Originally posted on my blog Siliconundrum.

The question is … but is it art! It’s something I use to ask/say to my other “arty” friends back in Jr High back in the glorious(?) 70′s(?) … OMG! And so the question is raised today. I’m not trying to rekindle the age old battle about clay Art vs Craft. No! I’m saying it more tongue in cheek this time around.

I have to give a big shout out to Diana Fayt for turning me onto a very cool app called Hipstamatic for iPhone. She published a photo yesterday which I knew came from her iPhone, so I tweeted her asking what app. I knew there were billions an billions of apps it could have been. She was kind enough to tweet me back a reply. So of course I fire up iTunes and spent a whopping $1.99 and purchased a copy for myself. All I can say is WOW! It’s like my 1st gen iPhone dropped orange sunshine!

After meeting a downtown client this morning, (my day job is being a Mac computer consultant) I decided to take my new toy.app and re-explore the Pike Place Market. It’s been a long time since I had been or was inclined to take photos. One of the pitfalls of living in Seattle for so long is becoming apathetic to the innate beauty of the market. Tourists or not!

Sometimes I wonder where the time goes. Most times I’m so caught up in the mind-numbing sameness of the every day, that I often don’t realize time has passed. Or maybe I just don’t want to consciously recognize I’ve gotten another day older … and as the song goes … deeper in debt.

And to look at the line before, and the one in the song too … I’m also afraid I’m reaching the 16-ton mark. Okay maybe that’s a “little” exaggerated, but I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been. And that is certainly a frightening thought to an aging man. Well at least this aging man. I can’t speak for us all.

My vanity will not allow me to reveal my current weight. Well okay … I currently weigh 20 stones. You do the math! It’s with this in mind I figured it was time. Time to get back to the gym. My doctor has been urging me to. He also offered up this little nugget too. “Joe … you should get back to the gym. Especially now that you are being

I remember being there. I was high up almost touching the sky. Nothing could bring me down short of a bullet to the brain or some other grand misstep. I’d never been this high. Not to see a show at least. Not to see HIM. It was like an out of body experience. I’m here … and I’m somewhere else …

It was a beautiful sunny post-summer Sunday. September 22, 1974 to be exact. Having just finished my senior year at Linden High School, followed by a summer of “workin’ in Daddy’s garage,” then moving into a Rahway apartment with my sister, sliding right into my first semester at F.I.T. as a photography major … it was a welcome respite.

The sunny days of the previous week had dissolved into gray that day, and the skies wept because of it. The creek was running high from accumulated downpours. The air was cool and damp as I opened the sliding door. I needed that little brisk slap to fully awaken. But then again … did I really need to be fully awake?

I sat at my computer like most other mornings watching the cats rustle, stretch and yawn, starting their lazy day. Started my morning reads. MacWorld.com. OS X Hints.com. MacNN. Seattle Times … ad infinitum. A morning like many others. One by one the cats filed past as they time shared my lap or my arms. (I once read somewhere that in multiple cat households, cats tend to ‘time share’ their owner(s). I was intrigued by the concept alone!) It’s kind of tough to read or type when you have an arm full of the Rock man. But it’s a trade off I’d make. Any day. Then again … every day. It’s part of my pre- breakfast morning ritual. There are times I even have to put my feet up on the desk to create a larger landing pad for said time-sharers. It’s easier to multi-task that way. You know. Petting, rubbing and reading. What could be better! Okay … coffee, petting, rubbing and reading.

Okay. It only took seven days for me to break down & bite the silverish bullet that is the iPhone. I ranted. I raved. I kvetched. Then I broke down and bought one. Told you I was only human!

Dale from Crow’s Nest has that ‘extra’ one still kicking around … and I convinced myself … with a little help from Edie. She’s the office manager at the Seattle office. It had gotten to the point where so many people were asking me how to do ‘something’ on the iPhone that I figured it was ‘my duty’ as an informed Apple consultant to have one of these babies to call my own. Of course I made this purchase solely in the name of research. Yeah research. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

So yes …. Mr eMac Consulting now HAS an iPhone. Woo hoo!

Now that I have one let the research begin!

I’m fixing a hole where the rain gets in … and kept my mind from withering … from watching bad Monday night TV.

The rain was mighty. Seemingly much more mighty than the roof over our collective heads. There was a river torrent flowing down ‘Parking Lot Mountain’ into the storm drain. It was ‘east coast rain’ not the sort we are accustomed to in the Pacific Northwest. It was beyond a misting, beyond a drizzle. No. It was downright teeming.

Chris noticed the dripping on the window. I went over to look at the intruding liquid, and sure enough, rain water was leaking in. Now the oddity here was the outside of the window was dry as a bone. It certainly was odd, seeing how the window is six feet back from the edge of the balcony & protected by the overhanging roof. The roof extends to the edge of the balcony. So nothing on the balcony gets wet from rain … not even plants on the balcony!

It’s a lazy Saturday afternoon here in Bridgehaven. Did I mention that most of the folks living here are senior citizens? That’s okay though. I’ve hit fifty. I’m slidin’ into senior citizen-dom myself. Crap! Did I just say that? Yeah .. it’s the truth. Hell …. my partner Chris was told he was ‘middle aged’ by one of his friends. Middle-aged at thirty-six? So I must be sliding into the home plate of cremation … or Cremora. Put that in your coffee!

Was hangin’ over the balcony chattin’ up the downstairs neighbor & her daughter. They were working on getting the balcony all gussied up for the spring planting & summer fun. I wonder if these citizens are party animals. I guess only time will tell.

The cats were wanting to leap off the balcony and check out the action below. Let’s hope that’s not going to happen …. EVER!

Okay. It has been a while. Well … actually it’s been over a year. So much has gone on. So much has improved. But where to start?

At he beginning Joe. At the beginning.

It seemed like only yesterday … oye … already with the cliches. Okay it seems like it was only, 668 days, no 95 weeks, no, 1 Year, 9 Months, and 30 Days since my last confession or blog entry … take your pick. Break out your abacus & double check my math. Can people still do math in this country … can we?

Since those last entries a LOT of things have changed. First and foremost my health has gotten markedly better. My Sarcoidosis has been pushed to the back burner, there are very few, if any, signs that I ever had it. And believe me … I did & still do HAVE it. It’s like a bad toe fungus … you can make it subside, but it might come back. But I won’t linger on that thought.

Senior Pulmonologist Dr Spaghetti-Sauce has told me my lung capacity is back to “normal for a man my age.” I didn’t know whether to kiss him (no tongue please) or smack him … “a man my age” … indeed! Then Again I just turned the big five oh!!! Yup fifty big ones. No big thing.

Bought a new car. Yup. Traded in the gas-aholic 4-Runner for a tea totaling Scion tC. Chris & I moved out of Eastlake and bought a condo in the Pinehurst neighborhood of Seattle.

Never thought I could own a “home of my own” but here I sit. Though for the first month I didn’t do much sitting. I painted walls, made art, removed a wet bar … and it was all fun. It now looks like our home. Pretty amazing stuff … heady … if you will. And yes I will! Yes we will!