Stripping all the varnish off on a Saturday with Lauren’s help:

That took much longer than I thought and it was cold. Only 50 degrees. My hands were numb or so I thought.

Then there were days and nights of sanding (again Lauren helped!):

And then there was the prestaining to help the stain soak in evenly later:

And then first coat of real stain:

And progress

And then things went bad by coat 3:

All the areas where the old orange-ish stain wouldn’t come out of the wood, now shows through the dark stain. It wouldn’t let anymore stain soak into it by this point and started getting blotchy. I never did do the fronts of the cabinets with a 3rd coat after I saw the results of the backs of the cabinets.

So now I’m starting over, sanding to prepare for PAINT!:

I went to Sherwin Williams and picked up a primer/sealer to paint over the stain with and a nice dark mahogany paint. Hopefully it will be complete in 2 more weeks… we will see.

I helped Josh get the sandrail to the house and we did spring cleaning in the garage. We got rid of a big box of stuff. There’s still more I want to sell and get rid of. We’re going to sell our lawn mower that we used maybe 4 times since we had it. Keith and Lauren are getting a new place at the end of April and need a lawn mower so we’re gonna sell it to them.

Both Saturday and Sunday I took Meeka for a 3 mile walk. She was so tired on Sunday at about 2.5 miles she just laid in the grass for about 5 minutes then we continued on our way. We took Damien to the park with Cassie, Lauren, Keith and Charlie on Sunday too. Charlie flew his helicopter. He’s got some skills! I can’t imagine how long it takes to learn all that. Cassie loved the helicopter and wanted to chase it. It was cute. I posted pics in Picasa album… see right sidebar.

We’re pricing out granite and marble slabs for the counter and bath top and then travertine tile for the shower and around the bathtub. The slabs will be way easier to clean. I think we need to get undermount sinks and then we’ll try to sell our current sinks. I hope they can put a slab over our tub, no way we’re getting a new tub (do they even make undermount jacuzzi tubs?). We’re saving the glass shower surround too… found out a new one is like $1200! Yikes!

So hard to believe we’re doing this, but pay minimum $1500 to a plumber and contractor to fix this just seems like a wasted investment.

It was very helpful to see how other companies do their project management… even if they weren’t using drupal their methods are so effective! So I was doubly happy when I found that our methods are very close to the methods. What methods you ask? Well they talked a lot about waterfall vs. agile development… the great debate. Where you start one task and you don’t start another until the previous is complete (waterfall) and agile where you start one task.. if you get stuck go work on something else… and do iterations of changes, tasks overlap in the timeline, etc. They say waterfall works great for old school sites with site maps and exact hierarchical structure. But realistically websites today (and especially dynamic sites built with drupal) are not hierarchical. Pages and articles link to each other in all different ways. There’s probably a primary and maybe a secondary navigation… but that’s it, the rest is a cloud. So it seems the best way to do this… (which we do, yipee!) is first stage planning, second stage design AND development. That’s right not design finalize and stamp of approval on design and then start development. We design and develop at the same time. That way while developing we say “hey, wait that doesn’t work the way we thought… it has to work this way… um, designer, can you change it so we can style it when it works like this?”. It goes through iterations of what works back and forth with designer and developer.

Another helpful tip, more interestingly enough… don’t show the client anything until the wireframe stage… don’t talk to them about content types, CCK, workflow and other drupal mumbo jumbo. It will only have them trying to speak your language (incorrectly) and create a communication divide. Talk to them in “real-world language” and then go back and talk drupal with your team. Don’t teach them more than they need to know… with the client less is more. Deliver wireframes to your client, deliver mockups to your client and deliver alpha site to your client. Never deliver an unthemed site to your client. We learned this one… it can terrify the poor client and they can lose trust in you. They don’t understand CSS and theming. All they see is something they didn’t want… whether it functions the way they asked or not! This was one minor mistake we had with our last client, but luckily the client didn’t overreact and only said uhh… can that all be on the same line and can’t that look like this? Which created extra time spent on communication and reassurance, but it could have been avoided… if we only showed the alpha and not the prototype to the client. If it were a different client it could have gone worse though… much worse.

Another interesting debate in these project management/process sessions was number of mock-ups or wire frames to show a client (as in different mock-ups or wire frames). Some people said you should only show one, the one the design/dev team agree on. Some said you should show many. I agree with showing many… but before I wasn’t convinced really in one direction or the other… though in practice we show many (3-4). Most times the design your team prefers (though maybe not unanimously) is not the design the client picks. But this isn’t a bad thing… because a client does not always know how to say what they need but they can point to it. You may not realize it when they pick the less desireable design but later in the process you will learn you did the right thing because the client picked it for a reason. When showing only one design, the client may be fine with it, but later may feel like you limited their choices and didn’t really hit on what they were looking for.

Flex can do something very similar. I’m not as savvy with Flex, just because it deals more with the backend programming that I try to stay away from. It uses the Services module in Drupal as well and can feed your Flex application with Drupal data. The code is shorter using MXML but I’d rather stick with what I know and what I’m good at… the design stuff with Flash. Not enough room in my brain for Flex.

Another good session I saw was on Scaling Drupal. They talked about how to make your site faster as it gets larger. I was very happy to see everything they mentioned we use. From tools to techniques… we covered most of it. Load testing (hp load runner, openload, jmeter), foxyproxy (never used this one), ySlow, standard drupal core caching, memcache, block cache, gzip, boost module (never used this either), Cacti (never used this), js aggregation, load js at bottom of pages, css aggregation and now CDNs which we’re looking into.

I found it amusing that almost everyone (well not everyone, but the majority!) has macs. It’s great that developers are now using macs… of course boot camp and vmware fusion/parallels has helped so they can run windows at the same time. Even if they don’t know it… the usability in the macOS is so stellar it may impress upon them how usable their sites/modules etc. could be… or maybe they’re just code monkeys Here’s a screenshot I took during one of my sessions… Yes, that’s 108 computers on the wifi network and only 6, yes SIX windows computers, the other 102 are macs

There was a funny keynote today on “Is Drupal Moral?”. The speaker, David Weinberger, a philsopher, was pretty funny. His powerpoint was fantastic too.

Today’s sessions were somewhat productive. I picked up a few tidbits of knowledge. The highlight was probably Apache Solr. Somehow this technology missed my radar completely. It was my first time learning about it and there’s a module for it in Drupal. It’s based on Lucene. Basically Apache Solr is a wrapper around Lucene. It’s the coolest search ever!

It has result biasing; so for instance “sticky” articles can have higher weights (or lower), articles with more comments can have higher weights (or lower), etc. It also has advanced features that let you exclude content types or apply weightages for content types, even CCK fields weights! It lets the user sort by relevance, title, date, etc. in a block. It also lets users filter by content type in a block. It has a “More Like This” block that finds articles with similar keywords and suggests them to users. Like Google, it also has “Did you mean ***** ?” functionality. I guess sites like Netflix, Cnet, Citysearch, Stubhub, Gamespot and AOL use Apache Solr. It takes a dedicated server though and some configuration… I’ll have to investigate this further. Right now I’m sold on all the bells and whistles and the magic they performed at the session.

It was my first time seeing Dries Buytaert (creator of Drupal) speak. He’s an excellent speaker and kept the crowd engaged with his awesome slides during the keynote. He gave a great history of Drupal and how the community keeps doubling year after year.

I sat in for an Organic Groups session and it was sadly not as great as I hoped. It mostly confirmed everything I already learned on my own last week. Although, it did give me a [possibly] better idea for subgroups I need to look into (taxonomy).

On a side note, the convention center is not a safe neighborhood at all. My hotel is a nice historic hotel about 2 blocks away, but still it’s a bad neighborhood to walk through. Here’s some pics I took while rushing through to safety armed with my pepper spray! (haha… dramatic enough?):

So the neighborhood I’m in… isn’t really the safest. I’d take photos of it, just cuz it’d make nice grungy looking photos, but I’m afraid to take my camera out of my bag and afraid to stop walking. So for the next 3 days I’m going to just go to and from the convention center during daylight hours and pick up dinner on the walk back to the hotel each evening. Can’t wait till Tracey, Christine and Chrissy get here! (and we switch hotels then to Dupont Circle area)

For the first time in my life I feel I’ve earned the right to wear my track jacket!

So excited that Kate Winslet won for The Reader. I really liked that movie and I think she did an awesome job. Also really happy with Sean Penn’s win for Best Actor for Milk. I never heard the story of Harvey Milk before, it was really inspiring to watch.

Maybe next year I’ll try to be a seat filler. We’ll see…

Frost/Nixon was great too. Frank Langella does an excellent job playing Nixon. The directing was great too. It really brings to light a lot of what politics really are.

Slumdog Millionaire was a great feel good movie. It goes through all the violence, gang-life, poverty and police brutality and then finishes with an expected feel good ending. I felt it was a little predictable but still put together really well. Danny Boyle, the director also did Trainspotting…

Still have to see Milk and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and then I have the Best Picture category covered!

The train stops in Albuquerque, New Mexico to stop and refuel, etc. for 1 hour where you can get off the train and check out the Native American shops etc. nearby the train station. The train stops at other places too but sometimes it’s 5-10 mins other times int’s 20 mins etc. The layover is in Chicago where we’ll have a 7 hour layover or something where we’ll be downtown Chicago and we can check stuff out for a long while before our changeover to the next train. So, I’m really looking forward to the whole train thing now. I’m not forgetting I’ll need dramamine probably most of the time, but it’s an experience I’d like to have in my life! But Josh tells me not to get my hopes up now… with him losing his job and all, everything is up in the air.

I saw this at Albertson’s today.

Morrissey
Franz Ferdinand
Conor Oberst
Beirut
The Black Keys
The Ting Tings
Ghostland Observatory
Crystal Castles
A Place to Bury Strangers
Noah and the Whale
Los Campesinos!
The Killers
TV on the Radio
Band of Horses
MSTRKRFT
Henry Rollins
Liars
The Cure
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Peter Bjorn and John
Lykke Li
The Kills
Okkervil River
Vivian Girls

I’m back from Buffalo and Lori Beth found a wedding dress! She found several in fact. There were probably 3 top dresses she liked after we visited 3 places. She went back to the first place we visited and ended up getting a beautiful dress! Tracey, Nicole and I found bridesmaid dresses as well. I’m excited! It’s gonna be a lot of fun.

Unfortunately it was FREEZING in Buffalo the whole time I was there… felt like 0, but apparantly it was 11-14 degrees the whole time with wind and on Sunday it snowed just for me! (or that’s what my Aunt said). I got to see some family when I was there, which was a great treat. I really miss everyone because I don’t see them at the holidays! Photos from my visit on the right side in my Picasa album.

Here’s the full story

http://nicecritic.com/

Since the Santa Ana winds brought spring back to Los Angeles, I decided to catch up on some spring cleaning early. I’m seriously thinking of getting one of those crazy Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaners. Athough, I’m slightly uncomfortable with the idea of something wildly spraying chemicals around the shower and around my stuff in the shower that will ultimately be on my skin. I hate hate hate cleaning the shower. A glass enclosed shower is beautiful, but sometimes shower curtains just make things simpler.

Speaking of penalty… looking into refinancing my house this year before December 2009. Unfortunately it looks really difficult if you owe more than your house is worth at this point! Which is what… 95% of CA home owners?

