I am now officially home, exhausted to the point of nearly comatose. I have many thoughts but I want to sleep. Blogging tomorrow & Thursday to catch up, now that I am back on good fast, reliable wifi/internet.

I took a cool photo as we fly over Labrador, just as the plane crossed over into North America, but I can't find it on my phone to post.

Glad to be home. Bizarrely, Los Angeles is cooler in temperature than London by some.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia N95.

Fri 05.29.09 - Yesterday, while I was sitting in a session about Android binaries at the Google I/O 2009 conference, I texted Earl, my next door neighbor, to ask if the baby had come yet.

Earl texted me right back to say, "2 min. Ago, big!"

Thus, Baby Callis (name TBA) was the first baby born to our apartment building in a birthing pool in Tammy & Ryan's living room at 3:43pm on Thursday, May 28, 2009! Baby was born 8 lbs, 22 inches long and she is a girl.

When I got home last night around 9:40pm, all was quiet. Around noon today, Bird invited Sharon (Earl's lady) and I over to meet the Baby. Grandma Terri was holding the little one when we arrived and I snapped the above photo.

Congratulations to Family Callis on the safe delivery of Baby Callis!

The NaBloPoMo theme for May 2009 is sweet. Interpret the word sweet as one will.

The month of May is quite full right now and so it makes complete sense for me to sign up for NaBloPoMo when I will be overly busy. (not). But the theme this month intrigued me and I decided to sign myself up. I may be naturally bubbly and happy, but how many sweet things can I write about in 31 one days? We shall find out, won't we?

Our lovely friends over at the Online Etymology Dictionary give the word sweet's history as follows:

sweet (adj.)

O.E. swete "pleasing to the senses, mind or feelings," from P.Gmc. *swotijaz (cf. O.S. swoti, Swed. söt, Dan. sød, M.Du. soete, Du. zoet, O.H.G. swuozi, Ger. süß), from PIE base *swad- (Skt. svadus "sweet;" Gk. hedys "sweet, pleasant, agreeable," hedone "pleasure;" L. suavis "sweet," suadere "to advise," prop. "to make something pleasant to"). Sweetbread "pancreas used as food" is from 1565 (the -bread element may be from O.E. bræd "flesh"). To be sweet on someone is first recorded 1694. Sweet-talk (v.) dates from 1936 (in "Gone With the Wind"). Sweet sixteen first recorded 1826. Sweet dreams as a parting to one going to sleep is attested from 1908. Sweet and sour in cooking is from 1723, not originally of oriental food

Thus, I will spend the month attempting to blog about all things "sweet, pleasant, agreeable, and pleasing to the senses". Since I am already blogging either a photo or a text post every day this year (as with last year), for the NaBloPoMo challenge, I will write a text post everyday with a possible photo each day, too. Possibly.

As for the sweet bit about today, I had a fuzzily delightful dream last night/early this morning, just in time for May Day where I was in a forest (a west side of the Sierra Nevada giant sequoia forest) and I had a mobile, handheld map of the forest made of model sized trees. To navigate you turned the tree model upside down and let your hand feel where to go in the forest.

The May Day 2005 post from this blog.
The May Day 2008 post from this blog about a dream I had May Day morning last year.

Last but not least, I hope you had a delightfully sweet day today, whether it was enjoying spring flowers and maypoles or out marching in the name of Labor. Though celebrating Beltane seems a bit more delightful than a march...

If you are the sort of human who likes to have a really good panic every now and then and / or enjoys conspiracy theories, I would like to give you a good humorous cross section on the Aporkalypse to help trot you out of too much routing around in the slops of the swine flu hysteria [1]:

Apokalypse 2007 - A Flickr Photoset that involves a piglet and a BBQ spit. It does not end well... for the piglet.

Making Light commenter, albatross, makes reference to the Four Hogs of the Aporkalypse.

How to survive the Aporkalypse by Aaron at Tygerland.net:

Carry a pack of bacon at all times. If someone annoys you simply rub it in their face and watch them freak out.

Start ill-informed superstitions. For example: I heard that, if you wash your genitals in rose-oil after having full-sex with a pig, you won't catch the flu.

Further Signs of the Aporkalypse (from BoingBoing in 2001! How prescient!)

Last, but not least, The Ham of Darkness, which features a photo of a small blonde child french kissing a pig...

Notes:
[1] If you think I am not taking swine flu or *gasp* Avian Flu or **GASP**ZOMG**GASP**GASP** SARS seriously enough, I would like to trot out that you are much more likely to expire from an automobile accident, heart attack, stroke, or domestic abuse this year than you are of a fairly rare "epidemic" episode that happens once every few years to less that a couple of tens/hundreds/thousand folks world wide. I would really worry about how your local bus driver drives. The Flu is not even on the list of Causes of Death, but TB is. Have you been tested for TB recently?

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N79.

Fri 04.24.09 - Happy Birthday to me.

Today I was supposed to go to Disneyland with Julie Wanda but the plan got foiled by a migraine headache that landed me in bed most of the day. I took Maxalt, my migraine meds, in the late morning and by 6pm I could look at light again and walk about a bit, if unsteady. By 8pm, Julie joined me in Seal Beach and we walked down to the Wine Cellar on Main and Electric to salvage the birthday.

It was a delightful evening. I am very happy that we have our own little fun|cool|good wine bar in Seal Beach, even if it is a big overly loud and needs a few more servers on a Friday night. But it was fun and tasty. Now I am ready for bed.

And within an hour or two, Happy 6th Birthday to Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen!

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!

I wish I had a great photo for you all tonight. Or a big written post chock full of juicy tidbits or meaty ideas. But I don't have either for you all this evening because today was Tax Day.

Actually, my activity towards the eventual goal of the 11:59pm tax filing deadline this evening started yesterday. Back when I expected a refund every year, I couldn't get my taxes done fast enough in late January or early February. Now that I am not teaching, nor do I have a day job, but instead all my working efforts are those of the self-employed, it is all I can do to drag myself to Turbo Tax to get my taxes done in time.

The last two years, I knew before it all started that I had a loss or close to a draw, thus my incentive to do my taxes early was slim to none. This week I cut it very close, close in time and close in dollars.

I do not begrudge paying my taxes - as I do like paved roads and the like, nor do I begrudge giving a full accounting of my fiscal activities - it is a good discipline. But to sit down and do it, that is the hard part.

Luckily for me, TurboTax has really stepped up their game and rather than struggling a bit with the software or explanations or the user interface and then panicking that I would be audited by the IRS due to the bizarre TurboTax interface & lack of clarity, this year was easy with TurboTax 2008, unlike the evil 2005 TurboTax adventure.

TurboTax just worked this year. I had a choice of doing it online at the turbotax.com website or downloading the software on to my computer - or in my case, as a repeat customer, using the cd that came in the mail months ago. Rather than TurboTax walking me through tons of evil details that not even tax accountants understand at first glance, this year the program got smart enough to let me know when I should pay attention and when the details did not pertain to my situation. I love it when I am not drowned in details that make me panic.

Best of all the user interface allowed me to hop back and forth in between sections, finish bits, save and then hop somewhere else without complaint. And it was worth it to get the Home and Small Business edition, as it really was able to breakdown all the categories that as a small business owner / freelance / self-employed person would need to know and had expanded pop-ups to help explain each category of expenses that one is allowed to take for a business expense. There was only one time where I had to guess where to list an expense (domain name registry fees).

Big thanks to the design and development teams at Intuit for a good tax experience, rather than a panicked, evil one.

Intuit, I do have one big request: Please make a Quickbooks Simple Start for Mac OS X. Just sayin'... not all of us small business owners out there are MicroSquash junkies. I know I need to keep track of business expenses during the year, but I am not going to shell out $199 for the Mac edition of Quickbooks before I know if I like it & it will work for me. How about making Quickbooks Simple Start as an online service that is device agnostic?

Even though my exposure to Kalpen Modi's (aka Kal Penn) acting career was in the excellent but more literary movie, "The Namesake", and not any of the Harold and Kumar movies, I am still excited to see that he is leaving Hollywood behind for an even weirder town: Washington D.C.

Good luck, Mr. Modi.

Sepia Mutiny on Oh my God they killed Kutner. Bastards!
8Asians on Kumar Goes to Washington

Yesterday, walking into a bathroom at a Starbucks triggered the most bizarre 24+ hours of migraine I have ever experienced. Mind you, I have been getting migraines since I was 9 or so years old and I am no stranger to the experience. The usual migraine for me starts with a fluorescent light trigger (evil evil evil energy savers) and/or consumption of an allergic food substance (usually egg plus dairy) that causes a sense of unwellness that descends into light phobia, nausea, and twenty thousand evil hammer elves pounding at my skull and eye sockets for a day or so.

A couple of times in my life, I have had sound trigger a migraine. I learned early on, aka 1991, that I cannot go into a club that plays house or bass 'n' drum electronic music with a light show unless I want to exit with a migraine. Sound, repetitive loud bass sound that I can feel on my skin plus lights equals a migraine trigger, thus my love for the good old fashioned high trebled rock'n'roll.

Bizarrely enough, smoke of the mary jane is also a migraine trigger for me. I can't smoke the stuff or be around anyone smoking hash or pot at all. Neither can my brother. It triggers migraine and nausea for me, and just nausea for my brother. I am all for legalizing the weed, just do not smoke that sh*t within 50 feet of me.

Back to the sound trigger, I have read about folks who have aural / audio / optical migraines that are triggered by sound or flashing lights. When I was in my late 20s, I worked in Boston and was in an office with fluorescent lights and a CRT computer monitor. My doctor helped me work out that the flicker cycle of the fluorescent overhead lights was competing with the 60 cycle/minute flicker of the CRT monitor which was causing my brain to GACK into migraine land. She told me to turn off the fluorescent overhead lights, get a desktop incandescent light, and spend at least 1 hour outdoors every workday. This prescription worked.

I walked at lunch and home from work. I turned off the fluorescent lights and got an incandescent desktop lamp. No more migraines at that job. I now make sure that my house & work environments have lots of natural light and no fluorescent bulbs of any kind. I avoid electronic music. I avoid any combos of egg and dairy in food (thus my joke about being a gluten-free vegan carnivore). I spend most of my time now, gratefully, migraine free. Except the one off odd migraine here and there.

Yesterday was that day. I walked into the Starbucks bathroom, which had bare walls and a concrete floor with a very very noisy overhead fan. The fan was very loud and I could feel the sound and air pulse out of the fan, echo around the concrete and hit my skin. My first thought was, "Oh no! I need to get out of this bathroom now. Yikes, I have to pee!" I tried to get in and out quickly, but I didn't do it soon enough.

Within 30 minutes I found my eyes struggling to focus and the road in front of me pulsing. My hearing was starting to pulse as well. By the time, we made it to Erika & Thomas' house, I had a hard time remaining steady enough on my feet to walk up the stairs. I was having a hard time thinking and I was giggling for no reason.

Normally, by this time, the crushing headache pain and attendant nausea would have descended, but this migraine was different. My head felt off, but not achy. Erika gave me a cold pack and a black shirt to put over my eyes as I laid on the floor to try to get the world to stop pulsing. Within 20 minutes of no light and the ice pack on my eyes & forehead while lying on their living room floor, I started to feel more normal, though all the sounds I heard were still lightly pulsing.

I waited until I felt calmed enough to go home. Once home, I put myself to bed as my limbs felt weak and disoriented. I kept waking up feeling more than a bit off. Due to the fact that the headache and nausea did not arrive, I didn't take my migraine meds, but instead took a benadryl thinking that maybe the dim sum lunch that Erika and I went to contributed to the completely off kilter day.

I woke up this morning feeling like I needed to stay in bed with my eye mask on. My day was very touch and go. I walked the dogs but half way through the walk I started to feel a bit weak and the world got a bit visually wavy again. We went home and I went to sleep for the late morning and early afternoon. Since then, I have alternated between about 60% on and about 85% normal, with bouts of weakness, visual fuzziness, and feeling like my body took a half step over and left me here.

I went and read various folks' stories about optical and aural migraines online and my experience is in line with theirs. What has been so odd about the last 24+ hours is that the pre-migraine or first hour of migraine disorientation that I usually experience has now lasted for over a day.

I really hope that I wake up normal tomorrow. Well, as normal as I ever am.

Hi!

I have two mostly finished but not ready to publish posts one from Saturday on the Nokia N97 and one from yesterday on the N79, but due to client deadlines and my Mom's birthday (today!) it has been too busy to finish the posts up properly. I will do it tonight.

Sorry for what appears to be a lack of activity around here, but without Lifeblog on the Nokia N79, I can't moblog my usual photos.

Thurs. 03.26.09 - This afternoon, my Mom and I walked over to Seal Beach's Main Street to try out the new Vietnamese restaurant, Phở Basil Leaf. I had been watching the arrival of a Vietnamese place with trepidation, as I am so spoiled with being less than 15 minutes away from the mecca of Vietnamese food - Westminster and Garden Grove's Little Saigon. My trepidation was further fueled by the menu that Phở Basil posted in the window of the storefront just a few buildings closer to the Seal Beach pier from O'Malley's.

The posted menu seemed to be Americanized Vietnamese. Instead of the usual Phở menu of about 10-15 different variations of beef phở, there were only four listed: beef, chicken, pork and tofu. I have never, in 25+ years, of going to authentic Vietnamese restaurants seen a tofu phở on a menu before.

As a dedicated cha gio bún (Bún chả giò) fan, to see that the only bún options were in beef, chicken, pork and tofu, made me think, "Ugh, the attack of Americanized Chinese-Vietnamese food. Ugh."

Even though Phở Basil Leaf opened over 6 weeks ago, I was waiting to try it out. Waiting for my Mom to be available, so that if the restaurant was dull and Americanized, then my Mom could not force me to go again.

Luckily for us, Phở Basil Leaf was good to surprisingly fresh. The "Summertime Spring Rolls" (as seen above) were fresh and delightful. My Mom declared them the best she has had in years, I thought they were good. My pork bún was good, but not nearly fish sauce-y or basil-y enough. My Mom liked her beef phở.

Phở Basil Leaf is good, but given the immense amount of competition within 7-15 miles, I would love to see them step up their game and aim for a wider variety of authentic Vietnamese and not just dumbed down for Seal Beach's Main Street.

Phở Basil Leaf, give me some rice wrapped pork (not chicken) chả giò for my bun with a big basil & fish sauce kick. Where is the beef phở with meatballs, beef marrow, and fish balls?

Phở Basil Leaf, challenge us. Seal Beach's Main Street is not Main Street America, but a main street in the most diverse metropolitan area in the world, we can not only handle kick ass Vietnamese, but we will drive for it.

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...

Yesterday, Wednesday, my Dad, Cam, had his check up ultrasound at his local hospital, the La Paz Regional. After the "all good" ultrasound result from the hospital, we went to lunch at a local Mexican restaurant and then I went to do a good clean at my brother's vacation place.

With Joe's house clean, my dad's fridge stocked, his body in recovery, Scruffy & I were on the road by 3pm yesterday driving back to California. I am very glad to be home after 13 days away.

According to my Dad's doctors, he still needs to rest for another 2-3 weeks before returning to work. Over the last week he went from only being able to be upright and attentive for less than an hour a day to over 6 hours a day. By upright, I mean sitting and occasional walking.

I am glad that Cam is on the mend and on the road to full recovery. I am very grateful for my Mom coming to join me for a week and my brother for his support in the first 5 days. Most of all, I am darned glad that Cam is healing.

Thank you, one and all, for your emails, twitters, pings, texts and phone calls of support. Y'all are wonderful.

p.s. On Sunday, 3/1/09, in the parking lot of the Buckskin Mountain State Park, I had my first "lifer" sighting of a Vermillion Flycatcher, the desert dwelling red & black cousin of the Black Phoebe. I was so ecstatic, I almost hyperventilated. Yes, I am a bird geek.

Sorry about the lack of updates the last few days, but we have gotten into a bit of a routine here in Parker, Arizona, and blogging from the computer has not been apart of it.

The Backstory: A week ago Friday, I drove out to Phoenix to see my Dad, Cam, in the hospital as he had had a bad work accident 2 days previously that resulted in 3 broken ribs & a ruptured spleen & a bruised lung plus scalp lacerations. Last Sunday he was released, and my brother Joe and I drove him back to his home in Parker, AZ, which is across the street from my brother's vacation place. My Mom joined us on Monday and my brother left on Wednesday. My mom and I have been filling our days with making sure Cam is comfortable, hiking/exploring, and cooking. Lots of cooking.

The Cam Update: After his naughty escape morning on Monday to go have coffee with a crony, Cam has been mostly sleeping and resting. His ribs and spleen are quite painful and he was quite weak most of the week. Yesterday was his first follow up appointment with his primary care physician here in Parker. Basically, he is on bed and other forms of no work / no activity rest for four weeks. Due to the nature of the fall that caused him to fall, he does need to have a follow up ultrasound next week at the local hospital.

All in all, Cam is slowly on the mend but is still in a lot of pain, esp. when he moves. He spends most of his time sleeping and lying down watching TV. He is allowed to walk short distances, so he has been walking across the street for dinner with us. Mom and I have been bringing him his breakfast coffee so that he is not tempted to go out and about again.

How long will we be here? We decided after yesterday's doctor appointment and how wiped out Cam was after returning, that we would stay for at least another 4 days and reevaluate on Tuesday, March 2nd.

As I noted before, I have no phone reception at my brother's place, so please either leave me a phone message and SpinVox will email it to me or email me and then I will call you back on Skype or I will walk about 1/2 a mile away in the Keys were I do have reception.

Thanks for your kind Tweets, emails, prayers, and thoughts. Y'all rock.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with Mom's Nokia N82

Mon 02.23.09 - The rear guard / back up troops have arrived... Mom and Scruffy pulled into my brother's place in Parker, AZ, around 5pm or thereabouts today. My mom kindly agreed to come out to Parker to help me keep Cam resting and taking care of himself.

Which is a very good thing, since when I walked out of Joe's house this morning to go across the street to my dad's place to check on him, I found my dad in one of his crony's trucks about to take off to go to have coffee. Grrrr....

While it seemed like a good idea after a night's rest, when Cam returned from the jaunt, he was much worse for the wear and more willing to go back to his bed and nap. When Mom showed up, she told him that if he didn't behave that she would get a electronic dog training collar for him and set up a perimeter. She was only half joking.

In fabulously typical American hospital fashion, my Dad is being released this morning. Campbell gets to keep his spleen, which is good news, but it is still ruptured though healing.

Right now, Joe and I are packing up the hotel room, going to run a few errands, and then go pick up Cam from the hospital and drive him home to Parker.

