecy, a cherished relic in the Somrod household, and something that we have in our targeting computer for 2009.

And thus, tonight we drink away that bad taste in our mouth that 2008 left (“That didn’t taste like chicken”) and tomorrow, we unwrap the clean slate and begin the plotting and scheming again… what? What’s that you say? Unwrapping was last week? Oh well. Cheers and enjoy!

The Original Commute: M. Sahm takes a 37 minute Metro-North train from Westchester to NYC. At the end of his work day, he takes another 37 minute trip, and is home by 7pm. With 20 minutes of walking included, total daily commute time is 1 hour and 34 minutes.

Alteration #1: Sahm and S.Rod cannot find a house within their budget in Westchester, or an affordable condo with enough space to grow and expand their home-based business. So they decide to buy a townhouse in Connecticut, 15 minutes north of where they lived in NY.

Commute #2: Sahm now takes a 50 minute MN train from CT to NYC. Return trip is a 45 minute express that puts him home at 7:15pm. Tack on 20 minutes of walk time, total daily commute time is now 1 hour and 55 minutes. Twenty one extra minutes is not too bad a sacrifice to be a homeowner, right?

Alteration #2: Five months after Sahm moves to CT, his employers also decide to move their office, but not to CT. They move from Midtown Manhattan (which was an 8 minute walk from the Metro-North station) to one block north of Wall Street. For you non-New Yorkers out there, Wall Street is about 5 miles south of Midtown.

Current Commute #3: Sahm still takes the same 50 minute train in the morning. But now, to get to Wall Street, he hops on the NYC Subway which averages (with walking and waiting included) about 30 minutes to get to Wall Street… on a good day. On a bad day, it averages 45 minutes. Return trip is 30 minutes (Subway) followed by 45 minutes (Metro-North) and that puts him home at 8pm.

Now that assumes the Subway does not get halted for any reason. Which any straphanger will tell you, rarely happens on a peak hour train. More often than not, Sahm will miss his Metro North train and the one that follows ten minutes later. After that, he will not see another express train for thirty minutes.

So, in a best case scenario for #3, with 25 minutes of walk time, total daily commute time is now 3 hours. In a worst case for #3, with the walk time, two delayed Subways and a missed Metro North train (which believe it or not, happens about half of the time), total daily commute time is now 4 hours.

I have been doing this commute for 9 months. Now you know. Of course, we all know what the obvious and simplest solution is. But nothing has materialized. Thus, this is where I stand. I will still hold out hope for resolution. In the meantime, cheers.