I still want to continue with 2008’s staying “green” resolution though. I find it’s become a way of life for me. I shiver when people use paper towels to dry their hands in their own homes. That’s what towels are for! I also cringe when I see someone ask for a bag when they are buying one very easy-to-carry item. Josh says I’m “smug” just like the South Park episode mocking San Francisco. But that’s fine with me. I’ll be “smug” and raise awareness about how easy it is to just say no… to plastic! I am perfectly capable of carrying this single bottle of shampoo to my car and then into my house without a plastic bag. I recycle every box a product comes in rather than tossing it into the trash. I tried biodegradable trash bags but they just tear way too quickly… Not sure if a durable biodegradable trash bag exists.  On garbage day, my neighbor and I have recycle cans that are way more full than trash cans. That’s cool

From Josh, I got an iPhone and a MacBook Pro!! Wow! The iPhone is very impressive. I had an iPod Touch, but the iPhone is that much better with constant internet access and an easy to use phone. Josh got an iPhone himself as well and loves it. We got the family plan to save some money. The new MacBook Pro has all the gestures for the touchpad which is really fun. It also has a much larger hard drive, so that’s very convenient.

Not sure if anyone has ever heard of or has the Flip Video Camcorder? It was one of the top selling items on Amazon the past few weeks. My friend at work has it and it looks really cool! It’s HD and stores up to 60 minutes of video. Built into the side is a USB port, so you can plug it directly into your computer. The software it uses is very easy to use as well. Here’s what it looks like:

Beside the craziness of the flight. Adobe MAX, the purpose of my trip was fantastic.. I’d like to highlight some parts but not sure where to even start. My favorite in the sneak peaks was probably the video searching software. You can select a face in a video and hit search to find the same person in other parts of the video. Your search results are clips of the video starting at the point in the playhead where that same person is. Of course like any search the results aren’t all what you want, you’ll get faces similar to the face you chose.. which could also be good. Another cool feature is it takes the speech and converts it to text, so you can search for a word that was said in the video.. by a person in the video or a narrator anything and it will find other spots in the video where that word was said. I’ve never seen anything like this and never thought about it.. so it was probably the most impressive to me.

My second favorite was an application for testing webpages. It will show how your webpage will be displayed in all browsers, Safari, Firefox for mac, Firefox 2 or 3 for PC, IE 6, 7 or 8. I saw this as a huge time saver because I develop on a mac a lot at home and I have to run Parallels sometimes just to test for PC browsers. There’s even onion skinning to view different versions on top of each other to see the differences.

So yea after 3 days of at least 10 hours of Adobe lecture I was burnt out.. but cool stuff. I gotta go to San Francisco again. I didn’t have time to see everything in daylight, but Paul and Kim were gracious enough to be my tour guides for a few days It’s such a beautiful city! I didn’t expect it to be so East coast, old world architecture. Maybe because I’m used to LA and Vegas on the West coast. Josh and I will definitely be back within a year!

Orange County > LA Union Station 27 minutes

LA Union Station > Santa Clarita 15 minutes

Santa Clarita > Palmdale 17 minutes

That’s fantastic! If only construction started 10 years ago… I doubt I’ll see while still living here.

More details here

Here’s pics

Paul’s wedding was really fun. Kim’s dress was awesome, she looked beautiful. The food was sooo good. I had Chilean Sea bass. Cake was delicious too. West Lake Village Inn was a perfect setting. The wedding was outdoors. It’s set on a golf course and the gardens are really nice. Here are the pics:

Paul’s wedding

Chrissy’s wedding

Cell Phones for Soldiers

Cell phone donation for several organizations

Cell phone for 911 emergency phones

Or just recycle it at a location near you

I learned most of this from carbonrally.com

Here are some wedding photos and then a pic from Pasquale’s (for Buffalo style pizza!) for dinner our last night in town.

iPod Nano (looks a lot like the old iPod Mini)

I’ll try to take lots of photos and not get too distracted with all the reunions!

1. I heard Bloc Party’s new song “Mercury” and decided I do not like it.

2. I added my new job title to my e-mail signature at work.

3. I learned I how to water my peace lillies (wait until the leaves go limp, then water.. never before that).

4. I bought Paul & Kim a wedding gift.

5. We picked and ate our first tomato of the season (our tomato plant is not so fruitful this year).

6.  I saw a king crab photo from Princess cruises crewmembers in Alaska. Eeek! scary!

7. I learned TopShop is coming to the US! and opening in NYC in fall, just in time for Tracey, Christine and my visit!

8. I bought 2 new run flat tires for my mini cooper and an alignment… Ouch! $560!

9. I gave Damien a bath. He smells like vanilla!

I never posted it here, so here’s the latest NIN album… FREE to download:

http://dl.nin.com/theslip/signup

More details here.

Our destination was the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, but not until we made a pit stop at a secret location - Topanga Canyon Park. The parking lot probably holds 25 cars… so it was a feat getting everyone in and out… a slow moving machine.

I posted photos in my gallery bottom right… but also lots of photos here…

More here

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4826897

Leave a comment! I want to know how old your tires are!

My Mini Cooper has tires from 2006, Josh’s truck’s tires are from 2005.

Unfortunately when we were riding out to find calm waters, Steve’s boat’s bimini shade (I think it’s called) cracked off the track and whacked me in my boney shoulder. It was one of those things where you like stub your toe on something or bang your knee on something really hard.. there’s an instance of no feeling then the pounding pain comes… just like that. I wasn’t gonna wakeboard after that but I iced my shoulder and like Steve said “be a man!” and I went out and did it anyway for a few times. There’s a bump on my left soulder now and it’s surprisingly only red no black and blue mark… yet anyway.

It was a really nice relaxing trip aside from that. I love that. Just sitting and chatting with friends at the lake can be just as much fun without the wakeboarding, etc. The sound of the water is so calming. It was really cool because there were not many boats on the water and we slept in an extra hour leaving the house at 6am instead of 5am and we still got in before the jetski limit.

The best part was probably that we shared our cove area with some really awesome people. They had 4 dogs. Two golden retrievers - Pepper and Mocha, a shnauzer - Thistle and a little black dog that I forget his name. Mocha reminded me of Kelsey back home. They were so much fun running into the water like crazy as soon as they got a little bit dry they were back in the water and they loved their boat too.

Made Josh and I really ponder this whole boat thing… I would prefer a boat to the seados. But I know Josh loves the seados and won’t get rid of them for a boat.. he’d just add a boat to his collection of toys. We decided if we can ever find storage for free on our own property or for much cheaper than we pay now… that storage fee is equivalent to a boat payment.

1. Capillaries are thinner than a strand of hair, it takes 20 capillaries to equal the thickness of hair!
2. Your right lung is slightly larger than your left lung.
3. Lance Armstrong is super human, his heart is 30% larger than the average human heart… so he can get oxygenated blood to his legs and other muscles faster and for longer periods of time than most!
4. There’s a disease called Smoker’s leg, that is common in smokers. Their capillaries in the peripheral arteries will clot causing the leg to turn grey/black… it can be treated but also results in amputation commonly. ICK!
5. A baby embryo at 4 weeks old looks a lot like a worm.
6. The spleen is way smaller than you think… but can balloon up to like 6x it’s size if you have leukemia.
7. The funny bone is actually a nerve very close to the surface of the skin.
8. The human heart will continue to beat, even when out of the body and cut into pieces. An electric impulse causes it to beat. (the biggest challenge in artificial hearts - an energy source to keep it beating)

The exhibit totally made me want to apologize to my body and try to treat it better. I feel like I’ve been torturing it with not enough excercise. I’ll never smoke in my life though.. wow… you see photos and videos of black lungs of smokers but nothing compares to seeing real human lungs of a smoker… photos and videos don’t do it justice. It was appalling it looked like it could not be alive in your body in that state. The human body is so risilient! I’m shocked at some of the conditions of the organs we saw. There were several aortas shown of people with normal to high cholesterol and it was so disgusting what high cholesterol does to your aorta and that’s the largest artery! It turned into a lumpy spongy fat curly mess instead of a clean smooth artery for blood to flow through.  I can’t imagine what the smaller arteries must look like!

I recommend it to anyone. It’s totally worth seeing. At the end of the exhibit they added an ostrich and girafe, which were also very cool. It was neat to see how feathers grow out of a bird.

I’ll never take my body for granted again…

Down the Line

The road should seriously be closed. It was sooo old that you couldn’t even see the yellow lines on the road at all. It was a grey crumbly mess. Not to mention the road was just wide enough for my mini to fit on it. Any other vehicle would have been scratched by the overrun bushes on each side. There’s no way 2 vehicles could pass each other on most stretches of it. Then we started to see hillside coming down from the mountain side eroding… literally piles of rocks in the road we had to drive slowly over. Some banging the bottom of my car. Then the road just started falling apart.. pot holes first then just pavement gone and 4″ drops into dirt to get back to pavement. Not to mention this road kept going higher and higher with no guard rails and steep drop offs like mile high drop offs. Usually you can see the mountains in the distance.. yea we were in the mountains and there weren’t many mountains taller than the one we were on. We were above the smog and everything it was 20 degrees cooler! I was so terrified the entire time. It was like the going up the big first hill of a roller coaster but for like 12 miles straight. Plus there was no sign of human life. So I was sure the road was just going to give and mini + us would go tumbling down the side of the mountain stranded for days with no one finding us… nursing our wounds and surviving on wheat thins, cheddar bunnies and gatorade. Ugh… it flashed before me eyes!

Well we finally got to the top, a point where we could go no further because my mini couldn’t make it when the pavement stopped and we got out of the car. It seems to go to a cell tower or electricity tower or something… not sure what it was for because there weren’t homes or anything for miles. I’m sure if anyone has to work on it, they take a helicopter there. There were a ton of bullet casing and stuff at the top of the hill and the signs on the way up were all shot up with bullet holes. Obviously horror movie like activity goes on along that road!

Anyway we went back down for the 12 miles and miraculous I’m here to tell about it.

Photos here… though they don’t do it much justice

Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies

I bought a few flowers and a nice swively tiered planter. I found some summery fabric at the fabric store and sewed some pillows for the front porch. Almost forgot about my succulent on the table there… it’s been there for a little over a month now and doing well. About the only thing that survives in that spot!

In front of the bushes I planted Pacificas. I saw a few neighbors have them and they really take off, so I think/hope they will do well in our yard . Walmart had solar lanterns on sale, so we picked up 8 of those to put along the garden and up the driveway. I’ll take some night photos of it later.

TRJAN SC

I took it to mean Trajan Small Caps (although there is no small caps for Trajan because it’s all uppercase!) a beautiful typeface haha.

Then I saw the plate holder… USC Trojans.

2. I opened what I thought was important mail and got a papercut! And it was junk mail. ugh a wound for something as unimportant as junk mail!

3.  New cell phone law goes into affect today and it is illegal to hold a cell phone to your ear and drive… buuuut it is legal to hold your phone and text message. WTF?! Looking at road holding cell phone to ear vs. looking at phone holding cell phone in hand. Neither should be legal.

