I have a bunch of pictures that I never uploaded. I finally decided that I would, so here they are in order from oldest to newest. This goes back about 2 years or so.

Barley as a puppy

I had to begin with a puppy-Barley picture...

Barry and his doggie Rusty!!!

Animals! By the beach! Barley's first trip to Santa Cruz beach!!! Too bad it was overcast.

Check out these gnarly bug bites.... gross! I think I've become allergic to mosquitoes through these last few years because when I was a kid, I never got swollen like that. I rarely got bitten. Now, I get bitten all the time when there are mosquitoes around and the bites swell up for days and leave marks for weeks, even months. :( Lame...

My dad's side of the family and our immediate family took a cruise to Hawaii (I know, I just went the year before) to celebrate my grandma's birthday (about 12/18/2007 - 12/23/2007). I do love to travel, but I wish we switched it up a bit.  Plus, the cruise was super rocky and at night I literally slid around in my bed.

Some pictures of my daily life in California, such as walking Barley to the park, inviting friends to come play (yay, Seattle kids!), luring Barley to me with wonderful smells of food, taking him to the dog park, teaching him tricks with Cashew nuts, and snuggling him. (Barley consumes my life...)

Celebrating my graduating in Seattle as well as in California (because Barley couldn't make it to Washington). Even the pretty flower (Tan Hua 探花) bloomed!

So, after graduation when I got back to California, my family took me out for dinner at Alexander's Steak House to celebrate both my graduation and my birthday. It's a fancier place and the food is pricey but really, really good.

Okay, here are two normal Barley pictures and two puffy-faced Barley pictures. He was digging at the park and I think he was allergic to an animal/an animal's den or something -_-  Poor guy...

San Francisco - I went to the Asian Art Museum with my mum and dad during the Ming Dynasty art exhibit. The museum is right across the street from City Hall, and in front of City Hall, they planted this organic garden thing where all the grown food will be donated to the food drive. Impractical, but a good publicity effort.

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The more I get into the Manybooks.net experience, the better it is. Having The Day of the Nefilim listed there is working well. It's up to over 1,000 downloads now, in part thanks to exiledsurfer's great reader review. (I didn't even have to pay him.) I know that exiledsurfer gets what I was trying to do, because the two writers that he mentions in his last para, Douglas Adams and Robert Anton Wilson, are among my all-time favourite writers. (My info page for the whole TDotN exercise is here.)

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I went up to the city w/ a friend to see the Kahlo exhibit again before it closes. I also happened upon a great exhibit of modern Chinese art. I will have to go back and bring the kids to see it.

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SF MOMA

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 Whenever I go to this place I feel like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner.

Yamo

DSC03350

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Funeral for Hells Angels leader Mark "Papa" Guardado

 Recently, the leader of the Hells Angels Motorcycle club was killed in a retaliatory attack a few weeks ago behind my house. This incident has had me scrambling to take appropriate security measures to prepare for the massive retaliation that will soon occur. Hells Angels chapters will be converging on SF for a booze fueled shit-quake of epic proportions. It is almost certain that without these precautions I will most certainly be killed or maimed by stray gunfire, whiskey bottle throwing or incendiary device of some sorts. The past week has been spent sandbagging my room (even the windows, people ask where I got those great curtains) Sleeping in a flak vest that I bought from an army navy store and only traveling when necessary and then under the cover of darkness and even then I don't use my blinkers for my bicycle. Will update soon.

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Hello my dears!

I have been beyond dreadful in updating this blog, and I apologize. There are many reasons behind this.

1. Up until September 10th when we left for California, I was worn out, tired, stressed, hateful, starving and exhausted. Many a douchebag was getting me down, and when it came to looking at a blank rich text editor, I just didn't know what to say. I've learned that if I want to talk shit about someone, I can't really do it here, plus, I don't want to turn this blog into just a neighborhood only rant.

2. See number 1.

So far on our "vacation" we have:

- Been on a private tour of the Sierra Nevada brewery in Chico
- Been out on my step dad's boat
- Took my mom to an urgent care clinic as she broke her toe when we were out on the boat
- Eaten mini corn dogs, macaroni and cheese, pizza in Davis, In 'n Out, Barq's Rootbeer, all the sourdough toast I can manage, and plan on going to Round Table tonight. (Obviously, I lost weight before I came here so I could eat...everything.)

I also almost have a tan going on, and am amazed my body can still produce one after being in London for the past two years and NEVER SEEING THE SUN. Seriously. I look at the weather forecast for London while sitting in my mom's sun room and nearly cry for my friends over there. 60 degrees and cloudy. It's shit. It really is. All you selfish bastards in California should be ashamed at how much sun you soak up. It's glutonous and shameful.

