Fri 07.03.09 - Sprouted half of coconuts turning into coconut trees are a sight better than than Trader Joe's usual botanical fare of evil borchids (aka birthday orchids).

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Sun 06.28.09 - Much fun was had by all at the post-birthday BBQ for Ms. Vikki Chowney that Camilla Blackett held at her fabulous loft flat at the Church in Camden. This photo was taken after a flat of Kinder Eggs and a fifth of Jose Cuervo tequila was procured. The chocolate exterior's of the kinder eggs were used as shot chocolates for the tequila. It was later determined by the testers that rum worked better in the kinder eggs than tequila, as rum is more favorable to milk and white chocolate. Tequila would do better in a dark chocolate egg.

Allix formed the internal plastic kinder egg cases into jewellery for Cam.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Sun 06.28.09 - Vikki Chowney and James Whatley display the best of English summer BBQing weather...

;oD

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Sat 06.27.09 - Saturday was a big delight. I took the train from London Paddington out to Oxfordshire to hang out with Family Hicks. We had a nice lunch in their backyard, I got to meet Tufts and Tom Tom the new guinea pigs, and then we went out to Chipping Norton for Mantha's 8th birthday musical theatre adventure.

Upon return to Chez Hicks, the little ones had tea then went to bed. Leigh and I procured beverages and very good Chinese to go food, friends dropped in, and then karaoke was sung on Sing-Song (?). Unfortunately for me, I had to get to the train station to catch a the last train back into London before I could sing my Darkness song.

Even more unfortunately, my train was 1.5 hours late (o.O). But it was all worth it for the gloriousness that is Oxfordshire in the summer.

Big thanks to Leigh and Jon for hosting me.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri 06.26.09 - After dinner at Busaba Eathai on Wardour St, we walked over to Broadwick St. to get a photo in front of the cholera water pump (see "Ghost Map") and then to have drinks at the John Snow Pub. It was good fun and Dan Rubin brought his bag of camera fun, which included a Fuji polaroid style camera that at the very end of the night, we took lots of photos with. More like all the ladies took photos with Jason Santa Maria (in the red shirt) and Jeremy Keith (white shirt with stripes & crosses).

All in all, it was a completely delightful evening. Many thanks to all.

Tues 06.23.09 - Since I am having video upload FAIL due to my London hotel's bad BTInternet connection, I am uploading this rather amusing video that Rita Khoury (aka Dotsisx) has posted of the two of us giving a Nokia N86 review as we were on the bus from Aalen to Stuttgart after our 1.5 days of Carl Zeiss lens factory tour happiness.

My video of Phil Campbell doing his off the cuff review of the N86's video recording will be coming as soon as I can get the dang thing uploaded.... (grrr...)

I will be on an airplane flying from Los Angeles to Stuttgart, Germany, most likely somewhere over northern Canada when the official summer solstice occurs tonight 10:45pm PDT (5:45am UTC), which is highly appropriate to be in a northern clime during the actually time of "sun-standing".

Here is a cool chart from the US Navy on the relative length of longest day and longest night depending on your latitude: If you live just a bit north of Los Angeles at 35N, then today/tomorrow will have 14 hours and 31 minutes of sun, but if you live in Helsinki or Anchorage at 60N, then you will have 18 hours and 53 minutes of sun (providing it is not cloudy, so I should say daylight)!

If you belong to a good old fashioned Sun based religion, enjoy your day and evening... Happy Midsummer!

This is all Erin Gieschen's fault! She showed me this video back in the beginning of May and I have been signing the song ever since...

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her HTC Magic (G2) phone.

Mon 06.01.09 - Dropped by Alex's house this afternoon to join he and Jackie's Monday booking meeting. We discussed various bits of how to improve the Alex's Bar website.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Sun 05.31.09 - After three days of "June Gloom" or maritime inversion layer or clouds that have not evaporated by the afternoon, my sister Allison and I decided to see if we could get out of the dreary clouds near the beach and go east to the desert to find sun. We called Sandra and Justin who live in Ontario (Inland Empire) to see if there was sun at their house and there was, albeit hazy, and by the end of the afternoon the haze had shifted to clear sun.

For a spontaneous Sunday afternoon road trip, it was delightful to not only not only be saved from a May-June case of SAD but also hang out for a few hours with Sandra, Justin and Pogo in their backyard soaking up the sun and laughing.

Sat 05.23.09 - This afternoon, my Mom and I took Scruffy and Magnus down to Dog Beach. It was nice to be back at "our beach", mostly it was nice to walk the length of the beach with Scruffy and Magnus watching them greet all the other dogs and to feel the cooler California ocean water.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri 05.22.09 - Night heron on the pond's edge at the Rainbow Lanai. We are having a last hurrah breakfast before going to the airport.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Mon 05.04.09 - Late this afternoon, Erika and Erin arrived after body boarding in the choppy surf near the Seal Beach Pier. For the next four hours we had a lovely time: laughing, catching up, making dinner, eating dinner, talking about books, Facebook, hot guys, trying on various shades of red lipstick, and more laughter.

I think Erin needs to move back to LA.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Sun 05.03.09 - It has been a birthday weekend for our local community, as yesterday was Earl's birthday and today is Jeremy's birthday! Happy Birthday to both Jeremy and Earl!

May it be a sweet, blessed, and delightful year to both of this weekend's birthday boys!

Photos taken on Sat. 05.02.09 by Jen Hanen with a Nokia N79.

Sat 05.02.09 - Oh Sweet, Young Love. Sometimes when one of your friends is in love, it can be a bit too sweet, a bit sticky; but at other times it can be sweet indeed to know your friend is so happy.

It was good fun to hang out with James Whatley and Vikki Chowney today, and sweet indeed to see them both so happy. I am glad that they decided to take their much needed holiday, or escape from London to SoCal.

We had a good time going to dim sum at the Elite Restaurant in Monterey Park, driving around downtown, stopping to take photos at the Gehry Disney Concert Hall, driving from the start of Sunset Blvd at Main Street all they way to the 405 fwy, and then off to the Getty Center and Museum on the hill for the views and the art. After toddling about the Getty for a few hours Matt Singley and his lady met up with us and I departed for home.

All and all a lovely day.

All Photos by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79

Mon 04.27.09 - This morning Tammy and Bird were in the alley area of our apartments painting two chairs, given all the small child giggles floating about, I decided that it was time to get the camera phone and go take some photos. From the time I arrived to the time I departed about 20 minutes later, Bird mostly painted herself and not the chair. Much laughter was involved.

Other interesting tidbits from the day:
Spring New Living Room Layout, Part I
Spring New Living Room Layout, Part II

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Sat. 04.25.09 - Happy sixth birthday to this blog, Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen! Or happy blog anniversary! Yay!

It has been a big day with Jesse & Krista Wilder's baby shower, grocery shopping, the April Birthday Girls BBQ at my place, then to Salon Pop for Nicole Welke's art show, thus I am - like Scruffy - all tuckered out.

Photo by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Thurs 04.23.09 - A big Happy Birthday to Ms. Haley Callis for her big 25th birthday! And to add happiness to joy, Happy Anniversary to Haley and Jeremy for their 2nd wedding anniversary!

Tomorrow, the 24th, is my birthday. And Saturday, the 25th, is this blog's 6th Anniversary!

Wed 04.22.09 - I love the comic, Bizarro. Most of the time it is very bizarre, as the name would lead one to believe, but every so often it is true genius, like today's commentary on Homo Sapiens - the uppity cousins.

Happy Earth Day!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Tues. 04.21.09 - My lunch was *not* agreeing with me, so I stopped at Bay Liquor to get a 6-pack of Diet Coke (oh, lovely bubbly nectar of the post-modernist goddesses), when I got back in the car Magnus was perched on the passenger side dashboard and was not moving. He did not get off until we parked at home, luckily we were only 2 blocks away, that little sandy rascal.

Thurs 04.16.09 - One of my favorite Long Beach area artist/musician is Nicole Welke, who not only is a great musician, but is a fabulous painter of cutely subversive paintings. If you have been in the Ladies Room at Alex's Bar, you have seen her pink baby/bunny and little girl paintings on the walls. If you are a fan of the True Blood tv show, then you have seen Nicole's paintings.

Come out next Saturday night to Salon Pop to see Nicole's work in person and have a lovely time with the rest of us!

What: Art Show at Salon Pop, featuring Nicole Welke's paintings
When: Saturday, April 25, 2009
Time: 7-10pm
Where: Salon Pop, 1085 Redondo, Long Beach

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79

Fri 04.10.09 - A completely delightful evening was had tonight on the Good Friday appetizer crawl from Walt's Wharf to the new Thai place on Seal Beach's Main Street. Big thanks to Mike, Kimm and Kelli for organizing a lovely and fun evening.

Fri. 04.03.09 - After some prompting, the refrigerator repairman returned late this afternoon to replace the defrost motor in my fridge. The warmth of the spotlight contrasting with the blues of the late afternoon sun in the kitchen was lovely. Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Sat 03.28.09 - Who knew one could use one's ear plugs to hold one's cigarettes? Innovative.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen on 03.28.09 with a Nokia N79 at Alex's Bar, Long Beach, CA.

Mon 03.23.09 - This afternoon a group of us went offroading: Joe Hanen (on motorcycle), Joe Maxwell (on quad), Kyle Vestermark (Mr. Toad in the lead Tyrex), Cayden Vestermark (as Mole in the lead Tyrex), Christine Woods and I (in the following Tyrex). We went from Shea Road (Parker Speedway) to the Bill Williams and Planet Ranch and back in the Arizona Sonoran Desert.

It really was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, even odder with me taking photos every 30 seconds with the Nokia N79. The photos were exported into Quicktime with iPhoto and then uploaded as a movie to Flickr.

Sat. 03.21.09 - Local mourning dove decides to nest and raise youngins in a cactus filled window box.

I hope all is well, but I am concerned about you.

March, I hate to break this to you, but you seem to be confused this year. I know that you know this and I know that I know this, and so do the other 16 million folk who have lived in SoCal for longer than a couple of years, but ...

March, June Gloom is *supposed* start in June, or mid-May at earliest. Please tell the fog and inversion layer to go away. Yes, go away.

March, you, along with February, are the two months that I brag about to non-SoCal folks. Both of you are usually delightful and glorious, warm-ish, sunny, with a few storms that rumble quickly through and leave the mountains draped in white, which is stark contrast to the same two months in many other places in the northern hemisphere.

March, don't let me down. Please either tell the clouds to rain or to go away.

Thanks, jen ;o)

Happy New Year to all the folks who celebrate it on the Equinox!

All Colbert snarkiness aside, President Obama has given a Norouz address, and here is the wikipedia article on Nowruz.

New Year used to be celebrated at the spring equinox in Europe but it was changed over to January 1 by the Romans and finalized in various other cultures of Europe by the 1700s. Given how many of our holidays have their roots in the agricultural calendar of neolithic Eurasia and pre-Roman Europe, I would prefer that our New Year was celebrated with the advent of spring rather than an arbitrary date picked by Rome. Besides, spring is much more naturally festive than January in the northern hemisphere.

Happy New Year!

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Thurs. 03.19.09 - Magnus and Jeremy on a Thursday afternoon.

1) Since I departed last Wednesday afternoon, I have not heard from my Dad, thus no Cam update. Sorry. He has not returned calls, Skype or email, which is not surprising due to the lack of cell reception & internet at his house. While there is internet within 50 ft of my Dad's place, he is not availing himself of it at the current time, but my brother is going out to Arizona tomorrow and will check in with Cam and give me a report.

2) I have a refrigerator full of wild boar. Actually, it is California feral pigs. Farmer's domestic pigs have escaped since the 1800s and now there are feral pigs on the hillsides. Due to the fact that the feral pigs are not native and are very destructive to the environment, there is an all year open hunting season. My brother went hunting at Tejon Ranch last weekend, now I have lots of pig in the frig. Two big legs (aka ham to be), pork chops, sausages, 2 roasts, etc.

I will be making boar prosciutto. Check back with me in 18 months for some slices.

3) Due to 2.5 weeks of family excitement, I am now having epic work/to-do list fail. To the point of big stress. I have 17 work things that absolutely must get done before I get on the plane for Austin to go to SXSW on Thursday. I need at least 2 weeks to do it all rather than 4 days. Approximately half of the to do items are Bloggies related, more on that tomorrow.

Watch Jen spin around in overload...

Part I :: Scruffy Walking Bird :: Two Years Ago

On the Vicksburg Rd from the I-10 to Parker, AZ.

Sat 02.21.09 - Cam didn't want to eat his chicken pot pie.

Sun 02.08.09 - While walking at Huntington Beach's Dog Beach this afternoon, we saw / met our first ever Hungarian Puli dog. The Puli in this above photo was defending its owner from Belle who was shaking sand off of herself. Cute and funny all at the same time.

Rather than treat you all to my annual Groundhog Day's post or my annual St. Bridget of Kildare Day's post, I will say "Happy Birthday!" to my dad, Cam, and regale y'all with my totally lame film watching habits.