I would have taken a photo, but I was too hungry and just ate them

So this is what I picked:

It’s not as stylish as the other bluetooth headsets out there, but it has something perfect for me in sunny California. A solar panel for charging! It’s the Iqua 603 SUN Bluetooth Wireless Headset. I’ve charged it once in the wall charger since I bought it and it’s been solar charging since. I just sit it in my car in the sun and it charges. Quite the opposite of most electronics that you should keep out of direct sunlight….

I also made some bruschetta which we had tonight as an appetizer. It also turned out awesome. I’m not a huge fan of raw onions and this bruschetta was just tomatoes, basil, olive oil and garlic cloves. It was perfect. Of course you could always add some mozarella cheese to the top as well.

Here’s the sausage cacciatore:

I posted some photos here

I can’t wait until next time!

Weird! I’m an ambidextrous cutter?! It might come from Dad’s left-handedness.

While I was at the Farmer’s market I picked up my favorite, some purple Irises. $3 for a bunch of 5, not too bad. The seller even mentioned that you should put ice in the water and they will last longer because they like it cooler!

New Photo Gallery! 

A couple years ago, I never would have thought I’d ever have the desire to do actionscript coding in my free time at home. It was so frustrating to me as a designer, but I feel I’ve accomplished a lot in the last few years! I hope it makes me a more well-rounded web designer

So excited for her!

Damien has been pushing me to walk him everyday now too since he’s been feeling better. We walk the entire neighborhood now and he just loves it. His back legs are starting to thicken back up with muscle. So both Damien and I are getting stronger! I wish I could say the same for Mandy, but she’s not doing too well… her tummy is getting bigger every week, so I know her time is limited. She has outlived the doctor’s life expectancy estimate with soft tissue sarcoma cancer though… so that makes me feel good. She’s a tough cookie! Plus she doesn’t act sick really. She’s full of energy and a really happy dog. Our goal is to keep her that way.

now playing: Yeasayer - 2080

Here’s a cute pic of Damien from last weekend:

The reception was really pretty too at the Rococo room in Old Town Pasadena, a block North of Colorado blvd. Pics here!

It was a lot of fun! The rest of the trip I visited with family and friends. It was so nice to see Nicole and Lisa again. We have so much fun doing absolutely nothing but hanging out at the house. We had plans to go to this new fondue place but it had an almost 2 hour wait! So we grabbed take out cheesecake from the cheesecake factory and did dessert night at their new house (which is also way cool with vintage-y urban outfitters style decor!). They have 2 black cats… the male- Batman had a thing for me. Apparantly he doesn’t really like people usually but he posing for my camera.

I posted the rest of the pics in the gallery… see link on the right

And then we found out Lauren has a horse! How cool is that? Her horse’s name is J.D., he just arrived here yesterday after 4 long days standing up in a trailer! We went to see him. He was very sleepy, but adorable none the less. He’s a beautiful all white horse (or handsome?). She’s boarding him at a ranch just across the wash, about 3 miles away. He’s still getting used to his new surroundings and I’m sure he’s going to take a few days to shake off the jetlag too!

Our map filled up fast… after one day, we all think India will disappear from the map soon and just be names!

Represent’in Buffalo! Already had 3 people ask if I was Canadian :[

It was very difficult to do this post… the photos give me goosebumps!! ew! ick! bleh!

Health magazine names top chain restaurant fare

Here are the stores offering the free bags:

Albertsons

• 3840 S. Labrea Ave., Los Angeles
• 9022 Balboa St., Northridge
• 6240 Foothill Blvd, Tujunga
• 7224 Mason Ave., Canoga Park
• 2035 Hillhurst Ave., Los Angeles
• 7227 Van Nuys Blvd., Van Nuys

El Super

• 12727 Sherman Way, North Hollywood
• 14620 Parthenia St., Panorama City

Food 4 Less

• 5100 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park
• 5420 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood
• 2750 E. First St., Los Angeles
• 1820 W. Slauson Ave., Los Angeles

Henry’s Farmers Market

• 820 N. Western Ave., San Pedro

Pavilions

• 6534 Platt Ave., West Hills
• 727 N. Vine St., Los Angeles

Ralphs

• 4760 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles
• 12057 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles
• 19871 Rinaldi St., Northridge
• 1050 N. Western, San Pedro
• 21909 Ventura Blvd., Woodland Hills
• 10901 Ventura Blvd., Studio City
• 10861 Le Conte Ave., Westwood
• 14049 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks
• 17250 Saticoy St., Van Nuys
• 10400 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills
• 645 W. Ninth St., Los Angeles

Smart & Final

• 3607 Vermont Ave., Los Angeles

Superior Super Warehouse

• 6140 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood
• 9801 N. Laurel Canyon, Pacoima
• 10211 S. Avalon Blvd., Los Angeles
• 8811 S. Western Ave., Los Angeles
• 5824 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles

Valu Plus Food Warehouse

• 120 W. Anaheim, Wilmington
• 6820 De Soto Ave., Canoga Park

Vons

• 2511 Daly St., Los Angeles
• 20440 Devonshire St., Chatsworth
• 3461 W. Third St., Los Angeles
• 7311 N. Figueroa St., Eagle Rock
• 1221 Gaffey St., San Pedro
• 7789 Foothill Blvd., Tujunga
• 3118 S. Sepulveda, Los Angeles
• 10321 Sepulveda Blvd., Mission Hills

We don’t have much planned yet.. want to see the Golden Gate Bridge and definitely stopping in Cupertino on the way up to see Apple Campus and the Campus store. It’d be fun to ride a cable car too. I hope Mandy and Damien will be up for the trip… Damien still hasn’t been walking well and has a compromised immune system (ear infection eye infection, you name it!). He has more tests later this week and next week for his intestines… his liver tested fine last week… after that is kidneys. His protein, glucose and cholesterol levels are low which is contributing to a weak immune system. We just want them with us in the trailer for the most part, we’re not planning on dragging them all over and they love the camper and are used to it… so we figure we’ll keep them comfortable for the trip

Invisible Shield

Since it’s so thin, it’s not much protection against dropping.. but I guess the silicone iSkin cases really aren’t either!

And then I learned how to transfer photos from my bluetooth phone to my bluetooth laptop… so I ended up cleaning all the pics out of my camera that I had intentions of posting the last year or so…

When I was in Philly visiting Tracey… we went to Urban Outfitters and maybe she wanted this lamp… so I took a photo of it?

My Mini with the rat in it… being towed to the dealer where the rat meets his end.

The subway stop by the LA Civic Center… on my way home for LA Detour Festival… people are flying/floating overhead.

Subbu brought back this Taj Mahal figurine from India on his most recent visit home. It’s made of the same white marble the Taj Mahal is made of (heavy)!

Here’s the track:
They Call it a Ritual

Taken from this New York Times article.

I’m such a believer in this! Not so sure about the cloudy days… but I don’t spend a lot of time outside on cloudy days (and there aren’t many up here in northern LA county!), maybe it’s time I start!

Other fun stuff:

• MINI Parking Corral at festival grounds
• MINI-Autocross Test Drive
• Live festival entertainment
• Headliner band Saturday night
• The “Bootload of Fun Zone” with activities for all ages
• MINI Vendor Village
• An official MTTS Welcome Kit for each paid attendee
• Friday night Meet & Greet (MINI Owners only)
• Rise and Shine Saturday Rally (MINI Owners only)

Josh is in (mostly for the test drive I think)! Who else is in??

I looked into replacing our bulbs in the house with energy-efficient bulbs. I found big lots of them on eBay which is probably the way we’ll go… but maybe next month because we have a lot of wedding gifts to buy!

I did pick up some sweet reusable bags from baggubag.com. Josh is embarassed to be seen with me because everytime we’re at a checkout at like Target or Albertsons and even Macy’s this weekend I pulled out a bag from my purse and said “Don’t worry about it, I have my own bag.” Btw, they don’t make it easy to use your own bags at the self checkout counters… “unexpected item in bagging area, please wait for assistance”… ugh. And they’re afraid to touch your bags at the grocery stores and department stores they just hand you all the stuff to bag it yourself

I also use a lot less paper towels now and I’ve been cleaning windows in the house with a squegee and water instead of paper towels and windex. I am feeling very good about my newly green ways It reduces all the plastic bag clutter we usually have under our sink and we have way less garbage on garbage day too!

Another tip… you can recycle all those plastic bags at local Ralph’s stores or Smart & Final stores! That’s where I took a whole bunch of our bags.

I think the biggest draw back for people that prefer the iphone is that it’s only wifi not like the iphone that can use GSM networks for web access. So I started a list of places that have wifi in my town and there’s quite a few.. every Panera bread has free wifi, a few hotels nearby, almost every coffee shop that’s NOT starbucks or coffee bean/tea leaf has free wifi (Peet’s coffee, Java ‘n Jazz, etc.). Even the golf clubs in town have free wifi. Who knew?!

An iphone was just not for me because I spend way too much time on my iPod and usually kill the battery pretty quickly.. so with all the features on the iPhone that can kill the battery even faster i’d be phone-less quite a bit. iPhones cell phone plans also start at $59.99… which is far far more than I can afford or would like to even spend on a cell phone bill… (I’m at $25/month right now and doing just fine).

Overall I’m very impressed with the iPod touch on day 2 of owning it… Google maps is my favorite application. I’m a little bummed that all the free 3rd party webapps require internet connection. For those that don’t require internet, you will need to “jailbreak” your ipod, which would void the warranty and could have unexpected results… which is too much of a risk for me after all the money that was spent on it!

I had fun with my parents too. We celebrated Easter a week late. We made pierogi, placzek, braided easter bread and more! I’ll see them again in Buffalo next month for a short time when I go for Josh’s sister’s weddng.

Here’s a photo of Josh and I at the tulip garden:

Josh took the pic with his cell phone.

The dealer called later that afternoon…. the problem… here goes…. a RAT was living under the hood of my car! Three things go through my head:

1. Wha?
2. The engine barely fits under the hood of a mini cooper, how does a rat find room to live under there?
3. Where did this rat come from??

They said this rat lived under there for a while because they found rat droppings (but I drive the car everyday! granted it’s only 10 miles of driving a day… but still!). They also found the rat alive. So they pulled it out and killed it. They say they have photos of this rat because it’s the largest rat they’ve ever seen. I guess it’s a common thing the dealer says they get about 30 of these a year… is it just minis?!

So the rat apparantly did $2000 worth of damage to a few electrical wires as well as the engine harness. It was a Friday at 4 so of course the insurance company is closed. I opened a claim and just today they sent an inspector out there to look at the damage. They say they can now start the repair, but need to order parts. It’s looking like I get my mini back on Friday or Saturday. Glad the insurance covers it and I only pay my $500 deductible. They insist my insurance premiums will not go up, but I find it hard to believe. So I got names of the people that said it won’t!

Photos of said rat to come when I get my car on Friday or Saturday.

She had 4 treatments of radiation so far and has one more on Monday then the following Monday she goes in for a checkup to see if the tumor has shrunk at all.

So, out of the top categories I only saw “No Country for Old Men” and “Juno”. Still on my list is “There Will be Blood”, “Atonement”, and “Michael Clayton” (yea this year I’m interested in seeing them all). I liked “No Country for Old Men” because it’s excellent film making, acting and directing. But the story line just throws me. I liked it until the end. I’m not sure what I was supposed to get out of it. I got the theme - hunter becomes hunted. The hero is not quite moral but we still root for him… but I’m not sure what else I was supposed to get out of it that made it an excellent film… if someone got more out of it, please tell me what I’m missing!

