i: only the best for you j!! and its up to you to determine what that is ;)
j: thanks g! i really needed to hear that!:D
i: the only catch, is that you cannot blame other people for the choices you make :)
i: so choose wisely, but be happy :)
Art takes time. Understanding takes time. Knowing takes time. Forgetting takes time. Time takes nothing - except for what you don't give.
My domain and websites got defaced! Was down for almost 24 hours. I'm actually pretty flattered. Remember kids, use strong passwords!
So we spent the long weekend up along the Sonoma coast. First night was camped out with Kath and Dan at their friend's pad. The setup was three interconnected trailers along a bluff in the coast. My day was spent polishing off Tecates (my new favorite beer), while the other guys dove for abalone. Lots of cheese and beer, and Kat and I slept on the outdoor deck underneath a canopy of stars and the Milky Way. Great stuff!
I didn't take pictures until the second night, when Pat Pel Kat and I transferred over to a designated campground with our tents. I setup the camera to take one shot of star trails as they traversed the night sky, framed by the tree canopy up above. I left it outside for probably 3-4 hours, before Kat closed the shutter again. The problem is, that the noise reduction function processes the image after it's taken, and takes a terribly long time before it writes the final image to the CF card. And of course, it never reached that point. I come in with a full charge, take one massive picture, and the camera dies. I was really disappointed in the morning - that is, until I had my first can of Tecate for the day.
It seems likely that a new camera body is on the horizon within the coming year..
I like the anonymity of night. I can work tirelessly, without concern and disruption of interludes that daylight brings. During the day you're preoccupied (or too busy pretending not to be preoccupied) keeping tabs on the clock as it ticks to lunch time. Then your senses fail after a heavy meal. Perhaps indulge in a caffeine pep, or energy drink to prop you up the rest of the afternoon. Wait in your windowless cube until the seconds turn to minutes turn to hours turn to another day on your hamster wheel.
The silence of past midnight is all encompassing. The world is quiet. Your mind is free. To create, or to vegetate. The reasons are all your own.
I can find all the reasons to stay up all night. The missing piece of the puzzle though, is finding all the right reasons to wake up earlier in the morning. :P
Gave the dog another shower this morning. I tried some Avon stuff that the forums swore by, to get mats and tangles out. I can see how it would work, but I didn't dilute the solution enough and left the boy a bit too greasy. Had to rinse him out again to get rid of the gunk. I miss his hair :'c
Leaving for SF in a few minutes to catch the SF Outside Lands Festival, then coming back Sunday morning in time to catch Radiohead (again) play at the Bowl. Should be fun times :)
Pretty darn productive this weekend. Laid down the foundations and revamped Paul and Kat.com. Installed WordPress, that stuff is pretty powerful and slick! I might convert to a WP setup in the future and junk all this Blogger madness. I still need to debug against older browsers (i.e. I hate you IE 6.0), and start broadcasting our offerings of custom buttons and our upcoming 'Make Your Own Fan Club' shenanigan.
I also replaced Vanessa's valve cover gasket, to remedy the small leak on the passenger side valve cover. It was pretty exciting since it's the first time I've really opened anything of importance in the bus, even though it's just a simple gasket replacement.
The mechanic used some yellow adhesive to afix the old gasket, which was an official PITA to remove. Took me some good elbow grease to get the mating surface clean and slathered on a thin coat of number 2 permatex gasket sealant to fix that puppy. While crawling under the bus my left shoulder started complaining, and I felt its weakness from last year's dislocation accident due to unwarranted hand-stand-walking in a parking lot. Ahh, the bragging rights you earn when you get old!
Fascinating to point out, that the quantity and quality of my posts are directly proportional to my alcohol intake. Not that it's an excuse to drink more - I just find words easier when inebriated. Otherwise, it takes me forever to sit down, gather my thoughts, and pound it out to have no bearing of logical importance whatsoever. It's like spending the time to fix your hair to look like you just got out of bed.
