happy new year, linus.

Santa didn't really get anything for Linus. So for new year's I decided I would clean out her litter box. It was a disgusting procedure, as one might imagine. I needed gloves, I didn't have any gloves. But I did use a product with bleach. Not very eco-friendly, I know, but this was the time for such a measure. Here is the end result!
(okay I know I look rather crapola-y but throw me a bone people I had just worked out and then scrubbed a litter box)

fred and ted or american gothic (revised)

Christmas! This year Joshua got me a messenger bag from Alchemy Goods, a company based out of Seattle that makes bags out of old bicycle tubes and seat belts. I look really cool in it. And I got him a riding jacket from Chrome, a company based out of San Francisco, that makes sweet cycling gear. He looks really cool in it. Items from my two favorite big cities.

(In the picture, don't mind the tag.)

this is what i have to say today:

Merry Christmas!

happy hearts to you.

my new best friend

Yes. The Exfoliating Hydro Towel from Earth Therapeutics. Mark has been using one of these for ages; I was fine with my washcloth until a couple of weeks ago when I just wanted more for my back. (Oh, and a couple of months back I bought a pumice for my feet and once used it on my arms and legs to get a good scrub in-- it wasn't so bad, but I recommend this hydro towel version.) Henceforth, I asked Mark for one when he said, "what do you want?" I used it the first night I got it and I am a changed woman. Ahhmazing. And this morning I used it on my face. It's everything! No more body scrubs to buy or facials or made for tv callous removers-- just this. I also want to get this for everyone I know because I want their lives made better, one fantastic exfoliation at at a time.

camera. phone.

And thus begins my sharing of the awesome pictures I've taken with my phone. I couldn't figure out how to get them on my computer because Macs and Blackberry's aren't super close friends, but then realized I can MMS email them and it's opened up entirely new possibilities. I've been waiting to share this love, oh, for about a year.


And so we begin in early 2008. Joshua, you get the first. Thank you to Fig Garden and their non-discrimination of Fresno people who love their giant-ass vehiculars.

yes please

I want to get these for myself and many others this Christmas.

craigslist post o' the day

I didn't edit this. Isn't it great?

----------------------------

redline bike with 20" wheels, - $200 (fresno)

---

my son dont race no more so im saleing it.

mental health day

i was a stay-at-home-mother with no one to care for buy myself. should you be jealous? only if you were to make your own free-from-work day and not follow my paths. too much pbs, zero studying, lots of food and couch, all alone except for the "hi" and "thanks" from unintentionally getting something from my car at the same time the mail man came by.

harry potter # 6 and wine at 4pm. class tonight? i don't know.

coffee my heart

I had the most amazing soy cappuccino on Saturday morning with Joshua and Brandilyn and it was such a beauty, with peaks like sea monkey castles. Photo documentation was necessary. Here's the creator and the creation at Cafe Corazon.

PS-- does she look a little Jenny Lewis-esque?

school is fun!

this is me while typing the first paper I've had to write in, oh, almost 5 years. it's not even a big one. but I need to share this because this is how I felt and, sigh, it's going to last for a while.

this bag is not a toy

one of my most favorite lines! found this in some packaging at work with some new office equipment and now it's picture-definition numero uno.

not a lot to think about

I could do this myself and save some money and follow 52 steps and take out 800 mini screws from my laptop to replace/repair/evaluate my borked cd/dvd drive, or I could just buy a new MacBook. And get a free iPod and printer.

Hello tomorrow.

everyone needs to go

This is one of those places, like Yosemite, that even people who live in the valley may skip over visiting, even though people from all over the state/country come and see it (maybe during their trip to Yosemite). Well, it's stupid to miss and you're doing yourself a disservice. Today, the family went to the Forestiere Underground Gardens and it is totally amazing. Baldassare Forestiere worked for 40 years day in and day out (and I'm sure going a little nuts along his almost-hermit-like life, though they neglected to mention anything of the sort on the tour) on digging out 50 rooms, 20+ feet under the surface in 10 acres of hard pan Fresno land dirt. Crazy. The tour guide said he started digging to get away from the heat (I don't blame him), thinking of his parents' wine cellar. He had some genius ideas-- slanted flooring for proper drainage, skylights galore, plants and grafted plants everywhere, curved floorplan to increase wind circulation. Anywho, I'll save you the rest of the cool history lesson but just go and take your people. And what else was cool? There were a bunch of people on the tours! Go Fresno! My brother-in-laws idea: they should rent out the place for wine-tastings and intimate dinners.

