and in the news...

link between creativity & sexual attraction.

another case for being thin.

not that you really wanted to know but... what were the internal injuries?

ack! i'd get tired of the cuisine...

speaking of flying, a lost kitty is on her way home.

one more for the kitties. at least the granola ones...

links of questionable taste

the beer belly. use it to hide that favorite beverage from the security folks
at ball games or to hide a flamable liquid for terrorism, your choice.

a homemade vibrator that you can leave in the family room.

if sex is just too darn much work, there's this chair. yes, it's motorized.

i'm a wimp

it's ~70 degrees inside my place and i'm freezing. i put on a long sleeve shirt and a knit cap and i'm starting to warm up. but it's slow. my next move will be to crawl under the covers or make a nice big cup of hot chocolate.

e came over last night for dinner. this was no ordinary dinner...we cooked. okay, actually she came over a bit before dinner time and i made a couple of drinks for us then we just relaxed and did our own thing. she read a book while i worked on some blockprinting ideas. it was kind of weird having her there but not sitting next to her or discussing something. and we excel at talking with each other. after an hour or so, she decided she was hungry and got up to start cooking. i put away my drawing supplies and joined in. including last night, we've cooked together only 3 times so i'm still a little unsure of what to do and where to be in the kitchen. she seems much more comfortable in front of the stove than i do so i'm thinking my primary role will be of prep guy and dish washer. these are two things i can do pretty well. now i just hope that she likes to do the actual cooking part, maybe i should ask. she had picked out a recipe earlier and bought all the needed ingredients except for orange juice and soba noodles so, we went across the street to the korean market to shop.
that place is just weird to me. almost everything is written in korean or other asian language so i'm pretty lost as to what is what. if it doesn't have a picture, i doubt i'd buy it. i'm not sure if it's common but this place has the smallest dairy section i've ever seen. even the gas station has a bigger selection. luckily, we did find both orange juice and soba noodles (they had tons of noodles!) so our dinner got the green light. the recipe was for stir fried veggies & tofu in an orange sauce and i think it turned out pretty well. e thought it was on the bland side and added all sorts of spices to try to pep it up. the recipe made more than we could eat in two or three sittings so i split the remainder so e could take some home.
e stayed the night and kept me warm even though she ended up wanting an extra blanket. and as i lay here in bed, i wish that she was here again because my toes are chilly and i want to stick them on her to make her squirm. :)

it's raining and rather dreary. i've got a group outing tomorrow night to go to the cirque de soleil show (yes, the one i went to just the other night with e) and dinner. i said i'd go but of course now i'm feeling like all i want to do is come home and relax. oh well, at least i get to see the acrobats in their thigh high stockings again. too bad the whole show isn't sexy.

zip code visualization

this is fun!

shake and bake

just felt a tiny earthquake (only a 2.4). one of the things you have to deal with here on the left coast. USGS is a great site to track quakes.

flying made beautiful

it's cool to see the time change just from the change in airtraffic.
linky

sick and perverted world

and people are easily swayed.

hobble, gobble, bobble

goodness, i've been busy this weekend.

i'll start off with wednesday.
i took off work a little early so i could pick up my brother from the airport. his flight came in at 5:41 and i was a little late because of traffic. we went back to my house to drop off his stuff and wait for e to come over. after much deliberation, we decided on grasshopper for dinner. it's japanese tapas if you can believe that. we all had a great time and i think my bro and e got along really well. i tried (occasionally) to get another entry for my overheard blog but there wasn't too much to overhear and the stuff that would have been great to post came from our own table so i don't really think that counts. after dinner, we went back to my place and chatted a little before e needed to go home and my bro and i needed to go pick up my mom from the airport. my mom came in at 11:00pm and we took her out to san ramon to stay at my sister's. i think we got back to my house at 1:30. it was late and i was sleepy.

thursday.
not sure what got into us but, e, my bro, and i all went out for a run. i'm going to blame my brother for suggesting that we run to the bay as that made our run 4.5 miles. not the longest i've run but it was a good workout. e's round trip ended up being 6.5 miles! she's a marathoner in wolf's clothing. we all went back to our respective houses and my brother and i relaxed and played civilization IV while e made 2 pecan pies and took a nap. all 3 of us made it over to my sister's for thanksgiving dinner by 3:30. we stood around talking, snacking on cheese and bread, and drinking the sweet & spicy cardinal while my sister flew around cooking and warming all kinds of food. this year she decided to do something a little different and forgo the turkey. instead we had baked salmon and a couple of game hens. there was also the usual stuffing and mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, candided yams, & green beans as well as a couple of new ones, a rice salad and yellow beets with dill. i was so full. i only had small portions of everything (except the salmon) and i was stuffed. i didn't even finish the salmon. it was a great dinner and i'm glad my sister does it because i know i wouldn't be able to have everyone at my place and there's no way i'd be able to get a meal like that ready. we finished everything off with dessert which consisted of lime tarts, a birthday cake for the sister, and a delicious pecan pie (made by the very lovely e). i think we rolled out of there by 9:45.

friday.
as soon as the brother and i woke up, we were back in front of the televsion screen (hooked up to the laptop) playing civ. we were being lazy and were quite surprised when e invited us to lunch with her and her sister and brother-in-law. we went to eat at an ethiopian place that e and i have been to a couple of times and as usual, the food was great while the service was slow. not surprising since there were only 2 girls working (that i could see). i think this was the first ethiopian experience for e's sis and b-i-l. i like exposing people to new food. so many good things out there that people don't know about. i think they even liked it but then again, they were recovering from their own thankgiving feast. lunch was pretty quick as they had to get on the road to get back down south before it got too late. e and i had tickets to cirque de soleil for the evening and because of time constraints, our dinner ended up being taco bell. i'm glad that e doesn't mind slumming for food occasionally. we took bart into the city and walked the 1/4 mile to the show. it was kind of chilly and e was prepared with gloves and a scarf while i got to snuggle up close to her for warmth. the show itself was fun. lot's of acrobatics, juggling, and bouncing around. it's funny because i'm going to the same show with my co-workers on tuesday. i'm glad i got to see it with e first though. i convinced her that it was safer for her to stay at my place that night since it was so late when we got back. it felt good to have her in bed next to me again. she's warm and soft :)

