Sour Particles

A city,town or village without a decent smoothie place is really just a trailer park, even if the houses don't have wheels. Free smoothie isn't bad, not like my typical one I get at Jamba Juice though. It isn't a bad one though and there are a lot more to try, and wheatgrass! I think the value of houses will go up now that this city is civilized.

I've put more miles on my free rental car in a week than my actual car has total. I guess it helps that mine doesn't have that many miles on it, but I'm still proud of pushing 1500 miles (so far, return it on Monday so I have over 24 hours left, but they said not to go in to Mexico with it...) on a rental car that I didn't even think I'd have to begin with. And I get a free tank of gas with it.

The first exercise in ages, ten kilometers at a mile above sea-level. Dirt trail with some hills, as you can see from the elevation profile to the top left corner of the photo. Maximum elevation is 5500 feet, and the minimum is right around 5250 feet. My time last week was pathetic, but I was happy, fresh air and relaxing. Then decided instead of once a week, why not twice. Wednesday I lost six minutes, even more pathetic. But I feel redeemed now because I shaved nine minutes off my first time (15 less than last time) and that means there is hope. Stay posted for an overly dramatic webpage with performance / heartrate / bodyweight / etc graphs, gps tracklogs on maps and maybe some conclusions on my get in shape in 10 weeks or less experiment.

So I went looking for a single bottle of Cachaca, but I couldn't find a place that stocks or has even heard of it. Finally yesterday I found one place with one type of Cachaca, but not the exact one I wanted. The owner was really friendly and said she could order whatever I wanted. While I was there the distributor was in the store, and he began to show me what he could get. I saw one that I've tried previously. I asked if there was a discount for a case. She quoted me a price for a case, I almost passed out it was so cheap. As long as there are limes, there will be a caipirinha in my hand. Hopefully that is an exaggeration, since I probably won't keep all twelve bottles for myself.

Done walking for the day, walked over 10 miles. Started in downtown San Francisco where we saw some protesters laying in the street get zip tied and put in vans by Police in riot gear. I got the feeling the most of protesters were really fake, the kind of people who just like attention and acting. Well the ones who covered themselves in fake blood and were running around and screaming at least. Protesting seems pretty trendy. I wonder how many of them (the ones who were being really dramatic, not the ones chanting and holding up signs off of the road) got are failed actors / actresses. Honestly I would be much more affected by photographs that a lady running around and screaming about something horrible happening to her. I actually do not even know what she was trying to convey with it. Was she supposed to be an Iraqi woman? It didn't seem like she was supposed to be a solider's mother. She was calling out to Americans for help, did she want American citizens to pull out our troops because they are the ones who attacked her? The signs said impeech Bush, pull our troops out. Maybe I am just really stupid and everyone else who looked confused around her really understood what she was supposed to represent. Word to anyone who wants to protest, I'm open minded but stop the horrible acting and make sure your message is clear and not a confusing drama class gone bad soap opera. Anyways, next we walked down to the curvy Lomard street via Union square and some really big church.. Then to the warf for a beer and snack. And ofcourse we needed some sweets, ice cream, chocolate, etc. Then the almost final leg was all the way to the vista point on northern side of the Golden Gate bridge about six more miles. And then back across the bridge, it was dark by then so taxi to the BART station. Never a dull moment.

Lola has just passed out, I think her bedtime was a few hours ago. She is one tired little pooch. She has not stolen a single item of mine this time as far as I can tell. She usually takes something, even shoes, and hides it in her room. She hasn't destroyed anything of mine yet, just been a theif. But she can be destructive.

Arthur Schopenhauer is the topic of discussion today, since this is the only day I'm going to be here in the class, I don't know if its all this interesting. But I found today's lecture to be very stimulating. This is my idea of a good vacation. I even raised my hand and contributed to the discussion, more than the person whose guest in the class I am. Pessimism and and suffering are great topic to discuss. Oh, and I took the bus to get here, maybe sometime soon I will take the bus all by myself. And can't forget I went to the gym this morning, didn't exercise but I got a smoothie while I waited.

Yeah, Pacific Beach is way better. The gaslamp district seems pretty ghetto too, don't recommend much of San Diego, but Coronado, La Jolla and Pacific Beach are fun. Oh and a girl on a bicycle almost hit me, she didn't even say anything to warn me. Lucky I saw her out of the corner of my eye and stopped, or I would probably be in the ICU right now.

I was showing a friend the local natural foods grocery place, which by the way doesn't even have wild salmon. Most of the people shopping there are pretty much hippies and do not look like the kind of people who would use a good soap. But my friend found his secret soap there, I was reluctant to try it because I associated it with the dirty hippies (by the way, I have no issues with most clean hippies) because that market carried it. My friend assured me that they sold it at Trader Joe's back home, which eased my mind a bit. The label was insane, you have to read it to believe it, religious babble it seems mostly.

Here is a quote,"Each swallow works hard to be a perfect pilot-provider-builder-trainer-teacher-lover-mate, no half true hate! So each day like a bird, perfect thyself first! Have courage and smile my friend. Think and act 10 years ahead! And the man without fault? He's dead! Do one thing at a time, work hard! Get done!" And it keeps going, that's only a small fraction of the stuff written on the label.

As far as the soap goes, I like the peppermint cool burn it has, and it isn't a harsh soap. It does seem to make the water bead off my skin after a certain point during my shower, so I use a normal body wash every few showers, because I'm paranoid of some kind of oil buildup.

Ingredients: Water, Saponified Organic Coconut & Organic Olive Oils (w/ Retained Glycerin), Organic Hemp Oil, Organic Jojoba Oil, Organic Peppermint Oil, Organic Mentha Arvensis, Citric Acid and Vitamin E.

If anyone has any opinions or facts regarding its cleansing abilities, let me know. Or if you are interested in it, visit their website.

It is a pretty nice day out here. Hopefully when I get back here it will be even better. It has been a while since I gave the last update on my room. It has been pretty clean for a few weeks now. I even hung up two photos that I took on the wall, printed them out poster size.

Between the zero visibility dust and rock storms, roadrunner that came within inches of his death, flying tumble weeds from hell stuck in to the car, heavy rains in heavy traffic. Weel, I'm just really quite amazed at how smooth this weekend is going for being unplanned, even though I've know about it for months. Last night, in Santa Monica, was a nice change from the usual Thursday, which this week was pretty good actually. All I have to do is a bit of shopping here and make it an hour north in about an eight hour time span. Wish me luck.

I don't know what to call this, so I called it a "clover print." This is even more classy than PBR in a can.

What is intelligence? Is there any artificial intelligence yet? Will there ever be artificial intelligence? Is there even natural intelligence? Am I intelligent? Sometimes you can get wrapped up in those kind of questions. I don't think everyone who reads this would answer all the questions identically. Does that mean some people are wrong? Are those people unintelligent?

I used to be a dog only kind of person, but a few kittens have changed my mind. This one always makes me feel better when I'm down. He is my little baby, and he has been there for me through some rough times, even without needing to coax him with treats. I won't forget the day he came here, the day he got his name, or any other day that he has been in my life. Everyday that you spend with the people you care about is special, and even when you're not with them, they still make life worth living. Oh there was the day he was freaking out at the mouse in the bathtub and the day I took him for his first swim in the pool. Even though he won't ever live with me, he will always live in my heart. I love you Butters. Now that I have that off my chest I feel a lot better, he was guilt tripping me with meows.

Today is looking up and might be close to perfect, for no apparent reason at all. Need to run some errands, but other than that it should be fun. And I probably won't even do them today. I'm hungry.

Is it the afternoon or the evening?

Why do companies send a fake credit card when they send you an offer to get one of their real cards? You don't see Amazon sending fake books or 1800FLOWERS sending fake flowers to potential customers. But the credit card companies, they are so nice, I can even keep the fake credit card if I don't take their offer. Gee, thanks.

Friday at 8 o'clock in the evening, nothing beats a Guinness.

I'm so out of shape, even being on a swing for ten minutes leaves needing a tank of oxygen.

I guess a small airplane just made a safe landing on southbound 680 freeway. I took a quick photo as I passed in the northbound lane, I don't like rubberneckers but I was stopped and didn't even waste time with a good shot.

I sped up the process, set the starting point to be slightly before an image of Butters that was converted to 64x64 8-bit grayscale. But I think it demonstrates the possibilities that even a small colorless image can have. The downside is that it still is a huge amount of possibilities to have a human check each frame. Finding a way to fast forward only enough that it doesn't skip potential images but also helps us make it to those images in the first place is what needs to be researched next. Oh well, it was just my project for the evening, it will wait, until the next time I'm bored. If you want to help contribute by checking images, here is the link.

I was happy to to just have the souffle rise up in the oven. Even if it just made it that far along, I would have been proud of it. I made it with: butter, cream cheese, chocolate, cream, eggs, Grand Marnier, sugar and water. It didn't taste too bad to me, and people said it actually tasted good. But, you never know if they just bit the bullet and ate it even though it tasted atrocious. At any rate I don't think souffles are my thing, at least to eat, but they are fun to make. Oh, Christmas was fun, wet but fun.