I am going to stay in Parker at my brother's house there for a week or so to watch over my Dad and make sure he is sleeping, resting, taking deep breaths, and generally taking care of himself. My Mom is going to join me tomorrow evening and stay with me for the week.

Please do continue to pray for his healing, as it will be a couple weeks before Cam is able to resume daily life.

Also, email me if you want to get a hold of me rather than call, as AT&T wireless has little to no reception in Parker, AZ.

Thanks to all of you for your support emails, phone calls, and DMs on Twitter! Y'all rock.

My dad is still in the hospital in Phoenix for observation. His spleen was ruptured in the fall and the hospital folk are watching to determine if the internal bleeding has stopped or if they need to remove the spleen. It is best to keep it if possible, given that the spleen is a necessary organ for blood filtering and the immune system.

The good news is that he was moved from ICU to a regular hospital room this morning. Yesterday, I had a small chat the nurse, but do to another emergency in the trauma unit, I was not able to speak to the doctor. The nurse was fairly confident that if several blood levels remained the same or lowered, that they would not need to remove the spleen and that Cam would be able to go home sooner rather than later.

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

My dad, Cam, decided to accidentally test his flying squirrel impersonation yesterday from a high ladder on to some concrete. Needless to say, it did not go well.

In typical Hanen fashion, he decided to see if he could wait it out and didn't call for help until this morning.

He is currently at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, AZ, with 4 broken ribs, a bruised lung, a bleeding spleen, and a cracked head. My brother and I are driving out to Phoenix tonight tomorrow to be with our dad.

If you are the praying type, your prayers are highly appreciated. If you are not the praying type, please do a get well dance for my dad in the location of your choice.

Update: Thur. 02.19.09 9:33pm - My dad is in Emergency ICU at Good Samaritan in Phoenix. I will be driving out early in the morning and my brother will follow later after a work obligation is over.

My dad and I have talked 2x today and he texted me once this evening, but the hospital will not put me through.

If you want updates, please watch my twitter steam.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen on Fri. 02.13.09 with her Nokia N95 camera phone.

All my photos from today are unfit for the screen, mostly photos of the dogs in motion and blurred. The day was mostly gray, so the photo taking possibilities were limited.

This weekend has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster and energy drain. I did have a lovely lunch today at Open Sesame in Belmont Shore with my sister, Allison. And I have been working on a project that I am almost ready to unveil but not quite yet. Maybe an hour or two away, but it won't happen tonight.

Thus, Happy Quiet Sunday. Tomorrow is President's Day.

After over 9 days on the road visiting such exotic locales as Las Vegas, Bishop, and Mammoth, I finally arrived home tonight around 1:34am (approximately). Now I am too amped up from skiing all day, helping my cousin with her computer(s), and then driving home from 8:30pm to now to actually go to bed. Ever since Punk Rock Bowling, my sleep schedule has been a bit off and instead of going to bed around midnight, I have been staying up past 2am every night.

Tomorrow (Sunday - today - now) will be my day of rest. I plan to sleep in late, have a nice lunch, do laundry, shop for groceries, blog, and work on the Punk Rock Bowling 2009 photo essay.

Night y'all.

In case you were wondering what yesterday's photo was all about, Erika was kind enough to come over to my 'sickbed' (really, I was on the floor next to the wall heater) and dispense some wonder Chinese medicine that she picked up at a pharmacy in China last year after she walked up 6,000 steps.

For reasons only known to my sciatica nerve and the deep muscles that connect my right hip to femur, the muscles decided to completely seize up and pinch the nerve into intense pelvic & back pain while I was sitting on the floor working on the computer yesterday morning.

For the first few hours, I could not stand up due to numbness in my legs and so I had to either just lie down or crawl over to my bed to use the post to pull myself up. I called a few folks for advice on what to do, Erika suggested that I call around to see if anyone had some of the muscle relaxant Flexeril and my mom suggested that I go to the urgent care. I couldn't get out of the house, let alone drive over to the local urgent care, so I waited on the floor until I could hear some of neighbors moving around. Lucky for me, neighbor Earl and across the way neighbor Tony had just got home. Earl had some Flexeril and Tony gave solid medical advice on what to do with it (Tony is a Respiratory Therapist at a local hospital).

Before you, the reader, get all cranky on me and say, "You shouldn't take prescription pills from people, but only have it prescribed by a doctor." While this may be true, I hate my HMO. Hate them. It would take a lot worse than lying on the floor in pain to get me to call their damned advice nurse again to get the go ahead to go to the emergency/urgent care on a holiday.

But I didn't have to, as I crowdsourced great care and advice from neighbors, Erika, and Twitter friends (thanks v, for the advice on stretches!). The best part of all of this is when Erika showed up with the Wing Long Red Flower Oil that she picked up on her trip to China last year.

Between the Wing Long Red Flower Oil, Flexeril, Advil, Erika's Mom's 1970s heating pad, and two days of bed / floor rest, I am feeling better. I could actually put on pants today and sit in a chair. Rather than intense sharp pain, today's pain is dull. I hope tomorrow that the pain will have further dulled.

If I want to be optimistic about this, I could say that I have had a forced 2 day, do nothing holiday. Thanks everyone for helping out.

Fri 12.19.08 - A certain Thomas became a true hyphenated German-American this afternoon, or as he put it, a "Germerican".

Tues 12.16.08 - Today around 5pm, my brother Joe called to let me know that he had been laid off from his job of 16 years. He was laughing and I was frankly relieved. He went straight from his college internship into his job which over the last 16 years had morphed into a senior VP position at the company.

In those 16 years, he had not worked for any other company. He had the same set of bosses and over time became more stressed and weighed down even though he appeared to have it all.

Over the years, a few of us in our family encouraged him to look into other opportunities, to try other jobs and/or companies. But Joe is loyal and to his employer he was very loyal.

But circumstances dictated that he was to be let go, and it did not come as a surprise as his position was in limbo due to the credit crunch in that he could not really do his job with the economy at the state it was in.

His employer was honorable about the whole thing. The CEO called and apologized. His boss met with him in person even though their offices are more then 60 miles apart. They gave him a good severance package. He will remain friends with these folks who mentored him all these years.

Why did we go to celebrate at Walt's Wharf tonight? Because now Joe is set free to try other avenues. To stretch. To imagine a new life.

One of the things that I have admired greatly about my brother the last 6-7 years is the the house that he and my dad have built out in Arizona on the Colorado River. My brother has spent most weekends the last 6 years building a house and garage (1200 sq ft of house, and 2400 sq of garage - as it should be). While many folks would come home from an intense job and veg out on the weekends, my brother drove 3.5 hours each way to be creative over time. And the house is beautiful.

I hope that whatever my brother chooses to do with the next few years of his life, that he will figure out how to meld his talent for business, numbers, and negotiating with his wide creative streak that is able to build a house and a sand rail (dune buggy) on the his off time.

Go Joe Go!

Not really. Today was my day to get a lot of little things done. To finish up the pieces. To tie up all the strands. While I got a lot done, I did not complete everything on my to do list.

Let's cross our fingers that it can happen by tomorrow. In the meantime, I am off to bed.

'Night.

I have always had rosy cheeks. I sunburn easily. I windburn easily. I blush easily. If I eat something I am allergic to, everyone notices within minutes, as my face & neck turn bright red (or in the case of canola oil a violent purple-red). If I go skiing or in freezing weather, my nose rivals Rudolph's. I have such sensitive skin that it is very difficult to find skin products that don't make me break out, burn, itch, crack, etc.

But in the last year, I have moved from low level manageable facial skin troubles to outright Jen's face skin v. Jen. Yes, war. Actually, it is rosacea.

I have spent most of my life joking about my pink-piglet Scotch-Irish skin. It is no longer a joke. I am over the burning and itching. I am over spending in excess of $150 for sensitive skin product lines to find that a month or two into using it that my redness, burning, itching, and red bumps that aren't acne are worse from using said skin care line.

This summer the situation worsened due to the fact that I found my skin rejecting every sunblock I tried all the while the redness and bumps were aggravated by the sun. Yes, I live in the land of the perpetual sunshine, but my teenaged tactic of avoiding the day and going out at night really is not workable as an fairly responsible adult.

Another interesting bit that I found in my research this week is that rosacea is common amongst folks with migraines (both are a neuro-sensitivity response) and folks with migraines tend to have either IBS or celiacs disease. Ding ding ding.

I have all three. And my rosacea is worse on my right side, which is the side that I tend to get most of my migraines. Upon reading all of this, I was in tears and wanted to trade in my body for a better model, not just one free of sensitivities and auto-immune attacks but also a taller body. Thank you very much.

I know my triggers - sun, cold, hot, skin care products, sun block, canola oil, some wines, diet coke (oh, my beloved), among a few others. I try to eliminate what I can, but I do like to go out & about in the day.

And on Monday, I have an appointment with my dermatologist to talk about possible treatment. I can't do the pill form antibiotics nor the accutane nor the retin-A that is the normal course of treatment due to allergies and other sensitivities. Many other folks with rosacea who have written online about their struggles with the condition say that photo derm / photofacials have worked where other treatments have not.

One friend and one family member with the same level of irritation that I am now experiencing have gotten the photo facial treatments to good results - not just a reduction of rosacea redness & bumps but also of irritation and burning. Both are active in sports and are out in the California sun without much trouble now they have gotten the photo facial treatment.

Have you had problems with rosacea? If so, what have you done to help alleviate the symptoms? Has anyone here gotten some photo facial treatments for rosacea? Has it worked?

I may have invited y'all before, but the Seal Beach art | music | writing salon meets once every two months for a night of art, music, and poetry/reading - and drinking & snacking & talking. It really is a mishmash of folk from all over SoCal and from a variety of creative disciplines. This Saturday is the 1 year anniversary and they are moving the location to Dan Callis' new studio on Marina Dr. Come join us, it will be fun.

What: The Seal Beach Salon's First Anniversary
When: Saturday, Nov. 15, 2008
Time: Starts at 6pm, ends at 10pm.
Where: 700 1/2 Marina Drive* at Dan Callis' new studio (just back from the corner of Marina & PCH, in the yard behind the flower shop & plumber that are on PCH in the same building) - Google Map
Who: Filmmakers Hobo Soul will be showing their film in an RV, Dan Callis will be having an Open Studio, poet Aaron Belz will be giving a reading, and Avi Buffalo and Band will be performing.

Bring: Yourself, friends, and beverage of choice.

Come and join us in Seal Beach on Saturday evening.

Fri 11.07.08 - We celebrated Scruffy's 5th birthday at Dog Beach this morning.

Today I am going to combine my photo and text of the day into one post rather than two.

So, Mr. Scruffy McDoglet was born five years ago today in North Carolina, whether to a reputable Maltese breeder or to a puppy farm- we don't know, but he was the runt of the litter with a few "defects" that precludes him from being AKC. The truth of the matter is that is doesn't matter because Scruffy McDoglet is the best.

Scruffy is so full of personality, gumption, and pure sheer bloody mindedness, it doesn't matter that he has thin hair and too many skin spots. Who cares if he doesn't match some ideal that the AKC has set for pure-bred Maltese, as he is perfect as he is. I can't imagine him being smaller, more hairfull, and dumber.

Scruffy has truly been a joy and after growing up with lots of dogs, he is the first dog that I have truly grown attached to.

Happy Birthday to the best 12 lb bundle of squirmy, poopy, running, barking, sleeping joy!

Hi Y'all.

I have not fallen into a pit of despair and longing since Helsinki, only into a pit of work. I am slowing climbing out. When I get out, I have about 7-10 blog posts that I want to write for y'all and me. In the meantime, please content yourselves with the photos I have been moblogging up.

Also, can I just say that I am angry & frustrated at politics, greed and my email.... Yes, I said it.

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...

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.

I am now off to drive up to the San Francisco Bay Area to go to the DjangoCon 2008 that will be hosted at the Googleplex in Mountain View tomorrow & Sunday.

I am excited to be attending DjangoCon, Saturday night's Django 1.0 Release Party, and to visit the Googleplex for the first time. I had planned on staying up in San Francisco on Sunday night to have dinner with friends and generally wind down the weekend, but...

This morning I got a lovely email invitation asking if I wanted to attend the Nokia Open Lab* this upcoming week in Helsinki. Of course I said, "Yes, yes, yes!"

From the invite:

"The latest [Nokia Workshop] being a new annual workshop that hopes to involve an eclectic mix of the online community in a discussion of what the future holds for everything from mobile technology to media creation."

It will be a great whirlwind in the course of 8 days, all in the name of mobile and web creation! w00t!

* Big Thanks to Charlie for helping me out with the real name of the Nokia Open Lab event. As usual, Super Charlie to the Rescue.

I would like to extend a hearty congratulations to my lovely and smart friend Yvonne Cooprider Manganaro on her recent (July 25th) marriage to Frederico Manganaro. May your marriage be blessed with laughter and little people.

Photo of Frederico, Lauren (peeking out between F&Y) & Yvonne by me (Ms. Jen with my Nokia N95) from last night at Alex's Bar just before the Lords of Altamont went on stage.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen with a Nokia N82 in Chennai, India.

Fri. 08.15.08 - Happy Birthday to the Republic of India!

For the last 9 days, I have been suffering from a pinched nerve in my neck / base of my head on the left side. Who knows how it started... slept on it wrong or something.

The upswing is that everything has been painful. My teeth on the left side of my mouth have been sensitive to hot & cold. My back is mad at me for sitting or walking. Pain shooting down my left arm and leg, if I move wrong. My head so painful that I can't find a comfortable position to sleep. I have slept very badly the last week to the point of waking up in such pain that I was crying.

Yesterday, I went to a message therapist who worked on my neck, back and sciatica. She thinks the problem is not just my neck but also my sciatica nerve at my left hip.

Regardless, the last few days I have been so sleep deprived and in pain, that I have felt confused and at loss what to do next.

Today is the first day I have felt better and I am going to go to bed early.

Night, y'all.

Fifteen Years!

15 YEARS!

Fifteen years ago this summer, I was in the midst of the summer of weddings.

On July 10, 1993, Vicki married Rick in Brea, Ca. I was a bridesmaid.

On July 24, 1993, Annemiek married Ken in Gouda, Netherlands. I was a bridesmaid.

On August 7, 1993, Kimberly married Dave in Long Beach, Ca. I was a bridesmaid.

On August (something, 2 or 3 weeks after K & D), 1993, Naomi married Stephen in Shaver Lake, Ca. Blessedly I was NOT a bridesmaid. I had some other function of which I can't remember.

I ended that summer a lot poorer in dollars, but richer in bridesmaid dresses. By the time the summer of 1993 ended, I had been a bridesmaid 6 times. I swore that after that, I would only ever be a bridesmaid for Erika or my sister. When I moved to Boston in 1994, I sold all the above bridesmaid dresses at a garage sale (except the one for Kimberly & Dave's wedding, which bizarrely is still in my closet).

After the first wave of marriages within 2-4 years of graduating from college, there was a lull for about 10 years. Now the second wave of mid-to-late thirties marriages seems to be subsiding. With the big 40 birthday this year (yikes!), I have been doing a lot of reflecting on my hopes & dreams since college, as well as my friends and their hopes & dreams. I have thought about who we were and who we are now. I was so hopeful then.

Last Friday, Kimberly and I walked Scruffy down to the River Beach and let him run. I did the numbers in my head, and announced, "OMG! You and Dave will have your 15th Anniversary this year!" [[BRAIN EXPLODES!!!!]]

To all my friends who got married in the summer of 1993, Happy Anniversary! May you look back at 15 years of married life with pleasure.

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...

But ever since my last day in London, nearly two weeks ago, I have been sick. There has been only 3-4 days of the sick in bed kind of sick, but every other day since has been the you can get up and do things but you are dragging badly kind of sick.

Yesterday, my neighbor Tammy commented, "You have seemed down this last week, is anything wrong?"

Me, "I have been sick."

Tammy, "Oh, you haven't been yourself."

Me, "No kidding..." [Explanation of details follows, of which I won't bore you with.]

With the exception of last weekend's acute intestinal flu, I have been feeling run down with a variety of symptoms that is very reminiscent of the late spring / early summer of the year in college that I was diagnosed with mono / epstein barr virus type thingy. That was 3 months of no fun.

So, I am taking it slow, eating well, lots of sleep, in an attempt to get better and not feel so run down and achy.

Bah. I want to run & jump & bounce. Bah.

The above title sounds odd, but it is true. I am one of those people who exfoliates and moistures every day. Instead of having dry, flaky elbows & knees, mine are very soft and supple.

Maybe too soft, if that is possible.

Three weeks ago, I went to dinner with a friend and we were sat at a wooden table with heavy varnish. About half way through dinner, in between courses, I noticed that my left elbow slid about 2 inches across the table and was very painful. I looked down and saw a 3/8 inch diameter, many layered skin patch sitting on the table top.

I was very surprised. I wasn't leaning heavily on my elbows. It was bizarre. I looked at my friend and said, "Am I missing skin on my elbow?"

"Yes," said the friend, "It is red and looks like it is going to bleed."

!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Fast forward to having tea with Abhi this last Sunday at Apostrophe's in Notting Hill, tea and coffee has been consumed, we are sitting and chatting. The table top is either lacquered wood or plastic (sorry, I can't remember), my elbows are resting on the table top and, again, my elbow slips and skin scrapes off my right elbow.

Here I type tonight with both elbows scrapped and scabbed up. Why?

Yes, if one falls on concrete or asphalt or gravel, one expects to get a good scrape, but not off a table in a restaurant or coffee place.

Have you every heard of such a thing? I googled it to find out if this is a skin condition, but only got results for dry, flaky elbow skin, not soft elbow skin that is coming off with very little provocation.

Odd, but true.

Today was a big day* in the Neighborhood. I am exhausted and Lifeblog is not sending any of my photos here even though it worked yesterday and I have all my settings correct. I will suss out the problem tomorrow. Now bed.

*****

* Tea/Coffee with Abhi. Food 2.0 and then the Trusted Places party in SoHo. Lots and lots and lots of socializing, but lots and lots and lots of fun. I need a day off.

Fare the well to my thirties, I didn't like you much.

May the next decade be much better.

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.

Tue 04.15.08 - Taxes.

On Friday and today (Sunday), I have been so chained to my computer and finishing up tasks, that I have not posted any photos worth seeing the light of pixels and leds other than the memory of my camera. Why, you ask? Well, I am deep in the deadline doldrums.

Yep, too much to do, too many tasks to complete: client work, proposals (2 of them), and taxes. Yes, taxes. Bah.

Bah.

Bah.

bah...

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.

While very tummy sick with the Mumbai bug meets the Austin bug and conducts WWIII in my tummy when I was in Austin for SXSW, I decided that the two weeks after I returned would be a "blackout" period. I warned clients, friends & family that I would be going into a two week blackout (March 17-30) and would not be available.