I loved Juno! I saw it once and already want to see it again and I will because Josh fell asleep during it I heard a lot of people loved “There Will be Blood” even those that didn’t like “No Country for Old Men”… so I’m very interested in seeing that next.

Now Playing: Dead Confederate - The Rat

1. Go to your desktop and press the Print Scrn key (located on the right side of the F12 key).

2.Open a graphics program (like Picture Manager, Paint, or Photoshop) and doing a Paste (CTRL + V). If you wish, you can “edit” the image before saving it.

3. Post the picture on your blog. You can also give a short explanation on the look of your desktop if you want. You can explain why you prefer such a look or why it is full of icons. Things like that.

4. Tag five of your friends and ask them to give you a Free View of their desktops as well.

Keyboard shortcuts (true in most browsers):

• Spacebar (page down)
• Shift + Spacebar (page up)
• Cntrl + D (bookmark)
• Cntrl + T (new tab)
• Cntrl + K (Search box)
• Cntrl + L (Address bar)
• F5 (Reload page)
• Cntrl + R (Reload page)
• Cntrl + Tab (Move forward thru tabs) - Mac users, use Cntrl not Command
• Cntrl + Shift + Tab (Move backward thru tabs) - Mac users, use Cntrl not Command

Auto complete
I use this one a lot. Instead of typing “www.” in the address bar before an address, just type something like “apple” in the address bar and press Cntrl + Enter. It will automatically add the “www.” and the “.com” to the address.

These cupcakes are seriously jumbo muffin size. We picked up 6 of them for Josh’s Mom’s birthday (she has a major sweet tooth) and 4 of them for ourselves. Flavors? Reese’s Peanut Butter Cupcake, Oreo Cupcake, Caramel Apple Cupcake and Fudge Brownie Cupcake. Yum! The frosting is like an inch thick on them! I can only eat 1/2 a cupcake at a time.

What do you think?

It’s a lot of fun, but just another internet time waster My dollar that was stamped with that came from Irving, TX - a waitress at iHop apparantly had it. They even calculate average speed per day and calculate how many miles it’s traveled.

“It is primarily an electrically driven vehicle and it has an electric traction motor and it has a large lithium battery pack down the center of the vehicle. So just by simply plugging your car in a standard 110 volt outlet, you can drive 40 miles on pure electricity. No gas at all.”

It does have a small gas engine, but unlike the hybrids out in the market now, the gas engine recharges the battery rather than being used to drive the car.

The idea behind this car is that the average person drives less than 40 miles a day. So the average person would be using this car on electricity rather than being reliant on gasoline (foreign oil!). Going to gas stations so frequently would be a thing of the past, just park your car in the garage and plug it in! Only going on long trips would you need to go to gas stations.

Did I mention it’s pretty??

What spurred all this electric car talk? I recently saw this documentary on TV, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” and thought it was very well done! I learned a lot more about gas alternative vehicles and even the issues with hydrogen vehicles that I’d never even thought of.

Bands I would LOVE to see:

• Tegan and Sara
• Animal Collective
• Stars
• Battles
• Rogue Wave
• Death Cab for Cutie
• Cold War Kids
• M.I.A.
• VHS or Beta
• New Young Pony Club
• Roger Waters
• The Streets
• The Annuals
• Manchester Orchestra
• Shout Out Louds

There’s a few others I like songs of but want to hear more of… ie- Jens Lekman - Opposite of Halleleujah

Oscar Nominations

So sad, I’ve only seen “Transformers” and “Sicko” of all the nominated films!

Films I want to see:

• Juno
• There will be blood
• Sweeney Todd
• Atonement
• Michael Clayton
•  No Country for Old Men
• American Gangster
• The Golden Compass
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age
• The Bourne Ultimatum
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

Any other suggestions of the nominated films that are must sees??

Wow! What a relief this place is. They have sooo many brands of jeans and get this… they measure jeans realistically like men’s pants! They have a waist size and length size in a REAL unit of measurement! inches! So no longer do I wear size 6, 8, and/or 10 depending on brand. I now wear a 29/35! Yes they go as long as 35!! It’s so great!! I tried on all different 29/35s and they all fit!! It took me about an hour to figure out my size in real numbers and a style that I liked and then, presto! done. I left with 2 pairs of jeans. Of course to go through a stress-free jean shopping experience, you gotta pay a price. It cost me a lot more than I’m used to for jeans… I like paying no more than $40 for jeans- $30 even better. I paid $68 and $74 which is truly disgusting to me, but after 4 months of not finding a single pair that’s made for me, I felt justified in spending it.

Smultron has the basic features like color coding, but for sooo many different syntax definitions than even notepad++ supports. It has many many features I don’t even use, because I’m mostly using it for actionscript, javascript, and tweaking php template files from wordpress. It validates XHTML which is nice, but Dreamweaver already does this as well. Has a nice comment/uncomment command, I use that one a lot. It has a nice highlight current line option, so if the text is wrapping, you can see it highlighting the line below it. The auto complete function is kind of crazy… it never gives me what I’m actually looking for.. so I don’t use it use it much. Instead of having it on by default, you can press option+escape and it will give u the auto complete list. Auto-close tag is another nice feature.

“There’s a bridge connecting Heaven and Earth. It is called the Rainbow Bridge because of its many colors. Just this side of the Rainbow Bridge is a verdant land of meadows, hills, and valleys with lush green grass.

When a beloved pet passes, the pet goes to this place. There is always food and water and warm spring weather. Old and ill and frail animals are made whole. They play all day with each other in the beautiful sunshine.

They are happy and content, but there is one thing missing. They are not with their special person who loved them on Earth. So, each day, they run and play until the day comes when suddenly, one stops playing and looks up! The nose twitches! The eyes are staring! And this one suddenly runs from the group!

You have been seen, and when you and your special friend meet, you take him or her into your arms and embrace. Your face is kissed again and again, and you look once more into the eyes of your trusting pet.

Then you cross the Rainbow Bridge together, never again to be separated….”

-Anonymous

I’m working on getting all my posts over to Word press AND properly tagged.. maybe another week and it will be all set… I’ll post the new RSS link in the last post from this system so if you only look via RSS you can update that feed link…

New Years I did the mini skirts annual rally from Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank through Mulholland drive and PCH and ended up in Santa Monica and the group did some bowling down there. Really fun! 9 minis… which is a LOT more than it sounds like… I’ll post pics in the photo gallery and in the word press post when I move it over

All our Christmas cookies from the beginning of the month have diminished to almost none, so on Christmas eve we baked “melt in your mouth butter cookies”, which were excellent! (if you like butter cookies.. and i don’t). On Christmas I made my challenging Chocolate Ganache Tart.. it took 4 hours but turned out delicious!

We opened up gifts Christmas morning after church…

I gave Josh a new Fox Riding Co. hooded zip up sweatshirt (his old one is beat!):

Dupe helped open gifts:

I gave Josh a Fox Riding Co. long sleeve shirt:

Josh gave me an ipod car charging kit (battery only dies when it’s in the car):

Josh gave me a jewerly box organizer that fits in the drawer of our dresser upstairs.. oh was it a disaster area, until this came along!… Although I look disgusted (I was midsentence), I love it

I gave Josh a Japanese luxury air freshner (Air Spencer), the only thing that will fight dog smell in a car/truck

As a sort of silly gift, I bought Josh an at home cholesterol test. He won’t go to the doctor, so I’ve brought the doctor to him!

Josh got me equally silly gift, a foot warmer! Because I always complain my feet are cold!!

One more doctor gift… a little theme.. blood pressure checker… to prove stress increases blood pressure!

Josh is the bestest boyfriend ever, he hid stuff in my stocking! A super duper sweet homemade Christmas card and a $100 Visa gift card.. which is a bit of an inside joke..

Who wraps a gift card? Josh does

I gave Josh a creeper for under the car/mechanical work and it transforms into a stool on wheels

Lori Beth sent treats for the doggies! Mandy was very interested…

Josh’s sister gave us ornaments, Peanuts for me:

and A Christmas Story for Josh:

I’ll put all these photos and more in the Photo Gallery later…

Example? (this will give u a 220×50 sneak peak at my redesign!)

Before:

After:

To turn on font smoothing, Right click on the desktop, choose “properties” (it’s similar in Vista something like “personalize” instead of “properties”). Go to the “appearance” tab and click the “effects” button.

Neato!

I can’t wait to upgrade to Leopard… soon… soon…

now playing: Bing Crosby - White Christmas

now playing: Rilo Kiley - The Money Maker

Both a business client (Fleet training) as well as my supervisor nominated me for employee of the month. I was taken completely by surprise. Surprised because I’ve never been recognized for my work or diligence with something like this before, I’ve never been chosen student of the month or any of that kinda stuff. Especially in a company of 1500 people shoreside! It feels really good because I always try to help everyone with their work and projects to help them get the best solution and product. I also try to go the extra mile to make sure it turns out perfect… which could be a downfall and probably has selfish reasoning behind it (if my name is going on it… ). Sometimes I meet people with the attitude of no one appreciates it, so why even try. I’ve always believed the reverse- work hard and do the best you possibly can, but don’t expect anything in return. I guess it does pay off somehow in the long run

My boss pulled me out of a meeting/conference call with offshore (India) and said I had to work on an urgent project that just got bumped up in priority. Of course it was a project that I had just received on Friday at like 2pm and still didn’t have all the content for.. so I was a little perturbed. So I go to my desk working away and then hear a little commotion but I thought nothing of it because we had a new ship debut today (Queen Victoria)… so I thought they were going to do a little announcement or something. The IT president called into my cube asking me to join everyone.. I was just going to blow it off, like I have time for that! hah.. but felt embarassed when the president singled me out. Then I heard it was an employee of the month ceremony and still thought nothing of it. Then they started reading about the “winner” that was still anonymous and mentioned CBTs one too many times (computer based training). One of my major job responsibilities is building/coordinating computer based training modules in Flash for our shipboard employees. Then I realized shoot this has to be me… there’s no one else doing this except contractors that are ineligible! I’m having a bad hair day! I woke up late and didn’t have time to iron my pants! Yes this all ran through my head so that when it was time to walk up and do a speech.. my mind went absolutely blank and I mumbled some kind of thank yous and left a lot of people out I’m sure (I didn’t thank my Mom and the Academy!). I was just so surprised even after I realized it must be me.

The Employee of the Month program includes a plaque with name hung in one of the buildings, a t-shirt, mug, etc. that say Employee of the Month and a check for $500! Employees of the Month are also eligible for Employee of the Year which comes with a whole bunch more recognition, $$, and swag. In the “ceremony” I even got one of those cool huge checks, 2′ x 5′. I want to take it into Citibank and try to cash it Sign in really big sharpie on the back to endorse it. Totally.

now playing: TV On The Radio - Satellite

Here’s a shot of us in the audience!

Gaiam Solar powered LED Christmas lights

Also many places are selling LED lights now, 80% less energy than incandescent!

inirgee LED Christmas lights

Also on eBay, a lot cheaper (I bought some already!):

Solar LED Christmas lights on eBay

Here’s a couple pics:

A caparison is usually a gold plated decoration that is put on the head of an elephant during festivals in Cochin, India (that’s where the guys are from). I’d love to visit India someday although the one experience I had with Indian food wasn’t the best. I loved the naan, but the rest was just ok… I’m willing to give it another shot though. They say Indian food is very different from each region of India. Plus the culture is very interesting to me.