Yes, if you know me in IRL, you know that I live without a TV and maybe see a movie a year, until recently when I decided to get a Netflix subscription to watch on my laptop while I code and to ostensibly get caught up on the films I have wanted to see but never did. It is slow going, mostly because I receive the DVDs from Netflix, put them on a shelf, never open then, feel guilty about 6 weeks later, and then mail them back unwatched. Netflix, unrelentingly, keeps sending me more. Bastards.

Tonight, after finishing up work, and making dinner, I decided to actually open the "Amelie" Netflix packet and watch it. Amelie is every bit as delightful as folks have proclaimed it to be and more.

It is a perfect movie. A very singular vision. The color is beautiful. I love how stylized it is, in conception and in each scene. The story is delightful. I love mischievous heroines.

I may even watch it again before sending it back to the folks at the Netflix distribution center.

On the Groundhog Day's note: according to Punxsutawney Phil this morning, we will have another 6 weeks of winter. But NYC's Bloomberg biting Charles Hogg, is predicting an early spring. Regardless of winter or spring, California needs about 12 more weeks of rain and snow to get us out of the current drought. P. Phil, how is your rain predicting abilities?

Happy Candlemas | St. Bridget's Day | Groundhog Day!

Sun. 02.01.09 - My cousin Katy at the Equine Affair at the Pomona Fairplex this afternoon.

10 years ago today, Alex West, Ben Yau, and I got together at my brother's house in Huntington Beach with several computers and a bunch of scary snacks that Ben brought and we coded & launched Barflies.net to build on the Barflies mailing list that I had been running for the previous year and the SocialD message board that Alex had been running for the 4 years previous.

In the normal way of things, I should have thrown a big party tonight to celebrate 10 BIG YEARS on the internet. I have spent the last two months trying to find where all the early contributors of the Barflies.net have gotten themselves off to (Hey Amber & Erik Jansen, where are you? Email me!), so that Julie Wanda and I could throw a good thank you party and Hey, We are Still Going Strong party.

In typical, Wanda and Jen fashion, we are running fashionably late. Expect a party announcement soon.

Happy 10th Anniversary to Barflies.net!

Tonight at dinner, Erika and I had a long talk about my Facebook post from last night: how each of us use it, why I hate it, and why it is the first social network site that she has really gotten into. We talked at length about synchronous vs. asynchronous communication, public vs. private, the open web vs. the closed web (like MySpace or Facebook), preferred modes of communication, and which worked better when. It was a great conversation over excellent food at Fu Rai Bo in West LA.

All the while we were discussing Facebook and styles of communication an early 20s-something couple next to us was on a date and the whole time the girl kept taking phone calls and texting, all the while she was leaning across the table to smooch the fellow. When they left, I pointed out the extreme difference to Erika.

Not once during dinner did either Erika or I touch our mobile phones, I did not take photos or check my email, she did not take any phone calls. We talked. Then again, we weren't on a date, just having a fun debate over issues. Yet, the youngsters were completely ok with continuous partial attention and smooching in between communicative interruptions.

One of the things that Erika pointed out to me during our discussion, of which she should know as we have been friends for over 18 years now, is that if I strongly don't like something then it is a guarantee that 80% of the rest of the planet will strongly like it. I have a problem with intuitively not being mainstream. Thus, if I don't like Facebook, you should probably go buy stock in it. Well, if they were public that is.

I got home tonight and found this post over at The Spittoon and have concluded that I must not be "Miss Con-GENE-iality":

If Facebook is starting to take over your life, maybe your genes are partly to blame.

While I am good at keeping up with a wide circle of networks, I don't enjoy nor have I gotten sucked into Facebook. As I stated to Erika tonight, it really comes down to the open web vs. the closed web and how services like Facebook & MySpace encourage folks to remain in the closed web and get dumbed down by the confined space. Erika argued that folks like the convenience of the closed web spaces like Facebook & MySpace that allows folks to do everything in one place.

I don't want the internet to become an slightly more interactive version of the brain dead Boob Tube (TV), but a place where folks can grow and become more creative and alive.

Mon 01.26.09 - Happy New Year, the Year of the Ox - Ji Chou, the year 4706 or 4707 depending on the source.

Happy New Year!

Sat 01.24.09 - And now I am driving home.

Thurs 01.22.09 - Enjoying the snow at Rock Creek? Ms. Jen - always. Scruffy - cute dog parka or not, he is dubious about water in any form.

Sat 01.17.09 - Ben B., in a wrestling mask on his way to bowl.

Mon 01.12.09 - James Craig punning text at CalWAC 2009.

During and after college at least once a month, I would work at having a Big Sleep. Basically, I would sleep for as long as possible, at least 10+ hours, and then stay in my nightgown/sleepclothes until at least 5pm on the day of the Big Sleep In. The post-Big Sleep always included reading a good novel whilst hanging out and about with no plan until 5pm.

Over the years as time and stress of adult life has creeped on, the Big Sleep has reduced to sleeping in once a month or once every two months and not getting dressed until noon. In the last few years, I have not really had a good Big Sleep and have gotten much more involved in working at my computer at all hours and all days.

This weekend, after many weeks of sadness, stress, back pain, and holiday family fun, I decided to stay off my computer and enjoy hanging out with friends. I returned home last night from Ryan's exhibition and dinner with Lauren and determined that I would settle in for a Big Sleep.

I took a shower, finished reading a book, and then went to bed around 11pm. I woke up at 7:04am and determined that I needed to turn over and sleep more. I took a drink of water, went to the rest room, put on my sleep eye mask to take away the sunlight streaming in my windows, and turned over to attempt to sleep another hour or so.

The best part is that I woke up again at 11:56am this morning! Yay! I stayed in bed enjoying the relaxed happiness of waking up after a Big Sleep. While I did not stay in bed until 5pm, I did make it until 1pm - and then I went to lunch and took the dogs to Dog Beach.

Now I feel reset. This is very good.

I need to get back in the habit of turning off the computer for the weekend, settling in with a good novel, and have a good Big Sleep at least once a month.

Tues. 01.06.08 - ... my true love gave to me... 12 pee stops, 11 poop bags....

Happy Epiphany!

An ear worm is a pernicious song / melody / chorus that wiggles into your brain via your ears and stays all the while niggling at your brain and causing you to wake up singing it or worse... The worse is having the ear worm song stuck for days on end.

The best way to get rid of an ear worm is not to ignore or attempt to replace it with a better or more acceptable song, but instead to infect others around you. By some odd law of the universe that science has not yet documented, if you pass on your ear worm to at least 3 or 5 other humans, then it mercifully leaves your brain.

Back in college if the most pernicious of all ear worms infected us, we would start singing it in the cafeteria line. Evil but true. By the time you got your food and checked out, the ear worm would be gone, all the while 5 others behind you in line were shooting you eye daggers and singing along under their breathes.

By this same principal, my college roommate and I once got a large part of the audience at the Troubador, between bands, singing the Worst Ear Worm of All Time. This was a great accomplishment for the late 1980s.

Thankfully, Blip.fm has come up with a great antidote for ear worms. Blip.fm lets you post the song you are thinking of and then write a small note to go along with it, think Twitter plus a song database. Thus, when you think of a song, rather than letting your mind chew on it for hours and tormenting you, you can log into Blip.fm, and post the song and share it not just with your friends but with various other lovely folk on Blip.fm.

Today, when I heard a 70s ear worm gem on the radio and was too appalled to change the channel, as the song started to burrow into my brain, I went home, turned on the computer, when to Blip.fm and blipped it - 1975's Hot Chocolate's "I believe in Miracles". And I wrote:

This song, while an oldie, is a TERRIBLE HORRIBLE Ear Worm. I heard it on the radio today, now I must infect you...

And then Blip.fm set me free. So, I decided to test my karma and post the Worst Ear Worm of All Time to Blip.fm, yes - the ear worm that infected the cafeteria line at Pitzer College, the ear worm that infected a metal show at the Troubadour... Yes... The Green Acres Theme Song... I dare you to listen to it:

But this, if you are an American who watched too many re-runs as a kid, is the ALL TIME MOST infectious Ear Worm...

What is your favorite all time ear worm?

So here is the yearly list of the cities I have visited for at least a day or stayed the night in, other than my usual round of cities in Los Angeles & Orange counties. The following are in chronological order:

Las Vegas, NV, USA - Punk Rock Bowling 2008!
Encinitas, CA, USA
London, England, UK - Urbanista Diaries (all the way down to London & Oxford 8 cities again)
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Kochi, Kerala, India
Panaji, Goa, India
Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Vienna, Austria
London, England, UK
Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
Austin, TX, USA - SXSW 2008
Palm Desert, CA, USA - Easter
Bishop, CA, USA
Mammoth Lakes, CA, USA
Parker, AZ, USA
London, England, UK
Oxford, Oxfordshire, UK
Bishop & Lee Vining, CA, USA
Truckee & South Lake Tahoe - Camp Camp 5.0
La Jolla, San Diego, CA, USA
Bishop, CA, USA
Mountain View & Sunnyvale & Cupertino, CA, USA - DjanoCon 1.0
Helsinki & Espo, Finland - Nokia Open Labs 1.0
Bishop, CA, USA
Palm Desert, CA, USA - Thanksgiving

An extra big thank you to Nokia and WOM World for inviting me to participate in the Urbanista Diaries adventure to India and back in February of 2008 and then again for the Nokia Open Labs in Helsinki in September of 2008.

What a delightful traveling year!

Mon 12.15.08 - A short video explaining Scruffy's new rain slicker.

Mon 12.15.08 - Thank You plastic bag masquerading as a rain slicker.

Sat 12.13.08 - The Derby Dolls just told us, "Don't forget to go home and blog about this tonight!"

Well I'll be able to go to sleep when I get home, because I am moblogging it now.

[/snark]

Sat 12.12.08 - The Derby Dolls LA warm up for their big Saturday night match against an all-star nationwide team (Lil Santa's Helpers).

Mon. 12.08.08 - This same holiday seal won for best local lawn holiday ornament last year.

Fri 12.05.08 - So starts the Holiday Party Season!

Wed 12.03.08 - Hi, my name is Jenifer and I <3 kimchi...

Tues 12.02.08 - Today I got so wrapped up in work, good work, fun work, that I didn't take any photos, thus you get Bailey the Snow Dog video (via Mirabilis.ca).

Sun 11.23.08 - File this screenshot, taken today at 5:38pm, under "Fun with Dashboard" or "How Mac OS X Keeps Me Amused in Little Ways".

I would also like to point out how SoCal is *supposed* to get some real weather on Tuesday in the form of rain. Yay!

Sat 11.22.08 - Very amusing window dressing at a hair salon on Main St. I love the juxtaposition of Nick Notle's DUI police photo with Chairman Mao, George Washington, James Brown and Michael Jackson. The question my Mom and I had upon viewing this tableaux, is who is the fellow on the far left?

From 37 Signal's blog, Signal vs. Noise, comes the question:

Now that Jerry Yang is out as Yahoo CEO, what would you do if you became the next Yahoo CEO? How would you turn Yahoo around?

The 8th commenter down, Super B, replies:

"Immediately hire someone named Jerry Yin, and everything will turn around..."

Wonder Twins... Activate!

Unlike the Wonder Twins, my memory for what I wanted to blog about today has not activated with a fist bump between my brain and typing fingers.

All week, when in the car or or walking the dogs or otherwise equally far away from my laptop, I kept thinking up long, involved blog posts on life, the world, politics, and the universe. But when I returned to my laptop with time to write, after 10:30pm, all these lovely and grand ideas had fled, leaving only remnants or contrails of what they could have been.

Instead, I can only remember to write about stuff that is indiscreet* or inconsequential** or of no interest to anyone but me***.

Thus, you have no in depth analysis of mobile, world events, politics, or the farts of small dogs****. Sorry folks, maybe tomorrow.

Notes:
* Boy Oh Boy, did the Brohas next door ever have a Boy-to-Boy conversation yesterday. I will not write it down, but they were loud, right next to my window, and did I EVER here more than I wanted to. Not even @constantine could be as indiscreet and crude if he tried on one of his post-prandial jaiku posts!
** Scruffy is starting to achieve his I-haven't-been-bathed-in-a-week-and-I-smell-like-a-drunken-sailor-who-has-peed-on-himself-one-too-many-times smell. Time for a bath tomorrow.
*** Need to write a filter for all emails from a certain client who loves to use the ALL CAPS KEY AND NO PUNCTUATION ALL THE WHILE TRYING TO CONDUCT A BUSINESS COMMUNICATION. The filter I want to write would reduce the whole email to small caps, as at least that would be easier to read.
**** Ever since I switched Scruffy & Belle to the all natural, no gluten of any sort, Precise lamb & rice for adult dogs, there have been No Farts. Miracle. Thanks, Precise, you rock!

Usually, I don't mind the time change in late October. Ever since I was a little kid, I have liked it getting dark early. It seems mysterious and different for SoCa, which is BRIGHT and sunny all the time all day and all evening, whereas now the long shadows start at 3:30pm rather than 7pm and it is getting dark at 5pm rather than 8pm (in high summer). Basically, standard time is a nice break.

