As with every obsession that comes around Dylan's head, now comes the marble obsession. He can't seem to have enough marbles, but I indulge because they make excellent photo subjects – in bright sunlight or in flash diffused light as with the above picture taken in absolute dark and using a few white styrofoam bowls and some white paper sheets to complete the experiment – now my obsession comes to light.
3:46 PM | |
Braving cold weather, we simply had to go see the Red White & Blue Balloon Festival (or something like that). I've been close to a hot air balloon before, but nothing compared to a giant mass of them all together in one grassy field, bobbing up and down and loudly spewing hot air and flames every now and then to keep them afloat. The balloons were tethered and when it got darker, they all fired up and thus, the balloon glow came to be.
7:19 AM | |
CES 2007, a bit of a disappointment this year as all the excitement was over at MacWorld. Not as much gadgetry like in past years, and it was held during the week so I could only go for one day. You simply can't do CES in ONE day. That leaves you absolutely no time to test out the Karoke microphones …
The Sony Digital book can hold up to hundreds of books and travels well. BUT, can it let you see and feel the delicate cover of Fragile Things, or enable you to scribble notes in the margins of phenomenal passages that you won't want to soon forget? Will it self-destruct in 5 seconds if you share it with someone who hasn't paid for the book, because after all, it is Sony and they've been known to install a malicious program or two in you PC even if you did BUY the music CD? It certainly defies the term "page-turner".
7:10 AM | |
A couple of nice things when I used to have to WORK the shows was that I had all week to check everything out, therefore amassing mass quantities of freebies and filling the house with more useless junk than you could throw a free pen at, and the ridiculously priced bland food was reimbursed. This time, I shuddered at the bill and held my breath to take a bite out of this ruben and rye, and lo and behold, it was actually delicious. Or, walking miles and miles of showfloor could possibly make your tastebuds accepting to any edible mess placed in front of you.
7:08 AM | |
Holy bats! The original bat mobile? Complete with parachutes and a holy bat lever!
5:13 PM | |
It's rough starting out the year feeling completely drained of energy and completely partied out because it sets the tone for the rest of the first week of the year which ends on my birthday, thus setting off another week of celebration because at least four family members all share a January birthday and if by some stroke of luck we all happen to be in the same state, calls for dinners, lunches and more. And as it happened we were all here and it was dinner on Friday at a Mediterranean place which I'll refuse to name because I can't really say I'd recommend the place, although the Arabic coffee was quite good, smelling strongly of cardamom. Then it was a lunch on Saturday with more guests where I really just couldn't take another bite because despite not being really full from the night before, my taste buds were just deadened by the copious amounts of cough drops and mucus-annihilating drugs I'd been ingesting since day 1, 2007. Then I meant to go out all Saturday night well into the morning of my birthday and look it in the eye and say, hey you know, I don't really feel as old as I ought and something like, you're only as old as you feel. But I couldn't because I really did feel old and tired and beleaguered, so I gave up going out and instead stayed under the covers coughing up my lungs and watching depressing movies that ended with slight glimmerings of hope. So, I ended the weekend with a slight glimmering of hope that this coming weekend I'd be well enough to look dawn in the eye and say, hey, I'm still awake AND I've still got a drink in my hand and I'm going to party on.
10:29 PM | |
This is the view on the side of the road as I go to work in the morning. It seems as if Las Vegas isn't the arid desert that it is, but rather a lush, verdant plain of golf courses and hotels at the foot of jagged mountains with low lying clouds. And then you should see the sunsets – mostly amazing colors.
View outside my office window.
9:26 PM | |
A visual feast of a fairy tale set amidst the torturous time of Franco's Spain, Pan's Labyrinth casts a spell as you fall into Ofelia's world. Real or imagined, it exists somewhere between Hellboy and a country in the middle of a political struggle. As you contemplate the horrors of oppression, strife, and the fight to wield power, you are taken deeper into the labyrinth's mystery. The characters truly exist in flesh and blood, spewing tactile insults or crying salty tears, it is a visual feast and a story that holds together until the end, an end that I can say that I truly found satisfying. It's about choices – about how we choose to live our lives and the sacrifices that we are willing to make, and certainly this film did not sacrifice story over its resplendent imagery. Definitely go out and see it on the big screen for the full effect because there haven't been too many good fairy tales in a good long while.
10:36 PM | |
What a way to start off the first of the year – with bronchitis/laryngitis and no voice. Maybe that's a sign for me to shut up and just do more this year instead of talking about how much I wanna do this and that and never getting around to it. It's been a feast-filled last week of the year with a burst of flavors, sights and sounds shared with my lovely family and a bunch of extremely nice and warm people on the opposite coast where there wasn't a snowflake in sight. Spent the early morning struggling to get on a plane to cross back over the continent and that did not help my itchy throat and disappearing voice much. I'm sleep deprived and Grey Goose-soaked, and I might just need another year to recover from the holiday festivities of 2006.
Other than that, I could use a steamy cup of wonderful Mexican Spicy Hot Chocolate from Max Brenner: you can feel the red chili and pepper burning down your throat with each sip as the cinnamon and nutmeg swirl around your mouth, vying for attention while the delicious chocolate dances on your tongue sending you to a warm and comfortable place in the room making you forget that come Tuesday, it's back to the old mill, churning out jobs by the dozen. Ah well. Now for some much needed rest and dreams of melting chocolate and truffle sauce on all things gooey and lip-smackingly good.
8:31 PM | |
reading list<
mcsweeney's
neil gaiman
jonathan carroll
read yourself raw
alan moore fansite
phil lit portal
ninotchka rosca
GABRIELA Network
magazines<
layers magazine
wired
food<
jamie oliver
la tartine gourmande
nordljus
orangette
schtuff<
gizmodo
engadget
boingboing
Salamanca
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