saturday.
e and i lazed in bed until 10:00. usually she has to run off to work so early but this morning we were able to relax and talk a lot. happy moments like that i relish and hang onto in my memories. after e left, i called my sis to see what was on the agenda for the day and it turned out they were going to hit a matinee of harry potter so bro and i sped out to join them. after the flick, we stopped off at baja fresh and took it back to the house. we all sat around talking and taking pictures. bro and i are the shutter bugs during family gatherings so we worked our way through the daylight to get as many shots of the nieces as we could. (i think e was blind on t-day from the constant flash of our cameras. no wonder she didn't want to hang out with us more. j/k!). we got a few final family shots in before bro and i headed back to the east bay. we took our fast food weekend another step and picked up arby's for dinner. i talked to e for a little while bro was surfing and when i got off the phone with her, bro and i played with they synthesized voice on the mac, making it say perverted things. we laughed. his plane was leaving early the next morning so we set our alarms and went to sleep.

whew! that was a fast three days of fun. now, i need a rest. :)
(and i need to post my pics for the family)

i want candy

Gummy Bears

You may be smooshie and taste unnatural, but you're so darn cute.

What Kind of Candy Are You?

dress rehearsal

e brought 7 dresses over last night for me to look at. she looked great in all of them but some of the actual dresses makes me wonder what the designers were thinking. one that had a lot of promise was black, short, & tight. it had a great draped neckline but then they had this weird bunched section in the back. and it also had a bit of fabric attatched to the middle that looked like a tail. the tail wasn't bad but the bunching made it look like the wearer had got a bit of the dress stuck into her panties. poor design idea in my mind. in the end, i picked a simple one over all the others. i had no idea i was so picky on how dresses would look on her. it's fun to see her dressed up though. :)

let's celibate

this t-shirt.

the best damn woman that i've ever seen

yay! e stopped by tonight. her gno was way shorter that she expected so she stopped by my place to say hi just as i got home. she filled me in on all the girlie happenings while i ate some soup (she already had dinner & dessert). we talked about our days and discussed being better about our eating & exercising habits. she had brought me her dessert and after my soup, i finished off most of that (it was a lime cheesecake like thing). and as quickly as she stopped by, she had to go home. happy sigh... i like her.

btw, these are the candles i burn at my house. the same company also makes other interesting fragrances. it makes me want to do some sniffing. :)

i love tom cruise!!

a transcript from his interview with matt lauer.
well, spoken through aliens.

saturday, in the car. i think it was the 4th of july.

i spent all day saturday with e. i picked her up early (7:35) to take her to get her hair cut. i was outside in the car reading a little while i waited. it turned out her hairdresser knows a lady i used to work with. small world and all.
after her haircut, we went to eat breakfast at sam's log cabin. it's a great little place in albany. i had the cakes & eggs and e had a couple of scrambled eggs. the pancakes were really good but i kinda wished the syrup was warm. anyhoo, we split from there and stopped by bevmo to pick up some wine for turkey-day which is oddly enough, going to contain zero turkey for my family. we grabbed some wine as well as some liquor for mixing in the future.
off to corte madera we went. we both had things to exchange, her's at macy's and mine at nana pub. i guess we took our sweet time because we didn't get home until 3-ish. just in time for a nap! we woke up from that around 5:30 and decided to head out to get some dinner and stop by a bookstore. we ate at pasand (indian food). they had live music which was kinda cool. and a couple of grungy guys kept oogling e. we had the saag paneer and dal curry with garlic naan. it was pretty tasty so we said we'd need to come back to try it again. we went to barnes & noble so e could get her new book for the bookclub as well as a travel guide for ny. i was looking for the lenticular map of manhattan but they didn't carry it.
we were both exhausted from running around all day (and all the sex!) so we went back to my place, surfed a little, then fell asleep.
what a great saturday!!

christmas only comes once a year...

but with this device, your s.o. might have better numbers.

childhood christmas fantasies

from the sears wish book.

link-a-dink

i love the sony qiro robots and now they've got a starring role in the new
beck video, hell yes. i want one!

lose your keys easily? try this or this.

an interesting paper on The Effects of Diseases, Drugs, and Chemicals on the Creativity and Productivity of Famous Sculptors, Classic Painters, Classic Music Composers, and Authors.

yay! if you like regular bubbles, you'll love these!

listen if you dare...

hooray for free time!

match.com being sued

over employees posing as date prospects with the intent of making users renew subscriptions.
reuters story here.

i wonder if their employees are hotties?

viva norway!

"A student vying to be class president in Norway recently sparked a minor controversy by stripping after giving her speech."
the story.
the video.

thursday evening

e took me out to dinner last night at cesar's. it's a yummy tapas place in berkeley. we started off with a couple of drinks (she had an apple cider & i had the oliveman daiquiri), the olive oil fried marcona almonds and the spicy tuna & egg bocadillo. the almonds were nice and salty & the bocadillo was far from spicy. in fact, it was kinda heavy on the olive oil. it was good, don't get me wrong, just not quite what i was expecting. next on the menu for us was the brussels sprouts a la plancha with garlic, lemon & parsley & spanish cheeses: murcia al vino, urgèlía & ibérico. the brussel sprouts were a bit of a mis-order, we were looking at other the food on other tables to decide what to get and what we thought was the brussel sprouts was actually an endive salad. yeah, how do you get the two mixed up? well, we just didn't read far into the descriptions i guess. the brussel sprouts were actually kind of good as long as you didn't chew them up completely. that sounds bad, i know but really the garlic & lemon come out strong at first but then the bitterness of the sprout takes over if you chew too long. i ate a few more than e did, i don't think she was taken by them at all. the cheeses were all very mild. one was kind of stinky but none of them were terribly bitter or tangy. they seemed more like a sharp cheddar to me, taste-wise. i hope i'm not offending any spanish cheese lovers by saying that.