Except this year. I am not adjusting to the time change well. In the past I have only needed a day to adjust to the fall standard time, if that. But here I am 4.5 days later and instead of fully adjusted to the new time, my internal scheduling department decided to move to Texas, as I am ready to do everything 2 hours before the normal time.

Instead of waking up at 7am, I am bright eyed and bushy tailed at 5am (waaaaaa??????).
Instead of lunch at noon or 1pm, I am ravenously hungry at 10am, even if I just ate breakfast at 8am.
And worst of all, by 9:30pm, I ready to fall over in sleep.

This is just not right. I am the lady who stays up until midnight or 1am as the quiet of the evening is my best work time. I have been forcing myself to stay up until 11pm at the least, but then when I pop up at 5am...eeeek! Not good.

If I am going to have a 2 hour offset of jet lag, I would at least like to have gone on a trip, not stayed at home.

In my last 1.5 years of university and the first year of being out in the big world, I purchased quite a few household items. I belong to the set of folk who would rather spend good money for objects that will last, rather than the purchase objects for as cheaply as possible at Walmart/Ikea/Target/Costco and then discarded a few years later when the object is unusable.

To that end, most of what I purchased in that time period, I still use daily 18-15 years later. My towels, my kitchen knives, my dishes, my Reed&Barton flatware, my Chantel blue enameled cookware, etc, etc, etc.

In the last year, I have noticed that my towels, which are lovely and don't shed, are starting to fray. My good Gerber knives are now, even though I take them to be professionally sharpened, starting to have dings and dips in the blade and small rust spots are forming, although those are attacked with Bon Ami. My lifetime guaranteed Chantel enameled pans have a few dings in them, also with some spider cracks in the enamel.

Everything is still very usable and in good condition, but I will have to replace the towels soon unless I like having frayed towels hanging in my bathroom and getting stuck in the washer. I don't mind the idea of upgrading my knife set to Wüsthof or the like, but I do mind having to buy new towels.

New towels, no matter if you buy the cheap ones at Target or the more expensive ones at Macy's, shed. They shed all over you when you are drying yourself. They shed when washed. Shedding of the new towels lasts for up to a year, though declining after each wash & dry.

New towel lint is more pernicious than Black Lab fur scattered around the house. I wish there were pre-washed, lint-free, 100% cotton bath towels available for sale.

Now I could only get an upgrade on the gray hairs that are breeding like rabbits on my head... I suppose I will shortly be forced to dye all my hair purple.

;o)

Fri. 10.31.08 - 'Tis the end of a season and the beginning of another. Here in Southern California, we had our first real rain early this morning and expect some more tomorrow, hopefully this is the beginning of a good rainy season that will break our drought. If the saying that we follow New Zealand is true, then all will be well, as NZ was quite wet the last few months.

For others this is the end of summer and the beginning of winter. It is the end of the harvest season for many parts of the northern hemisphere and the beginning of the fallow time. A time where each night grows darker until winter solstice. It is a time to remember and look back, as well as a time to look forward and up to something greater.

Be it a candle in a pumpkin, a bonfire, or a five stared lamp, however you celebrate this week, Happy Halloween, Samhain, Diwali (Deepavali), All Saints Day, and Dia de los Muertos to one and all!

All Photos taken by Jen Hanen with a Nokia N82 at the Haute Dog Howl'o'ween Parade, Oct 26, 2008, in Long Beach, CA.

To view the Lightbox slideshow, please click on the thumbnail you wish to see and then use the "Next" & "Previous" to maneuver through the slideshow.

Big thanks to all the folks at Haute Dogs for putting on a fun parade and many thanks to our own Scruffy McDoglet & Belle Le Cane for being willing to be dressed up and sit on a dog parade float!

Update: More photos of the Howloween Dog Parade can be found at howloween.info.

Rather than torture you all with more photos of small white dogs* this evening, I am going to direct you to several great articles:

1) The ever fabulous and bright, Malcolm Gladwell has alerted his blog readers of his new New Yorker article, "Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity?".

This is one of the best articles I have read in a while, as Malcolm digs deep into a phenomenon that I have noticed for years: it is not the precocious or prodigies that you want to watch in life, but it is the late-bloomers who are most interesting. Malcolm weaves research into creativity and age v. output with historical references and current anecdotes into the lives of contemporary writers.

Excellent. A must read.

2) The ever fabulous Ariel Stallings Meadows, aka Electrolicious, has the best summary of the Black Mondays & Fridays of the recent Stock Market crash that I have read to date. Her analogy may shock the squeamish amongst us, but it is words to take to heart and live by. Listen to Ariel, Just don't look down there. Really, don't look at your stock portfolio until after the new year.

Just don't look.

****
* Just so y'all know, I already have it worked out with Erika that if I die suddenly by accident that she will post photos of Scruffy & Belle for 365 days after my death. I am compiling a stock of photos for her. So, y'all should darned hope I don't die suddenly, as after a year you will be darned glad I am gone. So here's to the hope that I have the longevity of all my other elderly family members who are currently in their 80s & 90s and doing things like golfing a few times a week (great Aunt Babe, aged 94) or flying to Uruguay for his holiday (what my 86 year old grandpa did on Sunday), etc. Just sayin'.

Tidbit #1: Is it just me or is anyone else annoyed at the recent trend that companies who want to be taken seriously online provide NO contact information and no real information about them on their websites?

Hello, Corporations & Startups, I have one phrase for you: Conjunction Junction.

Yes, tell me - Who, What, Where, and Why.

If you are a legit company, then giving your mailing address and your phone number builds trust. Get a PO Box if you don't want us to know you are running your company out of your apartment building.

When I go to an about page with no real information, other than PR bullshit, about the company and a whole slew of white dudes trying to look 'casual' - guess what?

YOU LOOK LAME. Be real. Not casual business fake. Tell me not just who you are, but why, where and when, maybe even how.

Where are you based out of? Why are you doing your thing? What kind of company and people are you? When did you start? etc. etc. etc.

Give me context.

Airwide Solutions = Fail.
The Real Republican Majority => Who are you? Why should I trust you any more than the shysters in government in the name of Republicans now? This website asks me to donate to a party I SO DON'T TRUST and the website gives me no reason to do so.

Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Tidbit #2 - We were supposed to have rain today. It didn't rain in Seal Beach or Culver City, the two places I was today. Even though the rain did not come, we had delicious moist mid-60s F temps all day. Yeah!

After a year or more of drought, some rain very early in the season would be lovely.

Tidbit #3 - One of the better parts about life is the eccentricities of one's loved ones over time.

Yep, my parents are weirder than yours.

Both of my parents are 65 this year and are still really surprising and cool. My dad can convince any number of 20-somethings to invite him to a party and give him free beer. Now there is a talent.

My mom has sussed out every Syrian owned liquor-deli in coastal Orange County and has made friends enough with the owners that she knows the particulars of their religion (Marionite, Syrian Orthodox, and Druze) and where they go to worship. Apparently one recently immigrated Syrian uses his Bible as a pillow to help him soak it in better (cashier at the liquor store just SW of the Carl's Jr on the SW corner of Brookhurst & Hamilton in Huntington Beach).

Tidbit #4 - Still on a high from my trip to Helsinki three weeks ago. I <3 Helsinki.

Tidbit #5 - Recently the Pixies have become very tiresome and I want to delete all three albums off my iTunes. Has this happened to anyone else?

Yes, folks, I have been living in a little hole known as intense webdev for the last 2 weeks ever since I got back from Helsinki. I missed you all and I missed my blog. I have a list of seven things I want to blog about, mostly mobile related, but first I have one more task that I have to do in the PHP Salt Mines. Then I swear, really, I do swear, that I will write here when I am done and have had a good night's sleep.

Really. I have all weekend...

Thurs 10.02.08 - Allison and Belle.

It usually takes me 4-7 days to fully get on a time zone, esp. it if is more than a 6 hour time zone shift from my usual time zone (Pacific Time). On this last few days' trip to Helsinki, I battled jet lag by not really sleeping, as I was only there for 3.5 days and traveling a total of 1.5 days.

There was no time to be jet lagged due to a busy schedule and no time to transition to the Central European time zone before departing back to California again. While I was there, I took a 2 hour nap most afternoons and only slept between 3am and 6am at night. Thus, it was as if I had to two days within each day. This actually worked, as it made me feel like I was in Helsinki twice as along as I was really there...

...Except the last time I had decent sleep was a week ago. I took today off to catch up on my sleep, but I didn't. Now I feel like I am melting.

Good night.

Coming tomorrow: A photo essay of my fave photos from Helsinki and my Nokia Open Lab write up. Due to melting, my brain is unable to think either task up this evening.

A conversation last night at the Nokia Open Lab 2008 Party at Ahjo Bar:

Fellow Nokia Open Lab Attendee #1: How was the Sauna?

Ms. Jen: Good.

Fellow #1: Was it incredible?

Me: Uh... no.

Fellow #2: I wanted to go, but I went out for a walk instead.

Fellow #1: Just good? But they [event organizers] built it up that it was a premier Finnish experience.

Me: Yes, but it was just a sauna.

Fellow #1: Like my gym?

Fellow #2: I just couldn't get naked with other guys.

Me: Yes, like your gym.

Fellow #1: No....

Me: Yes, same size...

Fellow #1: No, it can't be a sauna just like my gym!

Me: Uh... wooden interior, about 8x10 feet, electric heater, pour water in. Just like a sauna at a spa or gym at home.

Fellow #1: It had to be nicer!

Me: There wasn't a cold pool to jump in.

Fellow #1: No?!? Then my gym is nicer.

Fellow #2: I am glad I didn't get naked with a bunch of guys.

...

In 4 hours and 3 minutes, two of my alarms will ring for me to get up, take a shower, pack the last final bits, zip up the small-ish bag I borrowed from Alex, and then go to LAX airport to depart for Helsinki, Finland.

24 hours from now, I will be in Finland for the Nokia Open Lab workshop/seminar event for four days. I am excited, but tired from the last few days of whirlwind. I will be moblogging photos as I go, also watch the Nokia viNe* flash interface on the nseries.com website, as I will be sending my photos up there as well.

* How to view my geo-located-pathed photos? Go to: Nokia viNe, click on the "Experience Nokia viNe" button, click on "Contributors", scroll right until you find Ms. Jen, click on my icon, and then wait for the photos, map and track gets served up.

Sat 09.06.08 - Flickr's Cal Henderson gave the best talk of the day at DjangoCon 2008. Cal's slides were full of win, esp. this one of Steve Marshall.

The transcript of Cal's keynote is in the More / Continue Reading section.

* Lines for the Men's Room and no lines for the Ladies. This makes the ladies happy that the usual tables are turned.

* The loos' seats at Building 40 of the Googleplex are heated! I have never met a warmed toilet seat before. The lap of luxury, indeed.

* Speaking of ladies, out of 200 Con attendees there are over 20 of us here. Better ratios than the RailsEdge 2007 in Chicago or the Rich Web Experience that I dropped into last Sept in San Jose.

Go Django Go! Now go out and get more ladies involved in web dev!

* Speaking of male heavy tech conferences, the upside is that there is plenty of eye candy if you prefer the gents. Slightly geeky eye candy, but delightful nonetheless.

* Translating Deep Geek: In Java all the dense, insider only names for things seem to be about African large mammals and their lifeways. In Rails, they are just dense and opaque acronyms and some names reflecting birds and their lifeways. In Django the dense, insider naming conventions are jazz greats or musical references (Django, Satchmo, Banjo, etc). The question remains will Django branch naming out to the lifeways of jazz musicians (Touring, Heroin, Speakeasy, etc.)?

* The amusing part of the Googleplex is the large number of signs with RULES (emphasis on the EMPHATIC nature of the signs for information that normally should be common sense) printed on 8.5x11" white paper that are everywhere. Some examples:
"PLEASE No table tennis during tech talks" (The ping pong table has 3 signs on it and 1 next to it on a file cabinet)
"No Wire" (This sign is in blue with a white circle and line through it and it is next to a wireless router. Abstractly bizarre.)

Thurs 09.04.08 - My Favorite invention of the week : Champagne in a Can. Thanks, Sofia!

Mon 08.18.08 - I think it is time for Alex to vacuum.

Happy 08.08.08!

I like the numbers 2, 4, and 8. I can't remember where I was on 02.02.02, mostly likely in Orange or at dinner with my Dad, as 02.02 is his birthday. On 04.04.04, I shot this fun photo of the Wittlest Cowboy in the West. And most of today was spent in Alex's Bar world: meeting, blogging, lunch, meeting again. Now I am home with Dog A & Dog B writing this to you.

Sun 07.27.08 - Scruffy and Belle enduring apartment torture.

Fri 07.18.08 - I love it when folks customize their cookie cutter track houses.

Tues 07.15.08 - Scruffy, Belle, and I met David and his human while walking today. Scruffy and Belle barked at David, David screached back at them. I am not an interspecies translator, so I don't know what they were talking about... ;o)

Sun. 07.13.08 - Today I went to the Udupi Palace in Artesia for lunch. I decided to branch out today by deviating from my usual Sada Dosa and trying something new. New today meant the Coconut Uttapam, which was, while tasty, so filling I could only eat half. Now I have lovely coconut uttapam leftovers for breakfast tomorrow morning.

