A few weeks ago, Jane and Jish threw me a surprise birthday party. Jane has posted the pictures she took, in which you can see an excellent sampling of my Bay area friends (or, at least those who could make it).

I have the best friends.

Break Bread with Brad 2004 has been announced!

If you're going to be in Austin on the 12th, and you haven't gotten an evite yet, it's not personal, and you should go leave a comment and he'll make sure you're included. I planned my incoming flight so that I would arrive early enough to attend this event, that's how important it is. If nothing else, the first Shiner is on Brad ... er, I mean, Brad will pay for everyone's first Shiner Bock.

I Goodle [via Kevin]

Today has been pretty much a wash. Didn't get enough to eat for breakfast, lost one of my earrings during lunch, experiencing my lowest productivity level all week, and I've actually been working!!

But Jane says she's going to see The Women with me tonight at the Paramount, and then when we get back to the City, I'll call some other women and see where they're partying so I can join up with them.

In other news...

My new sign-off: keep yourself ..., um, yeah, my family reads this site, ya know?

Remember the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement? I just got my check for $13.86 yesterday. [blogged a year ago]

Take that, you nefarious illegally-raising-the-prices-of-certain-prerecorded-music-products-by-implementing-minimum-advertised-price-policies CD sellers!!

My sentiments exactly:

A Partial List of things that are a bigger threat to American Society than gay marriage.

What are some other things we can add to this list?

I took my lunch out of the fridge this morning, and left it on the stove when I went to work.

That's ok, though, 'cause i had forgotten that someone was coming to take me out to lunch today. Still, some of that stuff will have to be thrown out now, which is such a waste.

I fell asleep on the couch around 5:30 last night, the schizophrenic weather of the Bay area pretty nice after a day of violent wind and too much rain, only to be awakened at 9 to what sounded like hail coming down outside. I went to bed and slept soundly for the rest of the night. Now the weather is brisk and cold, but I'll be suprised if it rains again today and look! it's raining again!

Whoooeee! I've had some exciting rides in my life, but I must say that the drive across the Bay Bridge this morning was one of the most exciting, as I kept my steering wheel at an 80 degree angle just to keep driving straight ahead (which made it more exciting when the wind suddenly dropped and I had to quickly adjust to keep from swerving into the other lane).

I need a lower-profile car. Maybe something like this.

Heh. It took spam to remind me of this today: Happy Fat Tuesday!!

2 items, the relative relevance of which to your life I leave for you to decide:

Leaked Pentagon report warns climate change may bring famine, war: report [via Jish] True? Unlikely. Still, any bad press for the president has to be a good thing.

What happens when you fall for spam [via James] Too too funny.

The Valentine's Day Fiasco

Poor Tigger. Poor Heather. Poor Derek. Poor Chieka.

I have a friend who is enduring jury duty today. While IMing me from the Halls of Justice in San Jose about the intense boredom, and how he can't talk to the pretty girls nearby because he's dressed like a street punk in an attempt to be excused, and how this is his one day off during the week that he's spending this way, I had a thought:

They shouldn't call it jury duty anymore. Making it a duty right off the bat like that makes people spend more time trying to get out of it than anything else. Instead, they should call it jury opportunity and market it as something that allows you get out of work for the day. He came back with "Why spend an hour of your life driving to work and getting frustrated when you can drive for half an hour and send someone to jail!"

I'll let you know when we start our PR business.

In the meantime, can you spot which are real and which are fake? [via Reecie] I got 14 out of 20 right. I've never been good at this sort of thing.

I found out yesterday that Girl Scouts deliver their cookies at different times depending on what part of the country you're in. My friend in San Antonio sent me 2 boxes of cookies for my birthday last week because her daughter is in GS. And yesterday I was talking to a someone in Mississippi (they were overjoyed that the temperature had risen over 44 degrees *brrrr*) and she was expressing the regret that she had not bought any of the cookies the girls were selling in the mall a few days ago.

So there. Now you know a little more about Girl Scout Cookies than you did 2 seconds ago.

I also like the rings made by Eveli Przepiorka. So totally my style.

Sting rocks, even when he's recovering from being sick.

We sang/shouted Roxanne. We yodelled through Desert Rose. And we reaffirmed our stalker impulses in Every Breath You Take. It was great. He even played Synchronicity.

And how can people pay $60+ any amount of money to sit for 2 hours and watch music? I just don't get it. I mean, if it's classical or slow music I understand, but Sting is generally rather danceable. I'm not having a good time till I'm dancing.

And this is cool: an Orkut member density map [via Jon, via here]

It's some indication of how stressed and short on time I'm feeling that I kinda wish Sting would cancel his concert tonight at the Paramount Theater. I'd get my money back *and* I'd have an extra night that I really really need to get all the stuff done that needs to get done.

But it looks like he's not cancelling tonight, and I know I'll have a good time, even if my nose is bleeding from the altitude.

