Scary rain


I got caught up in the big storm this afternoon on my way back to the office from lunch. I hydroplaned on the freeway, but didn't spin out. Then I saw a transformer explode and I saw a lamp post go up in flames like a torch. It was all very apocalyptic. And when I got back in the office, the power went off and came back on for the second time. Although it's all very dramatic and exciting, I would much prefer a dry sunny day. The sooner the better.

Yesterday's snow trip was fun. I tried snowboarding, and fell so much that I am extremely sore today. My tailbone is killing me, my upper body (from flailing around like an idiot) is aching and my neck is so sore from a little whiplash I got from falling on my back. I came home completely wiped of all energy, bruised and defeated. I slathered myself in hippy goo and fell fast asleep. You won this time mountain, but next time I will own you.

Bonding time


I'm super busy, but not too busy to go on a team bonding trip to the slopes tomorrow. I won't be sliding down any scary hills because that's not my style...too hurty. Maybe I'll spend half of the time looking for the Yeti and half of the time lounging in the lodge. After all that, we'll be eating at Centro's for more team snuggling and bonding. I know I said I'd never eat there again, but maybe I should revise that claim to, I'll never pay to eat there again.

Steve!


I've been thinking a lot lately about a performance I saw in Seattle last summer. It featured a bunch of people from the This American Life/McSweeney's set talking about this and that, trying to raise money for 826 Seattle or some such thing. I got in free (shame on me). But Dave Eggers (who annoys me from time to time) read some great pieces he wrote as an Irish Setter named Steve. I wish I could find these on the internets! I heard there's one printed in a Nick Hornby collection. Maybe I need to track this down.

Oh! I found one on the internets. It looks like some witty teacher was using it for homework. The letter is on the right.

All that stuff from Utah


Last week all the junk from Utah arrived. Everything we saved, carefully packed and had loaded into a storage pod is now here in Sac. Most of it sits in our living room and attic waiting to be unpacked, sorted and dealt with. It's too daunting of a task to tackle properly right now. We need acid-free boxes for all the photos, some other kinds of boxes for all these old linens and somewhere to put all kinds of random old dishes and some new fabric to re-seat one of the mod chairs we brought back. We brought some other chairs, too...some Saarinen tulip knock offs like those ones in the picture, but they have a different base. I feel like we could sell these to a good home.

Nothing exciting happened this weekend. I slept a lot (maybe allergies got to me?). Sunday we went to the auction for kicks but didn't find anything good. I still haven't seen the mini donut guy everyone talks about!

I went to a party and here are some pictures from it.

A really, really huge cat.


A whole bunch of keys.


Alice posing with my muse, Charles Albright.


A very official, important award.

Hey, I can't see!


This was my approximate view at Tuesday's Belle & Sebastian show until I decided to do something about it. So I was enjoying my view at the show at the worst possible venue for it (the SFDC Concourse Exhibition Barn), until 3 members of the San Francisco chapter of the Very Tall Dancers pushed their way in front of me. They proceeded to dance with arms up for every song, completely blocking my view. Since the sound was so bad, it really wasn't worth it for me to stand there looking at the back of someone's sport jacket. I momentarily considered going straight to the back; at least I'd have a clearer view there. Eventually, I thought better of that. Finally I couldn't take it any longer and decided to squeeze and push my way in front of the tallest dancer yelling "you're too fucking tall!" in the process. I could tell he was a little pissed at first, but he mellowed out after he saw that I wasn't going to block his view. I'm Lilliputian, hardly a height threat to anyone's line of sight. I weathered out the rest of the show seeing the stage kind of okay. The venue just sucked. It wasn't built for music at all. I would have much rather seen B&S play almost anywhere else. They could have easily played 2 nights at the Fillmore, Warfield or Great American, but I'm assuming they didn't because those places were probably booked already. Because why wouldn't you choose either of those places over the SFDC longhouse? The whole experience bummed me out.

I took the next day off to recover. We took Heylove to the park, checked out the new Ikea and I took a grand nap. The food at the new Ikea looks cheap and good. I'm going to try it for lunch next week.

Okay, now I'm busy. Outlook says I have 41 unread messages left.