Today is the last day of my self-imposed blackout period. During this time I have have kept my phone on silent or just plain turned off. I have slept a minimum of nine hours a night and made a point to eat good allergen-free home cooked meals. I have only worked on stuff that needed to be finished or wrapped up and only visited with folks who I wanted to see.

Basically, I pushed the reboot button on my life after 3 months of madness and go-go-go-go-go-go-go. I am *finally* free of the last 2+ months of flu or tummy bug. I am caught up on my sleep & client work. Now I just need to catch up on some blogging.

I had an interesting Friday night and have a whole blog post in my head about it, but it will have to wait while I finish the documentation for a client. Maybe tomorrow.

Sorry folks, due to general busy-ness and completing tasks on my To Do list today, I did not take any photos to moblog here. I did see lovely things whilst out walking Scruffy this morning but didn't photograph them. An unintentional day off from photography.

I did check a bunch of things off my weekly to do list. Best of all, I am *finally* back in the proper time zone and caught up on my sleep.

Note to self: Correct about page, add contact info, and sort out portfolio site before week's end.

While I am *supposed* to take my anti-malaria pills, Mefloquine, for another 2 weeks, I am over it and done. I will not be taking my pill tomorrow due to 3 weeks of mild building up to medium bad reactions on a daily basis.

The first week or so, the only reaction I had to the medication was feeling like I was on 5 shots of expresso at any given time and not sleeping more than 5 hours a night. By the end of the second week on the drug, I was having occasional nightmares and feeling agitated. The last two weeks I have continued sleeping badly, having nightmares, feeling agitated and upset over small things, etc.

When I was in India, all of the non-US travellers I met were NOT taking any anti-malarial preventive medication and were very surprised that my doctor put me on it. Since I have returned, several British friends told me to throw the mefloquine away and only to take it when I actually get sick, as they had more reactions from the medicine than any other sickness they may have experienced in India.

When I was so tummy sick earlier this week, I had more folks email me or tell me in person here at SXSW that I should go off the mefloquine, as it may be contributing to my tummy illness.

So, this morning I called the Kaiser Permanente Advice Nurse to see what they thought about my reaction to the medication and if I could speak to a pharmacist, but as usual the Kaiser Advice Nurse was THOROUGHLY unhelpful. And wanted me to come into an LA doctor appointment, I told her that I was in Austin, and then she got exasperated with me and said that Kaiser could not help if I was not at home and why did I not call when I was in India (Uh... $1.50+ per minute phone charges to be put on hold for 20 mins. I think not).

She told me to go to the emergency center in Austin. I pointed out that they might not know much more than she did and would it not be better to leave a message for the doctor who prescribed the medication to me or the pharmacist at Kaiser? No, she said, I should go to urgent care here and not take any more of the medication until I can get into Kaiser next week. WTF?!?!? End of call.

When I get back I am changing health insurance. I hate Kaiser. In the meantime, as to not have more insomnia, nightmares, tummy and emotional agitation, I am not taking my pill in the morning. Larium, I am over you.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen when laying like a lump in bed last evening while everyone else was out at SXSW Interactive parties having fun.

The short and sweet summary of this story is that in the last 3 weeks, I have only had two days (last Thursday & Friday) where I was not tummy sick in some fashion. Friday night I ate something funky at Iron Cactus which started another round of tummy troubles, which morphed by yesterday into a full case of fever/chills & trotting to the toilet. Basically the Bombay Bug was upset that the Austin Bug decided to show up and they have been throwing WWIII in my gut ever since.

Gatorade & Imodium are allievating the problems, but I am weak and worse for the wear. A fine way to spend SXSW. Bah.

Thurs 03.06.08 - Arriving at LAX, next stop Austin.

My evening was completely derailed by the onset of a migraine at dinner.

Well, after three plus weeks of going going going going and not stopping at all, I am now having a day of rest. I am exhausted, tired, and am congested and have a sore throat with a rough voice (which is the main sign of exhaustion for me after tiredness).

I have a ton more photos of India et al to put up, but it will have to wait. I really want to go to Megan and Murray McMillan's opening of "The Listening Array" tonight, but the likelihood of my rallying the troops to get up to Whittier after 7pm and still be awake to drive home is slim to none.

Hopefully resting today will mean that I will be recovered by tomorrow or Saturday...

Photo taken on 12.31.07 by Ms. Jen with the Nokia N82.

Brewster's Rockit has the best summary of the year 2007 to date. There have been many blessings in this last year, esp. all of my travels, visiting with friends near and far, as well as the opportunities that 2007 has presented itself, but I am ready for the new year. I like even numbered years and am particularly fond of leap years.

2008, I look forward to visiting with you for 12 months. May you be a delight.

Sat 12.08.07 - I drove by to see if Renu Nakorn was open yet and as you can see the answer is no, the center is still under development. It will be a wonder if Renu Nakorn ever opens again after 16 months of closure, which is an eternity in the restaurant business.

Fri 11.16.07 - Mom, Me, and Ruth just before entering Trinity's Public Theatre for the Commencement ceremony.

Six months ago today, on May 4, 2007, I moved into my new apartment with only what was needed for the immediate weeks and full intentions to go back to my brother's garage loft to get the rest of my boxes. I did get my books a couple of months ago, but I have been too busy, too over committed, to get the rest of the boxes and unpack.

I have said yes to too many projects and jobs. I feel like I have been running like a hamster on a habitrail wheel, lots of running but going no where. The worst part of the overly-busy, too many projects, too much yes-ing of the last few months, is that I don't feel like I have done anything well.

I am looking forward to the next few weeks in Europe as a time to take a BIG deep breath and slow down.

In the boxes at my brother's contain many necessary things in which to live an adult life, but until I can clear a few days from my schedule, I will continue to eat with plastic forks, as I have no idea which box my silverware is in...

December, when I get back, I will clear the first three days to make friends with the spiders in my brother's storage area.

More later when I get to my computer...

******

Later...

Sun. 09.16.07 - Yes, it is official. I am staying in SoCal. For now. Mildly settled. Whatever settled means to a lady with family on both sides that is always in motion.

I have now been home from Ireland for 48 weeks and in those 48 weeks, I have searched for the right fitting corporate web jobs in the Silicon Valley & San Francisco, I lived at my brother's house for 6 months, I traveled to Austin, Raleigh, Denver, Chicago, San Francisco 3 or 4 times, I restarted my freelance business, and I moved into my own apartment in Seal Beach, Calif.

When I first moved into my new apartment in May, I perceived it as temporary as I was 1 of 2 candidates being interviewed for a web design position at a large firm up north. At the time, I decided to only move what I absolutely needed for living into my new place and keep the rest in storage and my brother's garage loft. The plan at the time was that if I received the position it would be easy enough to have movers go to the loft and the storage space to pick things up rather than having to unpack and then repack in quick order.

Well, the in-house candidate got the job. I did not. My summer got busy and I kept telling myself that when I had time I would apply for more jobs up North In The Land Of Computer Utopia or that I would go get my stuff out of my brother's loft and unpack it.

The summer came and went. While at the Rails Edge 2007, I met Jim Meyer, a delightfully bright and interesting programmer from NorCal. Jim asked me to join him in participating in the Rails Rumble. I said yes, contributed one of my application ideas, drove up to the San Francisco Bay Area, hung out with friends, drove around neighborhoods with Kelly McCarthy, and coded with Jim for 2 days.

As I drove away from the Bay Area last Sunday evening, I felt relief. Each mile that I traveled south on the 5 fwy, my spirits lifted. Rather than groaning at driving over the Grapevine and back into the LA Basin, I was darned glad. I was home.

Ok, so I probably will move to Europe again for a year or two within the next 5 or 10 years, most likely London, but I have moved away enough to know something really important deep down in my bones: Southern California, for all of its joys and flaws, is home. Deep down home. Roots home.

I may have itchy feet and traveller's blood in me from all sides, but for now I am home. To that end, I went over to my brother's garage and got a round of boxes full of books on Tues. Sept. 11th. I unpacked them and started to set up my house as I like it. With lots of books.

The last week plus has been a very slowed down time for me. A week ago Thursday, I came down with a sore throat and ear ache, which evolved into a fever and a crushingly painful ear ache. Last Saturday, I got in on one of the last appointments at Kaiser in the hinterlands for the fastest doctor's appointment in my life: 3 minutes.

That was the last thing that has been fast since. I was diagnosed with a middle ear infection, given 2 kinds of drops and 2 kinds of pills to take for 10 days. No stopping early.

In the 7 days since, my life has been a round of laying down, putting drops in my ear, fashioning a cotton wick, putting it in my ear right, and staying on that side to let the drops settle in for at least a half hour. Repeat cycle every 4 hours. Yes, every four hours.

Given that I don't want this ear ache to continue or come back, I have been faithful about the ear drop ritual. Thus, my world has been a round of ear drops, reading while waiting for them to sink in, a small reaction to drops that leads to fuzziness and a bit of dizziness, more waiting, activity of some sort for a couple of hours (computing, sleeping, errands), and repeat. A much slower rhythm of life than I allow myself even on vacation.

At the best of times I avoid antibiotics like the plague, not only do I hate the pharmaculture but I don't like the side effects that antibiotics have on me: fuzzy thinking, dizziness, mild disassociation, and feeling like I am floating away but not in a nice way. When half of my face was swollen last Saturday and my whole head was on fire, I got up and over my distaste for doctors and pills.

The aching part of the ear ache is gone, but I still have to continue with the meds until this Wednesday. Ear now just feels full. Full of drops. So, slowly I continue.

From very early Tues 7/17/07 in the morning (attempt to drive north without driving through LA traffic) to very late Thurs 7/19/07 in the evening, I will be on a Road Trip / Hotel Camping / Mini-Summer Vacation with some friends from Ireland.

Billy & Margaret want to see a National Park, so we shall see two. I want to show them the Eastern Sierra, as it is the best part. They only want to be gone for 2 nights, thus the Whirlwind!

Somehow, we, including Scruffy McDoglet, will drive from OC/LA to Sequoia National park to visit General Sherman, Yosemite, drive over the Pacific Crest via Tuolumne Meadows, go to Bishop, go to Mammoth, go to the Mt. Whitney Portal and make it back to LA/OC again by Thursday evening.

Whew! I am already tired... Moblogged photos below.

Fri. 06.28.07 - Scruffy is back to doing hard cone time due to his seasonal grass allergy that is causing him to chew his feet to pieces. I am at wits end on how to deal with his foot chewing.

Two years ago, the vet put him on antihistamines, but the pills make Scruffy stoned and listless. This year, in an attempt to avoid a stoned Scruffy, we are trying spray on, expensive, anti-itch / anti-inflammatory steriods. This treatment is not working as Scruffy continues to lick his paws and the spray on steriods make his heart race and he gets distressed. End of expensive spray.

A few days ago, I went to buy a new cone. Tony the neighbor across the way recommends his family's old German remedy of applying bacon grease on the animal for mange and foot chewing in dogs and cats. I am not sure I want bacon grease tracked all over the apartment. So, I consulted the Oracle of the Googles and it spit out the following:

My Akita is chewing on her pads of her feet : recommends washing the dog's feet after walks, soaking them in epson salts, washing the dog's feet with hydrogen peroxide, and using cold tea as a compress.

Self Mutilation: Dogs Who Chew, Lick or Scratch Themselves to the Point of Harm : Fleas (check, Scruffy is on Frontline), Ticks (no, too dry around here for them), allergies (check, certified allergic to grass), or hypothyroidism ... the last one is interesting. The articles asserts at the end to give the dog a toy as they chew for relaxation. Check, have lots of dog toys.

Several of the articles that the Oracle of the Googles recommended giving the dog an Omega-3 fatty acid supplement. I will try this.

Has anyone tried Solid Gold Health dog food? I have been buying an all natural, no by-products, no gluten, no preservatives brand at Wild Oats. Dog food choice definitely makes a difference with Scruffy.

All photos taken with Ms. Jen's Nokia 7610.

Mon. 06.25.07 - Today, my Mom and I pulled my "art" table out of storage and I rearranged my living room / office space to accommodate a better working environment. Sitting on the couch with my laptop was wrecking havoc on my motivation to code and design. Upright at a desk forces me to stay alert and work.

Somehow I managed not to take a photo worth posting today. The photo of the SUV with the Mighty Ducks flag and the MIGHTYDUX license plate did not turn out good enough to send up.

Thus, you, my beloved Readers, get TidBits!

1) Did you notice a bit of a design change around here? If you are on a feed reader, click on the actual page link and go see it. Lovely, if I do say so myself. To quote Simon, "It is the little touches." [note: maybe he said little details..]

A couple of years ago, Erika and I went to the California Poppy Reserve and I snapped lots of photos. For a couple of months afterwards whenever I had a bit of time, I would work on my "attempted" CSS Zen Garden entry based off the Poppy Reserve and a horizontal layout. Time, clients, and readying for grad school got a hold of me and I never completed my entry.

Thus, this week's update of Blackphoebe's update is a riff off of my never submitted Zen Garden entry. Well, without horizontal scrolling. I still want to do a horizontal layout, sometime, somewhere. Just cause.

Hope you like the poppies.

2) Not quite cooked enough for a full announcement, hopefully in a few days it will be, but in August I will be speaking at a conference. On web design. I am quite excited!

3) Working on a Rails app. Yep, the idea that has been running around in my head for a few months will be seeing the light of beta user testing by July. Big thanks to Jackie and Alex for all of their brainstorming input, initial user research and testing.

4) Congrats to the Ducks for doing SoCal proud!

5) 37signals has put their new book, Getting Real, up online for free.

Hi folks,

I still have boxes piled up and am trying to get through them one by one. Sorry I have been a bit absent here, even with the photos, but there has been much to do. Once again there seems to be a problem between Cingular's LA/OC area network and Flickr, so photos I have sent this week are not posting here.

Anywhoooo... I will be having a housewarming / open house on Sat. May 19th at the new place so that I will be forced to get the place up to snuff within the week. And be back online...

:o)

Sometime in the 1940s, my great-grandma - Evelyn McCallum Jennings - opened an antique store in Anaheim, Calif. She regularly returned home to Iowa to search farmer's barns for antique furniture that could be sold at much higher prices in SoCal.

She found this corner cabinet in a barn in Iowa and that has come down to me via my grandmother Marlyce and my dad Cam, is the American Federalist mahogany corner cabinet dating from 1790 - 1810. Family lore has it that multiple coats of lavender and green paint had to be stripped off my Great-Grandma Evelyn to get to the original lovely mahogany wood.

Two weekends ago, when Mom and I were in North Carolina, we saw two corner cabinets that looked just like mine, one dated in the 1790s and one in the 1810s.

Big gigantic thanks to brother Joe and Alex for getting my cabinet into my new apartment today with no new bruises! Yeah!

Hmph. 13 * 3. Today. Hmph.

Or if you so choose, more prosaically, 21 + 18.

Regardless, I am taking a note from Lucky, who had a big party for her 30th birthday and has not had one since.

Today is my 21 + 18 or 13 * 3 birthday.

Don't feed me all the lines about how age is just a number or whatever .... I don't like it.

Thus, Erika and I are going to A.O.C. tonight for my actual birthday, where I can be cranky about 21 + 18 at the cheese bar.

Tomorrow is the big birthday party at Alex's from 9 - 11pm (we will be on time) with the Flametrick Subs and the Irish Brothers (who start at 9pm so be there).

Come on down tomorrow night (Wed. 4/25) and help me celebrate my last birthday ever. Next year I will be ((13*3)+some months).

Hmph.

On a better note, very late tonight this blog will be 4 years old!

Been a bit missing or lagging around here at Black Phoebe, be it text or photos. Life has been busy and quite full. I need a blogging app that I can talk to my mobile phone and it will post the text to this site.

On the News Front:

1) Decided to scrap Plan A for Plan B a few weeks ago, when Plan A decided that it was going to roar back to life on its own this week. Life is funny and that Murphy sure was prescient.

2) Yuck. The Ides of April are upon us! Have you done your taxes? I have to go get a check cut tomorrow.

3) Wow! Got to love it when geeks go single... Forget the puppies, let's talk... OK, DO, get back to blogging. My RSS feed has been waiting for you to start up again.

4) On the official Ides of April (the 15th), I will be flying off to North Carolina at oh-dark-thirty. I will be attending a 5 day "Programming PHP" training course in Raleigh. This will give me a good excuse to go and visit with Heather and Steve. And give my mom a lovely opportunity to visit a bunch of historical sites.

When my mom heard that I signed up for PHP / database training in North Carolina, she told me to extend my plane ticket and that she would join me the weekend afterwards. Apparently, she did many school reports on North Carolina and has never visited until now.

5) And then to continue my month of programming training, I will be going to the Ruby on Rails training course in Denver at the end of April.

So, I like learning. Take the girl out of the classroom and she feels the need to keep going back. I am also a big reader...

6) Last but not least, my very last birthday party ever will be at Alex's Bar on Wed. April 25th (one day after the real birthday) with the Flametrick Subs and the Irish Brothers. It will be an early show - 9-midnight. Come on down and join the festivities!

Tidbits and other bits from the brain and typing fingers of Ms. Jen:

1) Glad that April Fools is over. I never know what to make of the day, as the jokes are rarely truly funny. Google's Paper mail thing for Gmail, not very funny, more baffling. Toilet broadband? Where is their funny bone? Lost with the IPO? Who are they hiring there? Hmph...

2) This Sat. April 7, 2007 will be my 6th month anniversary of my return home from Mirkwood.

3) If you have a Nokia Series 60 phone and it is having a few problems, update it! Yes, Nokia is the only handset manufacturer that provides a utility to upgrade your mobile phone's OS/firmware. This is a blessing as the Nokia N80 of Love & Happiness has been running ragged around the edges lately. Yesterday, I used the update/upgrade utility and all troubles have been taken away. Thank you to Nokia for being so user friendly.

4) Web design confession of the week: I actually like using Flash. Yep, Ms. Jen the XHTML/CSS web standards des/dev lady enjoys using Flash. Today, I had the opportunity to use Flash for a contracting project and it was fun. Yes, fun. Thanks to Mr. Dominey for providing a good user experience.

And on that note, have a lovely and delightful evening.

Update from Tuesday Morning:

5) I forgot to mention the whole thing that started the impulse for this post: iTunes. No, not EMI and Apple cutting a deal, but iTunes 7.1.1 is a memory hog. When it is on it causes Firefox to turn into Turtlesnail. I guess it is time to add more RAM.

I have a few hard and fast stomach rules:

1) No wheat/gluten and garbanzo beans/hummus/falafel never ever never. No negotiation.

2) No Thai or Indian food for dinner. No, really, this is bad.

