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A Stinky Plant and the Golden Gate Park Conservatory of Flowers
Today was good day.
Farrah and I decided yesterday to go to the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. I told Farrah about the Amorphophallus titanum, which blooms once very couple of years. When it blooms it smells like “rotting flesh”. Yum! I wanted to see it, wanted to see the City since it is a three day weekend. So we went.
The drive and weather was very nice. There was a slight crowd in the park, people going to the Japanese Gardens, the Botanical Gardens and the Conservatory. The Conservatory had about four different rooms of various temperature and humidity, depending on the type of plants in the room. You can see the pictures on [Flickr]- sign-up and log in to see more!
On our way back from the exhibit we even ran into a weekly swing dance class! Oh, we should have joined them in a number or two but our stomachs were growling due as it was lunch time.
Melissa’s was closed so we headed to Hillsdale Mall to eat at California Pizza Kitchen. Afterwards we roamed the mall, where Farrah saw [Malou Nubla]! Ugh, I missed seeing here though.
#1 on Google!!!
I know this is cheesy, but janella.com is the #1 search result when searching for ‘janella’ on Google! The site was not even ranked in the top 20 results before. Guess Google fixed some things?
William's Memorial Service
We attended a memorial service for Bill today. It was a very nice ceremony at the Los Gatos United Methodist Church. Rex and Wendy shared some memorable moments about their father, and Kayla and Ella even spoke of their memories about their grandfather. Bill will be missed but never forgotten.
This is the obituary notice as posted in the Mercury News:
William Fred Traber
William Fred Traber (Bill) Aged 76, passed away May 15, after a massive stroke. He was born in Denver, Colorado in 1928. He attended the University of Colorado on a scholarship, graduating with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He was a Naval Officer on the U.S.S. Toledo during the Korean War, meeting his future wife and lifelong partner, of 53 years, at the foot of Mt. Fujiyama, Japan in 1951.
Settling in San Jose (1953) he worked on Quality Control, at Economics Laboratory. Later working for IBM for 35 years, in The Research and Development Lab. He was given many awards for his contributions to the company and co-authored several patents. Bill was on the ski patrol, when at the University and enjoyed skiing all his life. He had a black belt in Judo and in Karate. He also practiced Tai Chi. He was an intelligent, hardworking, generous and kind man. A loving and devoted son, brother, husband and father, a playful and involved grandfather, thoughtful friend and neighbor.
He is survived by his 100 year old mother, Maude Parsons, his brother Ronald Traber, his wife Doris Traber, his children Wendy and Rex Traber, his daughter-in-law Susana Traber, his son-in-law Michael Mason, his granddaughters Kayla and Ella Traber.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Quick Shot: Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, killing every Jedi in sight.
What I liked about the movie: A lot of action, some dialoge. Nice to see the pace pick up, which made the movie flow better. Love the lightsaber duels.
What I didn’t like: The acting is still wooden, probably due to the director and the script.
More later on the overall theater experience. I can say right now, boy I’m tired, but I gotta work today. Oh well.
Coming Soon.....
…but not soon enough. Have you seen the new Playstation 3 design? From what I read it has a pretty powerful processor comes in different colors too! You can probably find more information at places like Gamespot.com
William (Bill) - You Will Be Missed
Susana called me to tell me that Rex’s father had passed away. He suffered a stroke earlier this month and never recovered. He will be missed.
I didn’t know Bill that well, only talking to him at family get-togethers such as Mother’s Day brunches at the Coconut Grove, Kayla’s birthdays and especially Thanksgivings. He was always very talkative, very energetic and always willing to lend a hand to anyone. He was always up on current events and had an opinion on mostly anything. I enjoyed talking to him when possible. He always took an interest in the latest camera (digital or otherwise) I had.
My lasting memory of him is in this photo with Kayla and Ella. It was during Thanksgiving at Rex and Susana’s home. Bill was showing Kayla and Ella how to defend themselves and fight as well. “Just a little playtime with Grandpa.”
You will be missed.
Looking @ My Old Blog
Since I was contemplating a new blogging service, I was looking at my old blog at [blogger.com] You can take at look at it here:
You can see the whole in entries from April 2003 when I stopped using it to April of 2005 when I came back to play. I recently did some side-by-side posts on my blogger.com site and [LiveJournal.com] using [Flickr.com]. I must say the template look for blogger.com is much cleaner, stylized than most of the templates I’ve seen so far on LiveJournal.com
The problem I have with blogger.com is that you need a domain name in order to post your blog on a domain (e.g. janella.org) or you can have a blogspot address. For my blog it was janella.blogspot.com
The [360.yahoo.com] is still a maturing blog that doesn’t have a lot of features that I would like to use right now. First off it can’t accept Flickr posts (I’m sure it will in the future as Flickr was aquired by Yahoo!). Also there isn’t an ability to customize the look of your blog as of yet.