I want to ride an elephant!

now playing: New Young Pony Club - Get Lucky

I found this method that talks about exporting the RSS feed from nucleus into wordpress. Buuuut, you lose comments and photos. Not acceptable! Isn’t there a better way? Has anyone else done something like this??

Also saw this on sourceforge. Looks promising but I can’t find any comments on it or anyone that’s used it.

We’re using Drupal at work as our CMS and it looks really great and very expandable. Sites like MTV, The New York Observer and other high profile sites are now using Drupal. I’m considering using this as an alternative to WordPress but I think Drupal may have a lot more features that I may or may not need or ever want.. we’ll see.

now playing: Sunset Rubdown - The Mending of the Gown

now playing: The Pixies - Alec Eiffel

I’m very opposed to the Carolinas and a lot of the South… because of what little I’ve seen/heard in these places.. but still open to convincing… maybe?

In May we’re taking a train back to Buffalo and may look into places to move to. I’d like to live outside of NYC.. but Josh wants to live someplace warm and sunny.

What we love to do in SoCal - and hope to find where we move to…

- Wakeboard/Jetski (basically we need a lake nearby)
- Josh likes his sand/dirty toys - atv, dunebuggy, etc.
- I love a big city nearby for the artsy community, music, etc.
- Liberal cities are a plus because of their open-mindedness

now playing: TV On The Radio - Staring at the Sun

Then when we went home, we opened up gifts from Mom and Dad via web cam conference. Mom and Dad got me a cute button up jacket and a nice silver cuff bracelet along with the monetary ability to go shoe shopping with Tracey! Tracey got me a cute headphones zip up I wanted, a game called “Don’t Quote Me”, a really clever paper clip holder that looks like a sink and its magnetic so they stick to the faucet!! and the book “Handmaid’s Tale”. Josh got me a totally awesome Diesel watch that I really liked. LB got me a gift certificate for Maggiano’s/Chili’s/Macaroni Grill/Corner Bakery.

We went to Cheesecake factory the next night with Tarrah, Josh and Ruben. Ruben got both Tracey and I a box full of goodies from Origins. There’s this really nice “peace of mind” sensory therapy stuff that relieves tension and stress; it contains peppermint, basil and eucalyptus (stress relief = just what i need). Everything from Origins is 95% certified organic. yay Earth! Tarrah gave us our stockings! She was disappointed last year when the dogs had stockings but we didn’t, so she made Josh and I each a stocking

now playing: Electric Six - Gay Bar

I’m really excited that Tracey is coming to town next week for our birthday celebration. I went to Philly in September but that feels like a year ago!

Going to see Stars tonight with Amritz and Sarah at the Orpheum. Didn’t realize it was downtown! That’s gonna be a loooooong 38 mile drive on the way home… wish I could take the metrorail… we’ll see.

now playing: Alcest - Souvenirs D’un Autre Monde

First port was Puerto Vallarta where we took a scenic coastal drive and saw places like Elizabeth Taylor’s former house and Richard Burton’s former house. The coastal areas were beautiful. Small cobble stone streets added to that old Mexico charm. It was really pretty. We also stopped at Our Lady of Guadalupe church and it was beautiful lots of gold leaf and very white inside.

In the afternoon we did the swimming with the dolphins adventures and it was sooo much fun! Definitely the highlight of our trip. We were in a huge salt water pool with the dolphins. They did all sorts of trick… for example the dolphins would give us fish and we’d toss them back to them and feed them. They’d kiss us and we’d hug them. All the while they swam in and out of us upside down at the surface of the water and we’d pet their bellies. They were super cute. They’re much larger than I thought too… like 7 - 8′ long or so. The trainer said the one was 600 lbs! We even got to train baby dolphins. They were 9 and 10 mos old (the adults were 35 or so). The babies were still like 4′ long. The best part was riding the dolphin. We held onto their fins and and they swam upside down across the pool super fast. It was amazing! We were late after the dolphin stuff getting back to the ship, but it didn’t leave without us because it was Princess booked shore excursion. So it was like a bonus, instead of taking the bus back to the port we got to take a small inflatable boat with engine over the to ship. It was a lot of fun

Mazatlan was nice but maybe just the port area wasn’t so nice.. we went into the “Golden Zone” for shopping and stuff and it was a lot of construction. The sales people were very pushy saying “almost free!” CONSTANTLY. It turned us off and we ended up going back to the boat. But the taxi we took back was cool. The driver didn’t speak much English so I brushed up my Spanish and spoke to him in Spanish. We stopped at each monument and he told us a lot about the area. I translated a bit for Josh.

The next stop was Cabo San Lucas. Cabo as by far the best stop! And we were only there for 5 hours We only had time for shore excursion, not much to see the area. We went snorkeling in Chileno Bay. A catamaran took us out there… about an hour ride. The water was SUPER salty. You couldn’t sink if you wanted to. We saw lots of colorful fish and coral. After about 30 minutes of snorkeling or so we got back in the boat and has some snacks and drinks and then back to shore to get back on a tender to go back to the cruise ship. There’s no port at Cabo, so the cruise ship anchors and you take tendor boats out to shore. Both Josh and I want to go back to Cabo again and spend more time there. It was so beautiful.

I get motion sick a lot so I took ginger pills and got sick anyway that night so I took dramamine day and night and so did Josh and that was the only way we didn’t get motion sick. It’s almost like a more pronounced movement on the ship would have been better. The subtle swaying was nauseating especially when we weren’t on the upper decks.

I posted lots of photos in the photo album…

now playing: Stars - Bitches in Tokyo

The fires were just across the wash from us about half a mile East. Josh’s parents were watching our house and dogs and were advised to evacuate and waited it out and then the evacuation was called off.

Here are some photos from our neighborhood area:

I’m partially happy I wasn’t home because I heard the sky was as dark as night at 2 in the afternoon and it was so smokey, you could barely breath and it burnt everyone’s throats. But I sort of wish I was there just in case to pack my bags and be ready!

now playing: “won ton tomatoooooo is stuck in my head!”

It looks like hot 95ish and guaranteed some scattered thunderstorms. I sort of miss the East coast thunderstorms we used to have, so I’m probably not as worried about it as I should be. West coast of Mexico is a hurricane area and it is hurricane season.

Most worried about the sea sickness! and getting bored on a cruise ship…

now playing: Radiohead - Jigsaw Falling Into Place

Went down to LA from Valencia via freeway to Universal City then took the subway downtown. Way cheaper, way easier and way faster

Shout Out Louds = Fantastic! The crowd didn’t move much.. but it’s a festival with several bands so this is typical… the die hards are at the shows where the band is the single the main attraction.

Lead singer of Shout Out Louds has a striking resemblance to…

Jason Schwarzman! Could it be his long lost Swedish twin brother?!

I never saw or heard JUSTICE before and they were pretty good. Sarah and I noted we never saw so many guys dancing before. Waaaay more guys in the crowd than girls and they were dedicated to their moves. wow.

According to Amritz… Daft Punk’s manager is a DJ and he was there doing a set. We stopped by that it looked like they were having a blast. There were 4-5 DJ’s doing their thing on one table.

Bloc Party was good, but not as good as Coachella… they seemed to have more energy at Coachella. It was way hotter at Coachella and nice and cool at Detour so I don’t get it either It was their last tour date in America maybe that was it.

Here’s the Shout Out Louds (the video quality sucks when it gets YouTubified so I’ll try to post it in my photo gallery at a much more reasonable quality):

now playing: that you tube video above

Here are my photos

now playing: Shout Out Louds - 100 Degrees

We left at 1pm and we didn’t get more than 1 mile from our house and the left side trailer tire popped! In all fairness we drove up a curb when pulling out so that’s probably what bubbled up the tire and caused it to pop. We drove up the road to an America’s Tire Co. and had to wait in line for a trailer tire. It was about an hour wait so we grabbed a snack and waited. After they replaced it, we were on our way again… for a little while anyway…

Hector, Travis, and Alex who were driving behind us, had the check engine light turn on and the truck temperature was really high. He pulled over for a while to get it to cool down. Then he drove up to the next exit where we were waiting and they started adding water, because his coolant was down. Turns out it was down almost a gallon and a half! And so we continue on.

About 40 miles outside of Dumont, where it’s just desert and tumbleweed and the occasional trailer or shack in the middle of the desert… POP! The right side trailer tire pops! What are the chances?!! So it’s about dusk at this time.. the sun is slowly setting and we’re in the middle of nowhere!! Josh removed the tire and rim and Hector disconnected his trailer from his truck and took his truck up to the next town 20 miles away - Baker.

In the meantime I called Mom to be my internet sleuth and start looking up numbers of tire places and towing places nearby to see where we could get a tire at 7:30 on a Friday. By about the 5th place we found a tire! Josh and Hector eventually got there and had to wait in line and finally got the tire (for $100 more than retail!) after about 45 minutes. While they were out there our friend Eddie who was meeting us at Dumont found us on the side of the freeway and pulled over. He totally nailed my thoughts - said it was like Hills Have Eyes.. we’re stranded in the dark in the middle of nowhere between hicksville and hicksville! I felt like I was in Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses. When they got back they hooked it up… it was only C rated so it wasn’t exactly rated to tow all the weight we had in the toy hauler. It was sort of bubbling out so we kept it at 55-60 with our hazards on.

We had an awesome time out there. The best thing was the weather, it was way nicer than Pismo weather. It was 84 in the day and 65 in the night.. Pismo was 64 and cloudy in the day and 48 in the night. It was sunny everyday too! I forgot how much fun Dumont was. The dunes are way higher and way more exciting too. I tried to ride Josh’s quad around camp and it’s just too much thinking right now for me to learn the clutch, shifting, brakes, etc.

I posted pics in the gallery on the right.

now playing: Lenlow - Bjorn Slippy

Saturday we had a delicious breakfast at Honey’s Sit ‘n Eat with Tracey, Jay, Christine and Adam. It was really good. I never had turkey bacon that tasted so good. The food is Southern/Jewish from what the reviews say.. but it seemed more like comfort food to me. Very yummy and fattening .. maybe that is Jewish?

We then went on a Watson’s scavenger hunt in the city. It was a 2 hour hunt. Our team was made up of me, Tracey, Jay and Christine. We got every questions answered and were only 2 minutes or so late getting back. So yea, we won! 2007 champs! I forget what our team was called.. Tracey thought of it… we got extra points for creativity for our team name and it took the whole hunt for us to decide on one. We want to do one in LA now and wear our returning champs shirts and have everyone fear us! mwahahaha.

We did lots of shopping on Saturday (well just me, Tracey and Christine) and then stopped by an art show. Then we celebrated Christine’s 14th birthday Lots of guitar hero and karaoke revolution followed. It was good times. I was nice to see Adam. I haven’t seen him in like 3 years which is hard to believe! Time flies. Never hung out with Maggie before and it was lots of fun. Good times were had.

Sunday we shopped more at King of Prussia mall and then went to dinner at Jones with Tracey, Christine, and Maggie. Yums. Stayed up late chatting with Adam. I miss those people. Need more of them around here. It’s so easy to be around them and so easy to have fun.