3) No caffeine, esp. diet coke after 4pm. Not just because of wakefulness, but caffeine triggers tummy troubles.

I broke rules #2 and #3 at dinner last night and now at 5:33am I am paying for it. Wide awake with an upset stomach.

Blah.

Around Ireland : A Mobile Documentation Project is a finalist in the "Student" category of the SXSW Web Awards 2007!

I am very excited. Simon said via email, "FANTASTIC". Shonagh wrote, "such brilliant news about the website! ". Jasper emailed, "hooray for us."

In case you missed my blogging about the Around Ireland project this last summer, here is a summary from the About page:

Around Ireland is a mobile documentary project completed as part of the MSc in Multmedia Systems at Trinity College Dublin. We have travelled the 32 counties of Ireland, gathering video and images on mobile phones over the course of the Summer of 2006. The mobile content is sent directly to our site, Aroundireland.net from camera-equipped mobile phones in real time.

Rather than sending an image to just one other individual via MMS, Around Ireland aims to act as a central respository for mobile photographic content, allowing visitors to browse submitted mobile pictures from all over the island, geotagged according to location.

A big thanks to SXSW Interactive and see y'all at the 10th Annual SXSW Web Awards on Sun. March 10, 2007 at the Downtown Hilton, Austin, Texas!

No, shoe shopping for Julie Wanda, after Day 1 of Punk Rock Bowling 2007, the Barflies.net One Pin team is #20 out of 168 teams!!!!!

Julie Wanda, Tink, Brian, and I will be in the finals Sunday at 1pm! Very exciting.

The best record store in Orange County, Bionic Records (the Huntington store), has closed its doors today after many years of being the best light in otherwise dull North OC suburbia.

The lease on the space had come up for review the the landlords decided to raise the rent beyond what Bionic could afford. They have packed up, patched up, and moved lock, stock, and barrel to the Cypress store.

The manager, Mike (seen patching the wall above), assured me that all the staff would be working at the Cypress store.

Oh, the local neighborhood has now descended into blandness beyond repair. Danged landlords.

Sun. Dec. 31, 2006 - Happy New Year's Eve!

In order to keep up the the Storey-Haugheys, I present a list of the cities that I have visited this year.

Given my goal of traveling to all 32 counties on the island of Ireland this last summer, I will spare you a run down of every town and village that I visited. Technically, in Ireland, a city is defined by does it have a cathedral church or not, if only a parish church even if big then it is just a town. Cathedral = city.

Thus the Cities that I visited or occupied from Jan 1, 2006 to Dec. 31, 2006 (chronological order, so some repeats):

Long Beach, Calif, USA
Huntington Beach, Calif, USA
Los Angeles, Calif, USA
Dublin, Ireland
Kildare, Ireland
London, England, UK
Chicago O'Hare Airport (should be its own country)
Austin, Texas, USA
Dublin, Ireland
Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
London, England, UK
Sevilla, Andalucia, Spain
Granda, Andalucia, Spain
Cordoba, Andalucia, Spain
Barcelona, Catalon, Spain
Dublin, Ireland
Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
Armagh, Northern Ireland, UK
Limerick, Ireland
Los Angeles, Calif, USA
Huntington Beach, Calif, USA
San Jose, Calif, USA
San Francisco, Calif, USA
Dublin, Ireland
Galway, Ireland
Wexford, Ireland
Waterford, Ireland
Letterkenny, Ireland
Omagh, Northern Ireland, UK
Sligo, Ireland
(et al and many other places in Ireland)
Brighton, England, UK
Salisbury, England, UK
Dublin, Ireland
LA/LB/OC, Calif, USA
San Francisco, Calif, USA
Palm Desert, Calif, USA

The brief version is California, Ireland, Texas, UK, Spain. And back again a few times.

I have been tagged by Lauren to answer the 5 things that folks wouldn't know about you unless you posted them on your blog.... here it goes:

1) I got a final whole class grade of 105% in Typography. My only A+ in my whole academic career.

2) Really drunk people scare me. Anyone out of control scares me, but esp. drunks. I don't show it, but I get very agitated and upset inside. That makes my stint as the stage manager and door girl at Alex's even odder...

3) My hair, my ass and my boobs are all real and all mine. Several times recently someone has put their hands up the back of my hair and exclaimed in surprise, "It's your OWN hair! I thought you had extensions! ha ha ha..."

Yes, I grow my own hair. My ass is all my own muscle and fat; shape compliments of my dad's mom's side of the family and that may also be where my bosom came from.

4) In 1998 & 1999, I worked on Mars at JPL.

5) I am dreadfully allergic to pot and hash smoke, just a wee bit in an enclosed space will trigger a migraine. In 1992, I lived in Amsterdam for 3 months in the spring and 1 month in the late summer; I avoided the Red Light district and "cafes" like the plague.

I now tap to post 5 things about themselves that we would not otherwise know:
Liz
Allison
El
Megan and Murray
I am going to join Lauren in double-tapping Erika, because she really does not blog enough!

Lesile Harpold's Advent Calendar 2006 (via Rebecca's Pocket)

The Online Advent Calendar (via Making Light)

Erika's reflections on the Advent Season

My question is where can one find an Advent Calendar with dark chocolate? ;o)

Update:
The Geek Advent Calendar - 24 ways (via Clagnut)

* I am on mile 978 of the new Prius's odometer and down to the last gallon or so of the 2nd tank of gas. I am stretching it out to see how far I can go on a tank of gas, as it is my goal to top 500 miles before I fill up again. The car is fooling me and announcing it needs more gas when it has about 2.5 gallons to go. I am currently averaging about 52 miles to the gallon. Black Phoebe the Trickster.

* Wait a minute! How can Ms. Jen's new car already have nearly a thousand miles on it in 7 days? Well, Ms. Jen answers, "All the better to get rid of the pesky Break In Period with..."

* James Craig, aka Sir Cookie Crook, is a true gem. No ands if or buts about it. A big thanks to James for his help with my job search.

* After spending a few weeks with Ruby, and the last few days with PHP, can I break up with Javascript? JS, I love you, at times you are very elegant and loquacious, but I am not in love with you and you are very particular, as well as wordy. I may have to leave you for Ruby, who is sleek, a language of few words and even fewer nested conditional statements ...

Tada!

After much discussion and thought due to Sugar Plum's infirmities over the course of the last few days, I went to my Credit Union this morning and walked out 10 mins later with a check. Tomorrow, my brother Joe and I will take a road trip to pick up Black Phoebe the Prius.

Big thanks to OCTFCU for a rapid and painless auto loan process and to Jeff Fredrichsen at Perry Motors for making a phone deal on a day old black Prius fresh from Toyota with no time to collect dust or a waiting list. Gotta love small town auto dealerships.

Sugar Plum, the wonder Honda, is a bit weary from the year of no driving. Ok, she was weary to start with before I left for Ireland.

Miraculously, she survived her year of non-operation in my brother's driveway, other than having a local youth relieve her of her stereo. When I returned 6 weeks ago, I was able to start her up with a jump, go get new hubcaps from Hubcap Mike, and Sugar Plum has been happily trotting down the road, albeit with a stereo sized hole in the dashboard.

On Friday night, whilst driving home from Whole Foods, I received several honks from other drivers. It was not until I was driving down Bolsa Chica that a fellow in another car informed me that Sugar Plum did not have her back lights on. Crap.

Ever since Sugar Plum was purchased as a gently used auto, she has had electrical problems and shorted out 2 stereos. I became quite competent at checking and replacing the fuses under the steering wheel. After much to do, we found out that the previous owner or their stereo installer had screwed a screw into a wire in the trunk while trying to install the back speakers. We solved the problem by pulling out all the screws in the back speakers, which was much cheaper than running all new wires from the front of the car to the back.

Yesterday morning I tested all the fuses and they are all working. Joe and I pulled out all the lights from the back: parking/running, brake, and turn signal, all the blubs were good and the filaments happy. The brakes work and so do the signals, but the running lights don't turn on when I turn on the headlights. Joe looked it over and said, "Sugar Plum has a short."

Electrical wiring is tricky, to find the short and re-wire may take more than she is worth. Sugar Plum needs to become some teenager's project car... Do you know a nice young person taking auto shop who would like to rebuild and revamp a Honda?

The displacement I am talking about is my 6th rib on the right side. Diagnosis as of today's doctor visit, is that in moving a month ago and hauling big boxes and luggage around, I displaced my rib. It hurts.

Ribs - they just need to be left alone to heal. Pphhbbbttt....

In about 30 minutes, I will have been home in SoCal from my year in Ireland for exactly 2 weeks. In those 2 weeks, I have visited lots of friends, hung out with family, had a lovely holiday in the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, had a nice welcome home party, read three Mercedes Lackey novels, hung out with Scruffy and Belle a lot, haven't really blogged at all other than sending photos up along the way, and I have even missed Dublin a couple of times.

Kaffa in Orange has become my home office away from my currently non-existent home office. Free wifi and a lovely couch next to a power outlet all for the price of an ice tea. I have spent time here recently redesigning Alex's site, sprucing up my own, as well as working on my resume.

The two week vacation and recoup time is now over and I am now on the job market. I would love to move on up to the SF Bay area and join in the fray. If you know of or can recommend any mobile or web interface design positions for a experienced designer/developer/project manager with a M.Sc. in Computer Science such as myself, please email me.

Me and Alex at the Sat. night Throw Rag show at Alex's.

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I went from Dublin to LAX airport , to my brother's house, took a shower, had champagne with the family, to dinner at Walt's, then a nap, and then... to Alex's for the Throw Rag show. It was a blast. Yes, I am crazy, up and going for over 36 hours.

The Best Part of All of Saturday, other then departing from Mirkwood, was the ride home from Alex's at 2am pacific time (aka 10am Dublin time the next day) with the Irish Brothers and Julie Wanda. Karl Irish drunk dialed all his favorite ladies as we laughed and laughed and laughed in the back seat. (Karl was not driving, but in the passenger seat). Hot Karl is something else.

I have the day off today, as the exhibition is not open on Sunday. Tomorrow my sister Allison arrives for the week. Tuesday we take the exhibition down and have a big Goodbye dinner. Wednesday, Allison and I will go down south to Tipperary to see Eoin and Family Gubbins. Thursday, who knows. Friday back up to Dublin and a going away dinner with friends. And Saturday... flying off to the wild blue yonder towards Los Angeles-town.

Today is to be savored. Thus, I have another rental car and Ruth and I are are off to Roscommon and Mayo. I must see Knock and buy some really good kitschy Mary stuff to take home to Alex and Julie Wanda. Apparently, Knock is awash in Marian kitsch and souvenier stores.

I thought I would also get some sort of glow-in-the-dark, blingy Mary thingy to go put on the family graves at the Protestant Cemetery in Cork City... I am sure that G-G-Gpa Kilroy needs a good laugh after being 6 ft. under for the last 91 years... ;o)

I got back tonight from over a week of travelling in and around Ireland. Last Thursday, Shonagh and I did the "Around Lough Neagh" adventure. On Sat. I went up to the northwest of the island to see Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo and Roscommon. And on Sunday through today, I was in the south in Tipperary, Limerick, Waterford, Cork and Kilkenny. On this upcoming Thursday, 1 day away, I get on a plane and go to d.construct 2006. Yikes!

I now have been to all 32 counties of the island of Ireland since June and have taken photos and video in each one. Goal accomplished. Now I can't say to people that I went to Ireland for 53 weeks and only saw the computer lab, the Luas, and my room...

And for the BAD NEWS...

Really Bad News...

As just emailed in by my brother, Joe:

Renu Nakorn is shutting down from 9/24 for about six months while the shopping center they are in gets remodeled. I just got me some larp!

Joey

I fly home on October 7th... Crap! Oh, Renu... Oh, goddess of Issan Thai in SoCal... What will I do without you??????

El Camino Real and India Sweet & Spices better not shut down for remodeling. ((grr grr ... just thinking aobut it ... grr grr))

I am just about to leave to go to the far northwest of Ireland, Donegal, for 3 days of photos and project research. Watch for a few photos here!

Thurs 08.17.06 - I have been feeling a bit down this week, mostly due to the rainy weather and low clouds that have not been clearing. And then the other evening when on Jason's blog I saw that Rob, Jason and Greg were coming to Dublin on Business... well, Friends... in Dublin! Yeah!

A few emails later it was arranged. I met Greg (left), Jason (center), and Rob (right) in front of the Pearse Street DART Station and off we went to the Long Library on the Trinity Campus to see the Book of Kells. My TCD ID got all of us in for free and in we went. Shuffled out at 5pm by security, we walked over to Merrion Sq. and around through the Square. Up we went to O'Donoghues for a pint and then over to see the Phil Lynott statue just off Grafton Street for Rob. Back over to the Ely Wine Bar for dinner and a glass of wine.

The three and a half hour whirlwind tour of Dublin City Center over, Greg, Stan, and Rob are delivered back to the Pearse Street DART Station to return to their accommodation, as they left Philadelphia at 1pm yesterday, flew to Stockholm, then to Dublin without really sleeping.

It was great fun to have folks come and visit, if only for an evening, and my spirits are revived. Thanks guys. You rock.

We (I) here at Black Phoebe sort out Jet Lag, Vodafone.ie server downtime (no moblobbing all day today), and did I mention that I am very sleepy and can't think?

I will over the weeknd have a BlogHer Summary for you all. I promise.

Here in Ireland it is August Bank Holiday weekend and I have a Toyota Micra rental car. Source of the River Boyne, here I come.

Here is how I figured out I am really homesick...

Yesterday, Saturday, I had my bags all packed and lined up in my room before noon. Yes, I am packed for this Wednesday, for the trip to LA and San Jose (BlogHer!). I packed four days early. I usually pack in a mad whirlwind 22 minutes before leaving for the airport. This flurry of pre-packing activity was both very funny and more than slightly sad.

... I am recovering from my vacation. I joked for the last few days of my vacation to London and Spain that I would need a holiday from my holiday. Luckily for Mom and I the last few days of our trip to Spain Megan and Murray invited us to join them outside of Barcelona at the artist residency, Can Serrat, was so lovely and peaceful that it did my body, heart, and mind a whole lotta good. But I still needed down time after 13 days of waking up, touring, lunching, touring, visiting, talking, and then sleeping.

Now I am relatively rested, only to start up this week with the Trinity MSCMM's summer project, which is 50% of our whole master's course grade/marks and will last three months. Simon, Jasper, and I will be doing a mobile blogging project (what else?) around Ireland, links coming to a browser near you soon.

My Mom departed yesterday and today I worked on my resume (a lovely internet job needed in Calif. in Oct. upon my masters degree completion) and adding titles to the MMS moblogged vacation photos here. Hopefully, I will get up the other London and Spain photos I took as photo essays before the next century.

I have lots of thoughts swirling around my head that I would like to blog here, but I am a bit crazy with finishing the redesign of this site, my resume, and starting the design of the summer project site, that if I am a bit quiet here, please forgive me.

I hope all is well in your world.

Hi to the InterWebs!

Spain is lovely. The food is wonderful. But dang it is hot. ,'o)

I am mobile blogging whilst on holiday, but don't have access to a computer regularily to add proper titles and info as I am using Vodafone MMS. If you want titles and other info wait until next week when I am back to Dublin-town.

I hope all is well. Happy Summer Solistice one day early.

(Really posted on Tues. June 20th at 10:08am)

Hi lovely readers!

I am leaving tomorrow for vacation with my Mom until 6/26. Ireland, London, and Spain will be explored.

Due to a few minor technical difficulties, my flickr blog posts are not posting and I don't have time to fix it before I depart. I will be moblogging to flickr, but watch the sidebar for the new photos, as they may not be showing up here.

Even more shocking, I will be leaving my laptop at home and relying on internet cafes... So, if posting is slow, sorry. I love you, but will see you in 13 or 14 days.

;oD

Update: (20 some odd minutes later) Technical difficulties solved, but now Vodafone is not sending emails.... grr grr...

I am starting to unwind, physically and mentally, from the exam weeks. For the last two days I have been sleeping, walking, hanging out, reading, and sleeping some more.

Today was a slow dip into Back to Work. I have been working through Timothy Samara's "Making and Breaking the Grid", as well as trying out the Movable Type 3.3 Beta 1.

I'll let you know how both go.

Please file the above heading under : "Ha!" as in "ha ha ha ha" falling of one's chair and laughing...

Vacation, all I ever wanted,
Vacation, all I ever needed...

So, I spent the first few hours of my vacation lolling about and then what do I do? Start working on my site redesign and my summer project.

I have one week completely to myself to happily CSS away, as well as plan out the design of my summer project web site, and then my Mom arrives next Sunday morning.

Mom and I will do a bit of traveling around Ireland, a day in London, and then a week in Spain. We will go and visit Meg and Murray at their residency at Can Serrat. I am very excited about all of this.

After Mom departs back home to Calfornia on the 26th of June, I will start on my summer multimedia moblogging* project in earnest.

Speaking of all I ever wanted and needed, I do need some screening material to keep the midges out of my room and stop my nights from becoming a bite fest. Why are there no screens on windows in Europe? People, people, people, Europe has mosquitos and midges, too. Why no screens? Denial? Or is a rite of passage for the 3-4 months of summer?

* (( did you think I would embark on any other sort of project? ))

Fri 06.02.06 - Exams are over and it is beautiful out!

Update: The fifth and final exam was held in the Regents House, just over the Front Arch, and it is the room we will have our MSCMM exhibition at the end of September.

Mon 05.29.05 - that.wasEvil;

While last week's two exams were difficult because they were back to back on Tuesday and Wednesday, this upcoming week's of three exams will be an endurance test, as they are scheduled Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons.

Last week's exams were the classes I enjoyed or were all the subjects I have worked in for the last 10 - 15 years of my life, pre-showing up to the Master in Multimedia Systems. Design, Interactive Authoring, XHTML/XML, Interactive Narrative, Interactive Design / HCI, and Cultural & Critical Theory.

This upcoming week's worth of exams were the classes that I either really wanted to learn (& enjoyed) but were a bit of a struggle (Programming/Javascript, Networking & PHP, and Wireless Computing) or were the classes that I wasn't super interested in or plain did not like (Audio, Video, 3D Hell, Games, etc). I am not as confident about the upcoming run of exams.

Please say a prayer or do an Exam Dance for me... ;o)

Come Friday, June 2, 2006, at 5pm, I will be Free (from exams)! Wahoo!

Then comes the Summer Project, of which I will announce soon... Mark your calendars, as the MSCMM exhibition of all of our Projects will be Sept. 27 - Oct. 4, 2006 at the Regent House at Trinity College, Dublin.

Wed 05.24.06 - Foyer of the Museum Building. The exam was in the Drawing Room.