My month of July NaBloPoMo daily food blogging continues over at the Happy Tastebud.

Due to being deep in my second "Blackout" period of the year whilst working away on a web app, I have no interesting thoughts or photos for you all today. But I do have a few tidbits:

1) Magnus the Pom-huahua (or Chi-meranian) came over to visit and have a play date with Scruffy today. A few notes on Magnus:
a) Magnus dropped off a few fleas and shared them with Scruffy. The fleas bit and then jumped off Scruffy due to his Frontline protection, but now Scruff has a bunch of inflamed flea bites on his tummy. I need to call the vet to ask what to do about this when we are only two weeks since his last Frontline application (minimum time between Frontline applications = one month, maximum = 2 months).
b) Magnus is as bad as Belle about letting me work. He repeatedly climbed on me and my computer trying to get attention.

2) I have made a To Do List breakthrough... The highly detailed list with over 32 points on it that I made a few weeks ago... Well, I checked off the final undone activity today when I washed my apartment's curtains. They are now very clean and slightly wrinkled.

Do I seem like the sort of human to own an iron? No, the iron is loaned out right now. Do I seem like the sort of human to iron my curtains when they come out of the dryer?

((She runs for the hills, screaming...))

3) I have entered, as mentioned above, my 2nd "Blackout" period of the year. This is where I sweep out all distractions and work on an a web application for two weeks. Day one is going very well so far. Am excited. Since my last Blackout in late March, I have been able to piece together a lot of code bits, IA and UI bits, as well as the large picture structure, and am as a result, I am prepped, ready and very excited.

My goal is to have the app to Alpha Testing phase by Saturday. I think I can do it. Why Saturday? Well, I am speaking Saturday night at an Art / Music / Writing / Web Salon and it will be the perfect time to recruit testers. An Art Web App needs Artists to test it, right? Right.

Impetus. Determination. I promise I will not try to procrastinate with housework, as I have got 95% of it done*, well, except bleaching the bathroom ceiling**.

4) After struggling most of last year with trying to realize my application ideas in Ruby on Rails or PHP, I have tossed both to the winds and am now developing in Django and am MUCH happier. PHP is too messy for my minimalist streak. Ruby on Rails really is oriented for the programmer to do web developement, but Django is a lovely framework for web designers to get into development with. With no apologies, I will say that I am having a lot of fun with Django only a few struggles. Yeah.

******
* This past weekend, Erika very kindly helped me completely rearrange all the furniture in my living room & bedroom, except my corner cabinet, bed and 3 bookcases. We did all of this so I wouldn't be distracted this week.

** This is my favorite inside joke, as when I was writing my Master's thesis, I got so stressed out that I stood on the toilet to bleach my bathroom ceiling and thus broke the toilet and dripped bleach on to me. When the repair guy came, he did not believe the truth whatsoever , but thought I was up to some sort of naughty on the toilet. No naughty, just serious out of control procrastination - totally different.

Sat. 07.05.08 - While walking Scruffy this afternoon, I ran into Paul and Tanya Bonaventura at the Seal Beach Pier. As we were chatting, Paul asked if I was ditching the Hootenanny, too. Yes, I was. So were they.

I seriously thought the past month about going to the Hoot today. Wanda did. Sandra did. And so did Tink. But I just couldn't justify paying $40 plus TicketMaster Rape Charges of at least $15-20 to see the 2 bands I wanted to see on top of the bad parking, gang fights, hot weather, overflowing porta-potties, huge lines for an overprice beverage. I am sorry, I love my friends and want to support the bands, but...

I decided it would be much more fun to sleep in today, hang out with Erika, walk Scruffy, and make dinner rather than get my annual case of heat stroke at the Hoot. Looks like Tanya and Paul were in the same boat.

On an additional note, HAPPY Wedding & Marriage to Tanya and Paul. They got married in early May and I am pleased as punch to see them happy together.

On an extra additional note, on the same walk today, I saw the pink food domes that became today's Happy Tastebud post.

Wed 07.02.08 - Lucky Laura came over tonight, we had a glass of wine, talked and laughed. It was good to catch up and hear all the stories as well as tell a few of my own.

The other day Eden sent around an email letting those of us on the NaBloPoMo Ning group know that July would be the Food edition. w00t!

Jessica announced she would be taking up the daily food posting challenge at WordRidden & Principia Gastronomica. And Lori announced today that she would be food blogging all month.

Since I have a food blog, I will be food blogging daily during the month of July over at The Happy Tastebud, as well as continuing the 365 daily posting challenge here at Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen (going strong! Thanks mobile blogging!).

Today's post over at The Happy Tastebud is "Whole Foods v. Pavilions". Yes, people, I *actually* comparison shopped today. NO, I did not use coupons, I have my principles.

;oD

Sun 06.29.08 - A bit too warm for the dogs' taste and more than a bit too boring as the human was working and not walking or playing with the dogs...

All photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 on Sat. June 28, 2008 at the Ocean Star Restaurant and at the Huntington Library and Gardens.

Sat 06.28.08 - Today Erika and I had the great pleasure of helping Dave surprise Lauren by leading her off into distraction land, so that he could ask her to marry him without her having a clue of what was to transpire.

Over a week and a half ago, Dave emailed me asking if I could help him pull off surprising Lauren, who is the ultimate planner and very hard to surprise. I said yes, I would love to help, but give me some time to cook up a few good options in subterfuge. That day I talked to Erika about it, we decided that we should trick Lauren with a plan to go to lunch and a museum for Erika's "birthday". I was determined that this would go off properly and that Dave's presence in Southern California would be a big surprise.

Today "The Plan" was executed - Erika, Lauren, and I had a lovely dim sum lunch at the Ocean Star in Monterey park. After a good lunch we proceeded on to the Huntington Library & Gardens, where we went to the "This Side of Paradise" Photo Exhibit and to the Main House to visit Pinky & Blue Boy. Much chatter and laughter. Then off to the Rose Garden. Erika kept Lauren busy, while I texted Dave on our progress towards the Japanese Garden where he awaited our arrival.

I won't go into all the details, but let's just say that Lauren had no clue and was VERY surprised to have Dave tap her shoulder while she was taking a photo of a water lily at the Japanese Gardens.

And let's just say that Erika & I were very happy that D&L were very very very happy.

Dave & Lauren:

May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Sat 06.28.08 - Tap. tap. tap...

Mon 06.23.08 - Activity Schedule for Les Doggies at Camp Sue:
5:50am Wake up call
6:00am Running around the property and following Sue around as she watered.
6:30am Dogs barking as Camille drops off 2 canoes.
7:00am Sue throws ball, Belle and Reo catch it.
8:00am Weed the vegetable garden.
9:00am Belle goes in and out of the house following Sue.
9:30am 1st Nap of the day.
11:00am Belle v. Reo in the 2008 Bishop Chuckit Finals. Belle 8, Reo 1.
Noon 2nd Nap of the day.
2pm Watch the Humans.
3pm All dogs climb in old Escape to drive to Rock Creek Lake.
4pm Throw ball and stick, dogs fetch.
4:30pm Walk all the way around the Lake.
6:00pm 3rd Nap of the day
7:00pm All dogs get bathed
7:30pm Dogs fed
8:00pm Humans eat dinner, dogs beg.
9:15pm Last outdoors excursion.
9:30pm Dog lights out.

Update:
1:10am Tick found crawling from Scruffy across bed to Human. Human completely freaks out, uses side of hard cover book to try to kill tick. Instead flushes it down the toilet.
2:38 am Camp Director Sue wakes everyone up to ask then to open windows, as she has turned off the A/C. Scuffy rolls on carpet next to Reo & Amigo, picks up YET another truly disgusting and evil tick. Human again picks up tick and flushes it down toilet.
4:something am Human finally falls asleep, then dreams of 20 foot ticks attacking dogs and humans.
6:10 am Dogs and Humans wake up to find the air filled with smoke from lightning strike fires.

Sat 06.21.08 - 1:49pm - Hoff and Kevron in the midst of their favorite activity.

Fri 06.20.08 - 1:52am - Mike explaining the rules.

According to the nice folk at the US Navy Observatory, today, June 20, 2008 at 23:59 UT will be the Summer Solstice.

To most North Americans, this is the day we mark as the start of Summer. When I was in Ireland, May 1st was the first day of Summer and today would be considered the high point of Summer. Where ever you are north of the equator and whenever you start your Summer, Happy Longest Day of the Year!

Enjoy it as you will. I will be driving to Lake Tahoe for CampCamp 5.0. I should be on the Interstate 5 driving north at 4:59pm Pacific Daylight Time.

Wed. 06.18.08 - The more sedate exterior of Kimberly's glovebox.

Sun 06.15.08 - Scruffy poops out on the McGee Creek trail.

Ms. Jen waves at all of you in cyberspace land.

Sorry for the lack of photos here in the last few days, but I have been working on a web design/dev deadline and have not really been leaving the house or doing any dishes. Unfortunately, the dishwashing fairy has not shown up...

But hopefully I will be done with the project tomorrow and will be back on visual line (i.e. walking the dog and taking photos again).

Wish me luck on whipping MT4 to my will or at the very least do a dance in your living room to convince the dishwashing fairy to come and do my dishes!

Mon 06.02.08 - Scruffy has once again pulled out all of the stuffing out of a favored toy. And he was darned happy about the whole thing.

Now here is a movie I can get excited about, Mongol.

I love all things Silk Road, Ancient travels from East to West or West to East, Eurasian, the art, the cultural exchange, and even the conquerors of the Silk Road: Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, and Tamerlane. It is all Dr. Elizabeth ten Grotenhuis' fault. Well, at least the bug bit me in her Art of the Silk Road class in the fall of 1994 at Boston University.

I have at least five books on the Silk Road in my bookcase and another three on A. Hun, G. Khan, and Mr. TransOxiania himself, Tamerlane.

While Attila was the first, and Tamerlane was the last of the great conquerors to wreak havoc for many thousands of miles on horseback, Genghis Khan was the greatest. He and his army conquered the most land (China to Poland and back), they were known for being incredibly bloodthirsty, and prolific (.5% of the males in the WHOLE world descend from Genghis. If that is not successful breeding, then I don't know what is).

"In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the motorway contractor Mr. Prosser is (unknown to himself) a direct patrilineal descendant of Genghis Khan. This manifests itself in a predilection for little fur hats, a desire to have axes hanging above his front door, and occasional visions of screaming Mongol hordes." - Wikipedia on the Descendants of Genghis Khan.

Basically, a bunch of folks on horseback conquerer the known world. You try it some time.

Who wants to go see the movie with me?

Wed 05.28.08 - Dave Irish and Alex Hernandez in the parking lot at Alex's.

****

In a fit of moblogging journalist fevor, Scruffy McDoglet and I went over to Alex's at about 6:30pm to watch the fun as folks waited in line to get into the Foxboro Hot Tubs (Green Day + 2) show. We stayed until 7:40pm and I will return later for the show (sans camera phone, per the rules, and sans Scruffy McDoglet).

Here are my two qik.com/msjen videos streamed from my Nokia N95:

Beer Truck tests the wand on Green Day's drum tech before any of the line is let in.

The Line to get into Alex's for the Foxboro Hot Tubs Show Tonight. There were hundreds more folk standing in line than capacity in Alex's.

Wed 05.28.08 - As planted by me yesterday and today.

Sun 05.25.08 - At the annual Scottish Games / Highland Festival at the OC Fairgrounds.

Thurs 05.22.08 - Local house sparrow gets nosy and watches Scruffy intently.

Sun 05.18.08 - Ribot, Guinevieve, and James at the Food 2.0 Nom Nom Nom dinner.

Hanging out with the lovely folks who participated in the cookery contest and the Trusted Places after party was the most fun I have had in a very long time!

Sun 05.11.08 - Eoin and the front half of Joe's boat gets soaked while on a Mother's Day cruise of the Colorado River. Ms. Jen gets blamed from some corners for driving the boat too fast into a choppy wind driven swell, but gets kudos & clapping from other corners of the boat for catching such a great wave at the right angle.... ;o)

Video captured by Ms. Jen whilst driving brother Joe's boat on the Colorado River with a Nokia 95.

Photos taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95 on 05.05.08.

Mon. 05.05.08 - Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Greg & Leah stopped by this evening in "Ojitos - Hecho en Nuevo Mexico", a fun 1927 modified hot rod owned by Greg's friend Thomas. Thomas wants to sell Ojitos to Greg, Leah is wary, so they have Ojitos for one day/evening.

Ojiotos, she was the toast of Seal Beach. And danged loud, too.

No, obviously not. Eight is not ten, especially when one skips seven. Seven may possibly be the new thirteen.

Speaking of numbers, this Thursday is the birthday I am not having. Last year was my last birthday ever. Hmph.

On to better numbers, very late on this upcoming Thursday and/or very early on Friday morning will be this blog's 5th birthday.

Oh, and, Happy Earth Day to you.

Ha! Dave got me... Good thing I was keeping up on my feed reading... So, here it goes, my Eight Random Things...