In May we’re going back to Buffalo and trying to extend the visit to be a little longer to do stuff like visit friends as well as Josh’s sister’s wedding… but we’re still working on the dog sitting thing. The vacation time from work looks like it won’t be a problem for either of us though.

I’ll post photos really soon!

now playing: The Shout Out Louds - Tonight I Have to Leave It

http://www.buffalowing.com

Of course the photo doesn’t do it justice… but I thought it was kind of cool. 20 second shutter with my f1.4 Sigma lens

 now playing: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Down Boy

Here’s more details

now playing: Tokyo Police Club - Shoulders and Arms

The lake was super choppy but the launch was nice and empty at 11am We had yummy food. Steve and his wife brought all kinds of good stuff. Big sandwiches from Ralph’s, whole big shrimp and cocktail sauce platter, tostadas, and more! It was crazy. I can’t eat that much at the lake though. Something about knowing I’m gonna wipe out on the wakeboard or tube later… and I’d rather not do it on a full stomach. I drink tons of gatorade and water instead.

Amritz rode the war chariot for the first time and had a blast. I took some cool pics this time, more air shots But took them on Sarah’s camera, so I gotta wait to post them. Steve again rocked the tube. Not sure how he can almost surf on it at the speeds we’re going but yeah… Steve and Mimo tried wakeboarding and couldn’t get up. I got up for a little while. It was waaaaay easier off the boat. For some reason I can stay up much longer while crouching down. Something throws off my balance when I stand fully up. The rope gets slack so I pull it in closer and then it gets slack again and I have nothing to do now but fall… I think there’s another solution involving positioning the board and my body, just gotta figure it out though.

The rope got caught in one of Steve’s jets in his boat when it was Mimo’s last try. Good thing he has 2 jets! As soon as we pulled the boat out, we got it cut out no problem. So, it was fine Everytime we go out something happens, just part of the good time!

Summer is almost over! I think we might have a barbeque next weekend to celebrate the end of summer. That’s what labor day is for, right?

now playing: Biz Markie - Just a Friend

There’s a small beach area at the back of Castaic that is surrounded by high mountains that we hung out at. Steve’s wife made some awesome chicken tostadas and we had some fresh fruit. Nothing tastes better than fresh fruit when you’re in a lake or at the beach.. not sure why, but it always holds true. Josh got crazy air off the tube repeatedly until he called it quits same with Steve’s wife.. she got almost 4 feet out of the water one time. She’s brave.

Later that night we saw Chris Porter from Last Comic Standing perform at the Hollywood Improv with Amritz and Sarah. He’s hilarious. Josh and I thought he should have won his season of Last Comic Standing.

We went to the 8pm show… so by 10pm when we were clearing out I saw Matt from this seasons’s Last Comic Standing! Matt is this really funny comedian from the UK, he cracked me up on the show. Last week’s show he was voted off It looked like he was going to perform at the 10pm show.

unfortunately it was shipped by DHL. ugh. worst carrier ever. i haven’t had a good experience with them in the past (delivered to wrong location and i had to go find it) and i don’t know anyone that has. so of course, i had trouble with this delivery. the message from the tracking on their website said ‘Premises closed. Undeliverable. Will try again tomorrow’. i guess it’s because we live in a gated neighborhood… so i didn’t get any notice on my door to bring with me and i called to tell them i’ll just go pick it up bout 30 mins away. but i had to wait for calls all day for the delivery guy to confirm with me that i could pick it up that day. they were supposed to call my cell, so of course they called my home.. that sounds about right. so i went down to DHL facility and of course they can’t look it up by my name and license (like fedex.. ahh fedex). i had to call LB (she’s my inet go to girl - saved my butt when we were in vegas too ). she looked up my shipment and voila! tracking number and finally i could get out of that place. everyone in there was annoyed. big line… tiny little place no room for more than 20 ppl max shoulder to shoulder.

NEway.. i got my macbook pro and it was worth it i love it. i love the new power cord, the larger trackpad, built in camera and it’s thinner

now playing: Muse - Starlight

I posted some pics in the photo gallery at the right.

now playing: Alkaline Trio - Metro

http://thetrainingstationinc.com/exercises.html

Probably because I’m not exactly a regular at a real gym (i know the excercise machines that our HOA provides isn’t exactly a gym), I was not aware of what to do to build muscle where I want it.

now playing: x-games!

Riding at Pismo was fun until Ryan got hurt. He dislocated his shoulder when he fell off his 3 wheeler. Ambulance took him out of the dunes. His parents were there though, so they took his stuff home, etc. He’s starting the healing process now.

Josh’s sand rail was way cool, but the drag strip at Pismo was somehow all whoop-de-dos so it was a majorly bumpy ride. It’ll be much smoother at Dumont sand dunes, but it’s still 100 some degrees there. It’ll be another few months before we go there.

I posted photos from Pismo in the photo gallery- link on the right.

now playing: Cold War Kids - We Used To Vacation

I got photos

now playing: The Smiths - Shoplifters of the World Unite

So our phone bill usually floats around $68/mo with long distance calls and everything else - privacy manager, call waiting, etc. We ordered voip for $16.95/mo (paid in full for first year) from voip.com and it includes call waiting, nationwide calls, 3 way calling, call return, voice mail, etc. It also has a web interface where you can view all the call history and manager all the features. It’s way cool. Just plug the phone router (from voip.com) into our standard linksys router and into any phone jack and voila!

We can use this and save all this money because we have cable internet, those that have DSL wouldn’t be able to use it because it requires a phone land line. So I guess the question would be is DSL + phone line cheaper or more than Cable + voip…

It also saved us big bucks because we have a business line at the house (w/AT&T we paid $12 flat and pay per call) and to have a second phone line with voip.com which has all the bells and whistles (our AT&T didn’t) we pay an extra $10/month so our total voip bill is $26/mo vs. $80/mo. Easy decision for us!

Which reminds me, I miss Tracey. I want to plan a trip to see her ASAP but work schedule and vacation time is not cooperating right now. I don’t want to wait until our birthday to see her!

now playing: Bright Eyes - It’s Cool We Can Still Be Friends

So happy to finally travel somewhere with Josh! I’m flying his parents into town to watch our dogs for the week.

now playing: Ohgr - Cracker

Tarrah and Lawreen came this time (and Tarrah had a wedding to go to the night before! She’s a trooper). It was lots of fun. I tried to teach them how to wakeboard/wakeskate but it’s very tough. Reminded me of my first time. I probably looked just like that. I couldn’t manage to get up long enough to stand on the wake skate so I decided to try the wakeboard because I haven’t tried it in 2 summers. The wakeboard seemed way easier somehow. I got up and stayed up until the rope got some slack (jetski pull is not consistent like a prop boat). So I think I went in 20 ft increments or so.

Josh and Ryan are crazy on the tube and driving the jetski with the tube. They like to go 30-35mph and swerving to fling the tube out all over the place. I, on the contrary prefer a 20-25mph tube ride, but can’t have one with them driving I gotta have Tarrah or Lawreen drive the jetski next time. At one point they were going so fast with me on the tube that Ryan fell off the back of the jetski! See?! way too fast/swervy.

The highlight was definitely when Ryan flew off the tube and his water shoe went flinging off into the air. It was like a mini explosion tube went up, Ryan went up and shoe went up and all fell. Totally reminded me of Dane Cook’s joke- “The guy goes flying into the air, his shoes flew off. When you get hit by a car, sometimes your shoes will fly off.”

The tube popped again. I guess we didn’t have a fun time unless it pops heh.We gotta repair it again when we get home.

Good times. I’m very sore today but it was worth it

now playing: The Blow - True Affection

So here’s a before:

though it looked more like this generally (longest pony tail i’ve had in years!):

and now after cut and dye (i know the dye was very subtle.. i may kick it up a notch - more 2 tone in a few months):

I haven’t had bangs this short in a long time, but I’m digging them

now playing: Pixies - Head On

Without giving too much away, it was a long movie - 2 hrs 20 mins but it didn’t feel like it at all (nothing like Pirates of the Caribbean 2). The casting was awesome - aside from blonde Aussie girl. Humor is thrown in and somehow works.. better than any other action movie that tries to throw humor in it. Josh says it doesn’t follow the same factual details of the cartoon and cartoon movie, but he still loved it. The renderings are so great and look so real, it’s awesome. After the movie you feel a lot closer to your car

now playing: Matt and Kim - Yea Yeah

It looked like an awesome collaboration, but then there was - Red Hot Chili Peppers. Ugh. But it’s John Frusciante from the Chili Peppers.. I don’t really know his music, just know he’s a guitarist. So it may be ok after all.

Here’s the rest of the details

now playing: Handsome Furs - What We Had

When we were hanging out beachside we saw 2 boats smack into each other (sides grazed each other). One boat was just idling and another came flying by at like 50mph at least.. and bounced off it. I dunno how you hit a boat that’s standing still.. but they managed to. Didn’t look like too much damage though. Probably dents and cosmetic mostly.

Then we saw a patrol boat clearing out the cove next to us and they said helicopters will be landing to get water. Then we smelled fire and saw smoke behind us and then the ash came down. We got all excited to watch the helicopter come to get water and after like 10 minutes it was like 5 helicopters.. constantly getting water from the lake. We decide to go tubing and then got this photo and realized the fire is at Pyramid lake in the brush behind us!!

We went tubing for a bit more and then went back to our camp area and they were evacuating because the fire was getting close. We moved to a small beach area with an awesome shelter and then we started wakeboarding and wakeskating. I still didn’t manage an up for a good amount of time on the wake skate but Teresa was awesome on the wakeboard even with the choppy helicopter waters.

More photos in the photo gallery … link on right!

I’ve always wanted to see the Sequoias ever since my Grandma went to Yellowstone Park when I was young and came back with photos.

I took my own photos- posted in the gallery.

now playing: Beirut - Postcards from Italy

I canceled my order with wake-space.com, though they still haven’t replied to all my previous e-mails.

now playing: Morrissey - The Last Of The Famous International Playboys

I got both albums now and listen to em constantly right now.

On another note, we’re going jetskiing/tubing/wakeboarding this weekend! I ordered my own wake skate so I don’t have to keep relying on JDH bringing his. I ordered it 6 days ago and upon completion of the order it said “This order will ship in 1 business day”. Fed Ex ground from Reno, NV. So duh, I figured it’d be here by now… Reno is less than a day away. So I call and email them and finally get a response 3 days later that they don’t have it in stock, but they’ll send me an email as soon as they get it. What is that?! It said it would ship in 1 business day! Ugh. I emailed them back to be a little more clear (can they be any more vague on a shipping estimate??) on when they expect to get it. I kind of want it before summer is over. I’ll cancel my order if they don’t respond. Oh yea and I ordered it from www.wake-space.com. So buyers beware!!

now playing: Yacht - See a Penny (Pick it Up)

Most smokers think that we non-smokers can’t stand the smoke and their act of smoking in front of us, etc. But in addition to that.. the reality is it’s like hanging out with someone with bad hygiene. It’s just so filthy. But at least someone with bad hygiene’s nasty B.O. or dirty teeth don’t give you a head ache, watery red eyes and a sore throat (most anyway).