Also, while the economy may be shitty over here in California at the moment, you poor folks who have been laid off and can't afford the gas for you SUV should really look into bottling sunshine and selling it to the pale schmucks in the UK. Those puppies would sell like hotcakes. You'd be rich beyond your wildest dreams. It must be possible. Someone needs to figure it out.

Anyway.

Other than that, I've just been waking up before 8am every day, drinking a cup of coffee with that glorious Hazelnut Coffee Mate creamer, and working on BitchBuzz.

Last week was pretty exciting as on the 5th I was at Sky News

Green (Blue) Room @ Sky News

 
And on the 4th I was at BBC Radio

BBC Radio

Green Room @ Princess Productions

Hope to see some of you at the BitchBuzz Karaoke Night on Saturday in SF!

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Rent Control can stink for some...

http://tikitoon.vox.com/library/post/...

Hi from Wesley M. 42, San Francisco near Dolores and Market on Clinton Park. It is by the Levi Strauss building which is now a new Quaker elementary school. I have lived at my address since 1994 and due to circumstances have been on a fixed disabled income since 2001. My monthly income from the...

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Hi from Wesley M. 42, San Francisco near Dolores and Market on Clinton Park.

DJ Choppercat LIVE

 It is by the Levi Strauss building which is now a new Quaker elementary school. I have lived at my address since 1994 and due to circumstances have been on a fixed disabled income since 2001. My monthly income from the government is just exactly enough to pay for the rent and pg&e and the rest of the month, I sit without laundry. While I had a working computer at home and cruising the internet on wifi things were not so bad. I have a great imagination and talent as an illustrator and online DJ. Does not make an income, though.

Once you become disabled and start to live on susidy, those who have will probably agree, many friends abandon you like running out a house on fire. SO most of my so-called friends the past few years are addicts in need of recovery and homeless, hiv+ and homeless and disaffected and/or schizophrenic not taking medication and using meth. Still, when it is cold and when I have meals from ProjectOpen Hand, my door is open.

Now, I am in the film, 'Pacific Heights' which starred Michael Keaton, Melanie Griffith etc which has master tenants renting a room to a household terrorist played by Michael Keaton. AND the rent control rules favor the tenant and so here goes that I am held hostage in my own home to a rude, name calling and tempermental positive psychotic who leave needles in common areas used to distribute meth to his veins. I have opened my home to him last year when he was sick, and he took to inviting friends to use my mailbox and now up to three mere strangers are coming to my door looking for their mail. I have not been paid but 1/8 of one months rent in the recent agreed to past three months that I allowed him to be my roommate.

So now I have to visit daily ACCESS Point in the Polk, go the Bay Area Bar association, Rent Board stabilization, increasing the pressure on my landlord to evict me, and have had several occasions where the police were called to settle unreasonable disputes by this person.

It is hard not to take it personally and let it get under your skin. However, he is using the law and his lack of credibility to give his situation the upper hand although miserable for us both, he bides his time waiting for the city's AIDS susidies to find him a place of his own where and when he will be sitting on easy street in some respects.

Just thought i would get this off my chest a bit.

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So I was looking out the window and I saw this reflection on the building across the way.  It totally looks like a fish in a fishbowl. Is this like seeing images of the Virgin Mary?

Fishbowl

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So SF and I are still involved and seeing each other. And he is just the coolest person I know. I can't even describe how awesome I think he is. If I started to I think everyone would be annoyed with how much I would talk about him. Let ye keep these floodgates closed.

Anyway, we have been having all sorts of adventures all around town, being a nauseating couple who can't keep their hands off each other. I have seriously just continued having an Insane Amount of Sex. I don't know what it is, but I have a really strong sexual appetite, and can't help it. I just can't stop myself. And it's not like he's gonna say no.

:) So my life is good right now. Really good. I am excited to be starting my new job on Monday, beginning with corporate training for a couple weeks, interspersed with a couple of cottage weekends with SF. Teehee. I have to stop myself from typing in smiley faces every few sentences.

Gah. I am just happy and reveling in it.

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Sent from my iPhone

Chihuly!

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I listened to "The Sword and Laser" podcast the other day, and they had a contest for "the best last sentence" of a story.  I came up with this poem, which stands alone quite well, I think, though it does read as the last sentence of a story.  It says something about the writing process as I experience it.  I'm very happy with it.

of the Storied Way

And in that moment of conclusion,

as I realized the purpose of what I'd done,

everything that I was or ever would be --

      my mind, my body, my life's experience,

      my very soul --

passed, meaningfully, into fiction.