1. Let others know who tagged you.
2. Players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
3. Those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
4. Players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

*******

Fact #1: My two childhood passions were volcanoes & whales. One year, when I was 8 or 9, I convinced my Mom that we needed to do a roadtrip to visit all of the major volcanoes in California & Oregon. Good thing my Mom is cool.

Fact #2: In commemoration of my childhood, I am planning a road trip to Seattle for Bumbershoot this year and I plan on driving by and stopping at all the major volcanoes along the way in CA, OR, & WA.

Fact #3: Major West Coast Volcanoes of Note: Mt. Shasta, Mt. Lassen, Crater Lake, The Three Sisters, Mt. Jefferson, Black Butte, Mt. Hoot, Mt. St. Helen's, Mt. Baker, and Mt. Rainer. Now I have visited/ walked about / climbed: Mt. Shasta, Mt. Lassen, Craker Lake, The Three Sisters, Black Butte and Mt. Rainer. So that leaves Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Baker, and Mt. St. Helen's left for this August / September.

Fact #4: I am a rice-a-tarian. I have Celiacs Disease and rice is always the safest option.

Fact #5: Once I placed #3 for my age bracket in downhill ski racing for the whole of the West Coast. I also had the chance when I was 19 to ski a whole weekend with the US Olympic Ski team recruiters who afterwards told our mutual friend that they thought I had the "prettiest" skiing technique that they had ever seen. But the truth of the matter is that I was simply not competitive enough or aggressive enough to ski for the A, B, or C teams. Glad for that now.

Fact #6: I learned to ski when I was 2. Yep, 2 years old. My Mom & Dad met when they both worked at or around Mammoth Mountain. My Dad was on ski patrol at Bear Valley on the west side of the Sierra's when I was 2 and he put me in ski school.

Fact #8: As a child, my Mom's dad was obsessed with technology and pushed me constantly to learn how to program computers. I rebelled by not touching a computer at all until I was 19. Now he has the last laugh. Still does.

Fact #9: The area I live in is 6 feet below sea level and 1.5 blocks from the Pacific Ocean. Luckily, we did not have a storm surge at the same time as an extra high tide during one of the storms this winter , otherwise I would have been 3 feet under water at my apartment. This happened at our area in 1983. While I love being near the beach, am thinking that I should move back to Orange.

Fact #10: I have a book addiction. While the rest of the world loves their TV or gaming or sports or whatever, I love books. I am currently trying to decide where I should put another bookcase as to free up floor space currently taken up by stacks of books. I did make a positive step to break the addiction today by going to the Library to check out a book rather than order it on Amazon...

*******

Now I am supposed to tap 8 other folks, and to follow Dave's example, I won't email them but let them find this post via my feed:

1) Sandra Daly-Mendoza
2) Allison Hahn
3) Devin Ballentina
4) Tink
5) George Kelly
6) Rita El Khoury
7) Elizabeth Perry
8) Colin Mercer

Today was spent in two ways: the Dog ways and the Interaction Design ways.

Belle was a hair ball beyond Polar Bear status and desperately needed to visit a groomer to get shaved. Given that all the pet salons that I knew of were booked up due to predicted weekend hot weather, it involved me driving up PCH in this morning a bit looking for dog salons and walking into Purr-cision Grooming in Sunset Beach and begging for Belle to get a slot at the grooming table.

I have in the past noted that Sunset Beach has a high percentage of Psychics (2 or 3 in 2 miles), 3 Happy Ending Style Message Parlors (of the Rub & Tug variety), and 3 Tattoo parlours, and one just one dog groomers. Many thanks for Mark Anthony and the crew at Purr-cision for making Belle a dog again rather than a mini-polar bear.

The second part of my day was doing my least favorite activity: wireframing. Wireframing in my book is right up there with doing one's taxes and cleaning the toilet. Just say no.

Now I know that some folks consider wireframes to be the be all and end all of web design.

In my 12 years of designing and developing for the web, I prefer to first think about the task extensively, sketch & makes notes, and then just do it. This is much the same process I use when making art, esp. painting. I think, mull, turn things over in my mind - sometimes for weeks, make sketches, and then start the task.

In today's case, I already had fully envisioned the finished web interaction in my head and worked out the steps, but I needed to explain it to a programmer who would help me with the perl code. First I tried to explain it in an email, but that was not full enough. So I made two diagrams in photoshop with arrows to show how the behavior/actions would happen. But that was not enough either, so I started to make a html/javascript plain version of the interaction, when I realized... gasp! shock! horror! I was wireframing. blech.

Silly me.

Mon 04.07.08 - Local tree looses most of its white blossoms in favor of light green leaves. News at 11.

Photo of Calif. Poppies by Ms. Jen taken with her Nokia N95 on Sat. 04.05.08.

What I have done in the last 32 hours of my life:

* Drove from the Calif. Poppy Reserve to home.
* Went grocery shopping.
* Made dinner.
* Worked
* Walked a sick Scruffy.
* Slept. Had a bit of insomnia. Went back to sleep until about 8am.
* Walked a sick Scruffy. Dealt with a big pooh blow-out due to a sick Scruffy.
* Hosed Scruffy's backside down.
* Dried Scruffy.
* Went to the Sunday morning Farmer's Market at the Long Beach Marina.
* Went & took care of some essential errands.
* A bit more work.
* Bleached the front bit of my hair. Worked on re-sectioning the bleached bits on the front of my hair for new hair color that will be completed tomorrow.
* Downloaded the last week's worth of photos & video from my Nokia N95 to my computer. Over 200 MBs of photos.
* Started dinner. Realized I was out of charcoal, walked up to the corner store. Scruffy continued to have intestinal distress.
* Note to self - Do NOT let Scruffy drink out of the Owens River EVER again. Nor let him drink out of the cattle watering area. City dogs do not have the intestinal flora to deal with exciting country bacteria.
* Hang out & have BBQ with the Electric Arms neighbors (Ryan & Tammi, Earl & Sharon).
* Walk Scruffy all the way to Main Street & back to make sure all the distress is out of his system.

What I did NOT do in the last 32 hours of my life:
* Take a photo.

I guess it was the sabbath...

;o)

Fri 04.04.08 - As seen in the Wagon exhibition at the Laws Railroad Museum.

Sat 03.29.08 - Share Online on the N95 is back to working again, as seen from this photo of Scruffy & Belle in their "Portable Pet Home" this evening. As I stated previously, Share Online is unpredictable and more than a bit capricious.

Thurs. 03.27.08 - Whilst walking the dogs today in Huntington Beach, I looked up and saw this plane coming in for landing - be it to Los Alamitos or Long Beach, I don't know as I did not see if the markings were military or commercial. But I love it when the planes come low enough for me to capture the photo with my mobile phone.

Due to the fact that Nokia's Share Online has decided not to work for me today, I uploaded this via the web interface of the MT software. As of today, I was able to get Lifeblog to recognize and post to Typepad, but not to Movable Type. Grrr...

Purple, people! Purple!

Many blessings upon the folks who approved a purple phone! Purple! Yay!

Do I need to say any more about a purple Nokia 6220? Like the Nokia N82 it has a 5 megapixel camera? Should I mention the Xenon Flash? Or the GPS? ... HSPDA? Huh...

But hey! The Nokia 6220 is Purple! Did I mention it comes in Purple?

Now when will AT&T roll out their HSPDA network that will be compatible with a purple 6220?

;D

Thurs 03.15.08 - I <3 the Asylum Street Spankers. Hands down the best band of SXSW! Absolutely amazing show.

Tues 03.11.08 - The sentiments of many on the last night of SXSW Interactive.

Sun 03.09.08 - Elizabeth Perry and George Kelly. Photo by Ms. Jen at SXSW with a Nokia N82.

Tues 03.04.08 - If you live or work or are within 25 miles of Long Beach and you don't get your hair / nails / skin done at Salon Pop & Barber Shop, well then... you are missing out. Salon Pop is my hands down favorite in SoCal. Great folk / stylists: Nicole, Lesile, Beth, Eva, Billy, Sarah, Armando, and Chelsea. Great decor & music, and great prices for a full service cutting edge salon.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 while sitting under a hair dryer while the purple & pink were cooking.

Tues 02.26.08 - I would like to give a BIG Thank You to all the lovely folk at WOM World for all their hard work to make the Nokia Nseries Urbanista Diaries mobile travel adventure successfully go off! Thanks y'all!

Photo taken in Oxford by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82. WOM World folk - left to right: Colin, Richard, Siobhan, Amy, and Donna (unfortunately Frank and Robbie were not at lunch).

Photo of Grazyna and a Communist Flag in Kerala taken by Ms. Jen on Thurs. Feb. 14, 2008, with a Nokia N82.

One of the best parts about the Indian state of Kerala is all of the signs, esp. in tourist frequented locations, that state "Kerala : God's Own Country". Of the three Indian states, that I have been too so far: Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala, the last one has the most amount of religious edifices. Christian edificies at that.

In the 1.25 hour drive from the airport to Fort Cochin, I counted no less than 20 Christian churches of all stripes (Catholic, Pentecostal, Charismatic, Evangelical, and plain ole Protestant), 2 mosques, and only one Hindu temple. This seemed to be the pattern when we drove the 45 mins. to the Backwaters boat tour.

Then there is the beauty of the place. Coconut palms everywhere. Wide streets. No where near the trash on the streets as the other two states. etc.

And best of all, the 2 days I was in Kerala coincided with the annual Communist Party Conference (Feb. 11-14, 2008). Everywhere, except in Fort Cochin, all the towns were decked out in red finery: red flags, big decorated arches welcoming partisan politicians, big posters of the local Communist politicos. According to the Lonely Planet "South India" and other sources, Kerala is the only freely, democratically elected Communist state in India.

Kerala, possibly the only place on earth to freely and with abandon mix Communism and the love of Jesus, Allah, and [insert name of fave Hindu diety here]. God bless 'em.

Tue 02.12.08 - The Engine Room at the Bangalore Tech Museum.

Mon 02.04.08 - After all of Friday's troubles, fire drill, and hurried documenting of box contents to make the US Customs folks at LAX release the package from WOM World for my leg of the Nokia Urbanista Diaries adventure, it is a big relief to see the DHL truck pull up in front of my apartment building as I was coming back from a walk with my Mom and Scruffy.

I was so excited to document the arrival of the Nokia N82s and attendant accessories that I pushed the video button and made a video instead of a photo and I said "DSL" instead of "DHL". Oh well. The DHL delivery guy was a good sport.

As with Jay, my box contains:

3 Nokia N82s
2 Nokia GPS Modules
1 Nokia Bluetooth Headset (darn! I did not get the Pirate one that Jay did)
1 Nokia Buletooth Keyboard (excited!)
and a bag of goodies: sim chips, extra batteries, The Proporta Mobile Survival kit, and something called the Generation X (((CELL ANTENNA))) *.

The last item looks like an enlongated golden RFID chip, but you paste it into the battery compartment of you phone and it boosts low cell reception. All my iPhone friends on AT&T need this**.

Yeah! The Urbanista Diaries countdown continues: two more days to go, then I am on a plane.

-------
* According to the over the top copy at the amazon.com link: "AS SEEN ON TV".... Judge for yourself. I will let you know if it works well or not.

** I am on AT&T & have no reception problems with the Nokia N95. The iPhone folks in the same area are having dropped calls and data. It is the hardware, people. The internal antennas in the mobile device. Yet another way that Nokia kicks Apple's bootay...

I will fly into India late Friday night / early Saturday morning from London to officially start the Urbanista Diaries adventure. And the very next morning at 8am, I will be meeting up with the lovely folk from the Flickr "Chennai Photowalk" group to go on a Photowalk of Mount Road in Chennai (Madras)!

This will not just be hitting the ground running, but photo-ing! Ok, bad pun.

I am excited. I like to plan for my photo and mobile blogging adventures a bit beforehand and it is always better if one can meet up with like minded people.

I am looking forward to next Saturday's Photowalk in Chennai. Big thanks to Chandrachoodan for organizing it!

Sat 02.02.08 - Ryan and Tammy at my Groundhog's Day Party.

According to Phil, it is six more weeks of winter.

If Candlemas be fair and bright, Come, Winter, have another flight; If Candlemas brings clouds and rain, Go Winter, and come not again.

Both here in SoCal and in Pennsylvania, Candlemas dawned fair and bright. It clouded over mid-day here, but then again, other than rain one cannot call what we get from Dec - March a real winter... ;o)

Happy Friday to you! Happy Friday to me!

One week from today, I will be flying from London to Chennai, India. Yes, one week plus one day, aka next Saturday, the Nokia Urbanista Diaries starts for Ms. Jen!

Starting tomorrow, I will be blogging about the cities I will be visiting. But today I will give you the amusing tidbits that happened during the course of the day in the name of getting ready for the Urbanista adventure...

Amusement of the Day #1 - File under small typo turns into "Fun with Bureauracy™", I will let my Twitter-stream speak for me:

msjen Assistant at WOM world office labeled the phones as £18,000 instead of £1800. US Customs is now holding them. I am to leave next week...

msjen I have to either file an expensive bond or pay thousands in taxes. All over a clerical typing error.

msjen No, I had to call them get the correct invoice, & then verify it with MY Social Security card. Ugh. Hopefully, all is well.

msjen customs wanted proof of my biz tax id, but I do everything with the IRS online & don't have a card. So my Social it was.