Pink pimpin? Whaaa?


teeni_santini: Can I ask you a favor?
sabs: sure what's up?
teeni_santini: Can you leave me a comment on myspace today?
teeni_santini: My sister left me one that is weird.
sabs: but of course!
teeni_santini: I don't want hers to be the first thing on there.
sabs: oh mans. those siblings like to cause the troubles.
sabs: oh mans! pink pimpin!?!?!? waaah? i will find something more appropriate
teeni_santini: I know! :/
teeni_santini: I am telling you mang, it's too silly.
sabs: i will try to find something big-ish to push it down.
teeni_santini: thank you dude.
sabs: anytime

I love my sister. She likes to leave me funny comments in the form of pictures on myspace lately. This latest one I just couldn't hang with! Okay, okay...actually it's pretty funny, in fact, I'm totally cracking up about it now. I just don't want it to be the most recent comment on there.

And I quote...


I saw this call to readers from Heyamoto in the Bee yesterday, asking for busted designer jeans owners to step forward. I could not resist. I have a pair that fell apart on me, so I emailed her my story. Then she asked me to call her and recant it. I hope I didn't sound too stupid. The article will most likely come out next week, who knows if I'll be quoted. We shall see. But here's the important part...I have made contact with Heyamoto!

Sorry for everything


Oh! Heather brought me the new Rose Melberg to copy and I totally forgot to listen to it this weekend! Not that I was so busy or anything...I've been a shut-in lately.

Friday we went out to dinner with family and barely made it out afterwards to party. It was St. Patrick's day and all. I wasn't feeling like green beer (blame that tepid Centro's burrito), so I just talked and watched everyone else drink. Which reminds me, you have to ask Leon to do that trick where he makes a whole bottle of red wine dissappear. I don't know how he does it. One minute it's there and before you know it, it's gone! Anyway, I took a few photos and forgot to upload them.

Saturday we went to my cousin's house for someone's birthday. There are so many of them I loose track of who belongs to who and who's birthday is when. I just go to eat and talk to my tia about food. She hardly eats meat anymore for health reasons and has learned to adapt a bunch of our family recipes for vegetarians. I think she made the best enchiladas ever this weekend! They had potatoes and soy chorizo in them, covered in red chili sauce and cheese. She called them Blue Canyon enchiladas after ones that my grandma used to make (with real chorizo), when she and my grandpa lived in Blue Canyon. There were plenty of times when they didn't have much money and could afford only a little sausage, tortillas, potatoes and spices. She would make these for him when the going got a little tough. The veggie ones she made Saturday were seriously tasty. It made me remember how much I miss chorizo and how much I need to start incorporating the soy stuff back into my life.

Later on we met up with Heather and Matt to plan out some baby Hull shower stuff. Then everyone got hungry so we called up Alice, since we had tentative dinner plans anyway and decided to go get some food. We ended up at Dos Coyotes (I know, I know) and Pluto's in Arden. Some of us wanted salads and some of us needed, like really, really needed a grilled asparagus quesadilla with pepper jack cheese. Ahem. So, anyway what proceeded from here was possibly the worst thing I've done in a while. From where I was sitting, I had a clear view of a lady as she tripped on her clog and fell face forward. She got up, looked really embarrassed as her date dusted her off and went to stand in line for I Heart Teriyaki. It played over in my head until I started cracking up. I tried to explain it to everyone at the table, but they didn't really understand what happened and asked for a reinactment. After we were done eating, I walked over to where she tripped and reinacted the fall very dramatically, giggled and ran off. On our way out, I saw the tripping lady again! She was clearly getting broken up with...at I Heart Teriyaki!! That has got to be one of the worst places to get broken up with. She was crying and wiping her eyes with a napkin, while her date looked so unenthused. What if she saw me reinact the fall, too? I possibly helped make this her worst night ever. Well, maybe she didn't see me. I'll never really know, but I still feel terrible.

We ended up at my house later where I made poor Alice watch lots of akward reality television. Sorry, Alice.

Okay, I gotta run. I have to email Heyamoto today!

Gas, two kinds


Around 2PM I had a dicey burrito from Centro's. I know I said I'd never eat there again, but when it's free and delivered to me, how can I NOT refuse? Maybe I should have. The burrito was a little warmer than tepid when I got it and it contained....sour cream. My stomach feels a little sour about it right now, in fact.