We made it! And it works! And we even couldn't find some of the orange pieces but we made it work and look good without them!

Has there ever been a study on how long after removal from the dryer a pile of clean clothes will retain heat at its core? Last night I removed some clothes from the dryer after hearing the buzzer. I placed the clean pile of textiles on my bed. Later that night when I got around to moving the pile, the core of it was still heated. It is simply amazing and the possibilities are endless. We could power our homes and even our clothes dryers with the heat given off by the core. Not only is it free and clean energy, it also is a really nice place to put your cold feet in the winter. I will keep you posted on my progress in this great scientific endeavor.

My room has seen better days and not too many worse days. It is not rock bottom yet either though. There is hope, a light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Do you ever order something online, and they brag about three day shipping being standard. But they do not ship your order which is in stock and they say time to shipping is one to three business days. And you want to get a hold of them because you want to know what's happening, but they have no real way to contact them, but they are the best bet place to order that thing from. So you eventually get tired and want to take your business elsewhere, but you can't even cancel your order. Weeks go by. I hate that.

The Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Brownies is the best mix I've tried to date. They have a carmel variant too with walnuts pieces, but I havn't tried it yet. If anyone thinks there is a better mix out there, for quick and easy brownies, or even a recipe, send it my way.

Yeah, it wasn't a bad day, but it had its low points at around 9am. Oh, I'm leaving town for a second weekend in a row. I should probably clean up my room before I head out, even if it will take another hit when I get back and drop all my stuff in the middle of it.

Not even sure if I'm going to get any sleep before I start to drive. On the bright side, more photos of my room soon!

It is about time to pack up the car and start the long journey once again. I can't really even make an estimate to how much stuff I will bring with me. I don't know if I will take more stuff than I brought, or less stuff than I brought. Life is funny like that.

I will be happy if you donate some blood. I will even clean my room 100% if you do within 24 hours of you giving it. And if it has been more than 8 weeks since today I will go give blood with you if I have not already again.

I was cleaning my room up a bit looking for a key that I figured was in the room somewhere. Finally I gave up and guess what? The key was not even in the room, so I was less motivated to organize it since it was clearly in a way organized, had the key been in the room, I would have found it long ago. I also did some laundry, especially towels. Found the solarcaine too, that wasn't in my room either, but I knew exactly where it was. Last time that stuff was needed was back in May.

Seven Layers of Hell and an Amber Boch, good start.

I think I have made great progress with my room. Pretty soon it will look as if nobody even lives here. Nobody lives at dumps, right? Well maybe some people do. Seriously though, before i leave for the weekend, I am going to work on it.

Frenchy turned twenty-one, highlights (if you can call them that) of him for the evening would be loudly whispering to me "she's a big girl... ...she heard me huh?" referring to a large chested girl talking to us, falling down a 2 or 3 foot curb face first, getting kicked out of one bar and kicking a garbage can after I let him go on his way out causing two nearby bouncers to yell profanities and start to chase him down until we calmed them down, going in to the last bar and sitting down his elbow knocked over an amp which also took out a cello and caused half the people in the bar who were related to the band to want to beat him down, after leaving that bar punching a metal street sign and getting a big gash on one of his fingers, getting blood from his finger on everyone else around him and not even noticing he is bleeding at all, plus a lot of other things... ...and there was the random drunk dude who tried to start something with me, I pushed him aside and kept walking, then ten seconds later he's in a fight with everyone else, alcohol makes people act funny.

Seven Layers of Hell, pretty tasty. The week is now over, nothing more to do until Monday really. I think I have a permanent Guinness addiction now, if they don't have Guinness on tap I freak out, and usually I just order an Amber Boch. I never really liked beer, but Murphy's and Guinness just are more me. Fried mozzarella sticks with ranch go good with taquitos, beer and liquor for a healthy square meal.

I didn't even realize it but tomorrow is March too. Time flies when you're having fun huh? I'm pretty tired though and I have to be up pretty early so I'm going to try and keep this short, but in the next few days I'm going to try to add more photos to my website. Nite.

My bedroom is so messy, today my goal is to get it all the dirty clothes washed, old papers and junk on the floor put away, and vacuum. I think I might also want to move my desk and bed, although I can't really picture how I want them arranged. Not on my list of goals for this project today is to get the closet done, that is just a ridiculous amount of work right there, especially since most of the stuff from my room when I clean will end up in the closet. Lucky my closet is pretty spacious, in fact when I first moved in I slept in my closet because there were no blinds in the house, and my empty bedroom faced south. I even have electrical sockets in my closet, I had my computer in there for a while, just because I didn't want it in my bedroom. So now to stop writing and get to work!