I will find out tomorrow morning if the US Customs folks at LAX will accept the invoice with all the contents listed & with US Dollar prices of approx $2600 and not $37,000 or if I have to post a $250 bond to get the Nokia N82 and other related Urbanista stuff out of hock. The best part about the bond is that when I leave next Wednesday and take it all out of the country back to its originating port of LHR, I would not get the $250 bond returned.

I told the WOM World folk that we should let US Customs reject it and DHL just ship it back to the UK on Monday and then I pick up the package from WOM World on Thursday. Bureauracy should never ever be rewarded with money. Ever.

Amusement of the Day #2 - File under Prepping for the Tropics, also from my Twitter-stream:

msjen Just took my first anti-malaria pill. Hopefully, I won't have any of the evil nightmares, depression, etc that Mefloquine is known to cause

msjen According to the directions: If one vomits w/in 30 mins. take another pill. If w/in 60 mins. take a 1/2 a pill.

msjen Up to 1850, folks mixed quinine with wine. So, what's good for the goose, must be good for the gander. ;o) glass of wine in hand.

msjen Nearly 2 hours after taking my Mefloquine pill and no vomiting! FTW! Now crossing fingers for no nightmares or psychotic breaks!

All photos taken by Ms. Jen on Feb. 4, 2006 with her Casio Xlim40
digital camera at the 'new' St. Brigid's Well in Kildare, Ireland.

Yeah! This weekend is the time for my two favorite, highly under-appreciated holidays! St. Brigid's Day today and Ground Hog's Day / Candlemas tomorrow!

Go out and celebrate the transitioning of winter-spring and the increasing daylight by giving your local Ground Hog a big kiss... ;o)

A prayer:

Everliving God, we rejoice today in the fellowship of your blessed servant Brigid, and we give you thanks for her life of devoted service. Inspire us with life and light, and give us perseverance to serve you all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, world without end.

Who cares you say... Well, it does matter, folks, as I sent her off in a little FedEx envelope with a check, an application, and two photos to the Indian Embassy's outsourcer (yes, they use an outsourcer) a number of weeks ago to apply for a tourist visa to India in anticipation of the Urbanista Diaries trip.

The Outsourcer kindly had an online passport tracker to let me know how it was progressing along a line of desks on Mission St. in San Francisco (hey, if the Embassy is going to outsource, mighty kind of them to do it to my home state). Within an hour of my passport's arrive, it was "On Hold". Yep, "On Hold".

After a few weeks, a few emails, a few phone interviews to clarify my intentions, and two letters on my part, the upswing is that if one is a "Freelance Artist & Designer" from California, one's visa application will be on hold while the Outsourcer susses out if you are a journalist (no), a filmmaker (no - but you are from LA, no, I am not a filmmaker), a web designer seeking work in India (no, got enough right here at home in California, thanks), or ....

Anywho, after writing the second letter assuring that my intentions for travel in India were honorable and that I will be conducting a whimsical photo tour of India that is a continuation of an ongoing mobile photo project, my visa was approved and my passport returned.

Good thing that the Nokia Urbanista Diaries are merely a global mobile photo and geo-mapping project to showcase the Nokia N82's abilities and not a film project... ;o)

Today, Jay arrives in Singapore.
Tomorrow, Devin completes his leg of the Urbanista Diaries trip and passes the baton onto Jay, whereupon Jay trots off to Malayasia & Thailand.
Two weeks from today, I will be in Chennai, India.
Two weeks and one day from today, Jay will pass the baton onto me.
30 days from today, I pass the baton onto Ryan in Vienna...

Listening to "Up Around the Bend" by Hanoi Rocks. Finland produces more than multimedia mobile devices... ;o)

The same weekend of CES and the porn convention thingy (sorry, I don't pay attention to acronyms at the best of times, let alone the beachballtits acronyms) in Las Vegas is always the weekend of the American Football finals weekend. Thus, my brother, his good buddy Mike and Mike's dad make their yearly pilgrimage to the Sports Book at Caesar's Palace to spend the weekend drinking and betting and getting sick from the smoke & viruses brought to the sports book room by all the folks who are in there. Got to love Las Vegas.

Now listening to "El Matador" by The Spores. Molly rocks harder than you.

Whether you go to CES, the porn thingy, PRB, VLV, or any other reason to go to Lost Wages, you will come home with the Las Vegas Flu. The LV Flu is worse than anything you pick up in an airplane. First off there are a wider variety of folk from more ports of call in any given casino in Lost Wages than in any airplane. Then add onto that the canned, recycled air, and SMOKE. Did I mention the extra, pungent, oxygenated smoke that is recycled in Vegas? Add that to at least 243 viruses and you have SICK. Real quick.

Now listening to "Beat Surrender" by The Jam. If you haven't guessed, I have iTunes on shuffle.

Sin City nothing. More like Sick City. What goes on in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. It comes home with you. If you are a mild mannered (me) or a medium mannered (brother) Hanen, it means coming home sick with a nasty head cold which can develop into more. Now if your manners aren't mild or medium, then wrap it. I don't want to hear what you picked up.

So, my brother spent all last week at home with bronchitis, conjunctivitis, and sinusitis. The CL said he had an extendo hangover, but today (10 days later) was his first half day back at work. Hardly a hangover.

Up now? "Not a Crime" by Gogol Bordello.

I felt mild twinges of tummy flu last week but squelched it. I woke up this Saturday for our first day of the Punk Rock Bowling Tournament #10 with my nose dripping at an alarming rate and I was COLD. I am never feel cold. I like 45F. I like skiing. I like cold weather. I run hot. But I have been cold ever since Saturday. I currently have the heat on in my apartment. Shocker.

"Toast of the Town" by Motley Crue from the remastered "Too Fast for Love" cd. Thanks, Alex!

Don't know if I was getting a bit sick before leaving for Punk Rock Bowling, but within 12 hours I was very sick. Now this makes for a boring weekend. I was in bed by midnight and waking up at 10am. No real drunk, but lots of cold medicine. Bah. How can one flirt with hot 40-something punk men when one's nose is dripping and one has a sore throat. Really.

Speaking of the Crue and Ikki Nikki Three & a Half... if you have a copy of the original Leathur Records "Too Fast for Love" contact me. That is one of the best punk/metal albums of all times - Dead Boy-esque. The 1981 EMI version is just metal. Bah.

Ha.ha.ha.ha... In your mind you are thinking, "Ms. Jen must be sick and a bit loopy, she just wrote 'hot 40-something punk men'!" Yes, it was true. But flirting whilst sniffly never is very effective so I have no news to report. But the men were hot.

"Family Tree" by Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra. Love the TSPO. Love 'em.

I hope I don't get as sick as my brother, as I have WAY TOO MUCH TO DO before departing for the Nokia Urbanista mo-pho adventure on Feb. 6th. Like finish two client websites, update the barflies.net's CMS, and put together all of the Punk Rock Bowling photos (334 of 'em) into a mammoth photo essay.

"Leavin' Here" by Lars Fredricksen and the Bastards. Other than Gordy (the Unknown Bastard), none of the other Bastards or alumn Bastards were at Bowling this year. Hmph. Oh, Craig Fairbaugh, where are you? Did you fall off the planet?

Speaking of the Nokia Urbanista Diaries, how did Devin visit Punk Rock Bowling for most of Saturday but he did not post a single photo to the Nseries website? Enquiring minds want to know. I know he got some good photos, as I was with him when he was shooting and talking to the ladies with leopard print Sidekicks.

"Do the Devil" by the Amazing Royal Crowns. No websites for the Crowns, other than MySpace and all my old articles and other bits. Hey look! Someone put up a wikipedia article on the Crowns. Yeah!

Actually, I do know why Devin couldn't post his photos from the Sam's Town Bowling lanes... if one can't get a GPS signal than Nokia's Sports Tracker won't post the photos from the route taken. Why are we using software that is not working while the first of our four mobile bloggers is already out on the road? If Nokia would just add geotracking to Lifeblog and toss the Flash interface into the can, it could have worked out of the box.

iTunes is now playing "I Can't Get It" by Hanoi Rocks. Even though I have 1648 songs in my iTunes Library, it keeps coming back to Hanoi Rocks, The Jam, and Sigur Ros. Odd.

Well, to stop the cold induced brain dump now, I will say this, I can't get it why the world's premier mobile phone manufacturer insists on using Flash for their website. Ironic when one considers that most mobiles can't get Flash and Flash Lite is not so great. Gotta agree with Finland's other export, Hanoi Rocks, right now. I don't get it at all.

Sun. 01.20.08 - Manic Hispanic play the Punk rock Bowling Awards Party, Las Vegas, NV.

Sun 01.20.08 - Punk Rock Bowling - Jeffitaph and Ben Bramlette after Ben's team takes the title at Punk Rock Bowling.

Sun 01.20.08 - at Punk Rock Bowling - She turns him down.

Sat. 01.20.08 - at Punk Rock Bowling, Sam's Town Bowling Center, Las Vegas, NV.

Sat 01.19.08 - Punk Rock Bowling - Sean, Julia, Luis, and Kelly.

24 hours ago saw myself and Tink arriving at Julie Wanda's house in Orange. The yearly January migration to Lost Wages had begun. Now, sitting on my little bed on the floor of our hotel room in Las Vegas, I am writing to report to you that this year's Punk Rock Bowling is shaping up very very nicely already. Happy Days.

Fun road trip out. Hanging out with friends at our annual Friday night cocktail party in the room. Going to see The Adolescents and 7 Seconds at Jillian's downtown. Breakfast at 1:30am at the hotel coffee shop. Yapping with more friends until 3:30am. My group has decided I must be running for Mayor...

So far I am having a ton of fun! Today is the big bowling day.

I am moblogging to this blog, to my flickrstream and to barflies.net's flickrstream as we go.

Fri. 01.18.08 - Punk Rock Bowling

Photo taken by Ms. Jen just a few minutes ago with her MacBook Pro's iSight camera.

In early May, I moved my essential furniture and lifebits into my new apartment. In late summer, I finally returned to both my storage room and the loft in my brother's garage to get the rest of the boxes, but I did not have time to get it all.

Today, eight months after I moved in, I went to my brothers and to my storage room for Round III of the move in process. Only one problem, I am already out of room of which to place books and kitchen stuff. Anyone who knows me in person knows that I mostly own books and kitchen stuff. The rest is all superfluous.

I need to open the boxes tomorrow, sort, put things away or desperately look for somewhere to stuff all of it. Hopefully, there will be no black widows lurking in a box, like there was in one of the book boxes in the late summer. I will have hairspray ready if there is one.

Hairspray is a much better solution to black widow extermination then the time one caught me unawares with lighter fluid in my hand. It was pissed to have been forced to exit its nice dark charcoal bag cavern and was coming at me, so I poured the lighter fluid on the charcoal and spider. The spider kept moving, albeit slowly drenched in lighter fluid, I found the click-click lighter and put flame to coals and spider. Spider was pissed and not giving up. So, more lighter fluid was poured on the fire and a column of flame shot up at least 15 feet.

Two lessons from this adventure:

1) Make sure you seal your charcoal bag up before putting it back into a black widow infested garage.

2) Never, ever, never put more lighter fluid on a fire. Bad idea.

Needless to say, I did not see the spider after that. I was missing some eyebrows and the backyard elm tree was missing some leaves, but hey the spider was gone.

Now I use hairspray (very effective on black widow spiders) or Scruffy's anti-flea spray (less effective then lighter fluid sans flame) when opening boxes that have been living in my brother's garage loft and no flames whatsoever.

Sat 01.05.08 - Kimberly, Ms. Jen, and Judy the Birthday Girl.

Upon reading Steve Johnson's post today, My Year in Cities, I remembered to post my 2007 in Cities or places visited for fun or for business or both:

Huntington Beach, CA (lived)
Las Vegas, NV (2)
Austin, TX
Palm Desert, CA
Raleigh, NC
Durham, NC
Salem, NC
Denver, CO
Seal Beach, CA (live)
Carmel by the Sea, CA
San Francisco, CA (2)
Oakland, CA (2)
Los Angeles, CA (mulitple)
Sequoia, CA
Fresno, CA
Yosemite, CA
Bishop, CA
Chicago, IL
San Jose, CA
Alameda, CA
Ojai, CA
London, UK (3)
Oxford, UK (3)
Brighton, UK
Dublin, IE
Omagh, NoIE, UK
Letterkenny, IE
Cantebury, UK
Chicester, UK
Salisbury, UK
Swindon, UK
Long Beach, CA (multiple)

I will not make caveats or explanation, if curious puruse the photos and text on this blog or flickr for the last year.

1) Insane Traffic, which for SoCal is saying a lot. Crabiness. Parking lots. Crankiness.

2) While waiting in long check out lines, having one's eyeballs assaulted by tabloids and "celebrity" rags. Really, who are these people and WHY SHOULD I CARE???? Am completely UNCONVINCED that I should care for any reason whatsoever.