i think around before that last group of plates came to us, e ordered an andalusian sidecar. i'm guessing it's just a variation of a regular sidecar. it was strong and sweet. not as strong as my daiquiri though (at least to me). the last plate we ordered was the patatas & hinojo al graten which translates to baked cazuela of potatoes, fennel, cheese & cream sauce or something like that. i was disappointed my nose was a little stuffy because e said she could smell the fennel and i couldn't :( the potatoes were really tasty. it was maybe a heavier dish than what we should have had for the last one but we had to try it anyway. we were pretty full by then so we opted out of dessert.

we were both pretty frazzled and tired from the week so we went back to my apt. e is shopping for a dress for our trip to ny and she had bought a few dresses online. she brought them over and she gave me a little fashion show before bed. the second dress was much better than the first but i'm still unsure why the designers wanted to have the crisscrossing straps across the front. were they trying to distract from other parts? that "strappiness" seems trendy at the moment. also, the dress would have been better if it had a little more shaping to the waist and underbust. e has a wonderful figure and this dress didn't do her justice at all. i think we're going to try and hit a few stores this weekend in the hopes that we'll find something else. she also has another dress she bought online that should arrive in the next few days.

after the fashion show, e plopped into bed and i gave her a little massage. her back has been giving her trouble the past week an she's worried about what it might be. i think i've convinced her to call the doctor today to schedule an appointment. she's scared it might have something to do with a previous issue she had so she's not too keen on finding out if that's the reason. i've seen and heard of many people having chronic back pain and i'd hate for that to happen to her.

i stayed up until midnight writing email. and right before i went to sleep, the new overread quiz came up (of course!). i went through it a couple of times before trying to wake up e so she could have a shot at it. she was groggy but was able to identify one of the songs. she's really cute when she's sleepy. when we woke up in the morning, we laid in bed talking and surfing the web. kind of a silly thing to do but it's fun with her. she didn't have to go into work until a little later than usual so i had the benefit of having her stay a bit longer and we were able to have a more relaxing morning. it was a a great start to the day.

sneaky me

at lunch, i saw her car on the street and stuck a note on it. haha!
she left me voice mail saying that she hoped it was me that left
something on her car.

should i call her and let her know it was me?

:)

tangram game

fun little online version of this game.
my high score so far is 1134.

i did it

i broke down and bought a cellphone. yes, me. mr. "i hate cellphones" mr. "i think that people with cellphones are too available" mr. "i think that people talking on cellphones in public are generally annoying" yeah, that guy. well, i'm now going to be one of the masses. call me a sheep.
i bought razr phone from amazon.com and i'll be using cingular service since our office has at&t repeaters in the building. i really only plan on using it for emergencies or when coordinating a get-together. we'll see how it goes.

i'm starting to wonder. she's asked me many times but i don't think i've ever asked her. is she a felon? what are the worst things i need to know about her? i think i already know a lot of things but is that all?

the best feeling

is when she's laying next to me sleeping. she looks so peaceful.

not fair

e shouldn't have to deal with the way her roommate is acting. she doesn't want to live there any more and he's not even trying to talk to her. i feel bad because i know there's nothing i can do to help. well, except just be there for her and listen and i plan on doing that. it's just that i'd love to be able to wave a hand and have her free of this mess. it's affecting her mood and that's not good. maybe that's his plan? does he even have a secret plan? i doubt it. he's just being a baby and not wanting to deal with a subject that's going to be a pain. i can understand that desire, i would love to avoid tons of bad things that happen to me.

at least i know how she feels and that's more than i could hope for.
off to bed now.

links o' plenty

interesting properties of prince rupert's glass
and a video

testing the foil hat

cool visualization of all the water and air on earth

...and a foot

well goodness...

did they or didn't they?

cheerleader sex?

inquiring minds want to know...

a productive day

i was out and about pretty early today. okay, early for me. e and i lazed in bed until 9:00 (web surfing and talking) and after i walked her to her car, i was out the door to get some breakfast (jamba juice) and groceries at trader joe's. trader joe's is always a madhouse on the weekends, even at 10:00 in the morning. it's much worse later in the day though so really, i'm not complaining.
i picked up some clementines, cereal, a bit of frozen food, some of the usual snacks, wine & beer. sounds like a bachelor's grocery list, huh? one of these days i'm going to cook at home more. honest! e had reminded me that i needed a scale to weigh some stuff from ebay so i stopped by officemax. they didn't have squat! it might be that there's a brand new office depot less than a block away or maybe just the big office supply stores are not as popular as they once were, i dunno. e also made me remember that i need to get a helmet for my travels so i stopped by sportmart but was terribly disappointed. they had some bike helmets but really it was just one model from one brand. kind of suprising from a big sports store. oh well.
i made it home by 11:30 and i don't think too much of my frozen stuff had thawed, i'll find that out later i'm sure. (yum!) i decided i was hungry so i pulled out the cheese, crackers, olives, & bread that e and i had for our picnic on friday. it was still yummy and i still pick the stilton and the st. andre as the better cheese choices. i forget what the 3rd one was, something with mustard seeds.
after i finished that and also finished up a blog entry, i called e to offer the cheeses before i ate them all. she hadn't had lunch yet so it worked out fine. i snuck some chocolate in the bottom of the bag as well. i was going to walk it over to her house but she reminded me that the refrigerated items would be better if they arrived faster (it would take me at least 30 minutes to get to her house on foot) so i drove over. i used the excuse that i would go to the office depot to check on postal scales, since i forgot it even existed when i was right next door! her hair was still a little wet from her shower and she was barefoot. totally cute. i peeked in long enough to get a few kisses and a hug before i set out to brave the box store giant.
it turns out that office depot actually had postal scales. many of them in fact. i decided on a 10 lb electronic version that oddly comes with a remote. i also spent a few minutes looking at cellphones. i haven't owned one yet so i'm unsure of them like cavemen were with fire. they're big and clunky. they're colorful and funny looking. they have more features than a movie theater and i still just can't get excited by them. the only one that was okay was the motorola razr. and it still felt cheap and full of plastic. for a mere $114 (includes rebate and calling plan contract). to top it off, calling plans that the cellular providers were offering were pretty freaking stupid. for $40 a month, you get all sorts of "free" minutes. if you go out of your calling area and you either make a call or get a call, you pay out the nose per minute. wtf? if they want to attract people that don't currently have a cellphone, they need to make the calling plans easy and cheap. since i would rarely use a cellphone, i want to just pay for the time i use it. at pennies per minute, not quarters and half dollars. how hard is that? can i just pay a flat rate? and use it as much as i want? sure. unless you go out of your calling area. oh, and that plan isn't cheap. did i mention that i don't want to sign a contract? there's no reason that i should have to stay with a crappy provider if i get the phone home and find out that i can't get calls in my house or office. i think i'm destined to not have one right away. i'm too picky :)
the rest of the day was busy, i got 12 boxes of lego set up to sell via ebay. i took pictures of them all, weighed them, and posted them. that only took 3 or 4 hours. hehe. now i just hope they sell. i had a burrito and margarita for dinner. i was on the phone joking with e that i couldn't have a margarita or wine with potstickers. it's like i need to match my drink and food for some weird reason. it's only that way for alcoholic drinks. if it were just milk, i could have that with almost anything. i'm going to say my tastes are more refined these days. yeah, that's it.
i talked with e a few times during the day and she put a bug in my ear about taking a bath so that's what i ended up doing after dinner. bubbles and all. don't worry, i'm secure in my masculinity. e called while i was in the bath, she was frustrated with her living situation and needed to vent a little. it felt good to have her call me to vent, even if in the back of my head i figured her best friend wasn't available. haha! it's funny how easy it is for me to talk with her. i sound like a freaking broken record by saying that all the time but it really is true and it feels so foreign and lovely at the same time. i'm always finding myself rattling on when we're on the phone and have to stop myself from keeping her up too late. anyway, she was jealous that i was already in the tub so we got off the phone so we could both have prune fingers. and that was my day.

