./janella.com

I’m posting again directly to Janella.com using the famous Wordpress. Yes, I have left my irregular blogging on my Vox account. Actually, I will continue to do irregular blogging on Vox, but my regular musings will occur here.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Vox a lot. I like it better than MySpace, Friendster, Multiply, Facebook, and LiveJournal. Why?

• Nice templates
• Friendly community
• Easy to use blog posting screen.
• Great privacy controls. You can let everyone, friends, family or neighbors view what you post.
• The ability to upload photos, videos, and sound files.
• The ability to access your accounts like Flickr, Photobucket and such to post.
• Meeting new people.

What ended up NOT working for me was:

• Lack of personal customization. Recently added was an ability to add a banner images which is cool, though. I would like to have had the ability to add links to my other 'Me Sites'.
• Inability to for non-registered users to comment on your blog entries.

While the pros seem to outweigh the cons, the cons felt pretty big as time passed. If I never had a web hosting account or used Wordpress or MovableType, I guess I wouldn’t know what running my own blog/site would feel like. But that last pro, Meeting new people. is a big reason why I keep my Flickr account and will keep my Vox account.

There are so many interesting people out there, posting funny personal musings, intriguing thoughts. and stunning photographs that it’s hard to pry yourself away from a community you’ve joined. So I will be a visitor there from time to time. But for now, and the foreseeable future, I’m right here and will write here.

I’m home.

Tru dat!

This last weekend farrah and I flew down to San Diego to help Heidi and Yen move to their new apartment.  Unfortunately, I was just getting over a cold so I was a bit grumpy at times.

The flight going to San Diego had a slight delay.  The flight there was uneventful, though on landing the air pressure really got to my ears.  It was as if someone was pinching my ear drums.  I could not hear for sometime afterwards.  I guess I wasn’t over my cold after all.

James flew in from Oakland as well, so we all met at the airport.  We grabbed a bit to eat that night at a place called Yard House.  I guess their main claim to serving the world’s largest selection of draft beer.  I tried something called a Delirum Tremens - a bitter Belgium beer.  I didn’t really enjoy it much and downed it quickly ordering a Black & Tan to fill the void.  farrah had the SLO Blueberry Ale and the Lost Coast Apricot Wheat beer.   Even Yen had a SLO Blueberry Ale.

On Saturday, we got up a bit late, but was able to move everything in the afternoon.  The slow part was the loading of the U-Haul that Yen had rented.  Unload went by really quickly.  It probably when by quick because we were all thinking of dinner at Rei do Gado.   Farrah ate there with Yen and Heidi the last time we were in San Diego, and I really wanted to go there.  Even though we had an 8 o’clock reservation we still had to wait.  But I think the wait was worth it.  Honestly, I wish I ate more meat!

On Sunday we took a brief trip across the border into Tijuana, Mexico.  It was my first time there.  We ate at a little taco stand Heidi had eaten at before.  There was also several other places where various snacks were consumed.  We didn’t really buy anything there as the weather was turning cloudy, so we headed back across the border to shop at the Las Americas.  I think we stayed a bit to long there because we needed to rush back for James to catch his flight.  Thanks to Heidi’s mad driving James made his flight with about 15 minutes to spare.

Our plane back home was late in departing and I was feeling run down.   When I got home that night I knew I was sick once again.  I think I caught Heidi’s cold!  Now I’ve been sick most of February.  Hopefully, I will get better in March.

This past three-day weekend could have been more than what it was. Unfortunately, I caught the cold that has been hounding farrah for the past week. Thursday night found me with a scratchy throat. By Friday afternoon I was feeling rundown.

Friday night I resolved to spend most of Saturday in bed, hoping to salvage Sunday and Monday for some fun. But Farrah reminded me that the post office was open for passport renewal on this special Saturday, so morning rest had to wait. We got up early, but not early enough to beat the approximately 100 people in front of us in line. It took us ninety minutes to process through the line, then less then 10 minutes to actually process our paperwork. After eating brunch - since it was about 10:30 am, we headed home and me into bed.

Sunday morning I was still dopey, and Monday didn’t seem much better. But yet, I crawled slowly out of bed each day just to get out and about around the house. The only thing we really accomplished together this weekend, besides the passport renewal, was several levels of Zelda on the Wii.

Perhaps the weekend wasn’t lost after all.

I know I haven’t been blogging much lately.  There are several reasons for this, but the task taking up most of my free time has been trying to defeat General RAAM.  He’s the ugly MOFO you see below:

If I haven’t mentioned already, farrah’s Christmas present to me was an XBOX 360.  From previous posts you probably know I gave her a Wii for her birthday.  So now we have games system to the hilt - only lacking a Playstation 3 - which I see plunking down any change for anytime soon.

farrah knows I was debating the merits of an XBOX 360 versus a Playstation 3.  But when I started gushing about how “Gears of War” looked pretty cool on the XBOX 360, she pulled the trigger on it as my present. (Wow, what a wife!)

GOW has been a pretty fun game. A bloody, violent and profanity laced adventure which is all you can ask for in a shoot ‘em up type game.  But killing General RAAM, the last boss in the game, doesn’t take the normal blunt force trauma method.  It required numerous precise shots to his noggin while his shield of flying friends are not surrounding him.  Oh, he’s also armed with a gatlin gun that can cut you in half, so it even makes it more difficult.

It took me the good part of a week to finally kill him.  And now that game part is over and I have more free time to blog…and to play “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” on the Wii.

