I loaded sockparade up tonight right after I got out of the shower.

But I got caught up on email and Google Reader instead.

So now I have no time for a proper update.  But I thought of you.

I have all these unfinished drafts and haven’t been able to write for months.  Not sure what’s going on with me.  Not that I haven’t been feeling inspired but I just haven’t been setting aside time to write.  The most random thing happened the other day.  The photo you see above made it onto Reddit and The Daily What (thanks PatSun for bringing it to my attention).  I took it in a hotel in Amsterdam (Chic & Basic) and totally forgot about it but someone found it and posted it up.  The Reddit comments are so crazy and angry.  The public really worries me sometimes.  I try not to do this but sometimes I’ll read through the NPR fanpage comments on Facebook (I know, not the best reading material but I get bored on the bus sometimes!) and it’s really depressing sometimes.  Speaking of which, every time something political happens (like oh, I don’t know, the passing of the healthcare reform bill) I’m reminded of how my Facebook friends would never be able to attend a party together.  Based on their status updates and comments, I think people would be at each other’s throats.  I guess that’s what happens when you are a Christian that grows up in Houston and then becomes a social worker and moves to San Francisco.

Anyway, the husband and I have abandoned reading The Known World and have picked up Andre Agassi’s autobiography, Open.  It’s been a really great read so far, one of those books that are hard to put down.  (Gotta love those denim Nike shorts!)  I wish I had spent more of my youth watching tennis, I’ve really only started watching tennis these past 5 years and feel as though I’ve missed out on so many great moments.  I need to buy a DVD of the classic games or something.

The release of the iPad has provoked a lot of technology debates between the husband and I.  Heated debates about inventory marketing strategies, why Apple didn’t include cut/paste in their early feature sets, why Apple didn’t include a camera in the iPad, Apple’s courtship of the masses at the cost of alienation (and partial betrayal) of their core fanbase, the sustainability of cloud computing software companies who neglect to invest in the hardware side of things, and more.  Sometime we’ll be at a restaurant (usually a hole in the wall) and we’ll get so fired up and animated that I’m pretty sure most of the people in the restaurant think we’re fighting and probably breaking up.  Our latest episode was at Chava’s in the Mission (great place for soups, I love the Pozole there and the husband loved the Menudo and they have awesome handmade tortillas) where 5 or 6 waitresses came over to check on us with worried smiles, asking if everything was okay.  I love that about us though, always challenging each other, often disagreeing but even when we agree, it’s fun to articulate all of our arguments and points together and cheer each other on — even though there isn’t anyone right there with us disagreeing.  Sometimes we’ll even try to construct opposing arguments that other may try to use and then work together to deconstruct them.  Maybe if one day my brain feels extra juicy this month, I’ll blog about these topics.

Life just feels good these days.  Maybe a little too comfortable, but good.  We are still looking into different community based organizations to get involved with.  There are quite a few in the East Bay but a lot of the ones we are interested in are focused in East Oakland and we are hoping to get involved with something closer to home.

A couple months ago we were attending an evening church service and this woman was playing the most sorrowful, haunting song on the piano during the communion and it made me want to play the piano again.  I don’t think my parents read these posts but I know they would laugh if they heard me say that.  One of my most impressive feats as a 5th grader was to convince my parents that I really shouldn’t waste any more of their time and money on piano lessons especially since my older sister, Anny, had already mastered it.  They amazingly let me quit and then let me join a girls’ basketball league.  It was one of the best experiences of my life.  About the piano, I don’t really have the time for it right now and I have no idea where I’d put a piano so I’ll just file that away in the back of my mind and revisit it again when we’re more settled in life.

I don’t think I’ve ever reopened a draft of a post, finished it, and then published it.  Usually posts that stay in the draft folder just become mentions in a paragraph in a random post like this.

We flew back to Texas for Christmas and some change.  Good times with the family, immediate, extended, and further extended with all these first cousins once removed (or are they called second cousins) running around now.  It’s quite confusing.  What do you call the children of your first cousins?  Wikipedia says you call them first cousins once removed but several dictionaries call them second cousins.  This whole time I’ve been calling them my nieces and nephews.

I was able to sneak in a Chick-Fil-A run while I was out car shopping with my moms.  It was as good as I remembered.

Car shopping was really strange this time around.  It wasn’t my first time but this time it felt especially awkward and uncomfortable.  We went to three different dealerships and all 4 salespeople that we spoke to used to same exact line on us:

“What can I do to earn your business today?”