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Milk

I couldn't stop laughing when I saw how this pic turned out.  Muahhaahaha Christie, Rudes & Kasey are cra-craaay... love it!

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Audio Podcast here
San Francisco -
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to submerge giant turbines below the waters of the Golden Gate Bridge as a way to generate energy for the city, despite a study that recently concluded the idea would cost tens of millions of dollars and is not financially feasible.

Newsom, however, said the findings won't deter him from pushing ahead with the idea. On Tuesday, he said, "I am going to find a way to make it happen.

"I'm committed to it and am going to fight for it," Newsom said. "I don't care about the arguments against it. I care about the arguments for it."

"It got a lot of attention and excited lots of folks, and while we're not going to give up on it altogether, we will turn our resources and attention to potentially more productive renewable resources," said San Francisco PUC spokesman Tony Winnicker.

The mayor's push to drop turbines below the bridge became part of a controversy surrounding the high-profile firing of San Francisco PUC General Manager Susan Leal, who said she backed away from the proposal when she received the results of the study commissioned by her agency.

"We're going from thinking this is an incredibly great site based on one study to believing that we're not one of the top 10 sites in the world" for tidal power, said Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco's Department of the Environment. "We're actually maybe one of the top 100 sites in the world."

If officials eventually decide to submerge turbines in the bay, the hilly underwater topography in an area east of the Golden Gate Bridge, near the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito, makes for the best location, the study found.

A long list of state and federal agencies would have to approve any plan to install such tidal turbines. This is were projects always seems to get hung up.

San Francisco isn't alone in its interest in tidal power. Alaska, Washington state and Nova Scotia also have explored the idea.

NewYork -

The first of six underwater turbines has been anchored 10 metres deep in New York's East River between Manhattan and Queens. Soon a further five similar underwater turbine generators will be installed at the same location generating 150-200kW of electricity destined to meet 50% of the needs of a nearby Gristedes supermarket. On December 31st 2006 electricity was generated and used from the first turbine.

The flow of the water caused by the tides turn the 5-metre diameter turbine blades at around 30 rpm 18 hours a day silently, out of sight, and without risk to marine life. These 5-metre tall turbines, part of a demonstration project by Verdant Power, will eventually form part of the world's first kinetic hydropower plant, a $20 million 200 to 300 turbine farm with a total capacity of up to 10MW - enough to power 8,000 homes and cut annual CO2 emissions by 33,000 tonnes.

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PIC-0047

Prior to work

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Lunch_sm

Cheap, fast sushi bowls right downstairs. 

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A friend of mine ate dinner at a very unique restaurant the other night: Opaque, where the dining room is pitch black and you can't see your hand in front of your face. Or the fork in your hand in front of your face. Or your plate, or your food or your neighbor in front of your face.

He wrote a marvelous review, here is a taste of it:

"In line with the adage "less is more", San Francisco restaurant Opaque takes something away (your ability to see) to provide something more. Dining at Opaque was a scary, sexy, nauseating, intimate, primal, communal eating adventure."

You can read the full post here.

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Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth, Book 1)

Terry Goodkind

The Dragonbone Chair (Memory, Sorrow and Thorn)

The Sleeping Beauty Novels: The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty's Punishment, Beauty's Release (

A Dance with Dragons (Song of Ice and Fire)

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some days it is hard to get out of the house - the nap/feed/change cycle plus trying to keep things in order (well, at least not in disarray) around the house can make it nearly impossible to actually get us both dressed and out the door.  and when we do get out the door i always need to have places to change a diaper and nurse in mind (note: the ladies lounge at bloomies is swank). but i try to get out every day to at least take a quick walk. it's good for ryall, but even better for me i think.

1. the botanical garden in Golden Gate Park. it's free and pretty mellow (empty) during the week. plus, easy parking and a short walk to the 9th and irving shopping district for a post-garden snack.
2. a walk along ocean beach. the sound of the waves always lulls ryall to sleep after about 10 minutes.
3. yerba buena gardens. in SOMA, one block from the powell muni/BART station. there are free concerts, puppet shows, and more. check out the events calendar. 
4. visit miette in hayes valley. you can get a cupcake and your baby can gaze at all the bright colors and fun shapes.
5. get lost in golden gate park. enter and wander.
6. hang out at a playground. even though ryall is too little to enjoy anything more than the baby swing, he loves watching other kids play.
7. picnic in dolores park. grab a treat from nearby tartine and/or bi-rite market and hang out on a picnic blanket together. 
8. the mall. ok, this one is mostly great on those super hot days when it is just too hot to be outside or at home. lots of parking makes it an easy adventure, too. 

Ryallpark

 

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