APS

I got this email from ExchangeEveryDay, one of those early childhood things I subscribe to since I'm in the field, and actually read this one. The last two bullets-- classic examples of American Parents Syndrome.

A Norton Online Living Report, reviewed by the Center for Media Research, found some interesting and some concerning trends in online activity. For example:

• Out of thousands of children and adult Internet users surveyed in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Germany, France, Brazil, China, and Japan, 52 percent report having made friends online.
• 46 percent of users who made friends online said they enjoyed those relationships as much or more than friendships made offline.
• Parents in the U.S. reported their kids are online two hours a month.
• U.S. kids report spending 20 hours a month online.

basic tv

I see the same commercials over and over. (And on the lines of TV, I have complaints in general about the new DTV-- my antenna doesn't pick up channels 18 and 30.) I don't feel like I really even watch that much TV. But it's the beauty of DVR TV viewing, with the ability to pause, rewind and fast forward at the convenience of a button, and shit, skip commercials altogether!, that has poisoned my enjoyment of watching TV, for now I must wait through each 30-second commercial segment: Round Table $6 lunch buffett, the new 90210, the usual disgusting Carl's Jr. ads with the mouth/chewing/meaty-juices-dripping noises. The rub is the Wild Water Adventures commercial that pushes the new Ghost Slider ride. I see this blasted thing each and every time I turn on the tv, no matter how short of a time period. I couldn't find the commercial online so I grabbed a reminder for you from their website.



aaaaah!

and I hope you now have the, "Wild Water Adventure Park!" jingle in your head and can identify with the annoyance, irritation and repetition of this commercial.

xoxo, biz.

gotta find my passport

i did not know Greece looks like this

purple pie-ness

linus is my cat's name. her full name, or when she's being adorable: linus purple pie-ness. don't remember how the "purple pie-ness" came about, and I don't spell "pie-ness" so phonetically in my head but any other way written and it looks too much like penis, and I don't want to associate that with linus, as she is female and not at all a purple penis.

there's plenty more background I could give you on linus, like where she came from, how I named her, how old she is, etc., but she's a cat (and my pet and I do love her in a pet-way), but you all don't want to read about that.

here's what I do want to say: she likes almond butter. is that bizarre? I think she might like it more than I do. when I'm eating on the couch as i normally do, she gets a whiff of it and is attracted to my plate like white to rice. it's crazy. and I googled it-- she's not the only cat who enjoys herself some almond butta.

my challenge to you: should you have a cat, try this almond butter theory. with a little reward system, we may be able to change all sorts of stereotypical human-cat relationships with this discovery.

home girl

Yesterday I cleaned. It had gotten to that point where if I didn't clean, it would subconsciously stress me out until I would be forced out of my laziness. Plus I had spent 3 hours cleaning my parents' house that morning after the fun fourth party, so I was in the swing of things. I vacuumed, mopped for real (that means with Mop N Glo-- perhaps the first time using a mopping product instead of just water and a washcloth since moving in 3 years ago), dusted, laundered clothes, changed sheets, scrubbed the tub and counter tops and sinks. I was sweating.

So after a lazy, sleeping-in morning, I decided to tackle the dusty fan blades. Not sure what possessed me to do this, or the ironing of some great napkins that brother brought back for me from Mexico, but I rolled with it. Awkward to have a vacuum on a chair with you while reaching for the fan blades. Nonetheless, success and I'm quite thankful for being tall today. On my way down the hall from one room to the next, I noticed my dusty A/C vent. Vacuumed that. Thought I should perhaps replace the filter, since who knows when that happened last. Struggled for days with the old fucking screws to unhinge the thing, eventually stumbled upon a new filter, replaced the old and was singing praises for about 5 seconds until I second-guessed the proper installation of the filter. The direction of the air flow. It sucks air from inside! Arg. Checked the package. Yep, had it wrong. I had replaced it the way I found it. I grumbled out loud, struggled with the fucked-up screws again, turned it around, with the "arrow toward the direction of the motor," and I think more air is coming out of the vents. Has it been working harder to cool/heat my place for the past long-overdue-to-change-the-filter period of time? Here's hoping my energy bill is less.