Are they all reading from the same script?  Car dealerships are sort of one of those places that feel so out of place, like stepping through a time warp.  I get the same feeling when I step into a laundromat or a shoe repair place.  Most service industries have changed but there are a few who have hardly changed at all.  What’s especially awkward is when the salesperson slips out of the picture to get the sales manager and he/she comes to try to break it down to you and close the deal.  It feels strangely like an intimidation play but it’s so hokey and unbelievable that I don’t know why they do it except that I have to believe that it works quite often which is why they still do it and haven’t changed the way they do things.  I wonder if the car sales industry will change in the next ten years.  Like a Redfin but for cars?

I’ve been batting around the idea of starting a separate photoblog but I think I’ve decided to just intermingle the photoposts with this content.  We’ll see how it goes.

We spent a few days in Reno/Tahoe when we got back from Texas and that was really nice and relaxing.  We skiied at Mt. Rose which was ridiculously close to Reno.  It’s a pretty small resort but because of that there were zero lines and we went up the lift right when we wanted to.  It was snowing most of that day and now I know why powder is so prized by skiers and snowboaders.  I only fell twice (as opposed to the fifty times I fell when snowboarding) and both times were pretty painless as the snow was fluffy and soft.  I like skiing a lot more than snowboarding.  I’ll admit a big part of the reason is because it’s a lot easier to pick up and the boots don’t feel as heavy and clunky so I’m not tired so quickly.  And I like that you can ski right after you get off the lift since you don’t need to strap your boot back in.  And I feel much more in control so I’m not endangering others on the slopes.  All good reasons to pick skiing over snowboarding.  I think the only thing snowboarding has over skiing is that it looks a bit cooler.  I’m willing to give that up.  Haha seriously.

Ski resorts have the monopoly on laid back effortless cool.  It’s like a tropical beach resort without the sleaze.  What a cool part time job for a teenager.  Where else can you put your expensive ski equipment unattended and not worry about it getting stolen?

We went snowshoeing at North Star the next day.  It was really exhausting but a cool experience.  North Star is super nice, we’ll probably try to go there again MLK weekend.  I love that it’s only a 3 hour drive away from where we live.  That’s got to be one of the biggest perks of living over here.  It’s also nice to use our 4runner’s 4WD to its potential.  The husband was really excited that we were finally going to drive through snow in it.

Yesterday we played 3 hours of tennis in which the husband beat me 20 games in a row.  He’s a good coach.  I’m making improvements, slowly but surely.  I spotted a girl wearing a burnt orange t-shirt and excitedly asked her if she was from Texas.  She looked confused and explained that her tshirt was from some local Alameda league that she was in.  I don’t know, I thought we had exclusive rights to burnt orange?

We went to this showing tonight of ten different short films from the 2009 Sundance Festival at the San Rafael Film Center and my favorites were:

• John and Karen – Matthew Walker
• Omelette – Nadejda Koseva
• Countertransference – Madeleine Olnek

Picking up the camera from the UPS station on Monday.  More photos coming to you soon.

Currently watching a frustrating Warriors game against the Pacers.  Cheering for the Warriors feels a lot like cheering for the Rockets (okay, probably worse) but it’s more fun to watch Monta Ellis drive in than to watch Yao post up.

The things that have changed are pretty small but they all add up to a different kind of daily experience.

For example, I can’t look at a bike without checking to see if it’s a fixed gear anymore.  I check the weather every morning before I get dressed.  I go to sleep before midnight every weeknight.  My Google Reader activity has really tanked as I don’t have quite as much time on my hands and our weekends are spent out and about instead of indoors hiding from the heat.  I read Kindle books (on my iPhone) instead of real books.  I think public transportation is probably the biggest change in my life that has trickled into all of these little changes.  The only time I drive a car these days is when the husband is on a business trip so it’s pretty rare.  What else has changed?  I listen to less and less current hip hop and have been listening to a lot of Billie Holiday, Neko Case (she is brilliant), and A Tribe Called Quest.  Is this a sign of aging?

I haven’t been able to take as many photos as I would like but I think that will slowly increase as we spend more of our weekends out and about.  I’m seriously eyeing the Leica XI that is expected to be released in January.  It has a hefty price tag but it would mean that I could carry a powerful camera on me at all times.  The thought of that really excites me.