3) Obviously, this week's lesson in the tabloids & mags in the check out line is that if you want to get pregnant without modern medical wonders & petri dishes, please disregard any and all family / societal warnings and make sure that you fuck like a bunny at 16 w/o contraception. If you are dumb enough to finish high school, go to college, have a career, and actually wait to make an adult decision about a good and wise marriage then you get what you had coming to you. Really.

4) Sitting next to a cop at a party and regaling him with tales after some lovely wine. Too bad he was so white and uptight.

5) Wondering what to do with the turkey carcass when one does not like turkey soup. Or generally does not really like soup at all.

6) Thinking it would be a good thing to make gifts this year. Decide to make gifts that take at least 3 days to make, due to the need to let the glue dry between each step. But is too busy to start on the making until Xmas Eve. Oops...

For neck or waist?

In other parts of the world, people decorate their lawns year round with gnomes and other bits, in Seal Beach there are lots of seals - cement seals, plastic seals, stone seals, etc. As the Christmas house and lawn decorations came out, at least four homes with 3 blocks of my house now have Christmas seals on their lawns.

Welcome to Seal Beach, we like our kitsch in pinniped form.

Belle bewildered by sounds coming from my computer.

Ernie was kind enough to post this great version of Boogie Woogie #5 by Puffy Ami Yumi on his Tumblrblog. I love how Puffy Ami Yumi have taken the spirit of boogie woogie and completely updated it. Very nice. And cute dancing boys. ;o)

I have two blog posts to be posted today, one on Nokia's Nseries Urbanista Diaries and one on the photo / camera comparison that I put my "classic" N95 and the WOM World trial N95 8GB through this weekend, but before I can post either, I have to return to and finish in the PHP / PEAR salt mines by the end of the day.

Wed. Nov. 28, 2007

9:30am (GMT) - @ AA counter checking in, as the agent is asking all the usual questions, a disheveled posh-ish woman comes up and starts yelling at the agent about locked v. unlocked baggage, £65, etc. The agent tells her to wait, she keeps yelling, he finishes up with us and two security folk arrive to deal with crazy lady.

9:45am (GMT) - @ security having bags x-rayed, can hear the same bat shit crazy lady yelling at passport control about locked luggage.

10:10am (GMT) - @ Heathrow food court / shopping mall thing. Have successfully avoided the yelling lady. Have a lovely conversation with a London lawyer and her 3 year old daughter who likes my hair.

10:55am (GMT) - @ gate, bat shit insane posh-ish lady now yelling at 3 security people and 2 American Airlines agents about her luggage, a receipt and £65. I wish I had a tranquilizer dart and £65 in cash. I would give the bat shit insane lady the £65 pounds to shut her up and then tranquilizer her. I tell my mom that AA and the Heathrow security should kick her out of the airport.

11:30am (GMT) - Sitting in seat with power point. Praying to all the deities that rule airplanes that BSI Lady will not be in my row.

11:42am (GMT) - Guess who comes tripping down the aisle announced to everyone in a loud voice that she is VERY TIRED and VERY UPSET. She stops at each aisle and and window seat to announce to each passenger. AA crew members are appalled. She sits down 2 rows behind me.

11:43am (GMT) - BSI Lady is now yelling at a stewardess about her luggage and £65 pounds. The nice teenager next to her gets up and asks me if she can move to my row as there is an empty seat. I give the nice teenager the aisle seat.

11:57am (GMT) - The plane starts to taxi and BSI has found a sympathetic man in her row to calm her down.

12:10pm (GMT) - Up in the air. Plane has not blown up. BSI is still ranting and raving about her £65 and lack of receipt. Loudly.

12:45pm (GMT) - Beverage service starts. Typical AA flight back to the US, the Americans get coffee and apple juice, the Brits & Irish get drinks (wine, beer, and gin). Crew smartly refuses to serve alcohol to BSI.

1:32pm (GMT) - Lunch served. Gluten-free meal is another big winner. Green curry chicken with potatoes and green beans. A fresh salad and gluten-free mini-loaf of bread, plus fresh fruit. Dinner of teenager next to me looks and smells bad. Note to world: Order the gluten-free meal, it is much fresher and nicer.

1:41pm (GMT) / 5:41am (PST) - Is wondering why a number of really handsome men that I have seen in the last few weeks have rings on their middle left finger but on no other finger? Fashion or symbol... Anyone know why?

1:43pm (GMT) / 5:43am (PST) - Is happily drinking glass of moderately crappy wine. If you can't drink at 5:43am when can you? Even if it is sunny outside... All the better to read xml dev docs by.

1:44pm (GMT) / 5:44am (PST) - According to the back of the seat flight map, we are approaching Iceland. Will finish wine before the usual Greenland turbulence. Surprisingly BSI Lady is completely silent. Maybe asleep?

2:18pm (GMT) / 6:18am (PST) - Watching 60 Minutes on the back of the seat screen, a segment on glacier melt and penguins.

2:27pm (GMT) / 6:27am (PST) - back to reading docs. Not as nice as penguins.

2:46pm (GMT) / 6:46am (PST) - Just starting over Greenland's land mass. Sky outside looks like sunset, even though it is mid-day. According to the back of the seat flight map, we are on the top edge of daylight for the north.

3:46pm (GMT) / 7:46am (PST) - Watching some back of the seat screen show, Mark Harmon is still hot.

4:46pm (GMT) / 8:46am (PST) - Over North America, Baffin Island to be exact. 3006 miles to LA. Time to LA 5 hrs 39 miles. Just watched the cop show with Mark Harmon and the new Hairspray by lots of channel switching.

5:00pm (GMT) / 9:00am (PST) - back to reading docs. hmph.

9:07am (PST) - done ready all of the docs. Now on to the specs. vlargh. Just switched all my clocks to California time.

10:53am (PST) - 3:33 hrs to LA. Somewhere north of Regina, Canada. Need a good walk and a nap.

11:21am (PST) - After a number of hours of silence, BSI Lady is back ranting and raving about being charged £65. Truly extraordinary mental persistence. People like this should be the detectives on cold cases, if only they could see the forest for the tiny tiny tiny tree.

11:25am (PST) - Am now considering taking a change collection in the cabin to see if we can raise £65 to shut her up. I think I will take a nap instead.

11:26am (PST) - Now she is crying. Drugs, anyone? Mentally unstable, without a doubt.

11:29am (PST) - I have had to pay for overweight and/or extra luggage before up to 60 euros, and did not carry on, and on, and on, and yell, and rant, and go nuts for hours and hours. Hello! Weight restrictions! Hello, if you don't like it, leave stuff at home.

12:52 (PST) - Over Salt Lake City. I have officially officially hit bored. 1:25 hrs to LA, so says the back of the seat screen.

Thurs 11.22.07 - Happy Thanksgiving!

Tonight I had a very non-tradritional Thanksgiving meal of the world's largest plate of mussels at Woodies in Chichester. Delicious.

Here are a few tidbits from a late Thursday evening in London on the eve of going to Dublin for graduation:

1) Why I love National Blog Posting Month #2... Quite a few of my very favorite bloggers who usually blog very irregularly are participating this month. I have been looking forward to my RSS reader queue for the daily tidbits from the following:
Fussy
Heather Powazek Champ : Words
Ugly Green Chair
Wordridden

Maybe when NaBloPoMo is over Mrs. Kennedy, Heather, Whitney, and Jessica will post more frequently. Now if we could have only convinced The Adnostic and Hadashi to do NaBloPoMo this month!

2) I am too tired to post my photos from today here. I will blog them later. My Mom arrived in London from LA today and very early tomorrow morning we depart for Dublin. Tomorrow is graduation for moi at Trinity.

3) After Ireland, Mom and I were planning to go to Spain, but I canceled the tickets to Spain tonight. We went to dinner with Donna from WOM World this evening and I was gushing about my favorite medieval English architecture to my Mom and Donna, when Mom suggested that we ditch Spain for a tour of Southern England next week.

Donna departed after dinner, Mom and I talked about it some more and I canceled our tickets to Malaga and hired a car for England instead. Avebury, Salisbury, and Wales, here we come...

4) This evening I gave away the last of the seven Peek-a-Poohs that I brought with me. Donna's Nokia N95 is now the proud wearer of a purple Libra Peek-a-Pooh.

Thurs. Nov. 8, 2007

Flying through the Air with the Greatest of Ease
or The small, bouncy child version thereof
or the non-Twitter but NaBloPoMo version

Approx. 4:30pm (PST) or 12:30am (GMT) - After a long and stressful week that included a scheduled small nervous breakdown from 5:05 pm to 5:07 pm on Tuesday afternoon, I am on a Boeing 777 flying over the Great Lakes en route to London. London Calling, the November edition.

Due to completing tasks and finishing my Jane Austen-a-thon, I did not get to sleep until 2am. When the alarm rang at 6:04 am, I was hurting from too little sleep. No matter, zip bags up, and get them out to the car. I drove over to my brother's house and together we drove up to LAX.

My first flight was uneventful as I cat napped. The plane landed in Chicago a bit early and I miscalculated time, I thought I had an hour and a half until boarding my next flight to London, it was really 45 mins. I had a bit of steamed rice and mixed veg at the Manchu Wok place at the food court and a lovely chat with some folks from Yorkshire who had just visited their grandkids in Houston. I then went for a walk, got a little lost, and kept hearing "Last boarding call for London gate K-12" over the paging system. Oops. Last one on the plane.

The flight to London is going well so far. I have the "H" right aisle seat and the block of the middle 5 seats is occupied by a woman and her three children under 6 years old, of which the two boys are bouncing off the seats, walls, aisles, etc. Should be interesting. The Simpsons movie has them somewhat quieted down but the oldest is still kicking the seat in front of him. The lady in front of him is watching the Transformers movie.

The best part of seat backs with video screens is being able to vaguely watch the various movies in one's view, partial attention with no sound. The best way to watch a movie. Unless one is having a Jane Austen-a-thon or Kevin Smith-a-thon, then it should be one movie at a time with sound.

The meal service is now coming by and it is the very first time I called beforehand and ordered a gluten-free meal. I am quite curious what it will be.

To quote the Bouncing Souls, "Here we go"...

Tomorrow is the big day: the departure for London Calling, the November Edition or the Future of Mobile Edition, as well as, Dublin Calling, Ulster Calling, and Andalucia Calling.

As I have started all the packing and the last stages of planning, I had to run lots of errands today. One of the errands took me to the Main Place Mall in Santa Ana, so that I could obtain a variety of Peek-a-Poohs for the small Hickseys. Whilst at the Mall, I stopped in at the AT&T/Cingular store to inquire as to why my sim chip has been going screwy of late. Some days my phone announces that it is Cingular. Some times AT&T. And some days, oddly, T-Mobile. What?!?!?! For fear of a large roaming bill, I decided to stop in to the AT&T/Cingular store and see what was up.

At the store, I found three men there, two obviously clerks and one in a suit, of which all three matched up my idea of the typical mobile / cell phone store employees: Mr. Indifferent, Mr. Helpful/Nice, and Mr. Pindick. When I walked in Mr. Indifferent and Mr. Pindick ignored me. Mr. Nice asked after what I needed, I explained to him that I was wondering if my old school AT&T sim chip from 2004 is on its last legs and described the issues I was having with it. Mr. Nice was very helpful, said yes I needed a new sim chip, and recommended where I could get a new AT&T sim chip without paying $25 for a new one and having to sign up for a new contract that his store would require.

I then asked when AT&T will be upgrading their 3G network. Mr. Nice did not know, he suggested I ask Mr. Indifferent the Regional Manager and Mr. Pindick. Over to the other two I went and inquired. Mr. Indifferent the Regional Manager asked which plan I had, I told him that I had an old school data plan from 2004, he was impressed. But his phone rang and he walked off to answer it.

Mr. Pindick, after arguing that I could have had an unlimited data plan since 2004, asked to see my current phone, I pulled my N95 out of my purse of which Mr. P. inspected.

Mr P: "Do you know that your phone is European manufactured?"

He didn't give me time to answer, "No shit, Sherlock, that is why I bought it."

Mr. P: "This phone does not work on the American 3G network, only the European and Asian ones. Which is why you don't have a good 3G connection with our network. You need an American 3G phone."

On he pressed. Me, repressing a snotty reply to the effect of "Cingular/AT&T has a 2.5 G network, the "EDGE", which is why I am asking when you will be upgrading to a REAL 3G network." He went on...

Mr. P: "Nokia has released an N95 for the American market."

Me: "No...." ((BLAH))

Mr. P as he turns my phone over and fondles it: "The American N95 has a black cover (his thumb rubs over the back cover of my phone repeatedly), instead of the purple one that this one has."

Me: ((Mr. Pindick is having thumb sex with my phone!!! AGH!!!))

Mr. P: "The new Nokia lacks a camera lens cover and has a bigger battery. Too bad you don't have that phone, you wouldn't have the problems with the network."

Me: "When will AT&T be selling them?" ((Knowing they aren't at this time and knowing even if I had the new Nokia N95-3 for the US market that the Cingular/AT&T network would still be slow...))

Mr. P: ((????)) [He did not answer.]

Me, smiling and taking my poor abused phone back: "Thank you."