whelp, the new quiz is up and i need to try to pry a melody out of a crevice in my brain.
goodnight all.

knowledge is power

since you've all wanted to know:

the origin of widow's peak

the lyrics to a song no one understands

the definition of apostacy

there, your brain just grew.

the 100 meme

1. i have blue eyes
2. i have no hair
3. i am stubborn
4. i love my employer
5. i like lego
6. i like to draw
7. i like movies
8. i've had surgery 3 times
9. i have only 1 wisdom tooth left
10. i went under general to have the others removed
11. i like playing games
12. but not in a relationship
13. i think i'm a good driver
14. but sometimes too agressive
15. until last year, i hadn't had a ticket in over 15 years
16. it was for speeding
17. i drive a mini cooper
18. i like spooning my gf
19. i also love the way she smells
20. i've lived on my own for the past 10 months
21. it's the first time in my life to do so
22. i'm 35
23. i first had sex when i was 15 1/2
24. i've owned 3 brand new cars
25. i have a thing for tiny cars
26. i have expensive tastes
27. i like modern furniture
28. i actually like stilton cheese, who knew!
29. i adore the fall
30. my sense of smell plays a large role in my daily happiness
31. i like running
32. my knee doesn't
33. i hate sit-ups
34. i have more music than i know what to do with
35. i have more lego than i know what to do with
36. i think i like to collect things
37. coins, dvds, cds, books, older cameras
38. i feel like i'm not a good friend all the time
39. i don't keep in touch with old friends
40. i usually don't stay friends with ex-girlfriends
41. that doesn't mean i don't want to
42. i've used match.com to look for dates
43. i love food
44. i really love chocolate
45. margaritas on the rocks with salt are my favorite
46. i've started drinking wine
47. i can fall asleep quickly
48. i snore loudly if i sleep on my back
49. i procrastinate
50. i've been meaning to do this blog entry for over a week now
51. i feel like i can do almost anything if i put my mind to it
52. i lost 15 pounds that way
53. i gave up sodas and candy as well
54. for only a few months
55. i try to eat healthy
56. i'm always tempted by candy
57. i can be really organized
58. as well as really messy
59. i prefer for things to have a place to put them away
60. if i'm in a rush, the closet will do
61. i just found out what apostate means
62. i dislike telemarketers
63. i'm rude to them
64. i'd like to find the people that actually buy things from telemarketers and smack them
65. people that are distracted by the phone while driving piss me off
66. people that drive slow but stay in the fast lane are poo-heads
67. i sometimes think it'd be cool to play bumper cars in real cars
68. i'm getting more mellow with age
69. i like this number
70. i sometimes think i'm perverted
71. i'm now thinking that everyone is
72. my testosterone level is higher than normal
73. i like seeing old couples holding hands
74. i used to think i wanted to try skydiving
75. now i'm positive i don't
76. i get nervous while flying
77. i have a fear of heights
78. i don't always wash my hands after going to the bathroom
79. i know that drives my gf crazy so i'm going to try to be better about it
80. i think my gf is gorgeous
81. i'm a pisces
82. i don't remember enough of my dreams
83. that makes me sad
84. i played the saxaphone in school
85. i can't read music anymore
86. i sing in the car
87. and all sorts of other places
88. i'm a voyeur
89. i'm probably a bit of an exhibitionist as well
90. i want people to like me
91. i know a few that don't
92. i don't exercise enough
93. i don't give myself enough credit for some things
94. i buy too many things
95. people can sometimes test my patience
96. i don't like it when others don't use their turn signals
97. even when changing lanes
98. i think rap is overrated
99. i think alternative music is no longer alternative
100. i think i'm done with this list and just like e said, it was easy

the fantastic four

this post is brought to you by the number 4.