Speaking of changes, we’ve only been in our loft for a few months but we’ve already made some mods to the house.  Here are some before and after photos:

BEFORE

DURING (yikes!  there were definitely some moments when we looked at each other and said what in the world were we thinking?!)

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

We’ve definitely learned a lot about plumbing and cabinetry.  We’d still like to redo our bathroom floors into ceramic tiles, put up sliding closet doors, install a giant sliding screen for our large windows, and lay a brick veneer wall but we’re putting those off for now.  Those things can wait, there are trails to be hiked and restaurants to be tried!

P.S.  Warriors win with a great comeback!

All of our life belongings came in from TX yesterday and it was sort of overwhelming. While we were moving in we had the luck to meet Rick Holliday, the developer of our loft community and the person behind the vision for the Central Station community in Oakland. He’s also the brains behind the Clocktower lofts in SOMA in the city which led to a domino effect that rejuvenated the neighborhood. We’ve basically invested in this guy’s vision by buying a loft where we did and we were excited to meet him. He happened to be giving a tour of the lofts to this group of property developers from Australia and we met all of them as well. One even gave the husband a lapel pin with the US flag and the Aussie flag crisscrossed. (I totally just had the urge to type KrissKross as in “make you wanna jump”.)

Everything went well with the moving of stuff except our place now looks a lot like a real warehouse with boxes stacked higher than my head. The only thing is that they couldn’t find the little west elm coffee table and it was an awkward situation because the moving company takes the claim money for missing and damaged property right out of the driver’s pocket. I really didn’t want to make the guy pay for the coffee table but at the same time I know it’s important to have accountability.

Thankfully, the husband said that they found it today and dropped it off at our place.

Ethical dilemma avoided.

I have a backlog of weird stories and anecdotes from moving here but my train stop is coming up so we’ll end here today.

We picked up our cars that we shipped from Texas to California this past weekend.  When I got into my 4Runner and closed the door, a pesky mosquito flew across the dashboard.  I instinctively rolled down my window in hopes that it would naturally fly out and to my relief it did.  (I hate it when mosquitoes get stuck in the car cause you can never kill them when you are driving and they just keep biting you over and over.)  But right after I let it fly out, I was briefly worried that I had somehow introduced horrible mosquitoes to California.  Haha, stupid, I know.  But you know that Simpsons episode where they visit Australia and a frog from America jumps out of Bart’s backpack (I think I might be messing up the details) and the frog upsets the entire ecosystem and there’s an overpopulation of frogs??  Was this a Simpsons episode or was this a bad dream?

Haha okay that’s all.  More to come…

Also, when the movers came, I hadn’t done my research so I didn’t know how long it would take (11 hours!).  I also didn’t know how much to tip them and had to Google it last minute.  And I also wasn’t prepared to provide them lunch — thankfully the husband took off from work early and brought food for me and the movers.  The movers said that our house was considered an easy move since it’s not very big and we don’t have too much stuff.  They said that the longest job they’ve ever had was a house that took two days to pack and three days to move.  They said they had to work past midnight!  So eleven hours was a walk in the park.  If anyone ever needs to move in the future, a really good website for reading reviews on moving companies is http://movingscam.com/.  It’s incredibly thorough and teaches you what kind of questions to ask and what scams to watch out for.  We went with Atlantic Relocation which is an agent of Atlas.  Competitive quote, professional customer service, and better storage options.  I’m pretty happy so far, I’ll give an update when they’ve moved everything in our new place to see if there were any damages.

Our loft won’t be ready for a few more weeks so we’re currently staying in a hotel in Berkeley.  It feels a lot like we’re on an extended vacation.  Berkeley is really nice, I don’t think the students here realize how great they have it.  There are really nice restaurants and fun stores to walk to and the weather is pretty much perfect — significantly warmer than the city.

I’m still not used to how the city is with all the bus riding.  The BART is really easy to use, even for directionally challenged folks like myself.  But the buses will take awhile for me to learn.  And I’m always paranoid about getting stuck at the bottom of a huge hill.  I don’t think I would be able to navigate if I didn’t have an iPhone.  I love how Google Maps shows when the next bus will arrive!  I wish they showed where there were big hills.

This past weekend we went to the Sausalito Art Festival.  It was pretty great.  I loved how all the artists were on hand to discuss their art work.  I wish museums would do that — it’s always interesting to see the person behind the concept/art.