When I hang out with smokers I just think ‘Pig Pen’ from the Peanuts gang. I just want them to quit and get their act together just like how you want a nasty bad hygiene person to brush their teeth and shower Want to shake them and make them realize they’re grossing themselves up!

Oh and the plumeria is growing well too. Josh was wrong, I didn’t plant the cutting upside down

now playing: The Blow - Parenthesis

The opening band- Yacht was pretty good. The kid is sooo energetic. He had an ibook, pressed play then went out dancing nonstop and singing, sounded similar to “Of Montreal” kinda stuff:

From what I recall, LCD performed:

Tribulations
Movement (YAY! one of my favorites)
Thrills
Great Release
Yeah (a reeeeeally long cool version)
Watch the Tapes
Us V Them
Time to Get Away
North American Scum
All of My Friends
Get Innocuous!
New York, I love you but you’re bringing me down…

They did a 3 song encore and Murphy said that’s 2 songs more than the night before. It was a special night.

Went to Pismo this weekend with Josh and Yader and Eddie and friends. I took a few pics, posted them in the Photo Gallery.

Josh’s new sand rail is amazing. It rides like it’s on air.. SUPER smooth compared to his last rail, even over the whoop-de-dos. It’s super fast too, that is until the turbo busted! The only part on it that was from the old rail Once that’s replaced it should be all good to go on another trip. It was chilly the first night like 46 at night and it was super windy.. couldn’t even sit outside.

But Saturday night was much nicer. We sat around the campfire and the camps on each side of us had fireworks - big ones so that was entertaining to watch. Of course s’mores with cadbury chocolate and 91 octane marshmallows were delicious too!

It’s a really cool site where you can rate books and look at books your friends enjoy. Think of it as netflix friends but free!

I just signed up, so I have a lot of reviewing to do. But, if you sign up… Add me!

now playing: Peter Bjorn and John - Amsterdam

I miss hiking. Need to do that more often. It’s been a looong time.

now playing: Handsome Furs - What We Had

Of course I forgot stuff- always do. But Lori Beth was kind enough to pick it up for me and drop it off for me this (Sunday) morning. They don’t sell contact solution smaller than 4oz and you can’t bring liquids more than 3oz on the plane. That was one dilemma- Lori Beth picked that up for me. And she brought me some chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, YUM!

Class starts is from 10:45-4:45 today with some kind of “meeting” at 5 until 7pm. I may skip that depending on what it is and how interesting it is. Going to have dinner and relax with LB tonight

Here’s a view out my hotel window:

now playing: Against Me! - White People for Peace

It’s in a really cool part of town. Very artsy. I had “herb crusted chicken” it was delicious. The salad before was especially delicious- lots of leafy greens and a really good dressing, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Salad came with a big biscuit (which looks like one, but tastes like 3- sooo filling) and some cranberry apple butter (kinda spicy but delish).

Then the meal came - I forgot what it came with and couldn’t figure it out. There was a cube of about rice-crispie-treat-size in orangish color, my chicken and what looked like wilted romaine lettuce cut up? Then I remember it came with “grilled” mac&cheese. It tasted ok, but sat like a brick in me.. so I moved back to the chicken and salad. The wilted lettuce thing- that was “collard greens”, a Southern thing. It didn’t look remotely appetizing but I had to try it.. I paid for it after all. I tasted it with water ready… and it tasted about as appetizing as it looked. Tasted like canned (yea that gross preservative taste) green beans (I hate green beans) but of course texture of wilted lettuce. Yuck. I don’t recommend it unless any of my description sounded good. Rest of the food was pretty good though, very filling.

I wish I had photos of the food, because I know at least Amritz would appreciate it.

It also works to open the gate in my neighborhood from the street rather than waiting until I get up to it. Bonus!

Position remote like so…

Looks like the Getty Villa will be booked thru the rest of summer.

Tomorrow we’re gonna go to the Getty Villa in Malibu. I’m gonna bring my rebel, hopefully I will get some fantabulous photos.

Oh and I might get my hair cut today can’t decide yet. I don’t want to drive down to Hollywood to my hairdresser I trust.

now playing: Tokyo Police Club - Shoulders and Arms

Here’s a quick how to..

1. On your google homepage click “Add Stuff” on the upper right.
2. Next to the search box and button there’s a link that says “Add by URL”, click it.
3. If it’s a Live Journal you want to add, put in the URL followed by /rss/ (ie- http://username.livejournal.com/rss/)

And I added an RSS link to the bottom right of the navigation for this blog, so you can use that link and add it as well.

now playing: some soap opera Josh’s mom is watching

After their visit I have a business trip coming up to Atlanta that I have mixed feelings about. It’ll be nice to go to Atlanta and see my sister and maybe Dale, but I’m not very happy about who I’m going to Atlanta with. I think I’m gonna have to plug myself into my ipod the whole time.

now playing: The Shins - Split Needles

PC Decrapifier

and best of all, it’s FREE!

now playing: Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek

Death from above 1979 - “Little Girl” is one of those songs for me.

Then the next weekend Josh’s parents will be visiting for the week. There’s so much to do when summer is here! Tarrah’s having a bonfire at the beach next week Friday too, sounds like fun. I love a camp fire and toasting marshmallows!

now playing: Arcade Fire - My Body is a Cage

Amritz didn’t leave until 4ish so even though we left at 11am and had a pitstop to get a rental car we were still making better time than Amritz and Sarah. We finally got to Palm Springs around 6:30 ish and then sat in traffic to get to the parking lot until 7:30. The only bands I wanted to see that I missed were Of Montreal and Tokyo Police Club, but it’s fine we got there as the sun was setting and it was getting cooler. I saw Peaches, Jarvis Cocker, Interpol, and Bjork. During Interpol I met up with Amritz and Sarah as they got in around 9 or 9:30. Bjork was phenomenal just like the last time I saw her. She started with her new single Earth Intruders. I also caught Joga and Unravel, 2 of my favorites. We left before Bjork finished fearing bad traffic like last year but turns out Amritz got an amazing parking spot very close to the exit and we just drove out no problem, no wait. Got a call from Ruben around 2am that he was STILL stuck in traffic and he left Bjork around 11:30. Ugh. No thanks.. poor Ruben and Neeka We stayed at Jerry’s vacation home in Palm Desert and it felt so fantastic to shower every night and every morning. In the morning I picked oranges off Jerry’s orange trees and made fresh squeezed OJ with his juicer. Yum!

Saturday we arrived around 11:30 and were shooting for the same awesome parking and found a spot open by the gate so we moved to it and again were only 20 feet from the road. Saturday was a good day (though 105 degrees), saw Regina Spektor who I’d only heard OF.. never heard. Heard a good bit of Travis, including Sing Saw Peter Bjorn and John who were much better than I expected live. The crowd was very into it. Though after Young Folks, quite a few people left.. sad I guess they should have done that song last? Sat and watched the Decemberists- Amritz and Sarah think they’re depressing haha.. I guess they’re kind of right, but it’s still good music! Arcade Fire was easily best of the day.. felt like I was gonna suffocate we were so close in the crowd.. only 20 feet or so back from the stage. Went to LCD Soundsystem when Amritz and Sarah met up with friends to go watch Red Hot Chili Peppers. LCD Soundsystem was the second best of the day. They really got the crowd going. North American Scum made the crowd go nuts. I can’t wait to go to another LCD show.. he was fun to watch too. Then watched a bunch of the Rapture who I love more and more as days go by and they were great too.. not very exciting to watch, but the music is still excellent. They did this crazy 60s music video thing on the huge plasma screens.. I can’t explain it any better than that. We left before The Rapture finished for same traffic concerns and again we got out with no delays!

Sunday we arrived around noonish. Sunday only hit 99 degrees, though I couldn’t tell the difference from Saturday. We paced ourselves well with the AC tent lots of water and rest in the shade between all music. Watched Lupe Fiasco in the Heineken Oasis AC tent. He was full of energy for it being so hot and sunny midday. Missed Tapes ‘n Tapes. Heard Junior Boys were supposed to be good. We stayed for 2 songs.. and no thanks. Saw Against Me! in passing- not a favorite of Amritz and Sarah and it was outdoor stage while it was super hot so we didn’t hang around there. Watched the Roots from a shaded tent in the beer garden fairly close to the stage and they were great. Then we met up with Paul and Kim and their friends briefly because the highlight of my day was starting - CSS! CSS was so full of energy and so fun, I wish Tracey was with me to dance to it. She would have loved it too. They did my favorite songs - Art Bitch, Off the Hook, Alcohol, Music is My Hot Hot Sex, Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above as well as some other good ones- Fuckoff Is Not the Only Thing You Have to Show, Meeting Paris Hilton. Sat and listened to Placebo after CSS, they were really good live too. Stopped by Lily Allen with Amritz and Sarah for a while before separating to go and catch Air (the band not the atmospheric air). Sarah felt dehydrated after Lily Allen so we sat near Damien Rice performing (missed Ratatat - but meh so tired at this point). Then we went to watch Rage. The crowd was huge.. bigger than any Coachella crowd I’d ever seen at a stage. We stayed near the back didn’t wanna get in the way of the cliche Rage fans. They sounded great and were full of energy. Everything was spot on like they had been playing together the past 10 years. We left a bit early again for parking/traffic concerns and got out with no wait again!

Monday I woke up with a raging head ache and sore throat. I figured it was from all the cigarette smoke. Sunday by far had been the most congested with people and the smoke and dust just sat in the crowds of people. Traffic was bad on the 10 and Josh advised us it’d be that way until we got to the 210. At some point on the 10 I felt very ill - as in car sick/motion sick ill. I told Amritz and Sarah I’d need a bag when we stop to get gas. We exited the 10 pretty quickly and I got some plastic bags and another water and it felt wonderful to be on still ground, but I had to get back in the car because I just wanted to get home at this point. I took some dramamine and after 45 mins or so started feeling sleepy from it so I knew it was kicking in. When we got to my house I was so happy to be home and relax. It was a fun trip and worth all the “adventures” but I was ready for a nap! I took just that and when I woke up the pain in my throat hurt more and my muscles and whole body ached. So this is more than motion sickness, a head ache and a sore throat from cigarette smoke.. it’s a cold or flu or strep throat.

Went to the doctor Tuesday morning after calling into work and she says it’s viral. Wish I had that numbing stuff my doctor in Buffalo would give me so I could eat and swallow, but all I got is nasty tasting Chloraseptic spray. Yuck! I went to work today and felt worse and worse and my boss sent me home. Hopefully I’ll feel better tomorrow.

I’ll be posting more pics in the Photo Gallery very soon. Still collecting them all!

now playing: Matt & Kim - No More Long Years

We also went to Pasadena shopping, some terrible home decorating show at the LA convention center- DON’T GO! It was like 3 aisles only in one hall with people trying to sell you stuff… that’s about it. Otherwise the visit was a lot of fun. We went to the 30th anniversary screening of Star Wars at the Academy, very cool. Mark Hamil and Carrie Fisher were surprise panelists along with George Lucas and about a dozen other set/props/art directors etc. It went kinda late so we had to sneak out early, but it was still fun.

parents are coming into town tomorrow

now playing: modest mouse - dashboard

now playing: Tokyo Police Club - Nature of the Experiment

H&M in London seemed to have like 30 things I wanted to buy. I found 3 I wanted here in LA:

now playing: Of Montreal - Gronlandic Edit

And I don’t see a lot of commentary about his on air apology. I so wish I could find the transcript somewhere. It went a lot further than the 2 sentences everyone is quoting. His apology was WAY more offensive than his 3 word comment that he was apologizing for. He pulled the “black people like me” thing. Saying his camp has lots of black children at it and he “lets” them sleep in his house with his wife and him and “even eats with them”. omg really? you eat with them?? they don’t have their own slave quarters in your home? wtf. this guy is so transparently racist! his on air apology was highly entertaining. the best part is that Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the rest of the people demanding his resignation didn’t even catch these much more offensive comments. They’re so focused on ‘Burn the witch! Burn the witch!’ It’s a Monty Python skit in the making.