Mr. P, voice dripping with condescension: "I guess you need a better plan and a better phone."

Me: leaving.

Going to a cell phone / mobile carrier retail store has become as unpleasant as going to a car dealership. Unfortunately, it is unavoidable as the call center folks can't help me replace my sim chip.

Dear Mobile Carriers, please screen out the Mr. Indifferents and Mr. Pindicks of the when you are hiring for your stores. Thank you.

Guy Fawkes wanted to blow up the new order (the Protestant Ascendency) to return to the old order (Catholicism). Today, I am going to have to blow up the old order (a mishmash of PHP4 & 5) to install the new order (PHP5 with PEAR & PDO). Wish me luck, taking down foundations is always risky...

How is it that England has a bonfire night on Guy Fawkes Night, Ireland has a good bonfire on Halloween, but we here in the US don't have a good bonfire night to start the descent into winter? Extending daylight savings time a week doesn't count.

We could argue that here in California we had a month of bonfires of the wrong sort.

Fri 11.02.07 - A malti-poo seen at the groomers.

Wed 10.31.07 - Bird as a Lamb and her two pumpkins.

Today is International Be Really Nice to Web Designers and Developers Day, which means that you, lovely internet public, should upgrade your browser.

Still using, Internet Explorer? Consider switching to Firefox or Opera or Safari (yeah, you want to do it, go buy a Mac).

If switching browsers is not your thing, then please, please, pretty please on top, be very nice and upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.

Yes, I know, Microsquash makes it hard, you have to find the Update area in the Start menu of your PC and then download about 62 security updates, but do it. Do it tonight before you go to bed, leave the MS update running while you sleep and hopefully when you wake up, your computer is happy and your favorite web designer and/or developer will be happy too.

Spread the love. Switch or Upgrade.

Sun 10.28.07 - Today was the Haute Dog Howl-oween Parade on 2nd Street in Belmont Shore area of Long Beach. Scruffy was a "Little Devil", Belle was a bee, and we commandeered Abbey from Family Callis to be Mephisto (although most folks thought she was Toto). It was a warm day, a bit confusing, and there were many, many more dogs registered for the Parade than last year (550 dogs in last year's Parade, Belle was 1432 and we were not at the end of the line). There were a surprising amount of lobster dogs this afternoon of all shapes and sizes.

The highlight was all of the wonderful dogs and the creativity of their owners in terms of costuming. The lowlight was me stepping in dog barf that flowed over my flipflop on to my foot at the very end of the parade, which caused a bit of shreaking and much laughter on my part. Last year, Scruffy, Belle, and I watched from the sidelines, and this year it was good fun to walk in the Parade. Big thanks to Justin Rudd and the Haute Dog folks for putting together such a fun event.

I did.

Tues 10.16.07 - Tonight our team, the Barflies.net One Pin, played against the Bowling Stones in the Alex's Bar Bowling League. Yes, somehow a bunch of us loosely related to Alex's have managed to show ourselves up at the Valley View AMF Bowling Lanes every Tuesday evening for a real live organized league.

A few non-Alex's Bar teams are in our league to round us up to 12 teams and these folks are WAY TOO SERIOUS. You would think that bowling was something other than to have a good laugh at. Really.

So far Joe, Maggie, Jim, and Jana of the Bowling Stones have been my favorite team to play with. We all had fun, we all cheered each other, and no one was too serious or took smoking breaks that lasted forever. The Bowling Stones were a delight. Thanks!

Sun. 10.14.07 - Los Straitjackets played in Jim & Kay's backyard for their "25 to Life" anniversary party.

This video of the last song were Jim & Kay dance their 25th anniversary dance to Los Straitjackets' version of "Sing, Sing, Sing".

Video captured by Jenifer Hanen with her Nokia N95 camera phone.

Sun. 10.14.07 - Los Straitjackets played in Jim & Kay's backyard for their "25 to Life" anniversary party. Per usual, there were more men dancing up front to Los Straitjackets than women. This particular bunch were too funny not to record on video...

Video captured by Jenifer Hanen with her Nokia N95 camera phone.

Sun 10.14.07 - At Jim and Kay's 25 to Life party.

Monday, Oct. 8, 2007 - LHR to LAX

Things I would Twitter if there was connection on the flight:

2:56pm (GMT) / 6:56am (PDT) - Yeah, my seat has a power port! Yeah! I can compute.

3:02pm (GMT) / 7:02am (Pacific Time) - Glad I never fully acclimated to UK time, as I will still be awake upon landing.

4:30 something pm (GMT) / 8:30 or thereabouts (Pacific Time) - I had something witty I wanted to say while eating boxed food, can't remember it now.

11:13am (Pacific Time) - Going over the southern tip of Greenland, with a bit of turbulence. Listening to podcasts.

around noon (Pacific Time) - attempted to clean up the 34,000 (approx) photos in my iPhoto, starting with 2004 & made more of a mess. Stopped. Will have to correct files from last week's back up.

1:21pm (Pacific Time) - Nearing Hudson Bay. Finished funny Bill Bryson book that I bought yesterday at Victoria Station. Now to finish Cameron Moll's Mobile Web Design.

1:24pm - Wishing for wifi on plane. On page 89 of 103 of Mr. Moll's pdf book.

1:31pm - I hate the phrase, "rich web experience". What a load of hooey. Moll uses a lot of cliched marketing speak. AGH~ No wonder why I can't read more than 8 pages of this book at a time.

1:44pm - huh. done with Moll's Mobile Web Design. huh. 4 hours & 48 mins to go to LAX.

2:22pm - back to listening to podcasts. Now over Ontario north of Lake Superior.

2:24pm - the fellow in front me has watched the same movie 3 times over. Of all the choices, he only likes the classic version of "Sunset Boulevard".

3:08pm - Nearing Winnipeg. LAX is supposedly 3 hours and 24 mins away. Am officially sick of sitting.

4:52pm - Over the Great Basin, flying towards Lake Powell. Tired. Listened to 3 podcasts. Thirsty. Hungry for real food, not plane food.

6:22pm - Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Big Bear on seat back screen. Seat mate from Glasgow asks what is Big Bear.

6:30pm - Gliding in the LAX landing formation / stack up. Can see the San Gabriel Mtns to right. Seat mate impressed that LA has big mtns.

6:40something pm - Landing! Landing! Landing!

7somethingpmforever - Bradley Terminal Customs. GROAN... Cheeky Mr. Sui the Customs Officer does NOT like my hair and tells me so. By accident step on drug sniffing dog.

8:44pm - At FuRaiBo for real food non-airplane food with Erika.

11:34 - At home. Showered. In bed. Happy.

@ the Biola Art Dept. Alumni/ae exhibition.

An amusing Om Turtle gift from a fellow Discworld fan friend. Thanks, Ruth!

This evening I went to theWiener Nationals qualifiers or the Dash of the Dachshunds at the Los Alamitos Race Track with Eoin and his Mom and Dad.

Family Gubbins is visiting Eoin from Ireland and are big dachshund fans, so I thought the Wiener Nationals would be a perfect introduction to California.

Earl Buck & George Kelly @ Ms. Jen's Fourth of July BBQ.

@ Ms. Jen's Fourth of July BBQ.

Thurs. 06.28.07 - As I was taking the dogs out for a walk, I encountered Earl and Patty (Ryan Patterson) out at the front of the apartments.

Me: "Hi Patty, what's up?"

Patty: "Nothing."

Me: "What are you doing today?"

Patty: "Nothing, blessedly, school's out. I have no plans all summer."

I love life. A guy who looks like an 80s rocker is having an unplanned summer after teaching the future generation of Angelenos all year at a school in the LAUSD. Enjoy your hard earned summer of nothing, Patty.

;o)

@ Alex's with Tink and Lucky. Russell Scott is playing tonight.

;o)

Tues. 05.22.07 - I walked into Salon Pop at 2pm for my hair color appointment with Beth Leheahy Martinez and walked out at 6:30pm with a fabulous new 'do and eyebrows. I love Salon Pop.

Sat. 05.19.07 - My first party at my new place.

Scruffy all wrapped up.

Made in West Germany.

In January of 1990, I returned from a month long study tour of Israel to find myself in need of pots and pans. In typical Jenifer fashion, but non-college student fashion, I bit the bullet, went to Williams and Sonoma at Satan Coast Plaza and bought a good set of pots and pans. When I got back to my Mom's house after the shopping expedition, she was astounded and got quite mad at me for spending $299 on a pan set when I could have gone to Kmart or the like and spent under $20 for some cheap aluminum.

I said, "I bought a Chantal enameled set that will last a lifetime."

The folks at my dormitory back at school were even more astounded. Really, why would I buy a WHOLE set of pots and pans when the Caf was just around the corner?

Today, 17 years and 3 months and some weeks later, I unpacked my lovely blue Chantal enameled pots and pans from their boxes (I kept the original packaging & reuse it every time I move), washed the dust off and put them away. As I was unwrapping the boxes, I noticed that each one of them said, "Made in West Germany".

Several thoughts popped into my head in rapid succession:
1 - "Hey, I really did buy a good set of pots. They are still here and I still like them.
2 - "Wow, the mark Roommate K. made on the bottom of the saucepan from steaming broccoli with no water is still there."
3 - "Made in West Germany?"
4 - "West Germany?"
5 - "Wait... when did West Germany ... oh yeah... 1989. Wow. West. Germany. West Germany."
6 - "God Bless the Germans and their good quality products."
7 - "Shit, has it really been 17 years? AGH!"
8 - "I wonder if Chantal enamel ware is still manufactured in Germany or if the new sets from Williams and Sonoma or Macy's say 'Made in China' on the bottom?"

According to their website, Chantal is now manufacturing the enameled parts in Germany, the lids in Japan, and assembling them in Houston, TX.

But West Germany!

Happy 4th birthday to this lovely little blog.

I have never, ever, never been on the eastbound 91 freeway through the Santa Ana Canyon on a Friday evening during rush hour traffic and been able to drive over 25mph. To drive 70 mph was a miracle. Most of the rest of the traffic must have had Good Friday off or at least half day.

Almost ready for SXSW.

Sun. 02.18.07 - Today is the second New Moon of 2007, which means it is the first day of the Year of the Pig. May you have a delightful year full of good juicy pork and lots of laughter.

Ha! It is all Hugh Reynolds from last year's game class's fault... I am now official addicted to Katamari! I called a bunch of game stores this morning looking for one that had Katamari Damacy in stock and only found one in Santa Ana. After my purchase, I came to the conclusion that Game Store Clerks are the New Record Store Clerks. Nice, geeky, willing to chat and very knowledgable. I miss Bionic.

After dinner with my mom at 320 Main in Seal Beach, I took the newly acquired Katamari Damacy, plus some wine, over to Lucky and Greg's house. Wine opened, Play Station 2 console pluged in, one call to Greg at work to figure out what channel was needed on the TV, a bowl of fresh popped popcorn, and off we rolled. Our biggest Katamari was 74cm. Wahoo!

Katamari, we love you!

You inform a person you are chatting with, "Forget schools and neighborhood safety, I pick where I live based on who the online cable provider is..."

Yes, it is my favorite holiday of the year today.... Groundhog's Day or St. Brigid's Day (yesterday)!

Phil's prediction for 2007:

Phil Says Spring is Right Around the Corner!

Phil's official forecast as read 2/2/07 at 7:28 a.m. at Gobbler's Knob:

El Nino has caused high winds, heavy snow, ice and freezing temperatures in the west.
Here in the East with much mild winter weather we have been blessed.

Global warming has caused a great debate.
This mild winter makes it seem just great.

On this Groundhog Day we think of one thing.
Will we have winter or will we have spring?

On Gobbler's Knob I see no shadow today.
I predict that early spring is on the way.

The Northwest and Northern California may have seen a heavy, wet, and cold winter this year, but here in SoCal we have only had one good rain in October and one last week. SoCal has been very dry and quite warm, until the January cold snap. Phil - we need rain. Will you please do a dance for SoCal today?

In other notes, congratulations to the Brigidine Sisters on their bicentennial anniversary this year! May you keep the fires of St. Brigid lit, may your compassion and peace go before you!

Hmph to Adam and Eve, I am switching religions. I am a descendant of the great Elm herself.

Thanks to Rebecca's Pocket's The Battle of Helm's Deep post, I have discovered my favorite new blog, Miss(ed) Manners. A genuinely funny blog. Go read it.

02.19.05 - Ms. Jen and Jeremy Callis. I used to babysit Jeremy when I was in college. Now he bowls at Punk Rock Bowling. When did he get so old? Photo by Jenifer Hanen at Punk Rock Bowling 2005.

Part 1 of the two part "Make Hair Streak Purple Before Bowling" maneuver. Bleach this afternoon. Purple on Thursday. Then set in pin curls. Then good hair all weekend in Lost Wages.

The Countdown to Punk Rock Bowling 2007 begins. We are now 8 days away from Lost Wages. For the next 8 days, I will countdown with photos from PRB 2005.

02.18.05 - Bryan Bouncing Soul, friend, and Bucky Boston. Photo by Jen Hanen with her Casion Exlim Z40.

What George W. Bush could learn from Steve Jobs (via rebecca's pocket)