Here are some of the artists I liked the most:

• Marc Sijan (http://marcsijan.com/) — This guy was incredible.  He made realistic life size sculptures of people — think Ripley’s Believe it or Not Wax Museum but a million times better.  I don’t remember what material he uses to make the sculptures but they are so lifelike!  Down to the wrinkles of the skin and the freckles/sunspots on people.  I kept bracing myself for it to be a big practical joke and for the sculpture to move and scare the crowd like one of those “Just for Laughs” episodes.  Really amazing.  Check out the website, the pictures do a pretty good job of conveying how lifelike they are.
• Lisa Kristine (http://lisakristine.com) — There were several photography exhibits at the festival but this was head and shoulders above the rest.  I think just by looking at Flickr photos for the past few years, I’ve gotten a lot pickier about photos I like.  I still think my own photography is child’s play but I can better distinguish other people’s good photography from amazing photography.  Now I know why people become art historians.  I do think it’s a bit unfair to compare this woman’s photography to the others at the exhibit because she’s traveled to a lot of fascinating places but there were some exhibits with photos from culturally exotic places that just didn’t capture the moments and the emotion that this woman was able to.  Ugh, ended with a preposition.  So sue me.
• Jeffrey Zachmann (http://zachmann.com/) — This exhibit was really cool.  I had to drag the husband away.  This guy makes kinetic sculptures — think Mousetrap but more complex.  Haha, do you like how I’m making tangible comparisons?  It’s such a simple concept but for some reason watching balls move through the sculpture just seemed to draw everyone in — regardless of age.  I’m surprised he doesn’t have YouTube videos.  You’ll just have to take my word for it.
• Nick Wroblewski (http://nickwroblewski.com/) — The guy does woodcut prints mostly of nature (landscapes and animals).  I think the whole woodcut print process is pretty neat, just because you have to create and think in such a different way.
• Leif Holland (http://www.squareroom.us/leif.htm) — I would totally hang this guy’s stuff in our house.  He basically takes box frames and uses natural wood and painted wood to create a slice or cross-section of a forest… if that makes sense.  It’s probably easier for you to look at the pictures on this one.

Huh, I don’t have an art blogpost category.  Not very cultured of me.  I’m working on it.  I’ll add a category to be optimistic.

So I’ve realized that not only am I sucker for bad television but I’m also a sucker for bad music.  It is so hard to clean out my iTunes library because I can always imagine a circumstance in which I’ll want to listen to that music.  It was really hard for me to delete the Beach Boys “Kokomo” today.  I NEVER listen to that song, but whenever I play it to delete it, I end up keeping it.  Partly because it reminds me of that Full House episode when they go to Hawaii and get to go on stage with the Beach Boys and partly because one time Tony and I were singing it at his parents house and his mom asked us if we were singing church songs — which I find hilarious.

Also, I can’t bring myself to delete any of my cheesy Brian McKnight slow jams.  Too much nostalgia associated with them.

I also can’t streamline my Asian music even though I rarely listen to it anymore.  Anytime I start sorting through them, I start getting into the mood to listen to them.  So I keep them, and I don’t listen to any of them until the next time I’m trying to streamline my music library.

And the new obnoxious funky electro house music I’ve acquired this year?  I keep imagining throwing a huge rave party with lots of white and neon and lots of people wearing sunglasses at night and I think it’d be the perfect music for something like that.

I also have crazy rock music that I think would go well with house painting or a snowboarding video that I might make in the future so I don’t delete those tracks either.

So I’m stuck with a fat, inconsistent iTunes library.  I really only listen to 50% of it.  Maybe less.

You know how women are susceptible to osteoporosis?  Well turns out, Asians are especially susceptible.  So yeah, double jeopardy.  I really need to start taking my one-a-day vitamins.  When I was in elementary school someone told me that their dad ate too many vitamins and he grew a sixth finger on his right hand.  I’ve always felt uneasy about vitamins since then.

I’ve deleted the past 3 posts I’ve written so I’m going to go ahead and publish this one even though it’s… yeah, pressing publish right now.

Last night I had a disturbing dream that this group of people was fund raising for their cause by laying down on the 610 freeway in front of cars until people donated money.  They were really successful!  People were pissed but were mostly late to work already so they forked over the money.  They even had one of those mobile credit card machines like they use at the car rental places where they can print you out a receipt right then and there!  I can usually trace the roots of my dreams but I have no idea where that came from.