Tue 05.23.06 - Classmate Mick Cullinan looking like the rockstar whilst waiting outside the exam hall.

Sun 05.14.06 - The 1st of the 5 MSCMM exams is on the 23rd and the last is on June 2nd. Today is get organized day, and then tomorrow I start reading & making notes/outlines.

Photo of Nina Bresnihan in the last Cultural & Critical Studies class of the year.

Fri. 05.12.06 - Today is the last day of classes for the MSCMM 2005-2006 class. Next up is exams and then our summer project. We have had three days of sun, warmth (68-73 degrees F), no coat, short sleeves and we all have a bad case of Spring Fever.

Photo taken by Ms. Jen's Nokia 7610 in early Feb. 2005 whilst on a walk in Hart Park, Orange, Calif.

While riding on the Luas to school this morning, I checked my email on my Nokia*, and found this lone note from my sister, Allison:

"I have some sad news to tell you. My dog Freckles died today, May 9, 2006. My mom found him in her yard this morning. He was almost 14."

Freckles has had cancer since last year and after two tumor removal surgeries, the vet warned my mom a month of two ago that the end was near. I was not surprised to receive this email.

For those of you who knew him hopefully you can agree with me on this, Freckles was a great dog. There are a lot of good dogs, but few great dogs.

Freckles was friendly, laid back, and very very nice. He was very gentle to all who approached, except men that he deemed unworthy (like past roommates' dates : "H-A-R-D L-U-C-K" and icky work dude)**. Toddlers loved him and would lurch up to him at the park and grab him around the neck before their parents could catch them. Freckles would not snap or even lick, but just stoicly receive the love.

When Mom and Allison lived at the Costa Mesa condo from 2000 to 2005, I really got to know Freckles. Whenever I would come over, he would greet me nicley and if I would say the "W-A-L-K" word, his paws and nails would dance happily on the entry wood floor. I would dogsit him when Mom and A were out of town and once had a big scare when I put him out in the yard before going to a gig at Alex's, only to come back to find him gone gone gone. I rode my bike around the South Western quadrant of Old Town Orange yelling, "Freckles, Freckles" from 1:30am - 2:30am. Around 5:30am, I heard a scratching at the side door and there he was... back and refreshed from his Walkabout. Mom theorized later that he went to sleep under one of the Ford Explorers down the block thinking it was her car.

Goodbye, sweet and lovely Dog. Thank you for being Freckles.

* Yes, yes, yes, I know. I am a complete MoGeek. ;o)
* *Freckles did like Dave Irish and I am sure he would have liked The Zen Master, if he had met him.

Tue 05.02.06 - I am glued to my room with stomach flu. Angee kindly went out to get me Milk of Magnesia & electrolyte salts. I am now attempting my first glass of water in 9 hours.

I would like to say a big giant Congratulations to Deanna Slone and Bobby Haendiges! Yeah!

Beyond the surprise of running into Cami at El Camino Real over the holidays when I thought she was in Sierra Leone, I also found out at that lunch from Deanna that she and Bobby were dating. Hello! Yeah!

I have known Deanna since 1988 or 1989 through Cami and we were all roommates for a brief period in 1993 or 1994. I have known Bobby Haendiges since 1990 or thereabouts, as he was a good friend's brother. At one point, Deanna was my roommate when Bobby's sister, Judy, was also a roommate or had just moved out. The point being is that our friendship circle has been intertwined since the mid-1990s.

All that to say, these two have known each other for years and years, but only started dating last year. Now engaged. Both are very kind and gentle souls who will do very well together. Can I say.... this is truly a good match.

Hi!

I am sorry that I have not been very forthcoming lately, but between my internet connection issues, Erika's visit, and my overwhelming amount of coursework/projects, I have been swept out to sea by several waves of frustration, fun, and busy-ness.

The Internet Connection bit: Currently Trinity College's ISS networking folks are winning the 2006 award for the "Best Post-Soviet Bureauracy on the Whole Darned Planet" award. We are now into the 37th day of no network / internet in my room. At last check of the "Open Query" applet, the networking folks are getting a price bid on a new ethernet faceplace.

Yes, they can be bought at most electronic suppy stores for less than $7, but here at Trinity College, Dublin, apparently all items must be put out to contracting price bids. I bet Maplins can beat Peat's in price. I bet I can go out and buy one and swap it out myself, before the networking folk can get their official first bid in.

Note to All Americans Thinking of Applying to Graduate School at Trinity College, Dublin: Unless you have a great love for Bureauracy, don't.

Think UC Berkeley. Apply Yale. Wish for Orange Coast College. Just Say No to the lovely, brilliant, but oh so Frustrating and Inefficient Trinity College.

Someone in power, please explain to the department heads at Trinity that it is much, much cheaper and more efficient and better customer service to have in house trained folk who can solve the problems and fix them the first day that they come out to visit.

Dear Trinity College, please send ALL of your staff and maintenance folk for training at Boston University ASAP! BU has 3 times the students, professors, and staff that Trinity does and 3077% more efficiency and speed and less bureauracy. Jack Weldon and Ken Elmore could whip Trinity's bureauracy into shape in 3 weeks of August training!

The Fun Bit: Erika just left today after a week long visit over my birthday weekend. Thanks, Erika! I had a blast and it was greatly restorative to have a long time friend come and see my world in Ireland. Pictures coming soon.

The Overwhelming Crazy Bit: Right now we are in the last 3 weeks of coursework before the exam reading period begins. I am / We are overloaded with project work. I am currently working on getting some Flash movie clips to layer correctly right now. Sigh.

Anywhoo have a great week. Get out and enjoy the Spring. Say hi to your local flowers and blooming tress. I will be back in full force soon.

Big giant thanks to my sister Allison and family for sending me a very funny "Theme" photo album of Scruffy and Belle "dressed" up in various outfits. I laughed hard.

Happy 3rd Birthday to Black Phoebe : Ms. Jen!

I started this blog as my 25+10 birthday present to myself. The three years have been good and I am glad, deep down glad, for the opportunity to post photos and text and thoughts over time that all adds up to this web space.

Thank you for coming out to play and read.

Sun 04.23.06 - Kind of like my internet connection. The Trinity network point in my room has not been working for over a month. Supposedly, they are coming tomorrow to attempt to repair the line, supposedly. My Irish Broadband wireless has been slower than a 9600 baud modem and won't send anything out. Good thing my mobile phone is working.

This week I have discovered something important about myself: I suck at eBay.

Yes, it is true, I am not good at auctioning. I can haggle like the dickens in person, but on eBay, I forget to check back with my bidding in the last hour of the auction, and I LOSE. Yes, Ladies & Gentlmen, I have lost out on three bids this week.

I know that some folks use third party auction services to help them out in that last crucial eBay bidding hour or even the last 3 minutes, but I believe in bidding by human. Except the human known as Ms. Jen keeps forgetting to pay attention in the last few hours or minutes, as evidenced by this evening when I was googling PHP functions to create my own referers log rather than making sure I won the bid on the Nikon FM3a camera.

Oops.

The Leather Mistress* sent me a Purple Crumpler Bag for the Silver Princess (who has not been blogged yet**) in celebration of my upcoming birthday. Big Thanks to LEI.

It is purple. I <3 purple. The Crumpler has lots of pocket-ess and cute little cubbie-ss. Yeah.

Lauren, thank you! You rock!

*If Dave gets to be the Zen Master, than Lauren gets to be the Leather Mistress... really. ;op

** Sorry, I did blog the FedEx tracking of the Silver Princess.

It is 12:16pm on Sunday afternoon and I am still in my jammies! Yeah!

Before I take off to drive up to the Cooley Pennisula, I just wanted to check in and say hi!

A few tidbits:

1) Yes, my thesis is done and even turned it before deadline*! Wahoo!

2) I took tons of photos yesterday whilst tripping around Offlay and Clonmacnoise. Will post a photo essay this week.

3) Yes, I still need to get up my SXSW photo essays and daily transcriptions. Will do this week.

4) Jason reminded me that I still owe a London write up.... Ooops... this week.... ;o)

*Oh, by at least 8 minutes.... ;op

Thu 03/30/2006 22:29 - Printing off final draft for proofreading, room exploding.

Wed 03/29/2006 12:55 - Must get outside. Go for walk.

It is beautiful out. The big trees have buds on them & are starting to leaf out.

Welcome to Black Phoebe's 2 year and 9 month anniversary which also conincides with her 1,000th post to this blog. Celebrate!

Nothing like a good bit of Taurus bloody mindedness to stick to a project... Or the love of creativity, photos, and writing... Or....

Various pundits state that the Internet is mainly a source of Information and Communication. I would like to add Creativity to that duo to make it an intertwined trio. Since 1994, when I jumped on the web on a daily basis, my creative output has increased incrementaly, with the start of this blog, expotentially, and then add on mo-blogging and BOOM!!!

Photos and text everywhere. All the time. Wonderful.

Madeleine L'Engle, in "Walking on Water", encourages artists of every stripe to practice their craft 30 minutes a day. How right she is.

I am thankful for this blog, for Barflies.net, for my Nokia 7610 & 6680, my sketchbook, and my writing notebook, all of which have increased my creative output and greatly increased my happiness.

Make art. Create. Blog. Photograph. Paint. Tinker. Write. Be more of you.

Sat 01.07.06 - I usually don't have much trouble with jetlag going to a new destination and when I come back home it takes a day or two for my body to get in sync with the local time. Not this last trip home to California. My body's time and sleep rhythms decided to take a big giant holiday somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and are still on holiday.

The first week in Calif, I was asleep by 10pm (!!!) and up by 7am (!!!!even more shocking!!!!). I normally go to bed at around 1am and wake up around 9am. The whole 6 days that I have been back in Dublin, I have been unable to fall asleep anytime before 4 or 5 or 6am even with Tylenol PM and I have been waking up between 1 and 2pm.

This is a problem on two counts: 1) I start back at school in two days at 10am and need to be alert for programming class. 2) Due to the fact that the sun has been setting here in Dublin around 4:30pm and it has been mostly cloudy, I am not getting enough natural light to get my brain out of Novia Scotia / Greenland time and on to GMT...

Any suggestions?

At El Camino Real! Cami Lynn Sigler - home from Africa!

JW would tell me to go check if Mercury is in Retrograde... but...

It has been six weeks now. And I am hitting the wall. Not only is there the adjustment of moving to a new country and culture. The adjustment of graduate school. The adjustment of a new housing situation. Of missing family and friends and Scruffy. The difficulty in making new good friends, as this takes Time... Etc. Etc. Etc.

But for five of the six weeks that I have been here, I have had communication problems. First there was the lack of internet access, then there was the Dell Computer Spa weeks, and as of last friday, I have no Skype. It is not working to save its life, I have reinstalled it, set the proxies, etc. No go. Last friday was a bad day in the world.

It just wasn't the near loss of the purse, nor the setting off the Whole Apartment Building's fire alarm at 8am (only 20 mins after the Official Fire Drill, let me tell you, I was not popular) with my attempt to toast rice cakes (don't ask, just don't do it at home), nor Skype going down and not coming back. It was also finding out that besides having a 40 plus page thesis due in March, I also have a 5 min. student film due. Wha......

I spent Saturday holed up in my room out of self-protection from the greater world. I even tried to send out an email to my nearest and dearest to tell them of my lack of Skype or any other way to call out or for them to call it, but guess ... the email wouldn't send. Not Sat., not Sun., not today. Bastard.

So, if you are a strict materialist and don't believe in anything that you can't touch, go talk to JW. Mercury Retrograde? Bad Tech Juju? Who knows? Who cares...

So, out of self-defense and near hatred for Trinity's network restrictions, I ordered an outside wireless sevice over the weekend, so that I can with without firewall proxy restrictions to access FTP, Skype, GoogleTalk, etc etc etc. The wifi device should arrive within the week and it will connect with a 512k (wahoo) signal somewhere in the neighborhood.

In the meantime, communicate with me via email, 'cause if you call my 213 SkypeIn #, I won't get your voicemail until late next week. And throw out a comment or two here, while you are at it... ;o)

Sun. 11.13.05 - Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far, far away (summer of 1992 in Istanbul, actually), Rene and I shared a hotel room on a YWAM trip and didn't recognize each other today until we had been talking for over 15 mins. Rene and her husband George just moved to Dublin from Budapest for work and are now attending the church I have been going to. Life is funny.

Tues. 10.25.05 - I came home on Tuesday night to find a lovely yellow and red DHL package containing the newly cleaned, exfoliated Black Phoebe the Laptop with her shiny, lovely new motherboard freshly returned from Dell's Computer Spa in Shropshire. Wahoo!

Now all I need is a mobile phone contract with unlimited GPRS/3G. Ah... fantasy time....

Relief!
All of my fears of being placed in a freshman apartment have been allayed. Thankfully, I have been placed in the Post Grad (graduate student) House. Starting this last Friday night at 7:30pm, the Post Grad House folk, about 80 of us, have been organized by our “Assistant Warden” (RA) and I have met a lot of really nice and very intelligent post grad students from all over the world, including two others in the Multimedia Systems course. Basically, we have spent a lot of time at pubs and in each other’s living rooms.

Hello! I am now in Dublin, Ireland.

Sorry about the lack of posts, but I have been going around and around trying to get simple things set up. Unfortunately, it is imperative to have a confirmed Irish Address & bank account before anyone can set up anything for me. And I am supposed to pick up my confirmation letter from the Graduate Admissions Office in about 15 mins. Bank account and cell/mobile carrier here I come!

I have been here two days now and so much has happened with no mobile data plan (Oh MoBlogging, how do I miss Thee!) and very spotty access to the computer labs on campus.

The first day (Wed) was arrival, try to get a good cell phone plan, no go due to lack of 3 months of residency in Ireland, shower, nap, agh, go to campus for the opening of the current year Multimedia exhibition, try to talk to another mobile carrier, lose umbrella, meet nice Scottish people at dinner chat for hours, etc.

Yesterday (Thurs) was sleep, go to registration, feel jet lagged, try to sign up for a bank account, no go as I didn't have the right documentation of my address, more jet lag, attempt to set my laptop up for connection at my housing, no go might take 2 weeks and I have to buy a new wi-fi card that meets specifications, verge on comatose from jet lag, try to email family and friends that I am safe, but too comatose to think, etc etc etc. Forget to buy toilet paper, too jet lagged to remember to buy it before heading home.

If you are a friend, family member or client looking for me, please be patient as setting up one's life, esp. connected life, has been more trouble than I expected. I plan on finding a wifi spot to update sites over the weekend. Now I need to remember to buy tp and a new umbrella...

One week from this morning, I will be at LAX trundling off to Ireland. Most of my furniture is in storage and tomorrow Lauren & I will move my boxes to storage and to my brother's.

Why oh why are we here in SoCal having a very early rain storm on the two days I need to be moving? I did not know it was going to rain last evening and while I was up at Biola, I had a bunch of boxes and other stuff in the driveway waiting for me to start packing when I got home. Now I have soggy boxes. Teaches me to get complacent with years and years and years of bone dry Septembers!

Mon 09.12.05 - First Flash Class.

When my web design or art history students would get overwhelmed with their overloaded college courses and art projects, I would tell them to be the mouse who takes one bite at a time of a large wheel of parmasean cheese, chew thoroughly before taking the next bite, and the whole wheel would get systematically eaten over time.

I am trying to live out my own advice this week. That is after my "I lost My Keys, all of them, on Labor Day Meltdown". Then I had my go to Home Depot and re-key my whole house and report to one of my offices that the key was gone, etc, etc, etc.

I discovered that replacing a deadbolt is relatively easy, if not a wee bit dirty.

I am starting to chip away at the overwhelming wheel of pre-departure cheese. The moving sale is on Saturday, my mom is coming tomorrow to help me sort and price. I called all my utilities and bills today to inform them of my move and new address. My sister and I went to sort out financial details as she will be my official "Power of Attorney" and real attorney to help me organize my business and banking when I am in Ireland. Getting these small details done helped me feel more peace.

I dropped by the Auto Club yesterday and sorted out Sugar Plum's title. Joe is going to sell her and we are going to apply the $ to a good cause.

Sale stuff. Pack house. Move it to my storage space. And then I can breathe free and enjoy my last week worry free. Enjoy my going away parties at Alex's and Erika's wedding.

Best of all, Aer Lingus rocks for cheap flights in Europe. I will be going to Erika and Thomas' German reception on Sat. Oct. 22nd at a winery near Speyer. Yeah! Miss Kitty is going to come to Dublin and I am going to visit her in Stockholm.

Less than 19 days before I get on an airplane at LAX and ...

Sat. Sept. 10, 2005
10am to 4pm

Ms. Jen's Moving Sale
329 E. Palmyra (between Grand & Center Sts.)
Orange, CA 92866

Antique, Vintage, and Contemporary
Furniture, Household Goods, a cute purple Honda, and Clothes.

Come buy things and help me raise $ for Ireland.

I discovered tonight that I am not ready to give Sugar Plum up to just anyone. Even if that anyone is a charity that will put her up on the auction block and put the proceeds to a good cause.

I know she is old, has 230,000 miles, and is in somewhat "iffy" shape. But she is still Sugar Plum The Wonder Honda and I want her to go to a good home.

Ever since brother Joe got her back running and her temperature/radiator system back in working order, I have been trying to search for a local charity that would help me find a family in need who would like to have the gift of Sugar Plum.

In my daydream for Sugar Plum, a local Orange or Santa Ana family in need of a car but possessing mechanical skills would be happy to get Sugar Plum as a gift. They would wash and wax her (as I never did) regularly and put on new plastic hubcaps and would love her until it was time to go to the big chop shop in the sky. But I can't find such a situation.

I called Holy Family Cathedral and they wanted me to sell it and give them the money. I called the Vineyard in Anaheim and they wanted to give it to a Biola student. I looked at the websites of a bunch of car donation places and they did not give to local charities, only to big national ones.

Erika suggested that I call LA Mission as they took used cars to help give homeless folk job training. Wonderful, Sugar Plum as training car. Not to be, as the LA Mission now wants to use one of the car donation clearinghousings and then get the $.

Megan suggested that I "tithe to NPR". I called KPCC's car donation line and then after setting up the donation for yesterday, I couldn't find the title (I put it somewhere too safe), and after spending several days crying about Katrina, I cancelled my donation.

On Saturday, I spoke to my Aunt Anne and she suggested that I contact her friend Geoge who knows a nice young lady who just moved from the UK to go to graduate school and needs a car. Now this I could get excited about, me leaving to grad school in The Isles and Sugar Plum going to a person from The Isles who is going to grad school here. Good idea.

I played phone tag with George all day today, and his last message was to the effect of, "Your aunt Anne told me the car has overheating problems, so my friend Tim will sell it and we will donate the money."