Reminds me of that recent South Park episode - the nagger. Rev. Jesse Jackson made an apperance

Great American Eat Right Challenge

I think it’s the subject matter as well though. I do some of the fitness tips like taking the stairs at work and in the parking structure. I never take an elevator unless I’m walking with a group to a meeting which is rare.

The recipes in the food section are pretty good ideas too.. they really get you thinking. Maybe I can make the delicious treats I make healthier

now playing: Peter Bjorn and John - Detects of My Affection

it’s beautiful outside today. i hope it’s the same tomorrow. though i heard it’s raining and crappy in other parts of LA. josh was kind enough to wash my filthy mini. i haven’t washed it in 2 months or so hah. but i think it looks well used if it’s dirty

josh and i are thinking of going on a cruise together in the end of september/early october down to mexico. the biggest hiccup is a dog sitter. we’d be gone 6 days so that eliminates most of our friends that work in south LA. we’re gonna try to offer plane tickets to friends and family and see if that entices anyone

now playing: Of Montreal - Suffer for Fashion

‘Earth Intruders’ will be available next Monday, April 9th for download

Full album comes out May 7th.

“In the role of producer Björk has brought in various other musicians to work on her songs and ‘Volta’ features some of her most interesting collaborations so far with Antony Hegarty (Antony And The Johnsons) singing on two tracks, and Timbaland (Jay-Z, Missy Elliot etc) working with Björk on beats that she created for three further songs.”

now playing: The Young Knives - Weekends and Bleak Days (Hot Summer)

natasha

=

k-fed!

It says Call 1-888-790-4463

Dear [my name],
We are trying to reach you regarding your $2,100,000.00 sweepstakes ID #[some ID number]. Please call us at the

now playing: Simpsons

here’s a clip amritz took of tatsu:

i posted some pics in the photo gallery section. we stopped home for lunch and went back for X and Goliath. X was not as bad the second time around, but still pretty intense.

oh yea, don’t forget to vote for sanjaya! http://votefortheworst.com he had the craziest mohawk tonight. Josh and I tivo and fast forward to his part of the show to catch the phone number and we were cracking up.. can’t wait to see what he looks like next week.

now playing: the boy least likely to - be gentle with me

i apologize for the poor quality. youtube has some terrible compression:

damien video 1

damien video 2

The tiny dogs you hear barking in the background are the neighbors miniature dachshunds (sp?). They hate when our dogs have fun they watch and bark.

now playing: the pixies - where is my mind?

I love asparagus

now playing: peaches - AA XXX

this is totally a josh cake.. mr. junk food:

and words just can’t describe the coolness of this:

we had a BBQ saturday with amritz and sarah and played his wii, that thing is soooo fun. we played bowling and some wario games. damien is totally freaked out by the wii though and he thinks we’re throwing the controller at him so he keeps barking at us.

sunday josh and i did more grilling, i made asparagus on the grill with skewers - salt, pepper & olive oil, it was delicious and we had roasted garlic marinated chicken that was super moist.

oh and on saturday the doorbell rings around like 1pm or so and Josh goes to get it and disappears for like 5 minutes so I go check it out and then in the driveway out the sliding door I see a bunch of packages laid out on the driveway of meat! and I look out the front yard and a guy is selling meat door-to-door! the magazine sales have been around.. but meat?! and it was 85 and he was laying it out on our driveway.. hrmm not so fresh then? but i hear it’s good meat.

now playing: the prestige

So riding 45 minutes - I burned 430 calories - all of the pizza I ate for dinner. Strawberries for dessert! I’m gonna be so in shape come time for jetskiing! or so I hope if i keep up this regimine…

now playing: new young pony club - ice cream

and I keep finding lots of these little anoles in my garden scattering everytime I go outside:

and I had a couple as pets in a terrarium back when I lived in Buffalo, but one day they mysteriously were in the garden and Mom and Dad looked guilty. I’m sure they didn’t make it through the winter. So now I have my own native anoles that come every spring/summer in my backyard (Yes, it looks like something sharp got in the way of this one’s tail).

One last pic.. Amritz and Sarah picked me up a plumeria cutting when they visited Hawaii for Christmas and I planted it a couple weeks ago and it’s started doing stuff. It’s the strangest growth I’ve ever seen (looks waxy/fake) but apparantly this is normal for a plumeria cutting and it means good things are happening and those gorgeous plumeria flowers will come next year. The first year is all leaves. I’ll be happy when I see some leaves. It likes little to no water and the soil is 1/2 sand. Strange growing conditions but sounds about accurate for Hawaii. I’ll keep taking pics every couple weeks so I can do a sweet animated gif of it growing!

I rode 6 miles on my bike today, the bike path by my house has been repaired.. it goes on much further than I rode but I turned around when I couldn’t ride anymore and had to ride all the way back home. ugh. Wednesday I’ll do it again if it’s warm again. All the Amgen bike riders were totally riding the path.. lookin all professional rider like in their spandex. No, I won’t wear bicyclist spandex.

now playing: bloc party - waiting for the 7:18

hah crazy.

was it just me or were the oscars not as glamorous this year? am i just numb from it all at this point? felt like there weren’t a lot of big stars/glamour/excitement…

josh bday pics

now playing: Peter Bjorn and John - The Chills

i got josh a new camera- underwater AND shockproof camera. which is perfect for josh:

and a couple shirts and surprise today- a trip to the california science center to see the star wars: where science meets imagination exhibit and destiny in space imax movie. we both never saw an imax, so that was really cool. the star wars exhibit was very cool too. I’ll post photos of that tomorrow.

oh and the guys at josh’s work bought him an awesome cake.. totally outdoes the one i made josh.. here it is:

Josh’s birthday is this weekend. It should be fun times. I’ll try to take lots of photos.

now playing: CSS - Music is my Hot, Hot Sex

I’m planning on seeing The Queen and Babel before the awards and anything else I can get to next. If I can get in Little Children, Notes on a Scandal, and Blood Diamond that would be awesomeness. I really want to see those.

now playing: CSS - C.S.S. Suxxx

So i get home and glance out the window before letting the dogs out and notice feathers all over the lawn and then see out of the corner of my eye what looks to be a pigeon.. so I assume the pigeon is hurt or something or he’s picking out all his feathers going crazy.. so I grab my camera so I can take a pic and show Josh, and when I go out there I realize woah that’s no pigeon, it’s some sort of hawk and it’s still standing on a dead bird! I take the photo as quickly as possible and run back in the house… don’t want to get in the way of a bird and his prey:

I guess my running into the house intrigued Damien and he wanted to go outside even more than usual.. but there was no way I was going to let him out there and face off with that bird and get some sort of bird flu. So I ended up letting him out in the front yard in the mulchy area. When I got home I cleaned up the feathers off our turf the only way I could think of- with a vacuum cleaner and then some disinfectant cleaner we use to clean the lawn:

Josh retrieved the dead carcass when he got home and apparantly all that was left was a rib cage and a bit of wings… ew the hawk thing ate the head and beak?!

http://www.instructables.com/

now playing: Peter Bjorn & John - Let’s Call It Off

Sunday it was 80! Josh and I washed all 3 dogs and Damien was quite amusing. You know how cats chase a laser pointer spot? Well imagine that scenario.. but Damien (full size rottweiler) as the cat.. and water stream from hose = laser pointer spot. It was quite amusing watching him chase it, pounce it and bite at it over and over. He never tired of it and we never tired of laughing at it.

I also went through my garden and threw away most of the dead plants that the “Buffalo weather” killed. I left the Queen Palm in hopes that it will come back to life sometime soon. Of course the weeds are thriving…

Also just finished an awesome book, “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides (wrote “The Virgin Suicides”). Amritz’s g/f, Sarah let me borrow it. It’s fantastic. 2003 Pulitzer prize winner. Took me a while to finish it beause I don’t have time to read lately, but I finally got through it and it was well worth the time spent. Lots of Greek history and immigration history that was interesting and then Detroit that reminded me of Buffalo in some respects and then there’s Cal the intersexual narrator and main character. I can’t give the story justice explaining it, so I’d suggest reading it It seemed very nonfiction to me, like this is a novel, but it’s real life for many people out there. A bit of an eye opener.

What do you think of the new design?

Billboards that talk to you when you drive by, if you’re a mini owner and vouched in for this campaign. Cute. It’s like a personalized amber alert sign just for mini owners

My mini is still at the dealer. Their diagnostics computer is out of service. It will be fixed tomorrow sometime so I don’t expect my car until Wednesday where I’m going to demand they drop it off to me. I’m so stressed out with this mini lately.

Some DJs opened that were ok. I just liked reminiscing with the old school jams they were mashing up. The crowd didn’t move much during that act. After that was a band called “Ariel Pink”. They were a waste of time (silence would have been better) and after a half hour I felt my ears may have been bleeding.

Then Of Montreal came on. Neat entrance from under the stage and a big stuffed dinosaur/dragon was on stage, but moved over to make way for Kevin Barnes, lead singer. He’s quite the ‘fashionable’ lad. Changed outfits 3 times. I recognized maybe 5 songs total all night. I didn’t realize they had a new album released 5 days ago, some fan I am huh?

Here are a few pics (courtesy of this guy)

I’m so excited Bjork is gonna be there. I saw her once in Toronto with Steve and Hatsumi and she was amazing and put on a very interesting and unique performance. There’s no one like her. I can’t wait to see her again.

Here’s my favorites (in order of day): Bjork, Interpol, DJ Shadow, Peaches, Benny Benassi, The Arcade Fire, The Decemberists, Travis, The Rapture, LCD Soundsystem, Rage Against the Machine, Air, Placebo, Against Me!, Ratatat, and CSS are all must sees. Also excited to see a few more that I have on my ipod but only a few of their songs, not full albums. $250/16 Must see acts = $15.63/act. Sounds like a sweet deal to me!

now playing: DJ Shadow - Organ Donor [Extended Overhaul]

Apparantly this long cold spell is not just annoying Angelinos, it’s also affecting all the crops up here and in Ventura county. Lots of oranges, strawberries, and avocados have died from the frost and cold temperatures.. so in the next 2 weeks we’re supposed to expect a huge price jump in those. I wonder if it will affect the East Coast too, i know they get a lot of their stuff from Florida.

I wish I got a photo of the snow this morning but after I sent my text message to all my friends about the snow, my phone battery died and with it goes the possible opportunity for a kodak moment.

Here’s a pic from KCAL of the 5 fwy north about 3 exits up the road from me near Castaic Lake:

now playing: Annuals - Complete or Completing

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