as of yesterday, e and i have been dating for four months. how did we celebrate you ask?
we had a picnic. yup, a picnic with wine and cheese and olives and bread and fruit and salami. did i mention the picnic was in my house? :) the weather was looking a little gloomy and wine and driving don't mix so we spread out a blanket in my living room, right next to the big windows so we could see everyone and they could see us. we celebrated the picnic by taking a nap and then we celebrated the nap by going over to her best friend's (j & m & z & k) house for dinner. he made some really tasty veggie stuff (i'm not sure what everything was). m & k & b were also in attendance and m had made some chocolatey brownies for dessert. not sure if e was as wiped out as i was but we were happy to get on the second to last bart train back to the other side as midnight creeped around.
i forgot to tell e yesterday how much i've enjoyed the past 4 months and how happy she makes me. i'm looking forward to everything that my future with her has to offer.

thanks e.

happiest place on earth indeed

e and i just got back from a quick trip down to disneyland and i had a fabulous time. we flew down late on wednesday and checked into our hotel. we were upgraded at the hotel so we had 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. it was odd having a place bigger than my apartment but on the good side, we were both able to get ready in the morning at the same time :) it's kind of funny, sometimes e reminds me of a schoolgirl.
we woke up at 7:00, showered, hit the contintental breakfast, made a quick hop onto the net to do our online check-in for our flight home (we had just enough time on the computer to check overread), checked out of the hotel, then made it to the park by 9:00. it was raining/drizzling the first hour we were there but it wasn't enough to stop us from having fun. we immediately got a fast pass for space mountain, then hit star tours (a whopping 5 minute wait). after start tours, we walked over to the matterhorn. the line there was all of 10 mintues. after that, were a little early for space mountain so we went back to the gift shop by star tours and spent at least 20 minutes feeling for specific characters in the collector packs. e wanted the ghosties from the haunted mansion and mr. toad. we found 4 of the doom buggy and thought we only had 1 of mr. toad and his car but when we got in line at space mountain and opend our purchases, it turned out we had 2. so were were both able to have one! oh, yes, we went through all the packages they had there, at least 30. on to space mountain. this was one of my favorite rides when i was younger and i had no idea they had spruced it up. they've updated a lot of the hallways (i think) and the track is completely new, with new cars. one cast member said the layout of the track hadn't changed but i kind thought it had a little. one of the first things i noticed was speakers right by your ears in the seats, this let them pipe in some really great (great in a bad way) music. in fact, the new soundtrack was composed by michael giacchino (composer for the incredibles). the other big noticeable difference was the opening launch lighting. before, it was a red laser type thing that kinda shined right into your eyes but now they have this weird graphic thing that made it feel like we were rotating (fun!). the new track and cars made it feel really really fast, lots of turns to pull g's with a few little dips here and there. the biggest drawback is at the end when they flash a strobe right in your eyes (which are by then dilated for the dark) for a glorious picture of yourself that you can purchase for just one month's salary. whee!
next up? e wanted to take advantage of the fast pass system so we walked over to big thunder only to find the fast pass system was out of order. we decided to check on the haunted mansion for one and found the line was only a 5 minute wait so we hopped on in. i'm not sure how long they've changed haunted mansion for the christmas season but they had all sorts of nightmare before christmas stuff overtaking the ride. i'm a fan of nbc but i had wanted to experience the old version of the haunted mansion. none the less, i really enjoyed the ride.
close by was the pirates of the caribean, always a fun trip (especially during the warmer days when you want to get out of the sun). e and i both thought they changed a little here and there but now i'm thinking they probably haven't.
the next ride we hit was big thunder. it was a 20 minute wait and we were in the area so why not? they changed the voice on the recording! i miss my "now hang on to your hats and glasses 'cause this here's the wildest ride in the wilderness!" still, it's a fun little coaster.
mr. toad's wild ride is e's favorite ride. to be honest, i had no idea what the story was behind it. what's the deal with going to hell at the end? we only rode it once but i have a feeling she would have wanted to ride it again. after that, we decided on lunch. it was 12:00 and we had already hit all the rides we had on our list. everything after that was just icing. we ate at the carnation cafe, one of the slowest run places i've ever seen. even with multiple open tables, it still took us 25 minutes to be seated. after lunch, we grabbed a locker to stash our coats and extra stuff ($6 for all day). then we headed off to look for a little bit of dessert. e had memories of sour ball candies being available but we didn't see any. we hit a couple of shops and still no luck.
we set off to more of fantasyland. through cinderella's castle and right into snow white's scary adventure. what's up with that one? they don't give much of the story (e and i couldn't even remember it so maybe i'm wrong). and i felt it ended rather abruptly. next was pinocchio, same as snow white but the story was a little better. then off to peter pan. i liked this one more than the other two. i seem to vaguely recall riding this when i was young, looking down from the ship to see the cars driving below. e made a comment about how much better the animatronics are nowadays.
we wanted to go to big thunder again so we trotted over that way only to find it closed. no biggie, the haunted mansion was right around the corner so away we went. this time the line was longer but it split into two lines at one point and most people weren't taking the right side, we did and essentially cut in front of a whole slew of folks. really, it saved us a 20 minute wait. yay! i don't remember much of the haunted mansion ride for some reason. maybe it was the darkness. anyway, when we got out of there, big thunder was back in business so we jumped on it again (grumble, voice, grumble). this time i screamed while riding and that made it better. much better :)
i think we went over to space mountain then, looked at the fastpass times (after we would be gone) and decided to hang out in line. the first gay couple i've seen at disneyland was in front of us, how cute. e liked one of the guys shoes. in line, there was also a little girl (5?) who had on a shirt that said "i'm a juicy girl" or something to that effect. gross! fire her mom!
the last ride was our second instance of star tours. the wait wasn't bad but the little asian girls in front of us in line kept stopping every 50' to take a picture of themselves. this was when there was no one in front of them. that was it for the rides, and we were on the verge of 5:00. we decided it best to be trying to leave the park by 6:00 so we factored in time for the tram as well as a stop or two down main street for candy and to get our things out of our locker. we did end up finding sour balls, but they were pre-packaged. not the memories e had but they were sour balls so that was good. after we stopped to look for a gift or two for my nieces, we snacked on our newly aquired candy while leaving the park.
disney took the old parking lot and turned it into a "downtown" area as well as another theme park (more coasters i hear). we strolled around this area just to look at the shops real quick like. i took e into the lego store for an introduction to the brick. she was smitten by the minifig. we then wandered back to the tram area and decided to just walk to the parking structure. it was only 1/2 mile away so it was a breeze. funny, we were the only people walking to or from the parking area. lazy folks he says smugly.
we made it to the airport in record time, early enough to have dinner (veggie tacos) and a stiff drink before boarding the plane. it was funny to see us sitting in the waiting line for the flight, both of us had out our palm pilots and we were both playing bookworm. she's so cute.