I haven’t played with Typepad much, but I assume it is like Movable Type, which I’ve used before. The only problem I have with Typepad upfront is the cost. Packages start at $4.95/month to $14.95/month (that’s how much I pay for web hosting!!!) Here at LiveJournal.com, if you choose to have a paid site, it would be as much as $25/year which is a little over $2/month. Not bad.
So I choose LiveJournal.com for now. Now it’s time to look for a home for photos. Is Flickr the solution or is there somewhere else?
National Treasure
Rating:** 1/2 out of five
Quick Shot:Nic Cage plays a treasure hunter/treasure protector in this action packed film. Yeah, it’s a little like “Indiana Jones meets teh Da Vinci Code”.
What I liked about the movie:Good chemistry between the cast. The storyline keeps moving. A good film to put in and just enjoy, not thinking much about anything.
What I didn’t like:I didn’t care much for the Jon Voight character. Strike that…I don’t care much for Jon Voight at all.
Visiting Yen and Heidi and Changes to Janella.com
These are photos from our visit with Yen and Heidi last week. You can see the rest by logging into the [Photos @ Flickr] pages. Yes, you will need to sign up for an account. It’s free and easy!
So as you can see the page is now a little different. This is because I’m trying out new services and am planning to move {Janella.com] off of the web hosting service at [hostgator.com].
Why?
Well, I’ve been playing with hosting a web site for some time now, different incarnations here and there. This last year has been great with using Wordpress for blogging (which is a great piece of software) and Gallery for photo management (another piece of great software). I’m just not in the mood any longer the manage the daily aspects of hosting a web site. I might move back to that platform once an integrated version becomes available, but for now managing the web site is a chore.
So I have moved the blog portion of Janella.com to [LiveJournal.com’s] services. I found out that Fina uses it for [her blog] when I sent here an invite to join Yahoo!’s new blogging service, [360.yahoo.com] I gave Livejournal.com a spin and found it suits my basic needs for blogging. Now on to a photo management site.
I found [filckr.com] suits my needs even before Yahoo! acquired them a couple of months ago. I find that it works well with blogging images to [LiveJournal.com], so it’s pretty cool in that respect.
I’ll need to work on posting older images up (if people still want to see them that is). But anyway, I think this set up should work for a while, until I get the urge to manage a full web site again.
I plan on writing a little about why I chose LiveJournal over Yahoo!, Typepad and Blogger as a blog hosting service. In the meantime, drop a note, comment or just look around and tell me what you think of the new setup. Oh, so to see all the photos on my filckr account you need to sign up for a free flickr account at [flickr.com] and I can add you as a family or friend member. Search for me under “sith_kicker” to add me on your list. Yeah, I’ll write more about why I chose that user name as well.
Anyway, back to enjoying the weekend.
Remembering Rockville
I was feeling nostalgic yesterday afternoon. It most likely started because I was listening to R.E.M.’s (Don’t Go Back To) Rockville, a song we played quite often when I was stationed in Iceland.
The year I spent in Iceland started very rough. When I arrived in March, the snow had yet to begun to melt. I remember falling down a couple of times in my dress blues, not getting used to all the ice and snow. It was difficult to fit in with my roommate on main base as well. Then my uncle died, without my mom or sisters telling me.
I was always afraid that my father would pass away when I was in the service - in some far off place without being able to spend some time with him. When my uncle died - my dad’s brother - it hit me very hard. I had just seen him the week before I left. He had suffered a massive stroke. He could not communicate and was being fed through a tube it his stomach. It was difficult to see this once vital man in this condition. And then I would picture my father in such a state, without me there to help him or be with him.
What hurt more of course was my mom not telling me he passed away. She didn’t want me to worry, didn’t want me to come back to California for the funeral as I just left there. She didn’t think the military would give me leave, but they would have. I got drunk that night. I got very drunk.
So there is that memory to deal with when I think of Iceland, but there many fond memories as well. I won’t get into them, but I wanted to see if there was any information about Rockville, the little radar station I was at, on the Internet. You know what there is!