Oh, and just in case you're imagining me cleaning to the tunes of the awesome music I own, I was not. Fox 26 terrible weekend matinees. mm hm.

stolen.

"Friday, June 20

In somewhat lighter news, today brings The Case of the Missing Woman Who Was Not Missed, courtesy of the UK's Daily Record. At the center of the story: Hedviga Golik, the Croatian woman who was born in 1924, and who was found this week after sitting dead in front of her television for 42 years. As the Daily Record reports, Golik was last seen by neighbors in 1966, when she would have been 42 years old, and next seen in 2008, when her skeleton was found by authorities hoping to establish who owned the woman's "empty" flat. "The cup she had been drinking tea from was still on a table next to the chair she had been sitting in," said a police spokesman. "Nothing had been disturbed for decades." As usual, neighbors were shocked. "I still remember her," said Jadranka Markic, who was 9 when Golik "vanished." "She was a quiet woman who kept to herself but was polite. We all thought that she had just moved out and gone to live with relatives." Here's hoping The Bones of a Woman Who Sat Dead in Front of Her Television for 42 Years gets the international gallery tour it deserves."

`stolen from Seattles's The Stranger, Last Days

another StumbleUpon find

Stolen from Mark Jenkins

a bottle of wine gone

and today the talking stops (for me anyway because I don't have a bluetooth deal that I can get to work).
---
...a quote from The Stranger; universal truth, this one:


"Monday, June 16

This week of fatal steamrollings, sympathetic sex offenders, and the unfortunate collision of low self-esteem and high fertility kicks off with a social experiment on the streets of Washington State. The experiment's thesis question: Is using a cell phone while driving dangerous? For an answer, the Washington State Patrol tested five drivers, who were monitored as they drove while talking on cell phones and sending and receiving text messages. As KIRO reports, the results were crushingly obvious, with phone-chatting drivers regularly veering into oncoming lanes and texting drivers spending "about a third of their time watching their screens." KIRO also specified that a car going 60 miles per hour travels nearly 100 feet in the one second a person's eyes are on a cell-phone screen. "Basically, you have no idea where you just traveled for 100 feet," said Tyler Fryberger of the WSP. "It's just like driving with your eyes closed." But starting July 1, the state gains a new tool against the deadly threat of Driving While Under the Influence of Hand-Held Technology, when "driving while using a hand-held cell phone" joins "driving while texting" on the list of poor choices officially forbidden by law. Once July hits, drivers caught using cell phones without the aid of a speakerphone or other hands-free device will be hit with a $124 fine. Considering how many cell-phone-using drivers we see on a daily basis, Last Days predicts revenues from the new law could rehabilitate Washington's public schools, fix every pothole in the state, and perhaps cure cancer."

I'm typing this post on June 29, 2008. One more day to text and phone people like maniacs while driving before having to text in super sly-mode.

Thanks to brother, who never lets me down when it comes to bringing me a copy of The Stranger. Brewer kids forever.

social friendmaking sites

Last week I got an email notification from facebook telling me I had a new message from "Jordann." (These past-school-mate-findings always freak me out and make me want to delete my profiles on these sites, but this time I decided to run with it and make the connection.) No way! Jordann was my Mormon best friend (for some reason I always called her my "Mormon best friend," maybe I wanted people to know I don't discriminate?) from first - fifth grade and it sent loss-of-words shock waves through my body. Come fifth grade, I moved to Fresno Christian and she moved to Auberry. The bond was broken.

Here's what I remember about Jordann: sleepovers at her house in Ranchos-- doughboy pool, a dry, parched-looking backyard, two dusty dogs, nintendo with the track-&-field pad, a halloween where I dressed up as a baby, popcorn, a reading from the book of mormon, her brother and sisters (and towards the end of our best-friendship a new baby brother, whom the parents named Will and I questioned why it was only Will and not William), changing Will's diaper and then discovering that Vaseline can also be used as chapstick; getting our ears pierced together on our 13th birthday and going to Malibu Grand Prix after on that hot summer saturday afternoon; giving her a "best friends" necklace-- a gold cracked heart, with the words "BEST" on top of "FRIENDS" which were divided by the crack, but properly spelled when the two halves were put together (Mark made fun of me for that by sarcastically suggesting I give it to Jordann in a "will you marry me?"-like manner by getting on one knee and asking, "will you be my best friend?" thanks brother).