that was our day at disneyland, or at least as much as i can remember. i'm really enjoying spending time with e and getting to know her. i hope she knows this.

all we are is but a dream within a dream

e and i were having lunch outside of where i work. there were tons of people so everything was slow. john lassetter brought us our lunch (half a sandwich, maybe tuna salad) and wanted to make sure we were doing okay and he apologized for the delay. he then made a few jokes (which i dreamed as mumbles) and i laughed and replied the same mumbles. i think that e was a little confused by this. he made a few more jokes like the last one as he walked away. the only other thing i remember is people (kids?) walking by us all wearing the same costume ( a walking, headless pink nightshirt with frilly collar and black pants) and they got progressively taller until the last one was about 15 feet tall (in my dream i remember someone saying 30 feet long).
there, analyze that one!

cleaning up

i don't know about you but one of the cooler things about going on vacation for me is that i have to scramble to get things tidied up before i go. i have to take care of help tickets, clean up and organize tapes, and mail out any new procedures. this is all so that other people can do my job while i'm away. what i do isn't rocket science but if someone were to just plop into my job, they might be disoriented for a little while until they get acclimated.
so that was my day. i think i was able to clear up almost all of my work queue which i have been putting off forever. stuff was never followed up on or whatever so it just sat. the users rarely respond when they're satisfied with my work but raise all sorts of hell if anything is amiss. so i just needed to go through and make sure i had told them where to find their information and then i just closed the ticket. it's easier for me that way.
the tape portion of my day was fairly easy, my normal stuff plus a little bit of scanning so another person could have a list of tapes we're setting aside. i also had to write up the new procedures for the other operators. i had walked one guy through it already but figured i needed to send it out to everyone just in case. oops, just remembered i should probably email another guy about making sure there are plenty of blank tapes available. i'll do that in the morning.
i had also spent some time talking to l. she's all caught up in this guy and needs some encouragement to get off her butt and call him. i'm trying to help with that. what are friends for? :) we're not sure if his relationship situation is cause for concern or not though. i'm trying to get her to bring up the topic with him but i don't think she wants to know the answer so she skirts around it. she's using the excuse that she doesn't want to influence him on that topic but i see it as she's already influencing him just by hanging out with the guy. oh well, we should know more by tomorrow afternoon (at least a little).
drawing class tonight was okay. the model had already been there earlier in the day so she was in the room waiting for us. it turned out that they guy that usually brings the model over didn't know this and he was in his office trying to figure out if class was even going to happen. so we started late. the pose was nice enough, but i didn't like some of the features of the model. and really, she was a little annoying, granted there were a couple of guys in the room with us that weren't drawing but they're working on something very important and having those guys in there might have made her a little crabby, i dunno. i only stayed until 9:00, as i still had a few things to finish up before i went home.
it's funny though, as soon as i got home, i remembered about 4 things that i had forgotten to take care of so i went back to work (luckily, it's only 2 miles a way) for a little while.
i think i can safely go to disneyland now. whew!

why is it?

i just talked to her for an hour and a half and yet i get sad when she needs to go.
what's up with that?

do i not take up enough of her time?

cooking class

e and i have had the same problem for quite a while, we keep saying we're going to cook but then we never have any recipes in mind when we're hungry. i had asked her on suday when we could see each other again and since i had class on tuesday night (and she was going out to dinner with friends) and we were flying to socal on wednesday that left yesterday. she called me after her workout to see what the plans were and, of course, i didn't have any. (i know she's going to get sick of that pretty soon). so after some back and forth, we decided to make dinner. i had suggested a soup and even though she wasn't excited by it, she said okay.
it was raining so my walk to the car was a little on the wet side. i ended up going to andronico's for the groceries. while i was there, i was able to get ingredients to make the trio bistro drink that e and i like called the cardinal. not this one though. it took me a while to get all the stuff i needed and for some reason, they were completely out of white kidney beans. who knew they were so popular? andway, i made it home just in time to pick up the phone. it was e, saying she was home, showered, and ready to come over. ack! i scurried around the house straightening up things, putting the flowers i just bought into a vase, putting away the groceries, turning on some music, lighting some candles, putting away laundry (does tossing it in the closet count?). whew!
since i had no beans, e checked her pantry and found some, she also brought over a couple of bowls because i only own one. yes, one bowl. i know i need to get out and purchase a set of dishes and i will. i just need to find the ones i like best and that's a hard task for me. she was hungry before she even came over so she started to work on the soup while i tried my hand at making the drinks. my first attempt was too sweet and had too much floating pepper. my second attempt was better but still too much syrup. we drank those anway and i topped them off with more wine so they were pretty close. i need to figure out how to make the pepper flakes sink instead of float. maybe at the bistro they already have them soaking?
the soup is a fairly easy recipe and she while she was finishing it up, i was washing dishes and warming some bread. the chicken stock i bought this time around was much thicker than what i had bought last time i made this soup so it was heartier and more filling. did i buy veggie stock then?
we both had our fill of soup, bread, and wine and settled down in front of the laptop to check for a new lyrics quiz. there wasn't a new one yet so we took some time to whittle down our pending emails in person. that was kind of weird actually. taking a conversation we've only had via the interwebby and moving it to in-person. it wasn't bad or anything, just a change to something you're used to. by this time it was 10:45, bedtime for normal folks, so that's what we did. when we sleep in the same bed, it's not unusual to wake up to see her awake as well. not really sure why that is but it's nice. am i not letting her sleep enough? am i snoring too loud? okay, sometimes she's telling me to scoot over so she can have a little of the bed. :) so, we woke up at 2:00am and she mumbled something about a new lyric quiz so i had to check. she knows a lot more of overread's music than i do, i'm jealous. here i used to think i listened to a lot of differrent stuff so i should just breeze through these quizes but they stump me constantly. i was able to answer 2 (and actually, she assisted on one) and i handed over the laptop to her so she could answer a couple as well. i closed up the computer and we were off to dreamland once again.
the alarm went off at 6:00 and everything in me wanted to keep her there with me for a few more hours but she needed to go home and get ready for work. i relented and walked her to her car. it was a little chilly as wind whipped around us, playing with my jacket and her hair. it wasn't raining any more but the streets were still damp and a few puddles reflected the grey-blue sky. we waved to each other as she drove away.