No. No. No.

Back to Square One.

No, not Derek O'Brien's new band, but the seats I am setting up to watch my meltdown... ;op

Three weeks from tomorrow, in the morning at LAX, I will get on a plane and fly to Dublin for graduate school. In the meantime, I have a thousand things to do but feel like I am stuck in sub-zero mental molasses. It hasn't helped any that I am not getting good sleep and I have had a five day sinus headache (danged fall allergies!).

Need sleep. Need professional movers. Need a Moving Coordinator. Need a carpet cleaner to come. Need an IV of diet coke. Need another band for Thursday and Saturday nights. Need food in the fridge. Need toilet paper. Need several backup packages of coping and energy. Need someone to send emails to everyone about my moving sale. Need someone to organize my going away party. Need another big suitcase. Need Scruffy to stop shitting in the car. Need be able to pray. Need prayer. Need Sugar Plum to go to a good family. Need the couch to go to a good family. Need to get the corner cabinet over to Joe's house. Need to pack. Need to sort. Need to price things for the moving sale. Need to find time to see my friends and family before I go. Need to finish up client work. Need to not fall asleep at my computer. Need to make flyers about the moving sale and post them around the neighborhood. Need to sleep.

Did I mention that most of the above needs to happen before this wednesday? Two days from now.

For those of you who have been calling or sending emails, here are the updates on the family canines:

1) Freckles is mending from the removal of the humongo sarcoma cancer tumor that was removed from his right rib side almost two weeks ago. He is resting lots, taking small walks and the tumor has not returned. Best of all, he is more alert and awake than he has been in two years. He must like his daily morphine. Our dog, the junkie. He is even taking the time and energy to intimidate Scruffy.

2) Scruffy has recovered fully from his fall and head bonk at Erika's shower. Scruff is back to his fully active skirmy self. Good news.

The countdown to Ireland has begun, 29 days until I board a plane from LAX to DUB. Here are the updates:

1) I have been accepted into a Hall on Trinity College for housing. My space will be a "single ensuite" which translates into a single bedroom with it's own bathroom within a larger apartment where I will share the kitchen and living room with 6 other folk.

Best of all, each room has a Network Connection. Yep, internet happiness.

2) I found another incoming M.Sc. student who is blogging! Wahoo! Say hi to Irish Stu...

Now I must get a crackin' on the packin'...
Uggh....

Wed 08.24.05 - Freckles in his recovery t-shirt. Last Wed. Freckles had a huge cancerous tumor cut out of his rightside ribs. He is a trooper.

Here are the dates for the Moving Sale and Going Away Party (at my house):

Sat. Sept. 10, 2005 : 10am to 2pm : Moving Sale
I am taking any donations towards this sale to help to raise $ for Ireland. Come and buy things.

Sat. Sept. 17, 2005 : 7pm plus : Going Away Party at my house : Aka the Last Geek Party

::Confirmed Going Away Shows ::

Thurs. Sept. 22, 2005 : Channel 3 (!!!), The Kissfits, The Irish Brothers, and The Ignorant at Alex's Bar

Fri. Sept. 23, 2005 : Royal Crown Revue (!!!), Viernes 13, plus more at Alex's Bar

In 41 days, I board a plane from LAX to Dublin, Ireland. Yep, less than 6 weeks from today I will be departing for Graduate School. The Utopia/Distopia that I have longed for many a year.

The perpetual student in me is darned excited to get crackin' at the books and programs. The 37 year old adult in me is anxious about big change, a new culture, scarce residential broadband (only 1 Mbps!!!) and the reception of Americans at this point.

No, really, I am a Californian. Didn't you know that we succeeded from the Union after the 2000 elections? We did. I swear.

My adventure itchin' side is roaring to go and wants to leave yesterday. My practical side is worrying about all the details.

But most of all, as I read Molly's blog on her going back to grad school as a 30 something, I am a bit sad. Why? Molly's Yale classmates have been contacting each other for months and several of them blog. She had community before she left San Francisco.

I feel stuck in a void. I have no idea who will be my 30 classmates for the next year and no one but me is blogging this. I keep googling all the keywords and have only come up with one student who is about to graduate in the 2004-2005 year and one who graduated a couple of years ago and is now at MIT's Media Lab.

Hello! Hello! We are going into a computer science masters program and no one is blogging?

Anxiety.

Tue 08.16.05 - ... has moved to new opulent space on 2nd St.

August 1988 - I went on "sabbatical" at Scripps College and transferred to Biola University. My dad was furious at me for leaving a well-respected women's college for a no-name Christian college. Furious. But I had to go, I had no direction at Scripps and it was way too hot & smoggy for me in Claremont. Biola was the only school in the medium sized range within 20 miles of the beach, thus cooler and less smoggy.

At Biola, I met my mentor and one of my best friends, Dan Callis. Painter, teacher, voracious learner | reader, and good friend. I babysat his kids, Ryan and Jeremy on occasion.

August 2000 - I left my cublicle day job to be a freelance web designer full time, excellent timing... Dan recruited me to teach 20th Century Art History, which turned into a regular adjunct gig teaching web design & art history. My two best students that first semester of teaching at Biola were Dustin Kensrue and Ryan Callis, who both sat up front, actually did the reading and were willing to challenge me in class discussion.

August 2005 - Tonight I went to dinner with Dan and his wife Terri Callis, afterwards Ryan and his wife Tammi joined us after dinner to hang out and chat. Ryan will start on his MFA in painting at the end of the month at Claremont Graduate (just west of Scripps) and his dad's MFA alma mater. I will go to Trinity for my M.Sc. Ryan talked about his excitement for grad school for both of us among other things. As I listened to him, I heard the future of a talented teacher and marveled that the kid I babysat is soon to be a father himself. Blessings my friend. Blessings.

Now I must convince Dan to start blogging...

Happy Friday! Tonight is Rapid Fire (FiiiiiiRE!) at Alex's and Mikey's birthday celebration. Come on down and celebrate with us.

The Tid Bits:

1) Some folks do binge drinking or scarf down quarts of Tom & Jerry's ice cream, not me. Me, I have pea binges and want to run around singing "Pease porridge...". Every so often I have a day of Pea-a-palooza. I eat peas at every meal. Today is one of those days. I had leftover pea and pancetta risotto for breakfast (heavy on the peas), I had Peas & Potatoes (aloo muttar?) from India Sweet & Spices for lunch, and I have a bag of Trader Joe's Petite Peas in the freezer, so what should I make pea-ful for dinner?

2) Cell / mobile phones have been in the news this last week after a study conducted by insurance companies concluded that hands free cell phone talking is just as distracting and dangerous to driving as holding the cell up to your ear.

From the LA Times article:

A study of cellphone use by motorists suggests that they aren't any better off using a headset in the car than holding the phone to their ear: They're still four times more likely to end up in a crash and injured than if they weren't using the phone.

The survey, released Monday by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said that using mobile phones while driving was just as dangerous whether they're chatting through a headset or holding on to the handset.

The statistical analysis, which compared phone records with the times of accidents, indicated that the risk was just as great across all age groups and in both sexes.

It's not just keying in phone numbers or calling up messages but the conversation itself that can be the most distracting, said Anne T. McCartt, the insurance institute's research executive overseeing the study.

Now what I would like to see a study on is: How does talking on one's cell with an ear bud or bluetooth wireless ear bud or a hands free set differ from talking to a passenger in the car? Does the brain differentiate tasks with a person present as opposed to a person on the other end of the phone call? Or is it just as distracting and dangerous to talk to a passenger as to have a cell conversation with a headset?

What do you think? When I drive I find that I can talk to a passenger and look forward to the road just fine and I can use my ear bud and look forward just fine, but if I have my cell to my ear then I can't see out of the side that the phone is on and I am distracted. And if Scruffy is in the car, all beats are off.

3) My roommate has been gone for a week and the house has gone to the birds. It is dangerous to live alone and requires discipline. I took out the vacuum on Monday to clean the carpets, have not done so, and the vaccuum is plugged in and in the middle of the living room walkway. I keep telling myself I will vacuum when it cools down. ;o)

Photo of Erika at Trinity Collge on 11/27/04 by Ms. Jen

...IRELAND!!!!

Yes, ladies and gents, Ms. Jen, the lady who uses few cell minutes but 25 to 40 MBs a month of internet/data on her cell phone needs to find a good unlimited data plan in Ireland... Taking recommendations from Irish mo-bloggers...Vodafone? O2? ;o)

After months of waiting on pins, needles, and at times what seemed like hot coals... I have been accepted to M.Sc. in Multimedia Systems at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland for the academic year 2005-2006!!!!

Hopping around with extreme happiness!!!!

Fri. 07.08.05 - Aunt Trice, Chris Krogh, & my brother Joe.

Fri 07.08.05 - Mark & Grandpa Jim.

File Under : Extraordinary or a Blessing...

Back when I was a young and idealistic college student, I decided to sign up with Compassion International and support a child's education. My Compassion child was a bright, engaging 9 year old girl from the Tamil Nadu state of India. She wrote regular letters me about her school, her studies, her hopes and her family for nine years and I wrote back telling her of college and a bit of my life.

When Esther turned 18, Compassion cut me off and switched, with no notice, my monthly support to a 7 year old boy in the Philipines. I was very upset, as I had encouraged Esther to go to university and continue her studies. I had written Compassion asking if I could send Esther money for college. No go. They only supported children until they were 18.

I called Compassion to vent my frustration and told them that I would like to write a goodbye letter, they said that they would pass it on. I didn't hear from Esther again.

Until today. I opened my gmail account that I use to funnel emails from this site and found the following email:

Hello Jenifer,

I am looking for a Ms. Jenifer Hanen. I know that her birthday is on the 24th of April and that she loves painting. I browsed the net with this info and found this link http://www.blackphoebe.com/. I am hoping you are the person I have been trying to look for.

Let me tell you about myself. I am Esther from India.

The one and same Esther. Thank God. The one and same Esther is now working for a large company and has a Bachelors in Computer Science. Yeah!

Idealism pays off in the long run.

Just in... my National Geographic Genographic results... I am a "K" (Southern and Western Europe) and yes, I know, I am a geek. With all due respect to Nat Geo and their use of Flash, I have typed out the info that they provided with my results (Please forgive any typing errors on my part and all links found via Google):

Your mtDNA results identify you as a member of halogroup K. This haplogroup is the final destination of a genetic journey that begam some 150,000 years ago with an ancient mtDNA haplogroup called L3.

Haplogroup L3 occurs only in Africa, but on that continent its derivatives are found nearly everywhere. L3's subclades are most prevalent in East Africa."

Happy Birthday to Ms. Erika G! Happy Bloomsday to everyone else!

Sun. 05.22.05 - Congratulations to Dennis and Cassendre! This Sat. they got engaged and made an offer on an Eichler house in Orange. Wahoo, they will back in the neighborhood!

I loved the winter in Boston. I got quite a lot of reading and painting done, as well as walking. I was thinner then. I love cold. I miss it now that I am back home in SoCal. The too-warm weather this week is driving me to SF next week.

One of the reasons that I applied for graduate school in Europe was the hope to return to a walking city and the hope for more uninterrupted time to make art, write, read and think due to inclement weather and a lack of overstimulation.

Meg says it all in her post about the overstimulation of LA and how our over-busy lives crowd out our creative impulses and acting out of those impulses. I must agree. I had to carve out this evening to catch up on the blog posts that have been bouncing around my head this week.

Yesterday I received an email from the admissions office of the university I applied to saying that they have received my full package and that it has moved on to departmental consideration. I was quite surprised that a busy admin office took the time to let me know that my little package had been processed and sent off to the department. How kind and thoughtful.

The email came the day had I planned to send an email inquiring if my package had arrived. The US Postal Service does not track Global Priority or Express Mail. I sent my application package off on April 12th and wanted to wait until May 12th to inquire that all was well. The deadline is June 12th and I hope to hear yea or nea by July.

On tenderhooks here in the land of warm weather, too much to do, make, say and write.

1) Typography - Lots of folk have been talking about typography on the web (or the lack thereof and the hacks needed), but lately I have been thinking a lot about book typography. I am teaching a Critical Thinking and Art Theory class to university art majors this semseter and have been reading at least 100 pages a week, thus page readability is a must.

Here is what I have noticed: books published in the last 5 - 10 years have very readable, curvy, thin, and lovely serif typefaces. Books that I have in my collection that were published previous to 1995 tend to have heavy times influenced typefaces. There is also a difference in line height that makes many new books appear light and airy.

Good work, I say to all the unknown designers slaving away in the little cubicles at the big publishing houses. Thank you.

2) Mom has been in SoCal for over 5 days and at my house for nearly 4 and my refigerator has not expanded. Yeah.

3) We are having a nice time and Mom was kind enough to leave my to client work this afternoon while she went out to prune and water my garden. Thanks, Mom!

4) My cousin Kristen is graduating from San Francisco State on Sat. May 28th. Anyone have any recommendations on hotels in SF that are nice, decent neighborhoods that are fun to walk around? I need a recommendation, as the hotel that I stayed at last year when I went to the MT party is full...

Mon 05.09.05 - Happy Birthday to my brother Joe & his roommate Rochelle.

Sun 04.24.05 - Happy Birthday 21 + 16 to me, 2nd b-day to this blog, and 7th to the Barflies mailing list. So much activity in one lovely little day.

Sugar Plum is nearly back!

On Fri. March 4th, I came out of teaching my class to see Sugar Plum peeing every possible fluid onto the Biola parking lot tarmac. Yikes!

I had a big debate with myself that afternoon, as I took her to the local mechanic and the cost to replace the oil pan and water pump was the same as the funds I had saved up for food and expenses at SXSW. Yikes!

I called my brother to ask if I could borrow his Mustang until I had returned from SXSW and could get Sugar Plum repaired. Best yet, my brother said that if I brought SP to his house he would repair her.

Over a month has gone by, gas prices have made driving the lovely V-8 Mustang a bit of a pain, but Sugar Plum is almost fixed! This week, Joe took the oil pan out for repair, as we tried to find a new one to no avail. He steam cleaned the engine today to look for more leaks, none. And next week he will replace the water pump.

Super Joe to the rescue!

Not the north sea birds, but Barbara's Bakery's no-wheat / gluten-free cereals. All the Puffin cereals that Trader Joe's carries are made with corn, and are to be avoided by Ms. Jen.

Happily, Wild Oats in Long Beach carries Honey Rice Puffins with no wheat and no corn. Tasty, non-allergenic and the best discovery of the week. ;oD

At 12:37pm today, my graduate school application went off to it's new home via Global Priority Mail. Yes, global. I am applying to a graduate program in Europe. Now comes the wait, as I probably will not hear yea or nea until July.

If you want to view the Slide Show that I put together for a selection of my March 2005 photos that I took and posted with my Nokia 7610. You will need to have your browser set at 1024 x 768 or larger and at that resolution, you may need to close a few of your browser's toolbars to see the full text with the vertical photos. It was made using Eric Meyer's S-5.

Ms. Jen's Portfolio Slides

Here's the sound of me screaming in frustration:

[AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]

That is the result of my noon visit to my local branch of my very lame bank, Washington Mutual.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago, major banks offered a wide range services and had trained employees. Unfortunately this state of affairs is now a fantasy...

The sad reality is that the folks at my local branch of a major, national bank had no clue, including the manager, on where one could go to have a bank or cashier's check cut in Euros.

Yes, Euros, the currency that has surpassed the US Dollar in strength and investment cache.

Back in the day when the great dinosaurs still roamed the earth... oh about 10 or 12 years ago, my local major California bank (Security Pacific) could make checks in British Pounds. Wahoo. Guess who Washington Suck Mutual bought out?. When Security Pacific couldn't do a banking event for you, the nice teller would recommend a local bank that could.

Not the case any more under the not so benevolent rule of WaMu. When I minorly lost my temper with usually nice, but unhelpful teller, I stated, "You know, there are more nations and currencies in the world than just America. And as a major bank, if you can't provide the service, then you should have a reference for someone who can."

Hey Washington Mutual, Please stop taking over good banks and making them medicore.

Funny thing... On the Downtown Disney property in Anaheim, they have a currency exchange place that can also cut one a check in Euros. The Maus is progressive or just savy enough to realize that local people, just not international guests, would like to occasionally bank in other currencies. Funny that.

Sun 04.02.05 - What not to do... Substitute the 2% milk that one's mom left last week for cream in tonight's potato gratin, as it needed to be drained.

ArtLex defines Horror Vacui as:

The compulsion to make marks in every space. Horror vacui is indicated by a crowded design. In Latin, it is literally, "fear of empty space" or "fear of emptiness."

My mom has refigerator horror vacui. Every nook and cranny must be filled, even if the condiment or leftover is 4 years old. When I was a teenager, the only time leftovers would leave the family frig is when I would eject them into the trashcan before they evolved into sapient beings.

As an adult, I love a minimalist refigerator. Other than a few condiments, an onion or carrot or apple or two, I like to buy my food as I am going to cook it. I generally don't keep leftovers past a day or two or three.

Whenever my mom comes to visit for longer than a day or two, the items in my frige multiply. And multiply and multiply, until one can't get anything in. Last night Lauren and I looked in the refrigerator with horror as it was overflowing with food we didn't recognize: a whole cooked chicken, fruit salad in a bag, a large container or milk (both of us are lactose intolerant), a case of beer, etc. etc. etc.

Here is the thing: my mom won't be back to collect the food when she leaves to go home tomorrow. She will leave it. She will take Freckles and his dog accroutrements, she will take her clothes and towels, but she will leave the chicken, the milk, the beer, etc. whether we will eat it or not. These items will join the whey protein shake, the 2 or 3 jars of olives, the pickles, and other items she left last time or the time before.

She will leave happy, knowing that my refigerator is full.

Sun 03.27.05 - Scruffy & Mom.

Six years and two months after they met. Four years and 11 months after they officially became "girlfriend" and "boyfriend"...

This Wed. March 9th, 2005, at sunset amongst the once in a lifetime wildflower profusion in Death Valley, Mr. Thomas Bertling asked Ms. Erika Gieschen to marry him.

Congratulations!

Ugh. Working the door at Alex's for a Manic or Cad Tramps show is a nightmare. Tonight is Manic.

We completely sold out at 9:27pm and for the last hour and a half it has been beg-beg-plead-plead-yell-yell-wheadle-wheadle. Ms. Jen melts down.

About 20 mins. ago I had a group of about 15 rush the door after they convinced Big Mike they were with a party on the list. They weren't. I kicked most of them out, it was bad.

I didn't have time for a real dinner. Scruffy is stuck in the car, because there was no one to dog sit and I was not in the mood to come home at 3am to pee and pooh. Now I am hungry and crabby.

I alluded to it in this entry.