After having dinner at home, farrah and I were watching TV a commercial for Carl’s Jr. milkshakes came on. Well, not twenty minutes later did I find myself in my truck heading over to get a couple of them for dessert … even though it’s freakin' 30 degrees outside.

Damn advertising.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq25qD44hC0&w=640&h=480]

farrah and I went to see Imogen Heap at the Warfield this past Sunday, December 3rd.  We hadn’t been to a concert in quite sometime.  I think the last concert we saw was Esthero at the Filmore back in July.

We got a late start to the Warfield, not really having a desire to see the only listed opening act who, Kid Beyond.  I had never heard of him, but then again I have never heard of some of the opening acts I had seen at the Warfield before.  I never heard of Cheryl Crow when she opened for Crowded House.  I never heard of Jewel when she opened for Liz Phair.  And I never heard of Tricky when he opened for PJ Harvey.  I’m not saying Kid Beyond is in the same league as these opening acts, but he was very entertaining.

We caught the tail end of Levi Weaver’s performance.  He had the crowd going on and made me interested in hearing how his studio work would be.

Kid Beyond in Toronto

Imogen Heap came briefly on stage to introduce Kid Beyond.  The dude beat boxes and so much more.  He did a little Nine Inch Nails, some Portishead, and some of his own stuff.  You can catch some clips, such as this, on YouTube.  All the performers used a machine that Imogen Heap called a parrot.  I’m not sure if that is the correct reference, but basically the performer records a vocal or sound that they layer upon until they have the affect they are trying to achieve. Anyway, it was a very good performance.

Imogen then came out twenty minutes later. She started by walking through the general admission crowd on the floor.  farrah and I were located in very good seats, first row lodge, so we could see her milling about there in the dark, singing the vocals to her first song.  I had never seen Imogen Heap perform, or never seen a video by her, so I was quite surprised to by her stage presence and performance.

She put on a strong performance considering she had a nasty cold she caught from Levi Weaver.  From her stage look and keyboard talent, all I could think of was that she may be the lost love child of Cyndi Lauper and Thomas Dolby. You can see photos of her on Flickr here.  I didn’t realize she is the girl in the red coat you see on Flickr’s home page from time to time.

She danced around stage with reckless abandon and played her keyboards and other instruments with (mostly) perfect precision. Her parrot failed her on one of her songs, but her cold never slowed her down.  She talks and responds to the crowd in her cute voice.  Very cool interaction.

Hopefully she’ll come around again in a couple of years after working on her next album.

farrah and I took a trip down south to visit friends. We haven't visited Yen and Heidi since they moved there last year. My friend Tage has lived in San Diego for several years and I have never visited him there.

We caught an evening flight out of SJO, arriving to unexpected warm weather in San Diego around 9:30 pm. Farrah and I didn't eat dinner before leaving San Jose, so Yen and Heidi - who picked us up at the airport - treated us to Extraordinary Desserts. We entered the eatery a little before eleven and the place closed at midnight. But the place was extrememly busy for 70 minutes we were there.

Our waitress seemed distracted. I'm guessing she was thinking about the end of the day more then about how to provide decent service for her customers. Everyone at our table ordered a type of panini, but I can't remember what kind I had. For dessert I ended up with Chocolate Short Bread which tasted like an overbaked cookie. I know that doesn't sound appealing to some, but I enjoyed it. I would have been better with a big glass of milk. Farrah, in her quest to find the perfect bread pudding, had their warmed bread pudding a la mode. Yum!

On Saturday morning we tried eating at Hash House A Go Go before splitting up for the weekend. Farrah was going to hang out with Yen and Heidi while I hung out with Tage for the rest of he weekend. The plan was to have breakfast, then split up. Unfortunately, the Hash House A Go Go was a little too busy when we did a drive by. We decided to go to a local Starbucks, then went our separate ways.

Shopping was on the agenda for the girls, while I had a hankering to go to the zoo and take photos. I haven't been to a zoo since I was a teenager, so I thought the San Diego Zoo would be the touristy thing to do. Plus I've been uninspired lately in taking photos.

I planned to take a lot of photos while in San Diego with the NIkon D70s. But while unpacking the night before, I found that I left a 1GB memory card back home. This meant I was down to only one 1GB card. I shoot in RAW, so that only afforded me 138 photos. But I thought, no worries, because I brought my portable hard drive, right? I even charged the hard drive two nights ago to ensure it was ready for the trip. But yes, you guessed it, I filled my memory card half way through the trip through the zoo, and then then took out the hard drive to dump the photos but (queue the wah wah wahhhh sound effect) the hard drive didn't work! Damn!!!

My photo shooting experience at the zoo and surrounding area felt a little truncated due to the memory card shortage. But oh well. I figured we could stop by a Best Buy or other store to pick up a card for the next day. After the zoo, Tage and I walked around Balboa Park. I must have seen at least five wedding parties taking photos in the surrounding area. I'll need to explore Balboa Park a little more on another visit.

We tried to meet up for dinner with the girls, but time and distance was against us. So Tage and I ending up eating at Fleming, a very nice steak house. The girls ended up at the Rei DO Gado Churrascaria, a Brazilian place I heard about and wanted to try, and which Farrah enjoyed.

Boy, my blogging stamina ain't what it used to be. I'll have need to blog about what happened on Sunday at a later time. I should work on the rest of the photos from the trip as well.