Airplane!
All About Eve
Amelie
Annie Hall
The Apartment
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Blazing Saddles
Bringing Up Baby
Broadcast News
Caddyshack
Le diner de con (the dinner game)
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Duck Soup
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Four Weddings and a Funeral
The General
Ghostbusters
The Gold Rush
Good Morning Vietnam
The Graduate
Groundhog Day
A Hard Day's Night
His Girl Friday
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Lady Killers (only half counts as i saw the recent version)
Local Hero
Manhattan
M*A*S*H
Monty Python's Life of Brian
National Lampoon's Animal House
The Odd Couple
The Producers
Raising Arizona
Roxanne
Rushmore
Shaun of the Dead
A Shot in the Dark
Some Like it Hot
Strictly Ballroom
Sullivan's Travels
There's Something About Mary
This is Spinal Tap
To Be or Not to Be
Tootsie
Toy Story
Les vacances de M. Hulot (m. hulot's holiday)
When Harry Met Sally...
Withnail and I

i'm a what??

Semicolon You scored 30% Sociability and 70% Sophistication!

Congratulations! You are the semicolon! You are the highest expression of punctuation; no one has more of a right to be proud. In the hands of a master, you will purr, sneering at commas, dismissing periods as beneath your contempt. You separate and connect at the same time, and no one does it better. The novice will find you difficult to come to terms with, but you need no one. You are secure in your elegance, knowing that you, and only you, have the power to mark the skill or incompetence of the craftsman. You have no natural enemies; all fear you. And never, NEVER let anyone tell you that you cannot appear in dialogue!

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 20% on Sociability You scored higher than 64% on Sophistication

Link: The Which Punctuation Mark Are You Test written by Gazda on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

i'm a what?

You Are A: Chipmunk!

Everyone adores these cute woodland animals, known for the stripe that runs down their back. Famously timid, chipmunks will quickly scurry to the safety of their burrows if danger approaches. As a chipmunk, you eat mostly seeds and nuts, but you may sample bird eggs and insects from time to time.

You were almost a: Bunny or a Squirrel
You are least like a: Turtle or a DuckCute Animals Test

evening falls over me.

just finished watching amelie, i really like that movie. great soundtrack too. probably too mellow for some people but it's fun anyway. it always puts me in a good mood too. i think i might need to start compiling a list of movies or the particular parts of movies that make me cry. this time it was happy tears. when was the last time you cried at a movie?
in the last few months:
High Fidelity
Amelie

made some risotto, had a margarita as well. not a perfectly healthy dinner but it worked. i guess i shouldn't have had so much candy afterwards but my sugar intake was much to low this year. i need to catch up still. :)

e and i have both said we need to cook more often. i hope that means we can cook together but really just eating healthier would be a start. besides, i don't want her to get sick of me just yet. i'm trying to pick out a recipe or two from Eating Well magazine. it's not a total vegetarian magazine but it does focus on low calorie, low sodium, low red meat type food. i made a soup from it once that turned out really yummy but the recipe that i made with e was a bit on the bland side. i think we're both of the view that most everything can be fixed with red pepper. haha!

i feel like i'm slacking a little on my blockprinting project. it is a rather involved project that i'm working on so really, it's not surprising that i'm not finished. i think it would have been smarter to start with the first pass block so i could at least print those while i worked on the rest of it.

i've answered my 2 songs from the lyrics quiz over at overread and i said goodnight to e so now i feel like i've accomplished everything i needed to tonight. except brushing my teeth, i suppose.

ugh, getting sleepy. g'night.

e woke me up pretty early this morning, or it at least felt like it. i joined up with her for a run around the neighborhood. 4.53 miles @ 50:44. i was walking and running since i hadn't been out running in at least 3 weeks. i got tired fast and felt like i was dragging the entire time.
i missed running quite a bit and was glad to be back out there. i was sweating a lot and according to my heart rate monitor, my running heart rate was ~130 before i met up with e and then her (much better for me) pace took it down to ~123. i like running with her but i'm afraid that unless i exercise my knee in more ways, i'll end up with the same pain that kept me out. grumble grumble, old body, grumble grumble. i guess i need to try cycling and maybe swimming as alternatives to running. at least that's what my doctor suggested.
anyway, i was back home from the run well before 10:00 ( i think) and i promptly gobbled down a bowl of cereal, i had no idea running could make me so hungry! (it never did before)
the day is grey and cloudy, they say there's a chance of rain tonight as well. my apt is dark and it feels much later than it really is. i guess i need to think about getting something to eat for lunch. e left her leftovers here so i might eat those for her (i'd hate for them to go bad. hehe.)

grrrr! someone tried to break into e's car last night. they left their broken knife blade stuck in her window. i hate people sometimes. the car only has 680 miles on it and someone felt they wanted the $3.00 in change she had. stupid fucking people in this world!