I found [Ken Walsh’s] pages on pbase, specifically his page on [Rockville, Iceland]. And I also found [this page on Homestead.com] which shows Rockville as a drug rehab facility now.
Things have changed.
Tori Amos @ Davies Symphony Hall
Last night we saw Tori Amos perform at the Davies Symphony Hall. It was our first concert at Davies, but not our first Tori concert. I have been to a handful of her concerts at various venues. It never ceases to amaze me how such a tiny, seemingly fragile woman could have such a powerful voice, and play the piano with such extreme passion.
The original tickets we got from [ticketmaster.com] where in Tier H, seat 2-4. But on the Friday before the concert, I went online on a hunch and tried to see if there were any better seats. Sometimes tickets (and better seats) are released closer to the performance date. I took the chance and scored orchestra seating, about 15 rows back!
Surprisingly, finding Davies Symphony Hall, parking near the Hall, and getting the will call tickets was very easy. I wouldn�t mind seeing another performance there. Anyway, here was last night’s set list. My favorite song from last night? “Sweet the Sting” which I think is Farrah’s current favorite song on the album.
Set List (04.24.05 - Davies Symphony Hall)
Original Sinsuality
Little Amsterdam
China
Goodbye Pisces
Space Dog
Seaside
Icicle
Father Figure (George Michael cover)
Moonshadow (Cat Stevens cover)
Marys of the Sea
Marianne
Mother Revolution
Mother
Bells For Her
The Beekeeper
1st Encore
Sweet The Sting
Purple People
2nd Encore
Cool On Your Island
Leather
U2 @ San Jose HP Pavillion
Ok, a moment to reflect on last night’s concert.
This was the sixth time seeing U2, but my first general admission experience in seeing them. The first time I saw U2 was from behind home plate at the Oakland Coliseum on the ZooTV tour. The Pop tour came next, the first time seeing them two shows in a row. This experience was unique in that the first night Farrah, Doug and I had seats way up high in the 200 section (again at the Oakland Coliseum), then the next night we were in the 5th row! Talk about being able to get an overall perspective of the show.
I was lucky enough watch U2’s Elevation tour both at San Jose Compaq Pavilion (with Doug) and Oakland Coliseum Arena (with Farrah) for two different shows. When I saw them in San Jose it was towards the beginning of their tour, the group was energetic. Later in the tour, two months after 9/11, they came to Oakland a bit more subdued and somber. But this concert they came out rocking. Here is the list of songs they played:
- Love and Peace
- Vertigo
- Elevation
- Cry / Electric Co.
- An Cat Dubh / Into the Heart
- City of Blinding Lights
- Beautiful Day
- Miracle Drug
- Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own
- New Year's Day
- Sunday Bloody Sunday
- Bullet The Blue Sky
- Running to Standstill
- Pride in the name of love
- Where the Streets Have No Name
- One
- The Fly
- Mysterious Ways
- Original of the Species
- All Because of You
- Yahweh
- 40
The open act was the Kings of Leon, who didn’t sound half bad. From their interaction with the crowd, it seemed as if they had a rough night the previous show.
Still a Little Wired
Just got back from the U2 concert at the HP Pavilion. I’m still a little jazzed from the experience. I’ll probably be really tired some time tomorrow. I’m winding down right now to last night’s episode of Law and Order: Criminal Intent. I’ll write more on the concert later.
Thoughts from Yosemite Lodge
Today’s blog entry was typed in the Yosemite Lodge, room 4109 Aspen building in Yosemite, California. It’s around 10:40 pm right now.
Today is my birthday. It has been a wonderful day. I don’t have access to the Internet here, at least not in the room, so I am typing this blog entry into Microsoft Word and will place it on the site later. And later is now, since you are reading these words at this moment.
We arrived in Yosemite late yesterday. We left Sunnyvale around 11:45 am, but not before Farrah and my mom sing happy birthday to me. Farrah bought me a huge chocolate chip cookie from Mrs. Fields, candles and frosting included! After blowing out the candles, going to Huong Lan and Starbucks, we heading off to Yosemite.
Coming in on the 120 route (West entrance) we were treated to a lot of snow and a view of valleys and waterfalls we haven’t seen before. The trek into Yosemite was through some high altitude and winding roads. Very high hitting 4000 feet and very winding on par with some of the hairy stuff on Highway 1. We were trying to take the South West Entrance (which is Highway 140), but mistakenly thought 120 was the route we were thinking about. Oh well, it worked out great. We saw a lot of great snow and even saw two wolves on the way in! They were on the road way, causing people to stop and stare. Luckily no one was stupid enough to get out of their car or at least I think they weren’t.