Spent many hours on VW forums the past few nights, to read up about Vanessa's intermittent smoke problem. My mechanic said it was being caused by all the crud on the heat exchangers, which was being burned off since hot air was now going through c/o of the alternator fan. He said it would eventually burn out, but I wanted to take matters into my own hands. I doused the right heat exchanger with Simple Green before dinner, but it seemed useless, so I came back with a toothbrush and some 409 degreaser - that stuff works wonders! Just a little dab and a scrub from the brush took out years of accumulated oil and grime, and I was kinda surprised it went down to the bare metal surface in some areas. I might add that twilight surgery is not very efficient, so I might do another session on a sunny day. Had I left that junk as is, there would have be no way for all that crap to burn out by itself. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, since the burning smoke made its way into the cabin through the heat vents and almost killed Peter Pan. Sayang.
Paul and Vanessa, April 2008. Photo by Kat :)
A belated thank you to those who attended the 27th Annual Tarzana BBQfest. Special thanks to Mike Kim for sharing his amazing KBBQ marinade, Pat and Pel's Chicken Inasal, and all the crazy kids from SF who made the trip down :) I am a happy cat! An old one :)
Hope ya'll enjoyed the Red Horse :)
It's that time of the year again! A year always comes fast in retrospect, but slower when looked forward to. Let's do a recap. I was going to write little blurbs, then thought pictures would be better, but changed my mind again. I ended up just reading my blog. How narcissistic, I know. Only because it's a Lovine Holiday :)
Spent my last birthday where I was born. Pretty cool for me, since I haven't been to Chicago in forever. Made in the Philippines, Born in the USA!
I know it's from last year, but I can't get over the best damn possible birthday gift I could ever have. I can't get over it, and will most likely never ever get over it. Handmade, with love. :) I love you Ms. Kat!
Adopted Nickel. :)
Quit my job at a risk consulting firm. Rode the Vespa from LA to SF, the morning after my last day of work. Bought a tent and sleeping bag from REI, little did I know it would be the beginning of a new era. A few months later I went crazy and took the Vespa on a 2,000 mile personal odyssey across Highway 1, to Red Rock Canyon, across Death Valley, to Las Vegas, to Yosemite, San Francisco, and back to LA. Camped in all the spots in between. Loved it. Would do it again in a heartbeat. And for sure someday, I will do it again.
Got addicted to snowboarding. Went a total of 10 times this season, 3 of which were by myself!
I can't remember what made us look for one, but all of a sudden Kat and I were in a mad rush to find a Volkswagen Type 2 Transporter. Made a few quick decisions, called some shots, and found ourselves on an Amtrak train headed north towards Oregon. Game plan was to check out this 1979 Volkswagen Type 2 Transporter (also known as a Kombi, hippie/turtle van, breadloaf, or in our case was to become - Vanessa). There was no contingency plan in case the deal fell through - we were on a one way ticket to Oregon, with no way to come back. Needless to say, we fell in love with the van, wrote the previous owners a check, and began to write a new chapter of awesomeness.
With Vanessa, and Nickel the boy wonder, we set out to conquer Death Valley and Yosemite. Had some mechanical issues, but all's well that ends with beautiful pictures! New friends! And stories to tell! I still find it funny that everyone got mad when they found out we picked up hitchhikers along the outskirts of Sequoia National Forest. "They could've been serial killers! Rapists! Goons!". Sorry boys and girls, that's how Paul and Kat roll.
I was telling her that I always feel like I haven't done much. But when I sit down to think about it, I don't even know where to start. In this sappy little heart of mine, I can find a million reasons to get excited about a single second.. let alone a year.. let alone, a lifetime. I like that feeling of not having done enough, because there really is so much more to do. The best part is, looking forward to it :)
I enjoy fast roller coasters where blood drains from your head, making your vision fade to white/black. Doesn't that make you feel more human? You're nothing but a bunch of cells, a ticking machine, an organized system - any point of failure can affect your other senses. We're so fragile.
My head is a mess! Only Red Bull is keeping me sane. I can function, but my thoughts are going all over the place. Thinking of everything, but accomplishing nothing! So I'll leave the hamster wheel in its right place, and taking my bike out again for a breather.
This is best performance I've had, in terms of jet lag. I still get bouts of sleepishness at around 4pm, but again, nothing a little silver can of RB can't fix. It usually takes me a week to recover, with severe relapses within a couple of days into the mix. Meaning falling asleep at 3pm and waking up at midnight. Pwned! Knock on wood.