she handles it much better than i do. :)

today i went shopping with e. i had to drop off my car to get it serviced and they said it would take about 3 hours for the whole inspection so e offered to take me shopping with her. we stopped by her office (my first time there) and she gave me the run-down of all the things she works with. i even got to take home a few souvenirs. :) we then went to check on getting a flu shot (yes, getting the flu shot together is a sign of being comfortable) but the line was at least 40 deep so we decided to head on over to the mall to try our luck at shopping. she needs to find a dress and a coat and i was looking for dress-casual type stuff as well as a new pair of earrings and shoes. she tried on a few coats but none of them were the perfect ones so she left empty handed. the selection of dresses was terrible! there were maybe 40 styles at the most and they weren't even attractive. she still has a month to get a dress so she'll continue to look.
we went to banana republic to look for clothes for me and i ended up buying all sorts of things. okay, it was 1 pair of pants and a bunch of shirts. we were starving by then so we stopped off at cpk asap pdq 4 eats. we bought too much food and we left full. we made a pit stop at the sweet factory before we made our final stop at nordstroms. i bought a pair of shoes i liked pretty well there but needed more pants to go with them. jeez, i sound like a clothing whore. e took me back to pick up the car and then she headed home to take a nap before her dinner date with the girls. i ended up napping from 3ish to 5ish. i was a little disoriented when i woke since it was so close to sunset. i had it in my head that i didn't do enough shopping for the day and went to another banana republic to look at pants & jeans that might go with my new shoes. i ended up getting a pair of jeans and a pair of cords (my first pair of cords since i was a kid!) as well as 4 pairs of socks and a long sleeve shirt that was on the sale rack. whew! a lot of money out of my pocket today. :) on my way home i stopped off at taco bell and picked up some dinner. i had just finished my second taco when i got a call from e. she was outside and wanted to know if i wanted to see her tonight (duh!). when she got inside, i gave her a fashion show and we decided that i had a few different outfits from all the stuff i bought (yay!) and i really only need to return the one pair of jeans. she liked the way my new hoops looked on me too.

i'm still tired. the "fall back" part of daylight savings time is sooo much harder to deal with than the "spring forward".
this afternoon when i walked to get lunch from the taco truck, i was struck by a feeling that i had in grade school. this time of year is always magical for me but when i was in school, it was really great. i'm not sure if it was the buildup to thanksgiving and christmas or maybe i loved halloween but the fall season has and always will be my favorite time of year. the low sun, the crisp mornings, the falling leaves. i think i enjoy the sunsets more in the fall as well. all full of color with the brightest orange light painting it's way to the horizon.

it's the being away from her that's hard for me. not so much that we're not constantly in each other's arms but more that there's no tease of an opportunity to get together, to look at her eyes, to taste the gum that she's been chewing because she knows i'm coming over. i can handle not seeing her (for a short time :D ) if she's close but not when she's thousands of miles away. again tonight, the words just flowed and our 15 minutes before she had to go to bed turned into an hour and a half. i know she needs more sleep but i just have trouble hanging up the phone. letting that line between us be severed for the night. damn i sound needy. i don't think i am, really.
is it wrong to miss a girl if she's only been gone a few days? i guess i miss her in all sorts of ways, all the time. i can't help but smile when i think of a friend who is constantly saying she's doomed because she fears she likes a guy too much. so i smile and think that i am doomed.

i spent most of my day today nursing my mail program back to health. someone or some server somewhere had caused over 17,000 messages to spew and those messages weren't tiny ones. at the height of my mailbox pain, i had 96GB of deleted mail that had filled up my harddrive and caused everything to pop since they couldn't write anything to disk. essentially, from 10:00-5:30 i had slow mail access as well as a mail program that crashed every few minutes. i know i could have got by if i used a text-based mail reader but i'm silly and i like the graphical interface of my app. so i suffered and made my officemate listen to my constant whining. :) yay!

unpacking tapes for an hour went slower today than it did last friday. not sure if i was just bogged down and sleepy or if the medicine i was taking had put a damper on my physical activities. i get to unpack new tapes for a few weeks and i'm not looking forward to it. unpack one box, unpack another, then another, then open the tape cases and separate the tape, the blank labels, the filler card, and the plastic case into different piles. do this x 240. i get to do it again on friday. thank god for my nano.
i always wonder if i'll end up with some odd rsi from this.

i helped b take some photos of her pumpkin. it was a pretty cool idea, a pumpki-trope. she had the pumpkin on a record player, carved the animated design into the sides (only 8 frames) and had a strobe light inside it. it worked out pretty well but in my head i was already thinking of improvements. i ended up taking a bunch of shots of it in the hopes of making an animated gif. we'll see if it turns out.

oh, it bugged me when my coworker set up a service call and then ended up having to go to a meeting, leaving me to take care of the service tech. i had no idea what things needed to be fixed on the machine in question and i had to pull the coworker out of his meeting to talk to the tech. anyway, i felt silly and it really wasn't the fault of my coworker.

off i go.

'tis the season already?
i had 5 fat catalogs in my mailbox on sunday and today, i had 12! yes, 12! i can only guess that i really need to take myself off the mailing lists of these companies. what a waste of paper. okay, i'm only bitter because there's not really anything in the catalogs that i'd buy. how many times do i need to look at cheese wheel and cracker gift baskets?

so, e lent me the lovely bones a few weeks ago and i just started reading it this past weekend. i finished it today. first off, i don't have a very high tolerance for stories of infidelity. i'm not sure why i'm that way but it will either make me very angry or make me cry. anyway, in the book one of the characters has an affair (sorry, should i have said "spoilers ahead"?) and it made me really mad. i felt like i could have easily punched things. i like to think i've learned that punching things (walls, boxes) is not the way to earn the adoration of a girl you might be courting so this evening, i refrained. instead, i got up from my desk and did some work (did i mention i was reading this during lunch?). later in the day, when i had some free time, i read more and got really sad. e had already told me the book was going to be sad so i was shored up for anything it could dish out. tears built up in my eyelids but i didn't let any of them free. the book was good. i'm glad i (finally) read it but also, it left me with this slightly depressed feeling.
luckily, i've got thoughts and emails that perk me up pretty well. i was missing her quite a bit today beacause the book made me feel alone. she gets back late thursday night and i'll be picking her up then. it can't come fast enough.
should i use bold or italics to emphasize something? that must be one of those things i used to know the answer to but now the crevices of my brain are refusing to let their secrets out.

okies, off to la la land.
goodnight