I got a call back in Sept. asking if I would go give blood to see if I was a match. I did. And I was.

On Dec. 9th, I went in for a full half day physicial. Blood. Heart. Chest. Urine. X-Ray. Multiple nice nurses and one cranky doctor. We were on. Scheduled for Mon. Jan. 3rd.

Then four days before Christmas it was called off. The transplant recipient had fallen out of remission. Donation cancelled.

Mon. Feb. 7th, I recieved a phone message from the NMDP saying that the donation was back on. More blood tests. More investment.

I returned home from Bowling on Monday evening, to find another message. We are off. Recipient is too ill to be a candidate for stem cell transplant.

Please pray for this leukemia patient, whose name I don't know.

Consider registering to be in the Marrow Donor pool. It is a gift.

What started out as a scratchy voice last monday after a weekend at the Pala Casino for my Grandma's 85th birthday, has turned into a full fledged case of laryngitis and a dry cough if I try to talk. Other than no voice and an occasional dry cough cough, I feel fine. Bleh.

Some days I sound like a little frog and today is the toad voice day. Croak. Bleh.

When I am working too much during the week and then have to work the weekend at Alex's in the noise and smoke, I have been known to be hoarse for a day or two, but not a week. Punk Rock Bowling is this upcoming weekend. Bleh. If I can't speak now, how I am I going to navigate 3.5 days of smokey Vegas? Croak...

Is a day or two after Christmas 1997, when Uncle Richard, Aunt Doreen, and Grandpa Joseph dropped Erika and I, or maybe just me, off at Penn Station to take the train back to Boston. As we were unloading gear, Grandpa Joseph bops out of the Jeep and down to an adjacent convenience store without saying a word.

Uncle Richard got frustrated and went into the store to look for him, but no Grandpa Joseph. I peeped in, no Grandpa Joseph. Richard told us to go catch our train or we would miss it. I found out later that Grandpa Joseph just decided to have a looksee at the area around Madison Square Garden and came back to the car within 10 minutes or so. Spry at 87.

Spry until the last year or so. He passed late last week. The viewing and funeral were Sunday and yesterday in New York.

Erika told me today that it was open casket and that Grandpa Joseph was placed sitting up in the casket. I would guess that was so he could get his last looksee around.

Yuen-Wei Tsang, May the Lord Bless You.

I have had my badge for SXSW Interactive and Music booked since November. I bought my plane ticket for Austin a week and a half ago. Today, in a fit of procrastination, I searched for who was talking about it and the good news is that Brad has resurrected the SXSW Blog as SXSW Baby! Yeah!

Robert Duffy at DoneWaiting.com has put together a blog for SXSW Music. Good thing that Alex is coming early, as DW has reported that QotSA is playing on Tuesday!

Here are some SXSW Blogs to follow for the next 7 weeks:
http://www.sxswbaby.com/
http://blog.sxsw.com/
http://www.donewaiting.com/sxsw/

1) I am coming down with a cold / flu / cough / headache / foggy head and I am sitting here taking $ from stoned reggae fans at Alex's door. Lots of the folk expect to the be on the guest list, when they are not. They are really on my Pest List.

I keep wondering where their enterprenurial spirit is? Shouldn't really cheap stoners be growing certain things hydroponically, selling such things, and then they would have the $ to pay five peasely dollars.

So the next cheap dufus who demands that they are on the list when they are not, I will offer to let them in for free if I can take their pic and get their real name and post both here. How cheap are they?

2) It has been a long week. A long week made good by the re-emergence of the sun. I can actually walk across the backyard without leaving deep footprints.

3) Last Sunday afternoon, in the downpour, Erika and I went to the Huntington Library for the last day of "The Bible and the People" exhibition. It was an interesting day. The show was ok, most of what was presented was the physical evidence of much what I had learned as a Biola student or in the history of graphic design. The best and worst part of the day were outside of the show.

4) Worst part, first... I leave the exhibition to use the ladies room in the lobby of the building, when a very sleek, expensive, aristocractic woman walked into the restroom ahead of me. She opened up and checked out every stall before choosing the handicap stall. I went into one of the middle stalls. I as I was doing my potty business, she moved into the stall next to me and started using a very loud vibrating machine of some sort. The noise went back and forth. I was appalled, finished up quickly, washed my hands and ran out. As I got out to the lobby, the noise of the vibrating machine (you know what it was) was reverberating and growing louder as echoed through the marble lobby.

Erika and the front door guard were standing near the front door with bewildered looks on their faces, I said sotto voce, "The woman in all black with the heels on is using a vibrator in the bathroom." "No, maybe she is shaving," says Erika. "Shaving? Back and forth, it would be done in a pass or two." "Well, she could get a quieter one. They do make silent vibrators."

HELLO! Hello! Hello! What is up with the Pasadena / San Marino aristocrats? Hello! Either at home or get a silent model. Hello! Simply not classy.

5) Best part of the Huntington is the parking lot aisle names. Not Eyore or Tinkerbell or Ariel, but plant names like Cactus 2.

6) A continuing thorn in my side is Honda's lack of bell or warning sound when one leaves one's lights on. I told myself driving all the way up from Orange in the heavy rain to remember to turn my lights off when I got out. Did I? No, in the daylight, even if cloudy, I can't see that the lights are on. When I returned to my car at nearly 6pm, in the dark, in the heavy rain. No battery power. Damned Honda.

If California is going to have a law that one's lights are to be during the day during the rain, then Honda needs to have a warning sound when one has left one's lights on.

The Upswing of the Saturday night Notes is that one probably shouldn't blog when one is sick and working. Cranky Jen...

The last few months of my life have been extra beyond busy, as many of you who are hoping for me to return a phone call or email can attest. When I do get the time in the car to return a call, it is usually brief and somewhat discombobulated.

2003 sucked dog. 'Nuff said.

2004 was the good year that I had been hoping for for several years in a row. Good in this instance equalled too busy for my own good, but at least I was not 6 weeks behind as I was in 2003, but instead 1 week ahead. Good enough to pull off a trip to Ireland and SXSW and Bowling.

I have no expectations for 2005. None, really. I am too burnt out. Really. I hope it is good, but I think I need a nap. I hope that blessings come my way and to others, but can I just veg on the couch for a bit?

I have spent the last 8 months working from 10am to 1am trying to catch up to the expense of my friendships and personal life. I would like to now sleep for a month and after Groundhog's Day I promise to return the 9 months of backed up emails and phone calls.

Really. I promise.

Yesterday, the split ends on the bleached / purple / pink parts of my hair started to bug me bad. Today, I decided that I did not want to deal with a trip to the hairdresser, so I just started to whack at it with my good scissors (pic #1 on the left). Upon seeing the piles of hair on the floor and in the wastebasket (pic #2, center), I started to laugh at myself, hard. It was before breakfast and any caffiene. After I washed my hair, trimmed up the mistakes, and dried it, it turned out ok (pic #3 on the right). All that maniac energy in 20 mins., all to save time and a few $. What a DIY geek.

The nice folk over at enature.com (National Wildlife Federation) have a great feature on their website: Zip Guides. Enter the zip code of the area you have been bird watching in and it will give a list of birds that are known to frequent that zip code. Click on the bird and you can learn and listen.

Excellent resource. Now if only I can find out who the bird is that I have heard but not seen for the last week in the backyard.

Every so often, about every 9 months or so, I fall down the Black Hole of the Internet genealogy search. Yep, I am a victim of a terrible force of ancestral gravity. It happened again tonight.

For years, the stories in my family were told that the only Irishman is my grandfather Kilroy and that all the rest of the family on both sides is English and German. Then how come I look as Irish as Irish can be?

After extensively interviewing and collecting records from all family members over 55 and then researching the various family members online and via the US census dating back to 1800, guess what? Lots of Irish. Some Scotch-Irish, but lots of Irish Irish. More than 60%. Then Scottish, Welsh, English, French, and a bit of German.

My father always thought Hanen was German. My research from the US census of his great-grandfather says Irish. My father was upset and asked his dad if this was true. My grandfather said of course it was, the Hanens were Irish. After my dad protested that he had spent his whole life thinking he was German and English, my grandfather replied, "Even as late as 1937 when I was just out of college, to be Irish was not to get a job in Oregon or Los Angeles except in the strawberry fields, so I lied."

In 1988, when I went to Ireland for the first time, I felt home for the first time in my life. I saw people who looked like my dad and my brother. Men flirted with me, not my California blonde traveling companion. Same in Boston in 1994.

In preparation for my Ireland trip over Thanksgiving, I am trying to nail down as much exact genealogical info as possible so that I can go visit birthplaces, churches, and cemeteries of my ancestors.

Now I really must go back to client work, but according to a google search the Hanen's originated from County Clare, good thing Clare and the Burrens is already on our itinerary.

Tonight Ms. E and I booked our flights to Dublin for one week over Thanksgiving! Wahoo!

Or maybe I ought to entitle this entry: "Bullshit!"
Or "Rant."

I have heard of this *small* snafu on various Celiac's Disease websites, but Cnn.com has been kind enough call the Catholic Church out on the carpet with this article.

People, people, people. Jesus himself had whole discussions/themes/etc. on the Spirit of the Law is Better than the Letter of the Law...

As a person who can't consume wheat due to intolerance and terrible bowel effects, I would willing supply the priest with a nice Japanese made rice cracker rather than have diaherrea for two days. Thank you very much.

Rice Cracker: looks like a communion wafer, smells like a communion wafer, tastes like a communion wafer, it is a communion wafer.

Dear Catholic Church, while I admire you in many ways, my 400 plus years of protesting ancestry is shining through quite clear right now. PLEASE people, Grace and the Scripture before Tradition and Rigid Law. Let the kid have a rice wafer. Let her participate in her community before the Lord. Thank you.

Faith, Hope, and Love. And the greatest of these is Love.

It has been over a week since I have posted, all apologies.

Last Thursday and Friday, I took a road trip with Sandra & Tink (plus Tom & Greg on the ride up) to San Francisco to go to the Movable Type / Sixapart 3.1 Sneak Preview party at the Varnish Gallery. The road trip was fun, the party a blast, and San Francisco very good. I have quite a few pictures to post here from the adventure.

Where have I been since? Lost in a world of work. Alex is out of town for a week and I am the replacement Alex... I have also been working on deadline to deliver the final draft of Phase 1 of a complete site redesign for a client.

I hope tomorrow that I will have time to post the pics from the road trip and update the SoCal calendar. Yikes!

The three highlights of the week are AT&T redeeming themselves on Monday, confirmation of The Hentchmen at the Alex' as well as the possibility of the Gore Gore Girls in Oct., and due to Ezra's kindness, I am now beta testing MT3.1b2.

MT3.1b - So far so good, this is my first post and I have yet to go have a good looksee. Due to an excess of yucky comment spam, I breathlessly await the full roll-out of MT-Blacklist 2.0. I have effectively turned off comments, thanks for the emails pointing this out, hopefully it will be resolved by the end of the month.

p.s. If you are a fan of the Paybacks or the Gore Gore Girls, go look at Miss Kitty's pics from the Underground Garage Fest.

Cnn.com reported today on Anti-identity Theft Freeze that folks in Louisiana, California and Texas can now do to protect their credit:

Little by little, a weapon against identity theft is gaining currency -- but few people know about it.

It's called the security freeze, and it lets individuals block access to their credit reports until they personally unlock the files by contacting the credit bureaus and providing a PIN code.

The process is a bit of a hassle, and the credit-reporting industry believes it complicates things unnecessarily.

But it appears to be one of the few ways to virtually guarantee that a fraudster cannot open an account in your name.

The freeze became an option in California and Texas last year, and Louisiana and Vermont will allow it beginning next July. However, the Texas and Vermont laws apply only to people who already have been victimized by identity theft.

Only 2,000 Californians and 150 Texans have taken advantage of the freeze, according to Experian Inc., one of the three major credit bureaus.

But identity theft watchdogs say usage is low simply because the credit bureaus don't publicize the option. With identity theft apparently growing, the advocates hope the freeze gains national momentum. Congress resisted calls for a freeze rule during debate over a major credit law last year.

Apparently the big three credit agencies are trying to not publicize this as an option and in this article are discouraging people from using it.

The credit bureaus think it isn't wise for anyone.

The industry has fought the freeze, contending that fraud alerts and new protections in last year's federal Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act offer significant defense against identity theft.

In testimony to a Louisiana legislative committee in May, Eric Ellman, a lobbyist for the Consumer Data Industry Association, called freezes "the most dramatic and draconian alteration" ever to hit the credit reporting system.

Consumers are accustomed to quick mortgage approvals and other conveniences that exist because banks, retailers and insurance companies have efficient access to credit histories, Ellman said. The freeze, he said, would only gum up the works and confuse people.

"It's using a machine gun to get at a fly," he said.

What the article does not say is how the credit bureaus make their money: by selling your credit report to any taker. Thus a widespread use of freezing one's credit report would cut into their business profits.

I think the credit freeze is an excellent idea that should be the default for all and if you want to open a new credit account or finance a car or a mortage or apply for a Victoria's Secret card then you can use your PIN to unfreeze your credit report account for the folks that you choose to look at your report. As it currently stands, any potential creditor with $15 can look at your report. Quite frankly, it is none of their business unless I am looking to do business with them.

Boing Boing kindly posted and linked to this Tech News article about a new AT&T Wireless' 3G service roll out that will have unlimited internet with your wireless service for $25.

AT&T Wireless will launch its third-generation or "3G" mobile phone service capable of transmitting e-mail, pictures, and video at high speed in four cities -- San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix and Detroit, the sources told Reuters.

The company will offer the data service at a fixed all-you-can-use rate of about $25 a month to consumers and $80 a month to corporate customers, one of the sources said.

"We're on track to deliver the 3G services before the end of the year," AT&T Wireless spokesman Ritch Blasi told Reuters, but he declined to address the specific timing.

As I wrote in May, I wanted to use my birthday $$ to buy a Palm Treo 600 but due to my current cell provider's (AT&T Wireless) change in plans and service mid-April I was unable to do so. After a bit of a meltdown at the AT&T store, a lot of research, and a large meltdown on a AT&T outsourced customer service person, I discovered that the current AT&T plans would not work with how I wanted to use the Treo 600 PDA/Camera phone.

Today the US Postal Service returned my rent checks and the torn envelope they went out in back to me in a plastic bag with a letter, that said:

July 7, 2004

Postal Customer

Re: Damage Mail

Dear Sir/Madam:

I apologize for the condition of the enclosed envelope you mailed at the Plaza Station in Orange, CA on or about July 6, 2004. [note: actually July 3rd]

Apparently, someone put "human excrement" in the collection box which covered approximately 37 pieces of out going mail. We have bagged each piece of damaged mail and returning it to you. Also, I have enclosed a 37 cent stamp so you can re-mail this item.

I recognize these are bills so you can copy this letter for your creditors. I'm requesting any late fees not be assessed to you for this was out of your control. If your ceditors need further information they can contact me at xxx-xxx-xxxx, [note: number x'd out by Jen] Monday thru Friday.

Again please accept my apology for the condition of your mail.

UGH!

Other than the local USPS customer service manager's inability to spell and grammar check his letter, the worst/repelling part of opening the large white envelope was the sight and smell of the enclosed plastic bag with the brown stained remnants of two rent checks. I entertained the possibility of taking a picture of it and posting it here, but decided to reproduce the apology letter instead.

How to explain this to the landlady? My other two big questions are what idiot decided to put shit in the mail box over Fourth of July weekend and why did this person think it would be a fine thing to do?

The Edwards House on Sat. 6/19/04 at it's original location of 431 E. Chapman Ave, Orange.

In most communities in Southern California, when an old building is in the way of "progess" it is demolished for whatever new building will be put in it's place, usually something ugly and in fashion with corporate architechs. Not in Old Towne Orange. In the mile square of Old Towne, there are over 1600 "National Registered Historic Buildings." If the building in question is in the mile square surrounding the Plaza and if it is registered, no demolishing.

If you are the owner of an old Victorian, like the house I rent, or a Craftsman, you have to get permission not just from the city but also from the historical society for any repair or remodel that will touch more than one wall. Two years ago, an impoverished elderly gentleman wanted to put plastic siding on his termite infested 1870s shotgun shack, but the city and the historical society would not let him. They instead, against his wishes, raised over $70,000 to completely re-do all the exterior of this two room shack with good hard wood planks and paint it. Now his shotgun shack, that would be more at home out at the Salton Sea, looks like a million bucks or at least $70,000.

The Edwards House on the Move - Mon. 6/21/04.

Thus, when the City of Orange wanted to expand the Central Library, there was one small problem: The Edwards House. The 1921 craftsman was in the way of the proposed expansion, so the City offered the house to any seller for $1, who would pay to relocate it to an empty lot in the mile square of Old Towne. It took over 9 months and a lot of LA Times articles to convince one of the two empty lot owners in Orange to buy the house.

Tonight was moving day. On June 10th, the City sent all the residents a letter announcing and explaining the move, as well as inviting residents to an Ice Cream Social with March Band at 8pm tonight to celebrate the House Move.

After a long day of Crow's arraignment at the Long Beach Courts with A, A, and P, and then to dinner with Mom at Walt's Wharf, I had nearly forgotten the Big Move. Silly me. At nearly 10pm tonight, I rode my bike to go get water at Rod's, when I saw the house in the middle of the intersection at Glassel and Almond. I immediately turned around and rode the two blocks back to my house for my camera. For the next half hour, I took pictures, investigated the scene (lots of folks milling about, post ice cream) and finally took a video as the house was towed around the corner.

At the Corner of Glassel and Almond about to turn the corner.

The best parts were watching the American Heavy Movers & Rigging guys lift one end of the house on hydraulics to move the wheels whilst the other end had its butt in the air, the SoCal Edison guys in cherry pickers lifting up the electric wires for the house to go under, and the kids at 100 S. Lemon St. riding their bmx bikes over the chaulk target marks that are to guide the movers on the empty lot to a correct deposit of the house onto the lot.

She'll be Comin' Around the Corner when She Comes....
She'll be Comin' Around the Corner when She Comes....
She'll be Pulled by One Big White Diesel when She Comes....
She'll be Pulled by One Big White Diesel when She Comes....
When She Comes!

I promise pictures tomorrow of her sitting on her new lot. I have an unedited AVI(49MB) movie of the Edwards House rounding the corner, please recommend a windows freeware movie compression software download, please...

I would like to extend a very warm and hearty Congratulations to a certain friend who met the love of his life in January and married her last week at the OC courthouse. May you be richly blessed with love, joy, laughter, and a few tears to round it all out for all the days of your life.

Happy First Birthday to this blog - Black Phoebe :: Ms. Jen

Happy Birthday to Me! Today is my 12*3 or 9*4 birthday.