The other gas: Is it a total shame when I opened my PG&E bill today and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw that it was only $76.00? That's a real shame. My last bill was $191. How the eff does that happen?

Top Models on myspace


Remember Jayla? She is the grown-up human equivelent to a purse dog.
http://www.myspace.com/hate_me_too

And Lluvy? The cute model with the worst photo ever.
http://www.myspace.com/lluvy

Then there's Brittany. Her myspace profile is about as loud and obnoxious as she was. It crashed internet explorer on my computer.
http://www.myspace.com/brittanyalena

And Keenyah. Her profile was just as boring as she was on the show.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=37445245

Did I already post Mollie Sue's profile from this season?
http://www.myspace.com/molliesue

And yesterday I saw Eva, cycle 4's winner in a video with Jamie Foxx. Good to see she's doing something other than Cover Girl commercials.

Bad daughter

My mom's birthday was yesterday. I called her to wish her happy birthday and all that. She doesn't want to go out to dinner until tonight, which is fine. I am so hoping she doesn't want to go to JJ North's or the awful chinese restaurant she just goes to out of habit. Shame on me because I still don't know what to get her. Is it tacky to just give moms some cash?

Bee is for boring


Teeni is boring today and has nothing to report. My editors strongly advised against posting even this much. Eff my editors. They've been keeping me on a very short leash lately.

Remember Joel & Hilary's wedding? That was fun and definitely not boring.

I heard Starbucks is giving away free coffee today. I'm going to go see if I can get in on some decaf action. See, I told you I was boring today.

Crazy for dogs


I saw this cell phone charm on fredflare.com and couldn't resist! Now I can show my love for this brachycephalic breed everytime I whip out the celly.

I meant to upload pictures from the cookie party last night, but I got lazy and forgot. That and Leon was hogging the computer for his new podcast.

I woke up this morning feeling like I had been to fight club last night. The evening's bean tacos at Jimboy's must not have agreed with me. Meaning, I wanted to pleasantly digest and wake up feeling good, but the tacos thought maybe I should feel terrible. Oh tacos, why do you do me wrong? I have nothing but love for you guys.

I would like to use this opportunity to give a shout out to Web MD for perpetuating my mild hypochondria. Here's to really hoping that this pain in my side is actually just a muscle pain and not anything scary like parasites or a severe case of food poisoning.

So, so many pregnant friends!


First Heather, now other Heather, too! Everyone's pregnant. Know what that means for me? Buying lots of ridiculously cute baby presents.

Making it


I have made vegetable stock with my own two hands! Thanks to this bible of vegetarian cookery, I made a very basic vegetable stock and delicious lentil minestrone last night. Somewhere in the process I think I simmered a little too much liquid out because it ended up a little like stew at the end. Still good though. Sometime this week I'm moving on to the entree section. This was the first time I put my new chef's knife to good use. Oh, how did I live with out it? It's so sharp and has a great weight to it. I just let the knife weight do my work for me.

So I made the soup because I was nursing myself back from diabetic coma. Saturday's cookie contest put me into sugar shock. I tasted at least 11 types of cookies and lived to tell about it. If I never see another cookie for as long as I live, that will be all too soon. After the contest, I had every intention of beeing seen at the Knock Knock show, but didn't get done eating real food until after 10. I figured I missed them, so I just went home and waited for the Four Eyes show start. Only I got really tired and decided to not go out after all.

Sunday I watched Crash. It was good, but I don't know about being Best Picture good. It was a little heavy-handed at times, but eased up here and there. I cried when it looked like the little girl got it. There are a bunch of other Oscar nominated and winning movies that I didn't see that I need to catch up on.

Incredibly busy!


I am so occupied at work. Too much to do and not enough time to do it. Yet I feel like my weekend should start now. It's been 4:00 PM for the last 4 hours to me. I can't wait to get out of here and start cookie tasting, thai food eating, shop shopping, dog schooling, soup cooking, couch napping and Crash watching.

That's me right now. Kind of boring, but I can dig it.

Complete and total lack of energy


I've been lazy. So has Heylove. The cute little ribs wouldn't get out of her bed this morning and I couldn't get out of mine. It certainly hasn't helped that there's been such gloomy weather when I'm not at work. Chilly, windy or rainy. Too conducive to staying in bed, or watching TV. I'll see if I can't snap out of it this weekend though.