——————————————————————————————-

Has Google Notifier been sucking for you lately?  It has for me.  It checks my Gmail at slow intervals and sometimes I have mail and it hasn’t checked yet so it doesn’t tell me.  Anyway, found a hack for it today that I’d like to share (for Mac users):

1. Click on the mail icon in your menubar so that the drop down menu appears
2. Hold down command + option WHILE clicking on “Preferences” in the drop down menu
3. A box will pop up with two fields, key and value
4. In the key field, type “AutocheckInterval” (case sensitive)
5. In the value field, type the number of minutes you want for the interval between checks (i.e. I put “1″ for 1 minute)
6. Quit the notifier
7. Run the app

Thanks to the MacOSXHints Forums!

(En route from Houston to Austin on Highway 290 on a beautiful summer night)

So come with me to a place that we don’t know
If you need some inspiration before we go, just know
It’s the way I have fallen in with you
Come with me, I just wanna say hello
It’s the way I have fallen in with you

– “Bandstand in the Sky” from the album Nightcrawler, Pete Yorn

It was the summer of 2006 and the husband and I had faithfully been listening to Pete’s first two CDs, Musicforthemorningafter and Day I Forgot for four straight years together.  We even bought Pete’s Live from New Jersey– never mind that it only had a couple of new songs.  I guess that’s what happens when you really become a fan of somebody.  I wouldn’t know, I’m not a very good music fan.  I rarely remember song lyrics, I often don’t recognize artists when I put my iTunes on shuffle, and I generally dislike going to concerts.

But this was different.  This was Pete Yorn and he was playing a show in Austin as part of his “You and Me” acoustic tour to promote the release of his third CD, Nightcrawler.  The only other artist that even comes close to how much I like Pete Yorn is Elliott Smith and I definitely don’t know all of his songs (granted, Elliott has a ton more songs than Pete).

So yeah, the concert was on a Wednesday night, but who cares, because we were going to leave right after work on Wednesday, watch the show, and drive straight into work on Thursday morning.  This is one of the things I love the most about the husband.  In the face of logistical difficulty, his stance is always, “If we really want to do this, let’s just do it.  We shouldn’t let things like driving or less sleep stop us.  C’mon, it’ll be worth it.”

I know this sounds silly but the night felt magical.  I think working in a cubicle day-in and day-out had really robbed me of my wonder.  As we drove to Austin I remarked at how pretty the drive was and how much I missed it.  And then we did something we never do on our drives to Austin.  We pulled over to the side of the road, got out of the car, took photos and just enjoyed the peacefulness of a Texas summer.  (That’s when I took the picture that’s posted above.)

By the time we arrived in Austin the sun was already making it’s final goodbyes over the DKR Texas Memorial Stadium.  We found parking pretty easily downtown since it was a Wednesday night and we excitedly hurried upstairs to The Parish, one of my favorite venues in Austin.  The place was still fairly empty, we were super early.  I’m really glad we were early though because the place eventually got pretty packed and because we were early we had a good spot near the front that let me take the following photos:

I took these photos in RAW format because I knew I wanted as much room to process as possible.  But the crazy thing is I never had the software to even look at RAW format photos until I got this MacBookPro this past year.  So two days ago I just came across this old CD-R in an old spindle of CDs that had “PETE YORN PHOTOS” written in large block letters in yellow sharpie (what a stupid color for a sharpie, I think it came in a set).  It was such a delight to open these pictures up in Aperture, see these photos for the first time, and relive the night all over again.

It was a great concert.  Probably the best concert of my life.  The crowd was great, everyone was singing along.  The setting was relatively intimate, the Parish room isn’t all that big.  So many moments during the concert, the husband and I would look at each other with beaming smiles and just wordlessly relish in the fact that this was an amazing concert and wasn’t it so great to hear Pete live and acoustic and wasn’t it so great to be here together.

We left the concert glowing.  Thanks to Judy for letting us crash at your place that night.

So fast forward three years to 2009.  Pete’s coming to Houston on July 14 at the Meridian and we already have tickets for it.  Will it be as memorable as our first?  Probably not.  But will it be a great concert?  I sure hope so.

——————————————————————————–

In other news, I got the following email from Facebook last night:

Subject: Alexander Rodriguez added you as a friend on Facebook

Alexander added you as a friend on Facebook.  We need to confirm that you know Alexander in order for you to be friends on Facebook.

A-Rod?!  Wait until I tell Lawrence!!

Unfortunately, when I went home and opened my Facebook Friend Requests page, I found this fellow looking at me.

Wrong Alexander Rodriguez.  I’ll refrain from any Super Mario jokes.  Beyond that one.