there may be danger in the deed, But there is honour too

    Sleep eludes me. It's funny (or maybe it's not, who knows, I could be hallucinating) that I'm such a solitary person, these three days on my own all of a sudden seem to be enormously challenging for me. Maybe it's just the lack of sleep, though.
     Just writing this is reminding me of an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which our intrepid crew stumbles upon...something...that renders them unable to sleep (all except the Betazoid counselor, who has super-detailed and disturbing dreams). The ship's doctor--typically a rather dry and mild woman, but at this point also affected by the disturbance--waxes on about the situation quite dramatically:

We have to dream in order to survive. If we don't reach REM sleep, we don't dream, we... we begin to lose our cognitive abilities, we find it hard to concentrate, we forget... how to do the most ordinary task. Then we become irritable, paranoid; some people experience hallucinations.

    Yep, I'm sleepy.

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    A few weeks ago (? maybe? I'm not certain exactly when it was) I signed up with lumosity.com. It was late, I was bored, I remembered seeing an advertisement on TV about it, and it seemed harmless enough.
     Well, yeah, it's that. It's also terribly engrossing, frustrating, fun, annoying, and I even think it's working. Check it out. (My progress over the last four weeks is shown graphically below.)

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    Charlie Trotter died today. I didn't know him, but almost anyone from around here would have heard of him. It's a sad day in the world of restaurants, "small business" (in the sense of starting your own place in your own way on your own terms, with your own vision, and making it work by force of will), and this area.
     In this, I am reminded of an old friend. We knew each other in high school. He was gregarious, very outgoing and friendly, a terrific guy. He intended to go into a job in radio. Somewhere along the way, though, he was sidetracked and gained an interest in cooking. Others tried to dissuade him, urging him to stick with the career for which he'd been educated. He had his heart set, though, and he went for it.
     It wasn't easy, but he succeeded. He launched and ran his own restaurant in a large city for several years, and has now branched out into different areas of the field. He was a James Beard Award semifinalist. He's a rock-star, really. I could not be more proud of him. Though we're out of touch, I've followed him--discreetly and respectfully--all along. I think it's terrific that he went for it, just like Charlie Trotter did. There's my lesson, my example, my thought for today: Take your one shot.

[the title quotation is by W.E. Aytoun, from "The Island of the Scots" in Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers]