Success in Bush's America

The Colbert Report had a nice segment on the other night showing a success story in these trying economic times. It's really kind of inspirational to see Americans finding creative ways to prosper.

Re: Holy. Fucking. Shit.

The word on the street is that the neighbor who got the visit from the SJ SWAT team is moving out. W00t. Now if the landlord can find some trouble free tenants. <crosses fingers>

Just Me and the Cats

So Noelle is off to Merry Old England to take a quick vacation while she's between jobs (new one starts next week). I, alas, couldn't get away thanks to work cooking up a special project for me to work on until October. :-p I do, however get Labor Day weekend off, so there's some comfort in that. I may (or may not depending on where my project is in the next couple of days) take an extra day off since at least half the people on this project appear to be doing that. I wanted really badly to go camping since I haven't done that in a while, but it's all very last minute, I don't think that's going to happen. On the other hand, I do think I will get some hiking in, if the weather around here will only cooperate (it was in the 90s today, which I find a tad warm for hiking). And if I can overcome my innate laziness.

Anyway, since we're going to be snuggle free for a week or so, I took Noelle down to Santa Cruz Monday night for some chinese food and a drive up Highway 1 under the stars, which was really cool. The section of coastline between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay is largely deserted, so the sky is really, really dark at night. Fortune smiled on us and we got clear skies to go with the lovely drive.

Weekend

Kind of a weird weekend. Friday night we went to see Mirrors with Rachel. If you're taking the night watchman job because they had replace the last one in a hurry, maybe you should ask why. Or inquire why the old department store you're watching over burned down in the first place. And if you see weird shit in the mirrors, perhaps you should stop working there. This Kiefer Sutherland vehicle was working ok (other than some excruciating dialog that periodically made _me_ want to cut my throat with a shard of broken mirror) as a somewhat cheesy albeit occasionally very violent horror movie until about the last twenty minutes. At that point I threw up my hands and mocked it as an Army of Darkness/Evil Dead wannabe. Don't ask. Let's just say that I think the writers painted themselves into a corner and didn't really know how to resolve the movie.

Saturday we got up really late. And then there was reading. And then some eating. And then some more reading. And some video games. It was a good, good day.

Sunday we got up late again (boy I miss that) and some of Noelle's friends from VA were in town escaping from the fog of San Bruno, so we had a hot dog with them and caught up on what was new up north. Then we nipped home for some yard work before heading over to Palo Alto to have dinner with Zak and Angie at Zao. After that we decided to check out the Clone Wars animated movie. It was ok. Better than at least than Episode I. (Noelle liked it better than two of the prequels.) Plot summary: The Jedi Knights must rescue Jabba the Hutt's kidnapped son in order to move Republican troops around the space blockade established by their enemies.

Crucible Pictures

(click to go to my flickr set)

Noelle, Wendy, Dan, and I went up to Oakland a few weeks ago to see the Crucible's Fire Festival, up in Oakland. It was a pretty intense show. They had fire tornados, trapeze artists, contortionists, clowns on stilts, and of course, a lot of shit on fire. It was a really cool way to spend a Saturday night. And they let me take pictures there, too.

Rain

Just for a minute, there were drops of water falling from the sky. How novel.

Comic-Con Pix Up

(click to go to my flickr set)

My pictures from Comic-Con are up. I was surprised to see that some of them already have very high page views and I haven't mentioned it at all to anyone I know. I guess the people looking for Martina Sirtis pictures must be pretty desperate. :-)

Busy Weekend

(click to see flickr set)

Noelle's BFF from high school, April came from SoCal to visit us last weekend. April wanted to go see the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so we went down to Monterey on Saturday. The aquarium had some traveling exhibits I hadn't seen before, including fresh water otters which were really cool. The jellyfish exhibits were also fascinating to watch as usual. They had an ocean sunfish there, which I haven't seen in a while at the aquarium. New since my last visit was a new entrance with a large exhibit dedicated to the history of fishing at Cannery Row (where the aquarium is located). My only disappointment was not being able to find any cuttlefish, which are probably my favorite fish there.

After extracting all the goodness possible from Monterey, we skidaddled northwards to Santa Cruz, where we were just in time to get some yummy greek food at Vasili's. Man, I love that place. I am also very fond of Cafe Pergolesi, where we went for coffee afterwards. We finally ended up at the boardwalk where Aki was sitting in at a very respectable blues band at a bar there.

The next day we got up late, but in time to go see The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor before taking April to the airport. The movie was ok. The fight scenes were very respectable, the effects were fab, the dialog caused my brain to try and escape from my skull, and the story was... average. Pretty much, there is a mummy with a dark backstory and someone wakes him up and Brendan Fraser and company have to put a stop to it. You know the drill. Oh, and there are yeti in the movie. Kung-fu yeti. I'm not making this up.

Anyway, that a whole lot of Dr Who watching pretty much took up my weekend. Which is now over. Sigh.