I need a device that can tell me if the smells I experience in my car are coming from my car, or are coming through my vents from other cars. When your truck is almost 12, and you aren't known as the most fastidious person in the world about taking care of it, every whiff of burning brakes and transmissions gone bad is a cause for panic. I panicked three times on the way to work today.

Happy birthday to me again!

It was a nice weekend, even if the weather sucked (and by sucked, I mean that it started out sunny and bright, transitioned into hazy and indistinct and ended in grey and depressing). My grandma is doing well, my niece (one day, I'll be able to spell that correctly the first time) is purdy and chubby-cheeked, and Daisy is just as cute as ever.

My brothers, both lacking in funds for different reasons gave me the gift I really wanted: a clean car. They once had an idea to start a car detailing business which has since fizzled out, but they still have a talent for making even an 11 1/2 year-old truck with lots of miles and scratches and dents look beeyutiful. I ordered a printer with a donation from my mom, and my grandma bought me a new pair of sandals for my plantar fasciitis-plagued feet. I got the new Dido CD, and a pair of blue earrings. And my cousin from LA sent a pretty bouquet (the only flowers that have been in my house since the last bunch I bought in August).

And there was lots and lots of chocolate cake. Yum.

Happy Valent  Happy birthday to me!



Happy Valentine's day to the rest of y'all.

So my birthday is tomorrow.

I've never really bought into the need to stay younger than 30, as I see getting older as more of an adventure than something to fear. Granted, my 20's were good, and I enjoyed them, but what, really, has been lost with my passage into my 30's? Nothing, as far as I can tell. I'm more self-confident, I know the reasons for what I do, rather than flailing about blindly because I don't have the experience or self-awareness to know what I'm doing, and I have a job that is able to finance all the fun I want to have.

And many of the youngest people I know are older than I am, too, which, should I ever worrry about feeling old or jaded or used up, gives me perspective and knowledge that age really is all in the mind.

Besides, 31 sucked and I'm more than ready to move into a better year.

And how do I feel about tomorrow for its other significance? The same way that Sarah does. You guys (and you know who you are) are so special and precious to me, and if I wasn't spending tomorrow with my family, I'd be spending it with y'all, my second family ... well, the ones who are single, anyway.

So I've always been fascinated with moonlight. I don't know why - I just think it's so cool that something that doesn't generate any light of its own can be such a brilliant beacon in the darkness.

Speaking of the act of reflection, driving in to work this morning I saw one of the most beautiful sunrises I've ever seen, the yellows and oranges, and the roses and golds vibrant and bright. But what surprised and pleased me most was when I turned north, and found that the sky in that direction had a light of its own, as the sunlight reflected off the clouds was bright enough to cause shadows from the other direction.

Btw, one of my best (and previously offline) friends has been turned to the Dark Side and has a blog of his own: Uio

The Human Clock [via Brad]

Two classic sites, courtesy of Ernie:

MetroSexual Tarot

Nice Valentine's Cards

I've always hated that Outkast song that seems to have everyone else shaking their booty these days, but now that I've seen it like this, I may be changing my mind. [via Bryan]

My horoscope this week:

This will be an elephant-wearing-a-parachute-as-it-falls-through-the-sky kind of week for you, Aquarius. It'll be a successfully-shoplifting-a-Bible kind of week, a using-bottles-of-Dom-Perignon-champagne-to-put-out-a-fire kind of week, a rewriting-a-Shakespeare-play-and-selling-it-to-a-Hollywood-producer kind of week. 'Improbable' should be your nickname. 'Prodigious' should be your word of power. If you don't receive a magic pretzel or a golden booger from a talking raven in your dreams, I'll be shocked.

Totally.

I found this neato-frito site while looking for ruby red shoes for Jessa today so she could click her way home: Century In Shoes (the shoes in question appear here).

Btw, it wasn't files that were needed, but permissions changed to fix the comments (thanks Jish!!). So Jane and Leila, could you repost your comments? They didn't stick, apparently.

Woohoo!! Why is it that I changed my DNS to the other hosting service weeks ago, and I never could access my site, either to ftp or just to view, but I changed it again last night, and suddenly it's working (as evidenced by the broken images, since I thought it would take longer to change over)?

UPDATE: oops, since I didn't realize the DNS would change over so quickly, I also appear to have neglected to move some necessary comments files yesterday, so things won't work till sometime after 4:30 this afternoon. I apologize for this - I think comments left will show up later, since I'm getting notifications of comments left here, but I'm not sure about that.

Oh my god, I'm going to gush like a 13-year old at an *NSync concert - I have the best friends ever, and most of them were at a suprise birthday party thrown for me tonight. What have I done to deserve this? Not a darn thing, I assure you. I am blessed beyond measure and I am fully aware of it.

I will detail the history of my month offline later, but right now I'm so happy I could cry.