A big Happy Birthday to Shawna Gregory today! Twenty years ago, in 1984, I spent my 16th birthday with the Pandoras girls and the CH3 gang in Hollywood. Last night at the turn of Fri. 4/23 into Sat. 4/24, I was at a CH3 show with all of the old gang! The nice thing about hanging out with twenty-somethings when one was 16 was getting to go all sorts of forbideen places. The nice thing about hanging out with forty-somethings when one is 36, is that one is perpetually the spring chicken... ;oD

My official birthday party is tomorrow - Sun. 4/25/04 at Alex's Bar in Long Beach. The Scotch Greens, Trucker Up, and the Atomic Men will be playing starting at 8pm.

On Thurs. evening, The Briefs and the Real McKenzies played a "secret" show that Toast put on. It wasn't really secret, it just couldn't be advertised due to last night's show that the bands played at a Clear Channel venue in the same market. Thus, Toast booked the bands at the El Cid, after the flamenco show, and invited everyone she knew. Mostly the show ended up being a live music social for LA area friends of Toast
(ie. punk musicians, journalists, record co. folk, and promoters) in the patio area of the El Cid.

The best part of the evening was hanging out on the patio before and between the bands catching up with LA based friends that I don't get to see too much due to their touring schedules, all of our busy lives, and/or my dislike of current gas prices.

Left to right in the pics above are friends that I have not seen in a long while and it was a delight to find them again:

1) Kim Chi - Super Kim to the Rescue! After departing the Distillers, Kim was in the Original Sinners playing bass, but is now writing her own material and doing her own thing. I am excited to hear what she puts together.

2) Sam and Craig - The last time I saw Sam was when he was also playing with the Original Sinners, now Sam has been sucked into the maelstrom of Gordy, Craig, and Lars. I am not quite sure if Sam is a Bastard now or if he is playing with Craig in the Mercy Killers, but Go Sam Go. While Craig moved to LA from SF last Sept, this was the first evening that I saw him out and about. He is happy, as the Bastards are finishing up in the studio and will be out on the road for most of the year.

3) Ms. Jen and Ms. Rachel - Ok, I did not lose myself. But, I have not seen Rachel since Bowling and it was good to catch up and see how Varla is doing. Rachel told me that this was the first show she had been out to in the 2.5 months since bowling, as she has been sucked (happily) into the "backend" of Varla.

I loved her use of the word "backend", as she used it the way computer folks would talk about the backend of a website and all the work that entails but the twist is she used it in the context of just not the Varla website and her computer, but also the production of the print magazine and her photography. Rather than talking about her website in terms of "old" media print world, she spoke of her print magazine using the terms of the "new" media internet world. Go Rachel Go!

Tim and friend - SXSW 2004

Last August I wrote a post on meeting Timmy the Real Turtle and ever since I get multiple hits to this site from folks who used the keywords "Timmy the Turtle" and wound up here. I am not sure if here is where they wanted.

But as an effort to further fuck up the search engines of the world.... I present my post on Timmy the Person Turtle.

Living on the Planet Earth are two Timmy the Turtles. One is male and human. One is female and repitillian. The band NOFX has a song about Timmy the Human who is their Tour Manager and Guy who does Stuff, and then Family Burkett got Timmy the Repitile for the office.

Now, let's talk about Tim McDuffee, aka Tim Grim, aka Timmy the Turtle. I first met Tim(my) a few years back at bowling late at night at the bar at the Gold Coast. We now run into each other about 3x year at different events even though he is out on the road most of the time, and when he is not he lives 2 counties north of me. Given that beast known as LA is in the way, I rarely get in his direction.

Here is the Tim I know: bright, on the ball, smart, good looking, always friendly, a kickass manager - be it road or band, and a hell of a lot of fun to hang out with. Besides doing "Stuff" for NOFX, Tim road manages Bad Religion, and band manages Jackass.

While Jackass is unable to play my birthday bash on the 25th of this month at Alex's, due to a band member in Europe in late April, they do have a new CD out on BYO called "Plastic Jesus." I recommend it. Keep Timmy employed, buy the Jackass cd....

As you can see, I am tweaking the design of this site, moving around some furniture, taking off a few rooms and adding a few more. Please excuse the construction dust, as I am not quite finished...

Update: 10 minutes later.... After a few CSS tweaks, I am happy for the time being. The site looks best in 1024 x 768 or larger, of which more than 60% of my readers are coming in at. If you are 800 x 600, sorry, but the Google Ad will intrude a bit into the Black Phoebe's tail.

First off, I want to say a BIG congratulations to Drs. Clairce and Greg Mullinax on the March 11th birth of their first son, Joshua Perrin Mullinax. Little Joshua is truly a gift. Yeah.

Second off, I want to thank Patrick Nielsen Hayden for posting Archbishop Romero's prayer to his blog a few days ago, as reading this was exactly what I needed late last week.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God�s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church�s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God�s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen.

Finally, I would like to extend a congratulations to Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden on their 25th wedding anniversary last week. Although I have not met them, I do love to read their blogs.

My homestate of California is a funny and sometimes confusing place. We supposedly are a very Democratic state, yet we keep electing Republican governors. We supposedly are known in other parts of the country as the "Land of Fruits & Nuts" or "The Left Coast," yet we keep enacting very conservative legislation and amendments like the Three Strikes Law and continually desire lower taxes of all sorts.

Given that almost eveyone I know, conservative or liberal, does not want to pay a single cent more in taxes, yet they want all the services that the State and Local governements provide, I had a good laugh when I saw this headline on the front page of the LA Times today:

Jail Inmates Freed Early to Save Money

Several of these tiny flowers were in the grass next to clumps of clover within 10 feet of home base at the Kick ball field.

Stewart Visits Probation Office

1) Yesterday I paid the highest price for a gallon of gas in all my years of driving - $2.17 and 9/10ths. $2.18! Time to get a Hybrid car...

2) Tomorrow is the California Primary, get out and vote!

3) Inquiring minds would like to know why California's state animal is the grizzly bear and Michigan's is the wolverine even though both animals are extinct or exceptionally rare in both states? Why not have a common animal as the State Mascot? Here in California we could have feral house cats, opposums, coyotes, stripper chicks with badly done brown lipliner, etc...

ReyRey and Damian, PRB 2001

There are seventeen, yep seventeen, measly little days until we pack up the Momasaurus Ford Escape and drive north on the Interstate 15 to Lost Wages for Punk Rock Bowling!

The Barflies.net Bad News Bowlers and the One Pin Team have been diligently practicing every week for a couple of months now and we are EXCITED!

In the Countdown to Departure, I will be posting pictures from various years past as a "Best of Bowling" memories.

Hector and Wanda after Daniel Lanios' opening the SXSW 2003 Music conference.

I just redeemed frequent flyer miles for a round trip ticket from Los Angeles to Austin for SXSW 2004!

Now I just need to buy a badge. Therein lies the big monetary vs. worth debate.

From 1998 - 2000, I attended the Music conference and loved it. In 2001 & 2003, I got a Platinum badge to attend the Interactive and Music conferences. The badge is quite a bit more expensive and the extra nights in the hotel plus food make it a very pricey adventure. I am currently on a cash only - no credit world, and the Platinum is too steep.

The Interactive part of the conference really is worth the badge for the panels alone. But it is lonely, as I am a music person and even though I try to be friendly I have had a hard time meeting folks (must be the lack of afternoon parties and free beer & bbq starting at 2pm). While the Music panels have sucked for the last couple of years, I have a blast with tons of friends, colleagues, and newly met folk at the conference and the showcases.

I have been considering just buying the Interactive badge and then attending afternoon parties for the Music part and a few night showcases, thus saving the dough. But as Wanda and I just discussed, last year many of the showcases we wanted to see were only letting badges in and no paying customers or wristbands. Grrr...

Debate, debate, debate.

Good news is that Manic Hispanic will be at Emo's on 3/19 for the BYO Records showcase!

Ok, after a week of holiday from blogging, I am back. A few notes before I get down to business:

1) Yeah! It is 2004, not 2003! Yeah! Already a better year. Yeah!
2) WallyMundo saved my bacon tonight. I hate their labor practices, their ugly clothes, domination and reshaping of the world shopping and buying habits, but I highly grateful that their photo dept. was able to print a large set of digital photo files on a short notice and do a great job so that I could make a deadline when all my fave photolabs are on holiday until Monday.
3) Tom Ridge needs to bug off. I promise not to use my postal box as a center of terrorism, if you promise to get out of my business and not be so snoopy. Enough said.

Happy New Year one and all.

May 2004 be a year of learning, love, laughter, and a few good tears, but not too many.

Police Blockade on West Sycamore St., Orange

At 4:30pm this afternoon, I turned off my computer, got in the bouncing middle aged Honda, and drove north up Glassell to go to Trader Joe's for spinach dip and cheese for Book Club this evening. I was not a block away from my house when I saw 2 helicopoters in the sky just above me. They were just hovering, not searching, but hovering.

I live near the Orange Crush, the conjunction of the 5, 22, and 57 freeways, and as a result, at rush hour traffic times there can be a helicopter in the sky to the west over the freeways. These helicopters were directly over Chapman University. I told myself that maybe someone famous was at the University and thus the helicopters, but they were dark blue with no markings or logos.

On the way back from Trader Joe's, they were still in the sky, and thrumming loudly. For the next hour, the sound of helicopters was loud. I did a google search to see what was up, to no avail.

At 6:42pm, I got in my car to go to Julie's to pick her up to drive to Meg's, when I flipped on KFWB for the news. Maybe they would tell me what was going on. And they did. Julie's exit from the 57 was closed off and the announcer reported that her whole neighborhood was blockaded due to a murder investigation. The 24 person SWAT team had set up their command center at Eckhoff and Sycamore, where the suspects had ditched their cars.

Julie's house is the corner house at Eckhoff & Sycamore. I called Julie on her cell and asked if she had been listening to the news, she had as she could not get off the freeway at her exit. She was unable to even get to her neighborhood and we met up at my house. Julie and I decided to proceed to Book Club, as there would be no going home for her for a number of hours.

The LA Times' front cover photo caption stated:

Launch Vehicle

Soldiers examine a rocket launcher mounted on a donkey-drawn cart near the Italian Embassy in Baghdad. Attacks launched from donkey carts Friday again raised the question: Can a high-tech army respond adequately to such low-tech threats?

Dear Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfield, and the various executives of Halliburton, Shell/Chevron/Texaco, Arco, Exxon, Mobile, etc,

Dear Sirs: I do realized that you all are damned and determined to make a profit in Iraq, but as the last 24 hours of events illustrate David and his Donkey are taking out Goliath and his corporate overlords.

Please note that 87 Billion US Taxpayers' Dollars will not defeat determined rebels with donkey carts. Please note that consulting Ariel Sharon and the current Isreali criminals... oops, I mean, governement will not help us but dig us deeper in the mire. Maybe you all ought to hire a medium to consult Rabin's ghost...

As an American taxpayer, I would like us to have adequate and working health care, education, transportation, and utilities right at home here in the good ole USA.

Mr. Bush, please remember the words of our Lord Jesus, "To whom much is given, much is required." Also, "A man can gain the world, but lose his soul."

Ms. Jen

I would like to extend a hearty congratulations to Dave "The Chairman" Mau and Lora "Lindy Lora" Wilson. Yesterday was their thrid year anniversary.

Three years ago, I threw a benefit party for Scarlett who was going to study in Ireland and needed to raise some money to pay for rent while she was gone. I hired Dave to make his famed MauBBQ, and Lora asked me for an introduction to Dave. And off they went.

Lora returned to California today after a one year career related absence and Dave threw a welcome home dinner party.

Here they are three years later. Yeah! I have hope.

Today I went to the bridal shower of a good friend of mine, Amanda Cunagin. It was one of the nicest wedding showers I have ever attended, bravo to Heather Teal, Lisa Lavine, and Arianna Shackelford for throwing such a great and lovely party at Heather & Dave Shackelford's home.

In honor of the celebration Amanda's friend Melissa recited the following poem by Richard Wilbur:

Wedding Toast

St. John tells how, at Cana's wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.

It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That this world's fullness is not made but found.
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for such as you.

Now, if your loves will lend an ear to mine,
I toast you both, good son and dear new daughter.
May you not lack for water,
And may that water smack of Cana's wine.

Many blessings on Amanda and Andrew!

Ok, all the nice lovely folks out there in blog-reader-land, I need your semantic help. Last night, Erika and I went to dinner at Alegria in Long Beach and we tried to determine what is the step between Smitten and Whupped.

Erika has decided that I have graduated into this step of my admiration for my Favorite Cute Man. Please help us find a name.

Audobon Warbler in front of Blue's place

Ever have one of those days that by 6:00pm you are so frustrated and tired that you could just cry (or if you are a guy - hit something)? Yesterday was that day for me....but it marvelously turned around after 6:00pm and by the time that I pulled the little honda to park at home after 2:00am, I looked up at the stars and was delighted.

Whilst walking along the path at Bolsa Chica today, as I was babbling along about my "Favorite Cute Man", Erika pointed out to me that I have passed beyond "Crush" to "Smitten." She's right. Just thought I ought to let y'all know.

Small apologies to my regular readers as it seems that I have gone AWOL, but I have not. I do have 4 fun posts for you all, but I have a website that I must get finished and I am not allowing myself the fun of blogging until I deliver the cd to the client.

Sneak Preview:
More Photos: The Dragons at Alex's; the Warped Tour link; Black Flag at Alex's
Off Road Racing weekend in the Nevada Desert
Kernels and Poems and Stories

Hopefully, I will have the cd into the client by the end of today, I will go to Renu Nakorn to treat myself, and then I will come back and blog.

My brother Joe wins the award for SuperHero of the month. Two days ago, he replaced my front brake rotors and pads on the little Honda, in trade for me varnishing his kitchen cabinets. Yeah for Joe!

This is a great relief to me, as the brakes were getting worse and worse, continuing to shudder, shake, and generally not brake very well.

When I picked my car up yesterday, my brother showed me the rotors that Big O Tires had put on back in February, and they were blue with heat searing. Joe told me that the rotors and pads were barely worn, but it was obvious due to greasey mechanic hands or a glazing that Big O had put on the rotors, that they were overheating, not getting the proper friction, and thus the car was shuddering and not braking well.

Joe found good German rotors, I forget their names, and installed them properly. I now have full stopping ability, not a sngle shudder or shake. And when an elderly woman in a Mercedes tried to run me off the road today, I was able to brake on a dime. Before yesterday, I would have had a large accident.

Ladies - My brother is a gem and single. He is a "nice" guy with his shit together - not only is he a vice president at a large LA real estate firm, but he can build a car/dune buggy from the ground up! He is an excellent cook, very bright, laid back, and has a great sense of humor.

Yesterday, Friday, August 15th, 2003, my cousin Liam West Kilroy was born to my mother's brother John and his wife, Catherine. Liam is the 15th cousin/grandkid to my mother's side of the family.

Here's the email announcement from my Uncle John:

It's official! We have a beautiful baby boy!

The newest member of our family, Liam West Kilroy arrived at 8:18 this morning in fine shape. He was just under 8 pounds!

Catherine and baby are doing well and will spend the weekend resting in Santa Monica UCLA Hospital before heading home.

I was over at my brother's yesterday morning when I heard the announcement via phone. My brother and I noted that it was a fine testament to our step-grandpa, Bill West, to have a baby boy named after him.

May Liam be as calm, strong, opinionated, and delightful as his namesake.

For the laughing sandy haired, freckled faced kid brother of my just-after-college roommate....

Many condolences to Johnny's (now John) wife Jill, to all of the Berger family, to John's flight squad, and to the Berger-Hocking family of the LBC. I am very sorry to hear of John's crash.

The family has set up a MSN group for info.

San Diego Tribune article: Miramar pilot dies in crash of Hornet

San Bernardino Co. Press Release:

On 7-22-03 at about 10:00 PM, USMC Captain John Timothy Berger, age:27, a resident of Santee and stationed at Miramar was flying an F-18 Military jet over the training area located at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC) in Twentynine Palms. For an unknown reason his jet crashed in the open desert area of the base and when emergency personnel arrived, he was pronounced dead at the scene. U.S. military officials are conducting the crash investigation. Please refer all inquiries to the the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (MCAGCC) in Twentynine Palms.

Here are 3 events that are happening this month that I am very excited about and will be attending.

June 13 - 15, 2003, 9:30am - 5:00pm: An International Three-Day Symposium: Beyond the Legacy of Genghis Khan at Los Angeles County Museum of Art's Leo Bing Theatre. This symposium is free and in conjunction with their excellent "The Legacy of Genghis Khan" exhibit.

June 20 - 21, 2003: The C. S. Lewis Foundation Summer Conference: A Celebration of Mere Christianity. I will be going down and working on Friday and Saturday for the conference, but I am most excited to hear Boston College philosopher Peter Kreeft's session on friday morning.

Friday, June 27, 2003, 6 - 10pm: Opening Reception of Kim Stringfellow's Greetings from the Salton Sea exhibition at the Circle Elephant Art, 4634 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027, 323-662-3279

Dave "The Chairman" Mau left me a message on my answering machine the other day to tell me of the plans for this year's Cinco de Mau BBQ, and he told me to tell the world.

Hello World, go to the BBQ, all are welcome.

This year the Cinco de Mau will not be held at Dave's house but at the Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa, Dave will be BBQing, and there will be live music. The bands will be Starpool (former members of Save Ferris) and Busstop Hurricanes.

My first Cinco de Mau party was at the Calvin Room in 1999. I went over on Dave's invitation for a wee bit, as I was supposed to meet Jez at the now infamous Manic Hispanic show at the Foothill. Dave's party was fun, great bbq, and a pinata with lottery tickets, lemon drops, and condoms in it, I ended up losting track of time and never getting over to the Foothill.

Much better than getting beat on by the Long Beach Police at the Foothill.... (Damn glad that Gabby is sober now...) The stories of the proceedings between Gabby/Manic and the LBPD and the crowd and the ensuing brawl vary depending on who is telling the tale. Rather glad I was eating BBQ in HB. (wimp)

Anywhoo, given that Manic's show went off without a major hitch on Sat. May 3rd, this leaves the OC club populace free with out debate to hie on down to Detroit on Thurs. May 8th.

Here I am testing my new little blog. Ahhhh!!!! New Horizons for my 25+10 year (officially started 12:22 am on 4/24/03).

I try to give myself a new computer challenge in and around my birthday every year. At SXSW 2003 Interactive, I found myself in various sessions on blogging and wondering about it. I bookmarked many of the panelists blogs and have been reading them ever since. Talk about setting my sites high and trying to keep up with the Dashes, Trotts, Powazeks, etc. Argh...