On this day: 1556 - The deadliest earthquake in history, the Shaanxi earthquake, hits Shaanxi province, China. The death toll may have been as high as 830,000.



So Oscar and I saw Memoirs of a Geisha tonight. A fabulous story about an american kid who learns the ancient art of karate from Mr Myagi. No? Oh well. Needless to say it was absolutely fabulous. Oscar had his reservations, but I for one thoughouly enjoyed it.

It highlighted something for me in my own life that is the reason behind this post. The idea of respect is something that I think needs to be highlighted. Not necessarily 'respect' in the circumstance of human to human interaction (or god forbid the african american colloquialism of the word), but respect for ideas, and the respect of the items we own.

Perhaps the best way to describe it is the way you treat something important to you (something of much sentimental and/or financial value) compared to something like a ball point pen.

No one treats a ball point pen with much thought or respect. We will leave it on the floor, step on it and generally not care about it. When it dies we do not mourn it - even for a second - before we toss it aside in the bin, go to the store and pay 50c for a box of 20 more.

My instinct is that we should try to treat more of our possessions (and our friends, and our self) with more and more respect. I do not know why I feel this.

In an effort to simplify my life, I decided to make a list of all the items I wanted in my new apartment. Moving is a good time to begin practicing change. What I found when I listed these things is that I was filtering through the stuff I could remember from my apartment. In doing so, I had created a list of the things that were important to me.

Perhaps what was more interesting than the items on the list, was the items that were not on the list. All the crap that i've garnered, and since it was not important enough for me to list, I will be removing it to try to seek simplicity.

Lastly tonight, I have recieved news that Disney is going to purchase Pixar for $7 or $8 billion dollars. At first this made me sad, but I think having Steve Jobs on the board, is the smartest business decision that Disney could've hoped for. Steve likes fixer-uppers and I suspect that this be more Disney being raised to Pixar's level than Pixar being lowered to Disney.