I’ve found myself regularly drinking cold brew coffee. I’ve been buying the Starbucks brand by the boxes from costco, and recently they no longer have them in stock. So, I’ve decided to cold brew it myself.
I’ve been grinding Philz Tesora beans and soaking them into the Takeya cold brew coffee maker for about 12-14 hours.
On the left is what the coffee looked like before putting into the fridge. On the right is what it looked like after 12 hours. One of my buddies said that it still looks little light, so it needs some more time. My technique probably needs some work, but it’s a good start.
I’ve been grilling some food with Annie over the last few weeks using an old school charcoal grill. This past weekened, we did some meal prep, cooking up salmon, impossible burgers and shrimp.
You’ll also notice the fresh snow pea tips pictured above—those are from our garden!
Quick shout out to Kent and Julia for hooking us up with the fresh striped bass they caught near Martha’s Vineyard. It was fresh and tasted amazing (prepared in a a Vietnamese style).
I worked with Joel back in the days of Clearspring—he was the guy who hired me and was my boss (VP product). I haven’t come across as many people with the balance of intelligence and calmness. He was a very gentle spirit, worked hard and always brought in an optimistic sense of humor.
I had a chance to go to his funeral and catch up with some old comrades. I wish we could have all hung out under different circumstances, but it was good to see some familiar faces.
Joel is an inspiration to us of how we should laugh, love and live. His values and friendship will always be cherished by us, and his memory and positive energy will help us shape the futur. To all my comrades, let’s catch up soon. Life is too short to wait for opportunities.
To Joel, thank you for being our moral compass, teacher and friend. Rest in peace.
Ps. I wrote this blog post years ago, and Hooman and I were referring to Joel at the time.
I’m within striking distance of a 25lbs weight loss since I first started a little over 3 months ago. I weighed 195.4lbs and this morning I weighed 170.6lbs. I haven’t been this weight bracket since 2013. The combination of proper diet and exercise has enabled me to sustain trajectory. The majority of my exercise comes from running 2+ miles per day, and I’ve found some additional supplimentary forms of exercise like hiking, biking and swimming.
After owning a home in this neighborhood for nearly 2 years, I’ve had the chance to use it the first time this month. I’m not particularly good at swimming, so this will give me something new to work on. I’m not sure it will be a regular part of my routine, but it’s a tool to change things up if I hit a wall.
I reassembled my bike recently and I’ve been exploring some scenic trails nearby. It’s nice getting outside every once and while for some fresh air. The e-bike also flattens out any hills around here, transforming any strenuous climbs into a nice cruise. While some may say that’s cheating, I think biking outside for me is more of a casual recreation to recharge, versus rough it out.
In other news, we should be getting our Tonal pretty soon, and I think that’ll be a nice way to keep things fresh. I’ve never really strength trained, so this will be a new experience. The next milestone is going to be 165lbs, but it’ll be more challenging as I will probably develop more muscle as well. I will need to start tracking new data points since weight is less relevant. As an example, my waistline (at its largest) was 41″, and today it’s 36.25″. I’d like to continue to reduce my visceral fat and get my mid-section to 34″.
I’m getting there. It’s just a matter of consistency and time at this point.
As I return back to a life where I don’t have to travel as much, I can establish a proper routine for excercise, diet and rest. Over the last few years, I made the mistake of thinking that if I wanted different results in life, I needed to do something different. I think this is true for creativity and exposure, but it came at a steep price (financially, emotionally, and physically).
The secret of tomorrow is in the routine today (like meal prepping, consistent hours of rest, etc). Without routine, I was constantly trying to reinvent the wheel and experimenting without consistency. Without routine, it’s hard to benchmark exactly where you are and what you can do to optimize every day. It’s also very challenging to make plans when schedules are unpredicatable or easily disrupted.
As for discipline, I believe it’s a way of committing to decisions ahead of time so that you don’t have to make the wrong choice when you don’t give in when you’re weak. The problem with discipline is that it is similar will-power—it’s a limited resource to always tap into it.
As I get older, I have found that you have to always have to be at the center of routine and discipline, with the willingness to re-evaluate things as needed if there’s stagnation. Many times we look for excitment to spice up life, but there has to be consistency with the use of time in order to move large initiatives forward.
After seeing a story of the Glenstone museum on one of my buddy’s IG stories, I added it to the bookmarks of places I wanted to visit in Maryland when my schedule opened up a little. And as fate would write it, I happened to check the Glenstone calendar last week in the morning on a whim, and there was a single appointment available that day, while the entire calendar for the next 3 months was completely booked. So I took the opportunity to check it out that friday afternoon with Annie.
The museum is actually a combination of art, architecture and beautiful landscaping. As we traversed to the gardens, we found ourselves immersed in a beautiful hike that incorporated experience design (with sound) and exhibits. It was inspirational, relaxing, and helped us reach our daily step count.
Photography was prohibited inside the museum, but some of the pieces were very special. It’s interesting that the architecture was almost more inspiring—there was a deck built on top of a small man made pond in the center of the museum, enclosed by glass. This was probably my favorite moment.
In many ways, this reminded me a little of california, with all the micro-climates and everchanging bioms. I’m hoping to go back there soon to explore it a little more. It was a lovely experience that I recommend to anyone who’s in the neighborhood.