Talk about Thai. Tonight I want to go to Thai Cottage for dinner. I've been craving their delicious mango dessert. Hopefully we'll get seated by the "water." Sometime this weekend, I'm going to break in my new Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone book and learn all about making a good, basic vegetable stock. There's a recipe for a really nice looking lentil minestrone that I want to try, too. So far, I'm loving this book. It's so fun to skim and read about say, leeks and everything I want to know about cooking and prepping leeks. It's like the vegetarian's cook's illustrated.

Top Model!

First episode aired last night.

Here's my take:

Nnenna - Love her
Gena - Talks too much, too young, definitely not prepared for this competition!
Grape Crusher - Could be good if she stopped crying all the time.
Molly Sue - Super cute, but needs a personality implant.
Sara from Davis - Pleasantly surprised!! She took a really good photo.
The doctor - I thought she was fierce at first, but she didn't photograph well.
Furonda - I thought her interview was hilarious, but I don't think she can hack it. Her favorite food is corn. Go figure.
Wendy - She has a heart-wrenching story, but I have a feeling she's not ready for this competition either.
Jade - Hello? Ego! If she stays around long enough she's going to get the break'em-down-build'em-up treatment.
Kari - Whoever said that she looked like a Bratz doll was right on the money.

Puppies


It's been so long since we've had a puppy in the house. Heylove is already 16 months old. She pretty much knows how to take care of her own needs (mostly she can just show herself out if she has to take a whiz). I guess I was taking that for granted. This week we are babysitting our niece-dog, Roxy while her parents are out of town. Look how cute:


Roxy is the coolest chihuahua puppy you'll ever meet, but she is a puppy. She needs a lot of interaction and she will be the first to cry about it if she doesn't get it. She's not a burden though, there's just a lot more to taking care of a puppy than I remembered. Plus, you can't really get mad at her because she's just so cute you want to put her between two slices of bread and eat her like a torta.

I had been wishing for the stork to bring us another Boston Terrier pup (collect 'em all - like pokemon), but now I'm not so sure that's my style. I really like having a grown up dog that can sleep in on the weekends, make me breakfast and bring in the paper.

More b&s


NPR aired a live webcast of last night's New Pornographers/Belle & Sebastian show at DC's 9:30 Club.

Here's the link to the page featuring both sets. I'm listening to the New Pornographer's set right now. These guys are always so tight! Vocals are sort of bad though. Neko Case is not with them at this show and the other chick has some king of "gitis" and can't sing.

I'm going to see them on the 21st in SF at the concourse exhibition hall in the SF Design Center. I am not so sure of this venue. The SFDC website is hard to navigate and doesn't readily list any info about the concourse exhibition hall calendar or address. After a huge effort from first me, then Leon, we were able to finally find the address of the place. Eff that ess. Is this supposed to be a secret show or what? It's not even sold out yet.

Fresh Air today


Stuart was on Fresh Air today. I caught part of it in the car, and am listening to the rest of it right now. I swear, if there was an implant that you could put in your ear that would change everyone's voice to a scottish accent, I would totally wear that implant everyday.

Oscars!


I forgot to watch and Tivo the Oscars on Sunday. F-men were recording in the attic. I played the office Oscar contest, but forgot what I voted for. I know I missed the best actor category, but totally nailed the best song catagory when I guessed that "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from Hustle & Flow would win the Oscar!

Fingers crossed!

Delicious



Where can I get pants like these!? On Friday, APMD came up for F-men times and recording. We all went to the Sex Rat/Spiral States/Lyme Regis show. Unfortunately (?), we missed Sex Rat. Bands were good!

Saturday I got some thrifting done at my favorite place (I'm not telling where, but I've mentioned it before), where I got a pair of wallabees and a tennis dress that I'll never fit. It's way too short, but so cute I had to rescue it and for $2, I figured I could sell it or give it away to a good home. Later on, we went to see Leon play with his new band at F&G. It was a fun show, but I was way tired at the end and cut out early. I thought about checking out the Animal Collective accross town, but $15 was too steep for me to pay to see a band that I'm not even sure I like. Sabrina did a review on her blog of it and it seems like I did't miss much, except maybe being seen there.