We checked in late afternoon, getting a very nice room on the second floor. The room has two full beds, a bathroom, balcony, and surprisingly a television. Granted the television only receives 5-6 channels, but we weren’t expecting one at all. We have been watching mostly the National Geographic Channel which is on a religious kick this weekend, it being Easter weekend and all. The show we’ve been watching is called “Quest for Truth”. We watched episodes “Quest for Noah’s Flood”, “King Soloman’s Tablet”, and the ever popular “Quest for Hogzilla”
Well, getting to today’s events. The morning started off slow for me. Farrah woke me up saying happy birthday and trying to get me up. She pried my eyes open by mentioning presents. Present I got to open on my birthday were:
- Mike and Ikes
- Hersey's Miniatures (nuts and regular)
- [Superman/Batman Hardcover] - covering the Supergirl saga
- Alton Brown's "[I'm Just Here for the Food]"
When I post the photos you will be able to see that I still looked a little groggy. Farrah let me sleep a couple more hours.
We had breakfast at the local Yosemite Lodge cafeteria, where the food is so so and the price is a little high. Convenience has its cost. We then took a trip to the Yosemite Village, where we scored some very good parking in the lot. At Yosemite Village we went to the Ansel Adams Museum which we never visited. After looking around the Village more, we decided to head back up Highway 120. We noticed several places to stop off and take photos, but didn’t take the opportunity on our drive in.
We stopped by a river bank and took some photos (see the feet photo), and then made our way up further for a valley type shot. We were amazed at the amount of people here this weekend as it wasn’t this crowded the last three years we came. At least from what we remember the park is usually sparse this time of year. Oh well, just have to deal, right?
After our Highway 120 trip, we headed back to Yosemite Village to get lunch at Degnan’s Deli. A couple of weird things happened: (1) a dog we ran into twice at Yosemite Village earlier, we ran into on Highway 120 as he was heading out of Yosemite!; and (2) after circling the parking lot once at Yosemite Village, we ending up with the exact same parking spot we had only two hours ago!
Degnan’s Deli was a good choice as the food was good. It was also a bad choice as the line and wait was very long. It took about an hour to get our sandwiches. Having a late lunch pushed our dinner plans back considerably, as we were going to have dinner in the Mountain Room Restaurant.
The Mountain Room Restaurant is here at Yosemite Lodge, walking distance from our room. The restaurant is somewhat pricey because (1) their food is good, and (2) the view is good and well, during the daytime. We had a great late birthday dinner. Farrah had the Pork Roast ever so tender, and I had the Lamb Shank ever so tender as well. Each bite almost didn’t require thought to chew or even the ability to chew itself. The food just melted in your mouth. We had to save room for dessert as well: bread pudding for Farrah, and two scoops of chocolate ice cream for me. Man, how many times have I used the work “chocolate” in this entry?
Well, it is almost 11:15 pm right now, as I’m finishing up these last thoughts. Farrah is sleeping soundly. The room is nice and toasty, and the view from the window into the dark night is wonderfully lit by the full moon. Tomorrow we plan to see a water fall or two, hopefully around sunrise. As for today, and actually this month as my birthday was celebrated with Rex’s on March 12th, it has been a great birthday this year.
I love you all and thank you for making my birthday this year memorable.
What's Been Happening Besides Site Updates?
I haven’t posted anything personal lately. I’ve been a bit busy with little things here and there. Plus most of the things I want to vent about deals with work. If you’ve read some of my past posts you’ll know about reasons for my hesitation to vent about work.
Farrah and I have been planning our concerts to see this year. So far on the agenda there is U2, Tori Amos and Jack Johnson. The Tori ticket buy was just as hectic as the U2 buy, as described earlier. Jack Johnson went without a hitch because it is a general admission event.
Last week, March 12th, we went to Santa Cruz to celebrate Rex’s and my birthday. We had some great ribs, and crab for those who didn’t want ribs. I packed away my share of ribs, stopping at 9 - though I could have continued. There are some digital pictures of the dinner, but I want to wait and get the film photos developed as well.
Gordon’s birthday was also this month, the 9th I believe. Sorry for the check mix up Gordon. Guess I was thinking of those [Girl Scout Cookies] that Tessie still needs to send!