Oh, Jordann. Good memories. And this brought up memories from elementary school, and since this year is my 10-year high school reunion, I put the two together and I think that an elementary school reunion would be incredibly awesome and oh-so-much better than a high school reunion. How much better was elementary school, where we all had total self-confidence and little homework, than high school which encourages self-doubt? Who out there went to Webster?! Go wolverines! Let's do it.

inspirational pictures?

thanks, people. I have to work with kids on this stuff.


america needs to follow this "not our fault, stupids!" notion


when I saw this one, I thought, "this scares the shit out of me"

thanks to StumbleUpon and divinecaroline

claustrophobia!

i'd suffocate.

waitress

i just watched that movie and it was amazing and i loved it. and then upon returning it to its netflix case i wondered, "hm, who is the director so i can watch more of this person's movies?" and saw "murdered" in the info blurb and read it a couple times to make sure my tired eyes weren't deceiving me. did you guys know this? certainly you do, but man what a sad story. i googled her name, adrienne shelly, and found her wikipedia page and probably you already know this, being superb internets users that you are, but that movie was just so good and this is such craziness-in-the-sad-way that i had to connect with someone out there. 

the wiki page. 

this one's for rebek

the new 'do!

impossible.

I got this from my brother who saw it on his friend jj's blog; can't imagine how long this took but it sure is nifty and rad and I'm darn glad there are people out there in the world who take this much time and patience to add to neatness to it (cause I'm pretty sure I'm too lazy).

this day

I've been surprisingly productive this morning for feeling so baseline. Let me boast: woke up at 8:30am, after going to bed around 2am (and I don't know why I woke up so early on a Saturday, except that I had to pee). Then started laundry, took out the trashes, swept/vacuumed the house, watered the flowers, tomatoes and did some weeding, painted more of my almost-done desk, did am and pm yoga because my back is seriously hurting these days, folded laundry, re-sheeted the bed, and rode to Fig and mailed my most recent netflix, Shortbus. All before 1pm! 

Still feeling drab. Just showered and am about to head to Trader Joes for some groceries and then Central Fish for fixins for tonight's sushi-party. Anyone need anything? Don't you fret, I'll pick up some beers.

oh, post post, in-post: passing road kill on your bike is not a good experience. 

tapiocas

Let's play around with a few of the thoughts currently in my head: 

                             

• I signed up for a netflix subscription two weekends ago (I cancelled my satellite and thought I'd do something to treat myself to some clear tv viewing) and recently rented Wristcutters: A Love Story and Happiness. Happiness is directed by Todd Solonz, and his others are now on my queue. I recommend the both of them to you. There's plenty of familiar faces in each (look for Tom Waits and Will Arnett appearances in WALS) and they're both a bit on the odd side with up and downs, which I enjoyed. Indie, interesting, and gluten-free; good for all.
• My brother just sent me a care package in the mail with 5 cds in it with more songs from Bishop Allen, Born Ruffians, fun from bff Adam, and oodles of joy. I can't wait! (to take them to work and load them on my computer and iPod there since my cd/dvd drive on my home laptop has decided to not allow for input.)
• I picked up a couple of new books this weekend: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers and Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. I started reading the latter Saturday afternoon and I'm about halfway through it. Fun and kooky. Damn work sure gets in the way of my reading time. Grr.

and welcome.

Welcome to the world of blogging. Who knows what I'll actually blog about. But more people are putting their thoughts down on the world wide internets and I thought I'd join them. Thank you, blogger friends, for (perhaps unconciously) urging me toward this fate. And thank you Google, megalomaniac company o' the millennium, for providing a free and easy template where all bloggers are welcome.

And speaking of Google, I just discovered an option on GoogleChat for going "invisible." So this means you can see which of your friends are online but said friends can't see you; it just looks like you're not signed in to chat with them. Here's the kicker: "You are invisible," says Google. "Go visible" (with a link to sign back into chat). 

Sometimes those two short sentences feel a bit too real.