Missed connection


I saw you last night. Large-ish, grey iguana. Missing part of your tail. Attempting to walk accross the capital city freeway near the Marconi curve. We exchanged terrified looks before you darted back into the median. Hope I didn't squish you with my car.

Cabin style!


Leon's already planning us a nice anniversary weekend in Big Sur. I've never been there before, but the photos on line look so pretty and nature-like. The cool thing about Leon (and there are many) is that he's kind of a country mouse so he likes to get back to nature every now and then.

Bagging


I've been known to bag on Trader Joe's once in a while. I do a lot of my shopping there. It's close to my house and I can find all that frou-frou stuff that I like to cook with (shallots, fancy cheese, tiny potatoes) for pretty cheap. I now have a theory on why some of the house label stuff is so cheap: shared equiptment! For instance, the hummus is cheap because it shares a conveyor belt with crab salad and that's why it tastes fishy, too. The dry pasta all tastes like Cinnamon Joe's Crunch eventhough the packaging doesn't say that the two products share equiptment...I'm sure they must. But occasionally I find something there that is just perfect. The vanilla almond granola clusters are one, the salsa autentica is another. I think I just found my new snack. Savory soy crisps! These delicious little rice cracker, flax seed and soy sauce flavored treats are killer. Killer in the sense that you will eat one, then two, then 34 and you'll end up with a stomach ache for eating too many of them. But damn it if it doesn't hurt so good.

Finches


The saddest thing about the Finches is that the only thing I have by them is 6 songs on a CD-R. It so leaves me wanting more! I saw the dude when I was in SF this weekend and we were reintroduced since the last time I met him was back at the show this picture is from. Plus, I'm sure he meets people all the time and like me, has a bad memory for faces and names. I like to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to stuff like this. Anyway, he totally made a weird face at me when he shook my hand. Maybe my breath was bad or I had something in my teeth, judging by the "ewww" face he made. I don't know if this is bad to put on the internet or not, but I'm doing it anyway because when stuff like that happens no matter who it is, I tend to think about it all day until it becomes kind of funny.

Lost last night


My editors have allowed me to post this unobscured by question marks screencap from last night's Lost episode. We don't think it'll spoil anything for anyone who is not caught up with all of season 2. Okay, here we go.

Holy crap dude! What was that about? Do you feel like you know so much more, but have even more mysteries to entertain?! I do. Usually I'm trolling around all the fan message boards reading about the latest crackpot theories, but today I found a new source of info. Who'd have thought that ABC's Lost official site would have the Lost Diaries? Don't click on that link if you aren't caught up as it contains a potential spoiler. Anyway, I've got to get caught up on these diaries tonight.

Target wants me to go broke


I swear they do. I've been to Target three times this week. Once on Monday morning because I needed to get some toothpaste and other sundries. All would have went well except the Target on Broadway hates me. They are consistently out of 2-3 things that I'm needing. Okay, sometimes they are the same things. But they are always out!

Target on Broaday's always out list:
1. Oxo dish wand refills with the scrubby on the end.
2. Stick-Ups in citrus flavor.
3. Refill jugs of Dial foaming hand cleanser
4. Oral-B pulsar toothbrush in soft 35 compact, preferably pink

Since Monday was my day off, I went out to Roseville for lunch with Leon and afterwards decided to check out the new, big Target in that area. Well, guess what? The new, big Target only had 1 out of the 4 above. What is up with that Target? Should I email Heyamoto about this?

Anyway, I ended up buying things that I didn't know that I needed at both Targets anyway. Like my favorite new tank top from their recent Luella line. I went back and got antother one today. I also found the perfect sunglasses, but they're $19.99, which goes against my $10 sunglasses budget. I'll just scratch and crush them anyway. And I found a sale on a nice blanket for the dog because I'm in the habit of spoiling her rotten.

Target, I don't feel like we have a very healthy relationship here.

Attack of the Klippans


IKEA opened today in West Sac. I expected much more traffic from downtown on my way to work, but it wasn't too bad. There were maybe 20% more cars on the freeway from hwy 50 to 80. Let's see how bad it is when I try to make it home for lunch.

I am not sure if I'll be going in the next few days though. Crowds will be crazy-style!

Klippans and Poangs for everyone.