ok, so like, i posted some new stuff, like schtuff – in the schtuff section. I have to stop acting like a retard. New photos, just a couple, of beautiful old type on brick buildings. Look for it here under projects.

What is up with being called ma'am? Am I not still in my twenties? Walking home from a late night drink or three, a boy-man, at least twenty, called me ma'am. What the hell? I told him not to do it again. I am a miss.

Tricky Pup did it, so I have to as well. This typeface is not only gorgeous, but you have GOT to dig the text used in the specimen, I mean come on, how many of these specimens do you see with references to some of the greatest bands, like, ever, duh. we love you diadala.

I once read in an Ayurvedic article somewhere, that singing outloud for 5 to 10 minutes everyday, will fulfill and prolong your life. I told this to a wonderful Italian gent this morning as he made my usual double-long, all the while singing Italian opera. He said, in a fabulous Italian accent, "As a young boy, I used to love to sing… I sing all the time and I always will. It is beautiful, music is beautiful!" I felt a pitter-patter with his words, and he continued singing as if he was on some grand stage. Another cafe-goer says, "Yes, but that rap stuff is just awful, this world doesn't need that kind of garbage!" The Italian responded, "Maybe you think it is garbage, but it is magical and wonderful in someone else's life; music, all music is beautiful."

Oh goodness, I am feeling weepy. I would have proposed right then and there had he not been, well, old enough to be my grandfather.

Wow, now kids can play Russian Roulette, just like mommy and daddy.

I just posted a new Sigur Ros concert photo page, cause I was desperately trying to avoid doing real work. Seriously, I have been meaning to post these for quite some time, they were taken way back in 2002.

The age-old question under debate, am I a dork? Does thinking robots are cool, make anyone a dork? What is a dork anyways? Why is it socially un-cool to be a dork? Why is it cool to be a dork? At what age do we stop being dorks? When does dork-dom begin? Are you born with it, or does it settle in after being subjected to dork infested paraphernalia? Talk amongst yourselves.

My favorite word of the day, er, week.
Temptilatin'!
Aunt Jemima used to to say this on a very old, remember I said very old, advertising slogan for pancakes and buckwheats. Dey's temptilatin!
Hey, I didn't make it up, they did.

Thank goodness for having Macs, my in-box has been getting hit with fairly large amounts of email carrying viral attachments, of course only affecting sad little recipients who own pc's. I read an article not long ago about this string of viruses, each getting snuffed by the big boys, only to find it has become stronger and increasingly contagious as time goes on. I forget the names associated with them, but the email addresses they are "sent" from are usually arranged in such a way that the recipient would recognize the sender address; or a common sender, of which I have received three or four, is from Microsoft technicial support, or that is it's disguise. I received a dozen or so this morning, all from colleges and universities in Oregon, my native state. I was of course curious as to why I was getting mail from places like Southern Oregon University and Oregon Health Sciences University, only to open it and find there was just an attachment, usually .pif, .vbs, .bat, .exe. It seems as though the virus becomes familiar with any email sent, or received and then bases its sender information on each individual, or perhaps it is just a coincidence I am receiving mail from my native state colleges. From what I understand, I am one of the unlucky ones who have my e-mail address located on someones zombie-pc which is infected. This virus also is known for taking the name of the person it is being sent to and then using it as the sender name to different recipients, so, some of you may one day receive an email from me containing a virus. If you can't read it, or if it has an attachment that is not recongnizable by a mac, it is not from me.

Frozen soy desserts, aka fake ice cream, is like sucking on a vanilla scented eraser. It almost has the consistency of an eraser, a very soft one. Last night in one of my hormone driven trips to the market for some comfort food, I picked up a wee bit of this stuff to take back home and savor as I read some serisouly boring marketing shit. Now, had I had access to real ice cream, the kind with real cream that comes from a real cow, I would have grabbed that anyday over a soy dessert. However, I was completely cash-less, meaning I had to go to a market that would take my debit card, that being one of two organic markets that sell really, really expensive food, most of which is made out of soy or something else that is apparently less harmful to little meat-covered creatures. I chose the dessert that was called Cookie Avalanche, all nestled in vanilla flavored, uh, dessert or frozen stuff. The picture showed lots of large chunky bits from fake chocolate/cream cookies, I figured it couldn't be all that bad. Once I returned home and was ready with spoon in hand to tear into my new frozen delight, that was sure to take all my emotional pain and throw it out the window (or add it to my ass), I drove my spoon into blank white space. My intitial taste response was probably similiar to eating a sour patch kid. It tasted like frozen egg nog actually, on the first bite, then it got increasingly worse after that – each bite feeling more and more like rubber in my mouth and tasting like it too. Yes, I kept eating it. It wasn't revolting, what was revolting though was the fact there were really no cookies and certainly no avalanche of cookies within this frozen eraser dessert. The only remnants of supposed chocolate/cream cookies were barely visible sprinkles of crumbs from the inside of a left-over box of cookies. I can see in my mind a bunch of hippies at the soy dessert company, all packed onto the CEO's back porch in the middle of the night, stirring up soybeans and organic evaporated cane juice with giant wooden pestles. These guys have the munchies in a bad way and the last of the organic and earth friendly chocolate/cream cookies have been eaten. One guy tries to get at the crumbs at the bottom of the package when the man with the pestle stops him and says, "Dude, don't do that man… I have an idea that is far better than eatin plain earth-friendly crumbs." He grabs the empty package and pours the remaining cookie crumbs into the barrel, stirring them together with the future frozen dessert.
"Yeah! It looks like an avalanche of cookie, man! I dig that."
"That would make a killer name, and hey we save money too, dude. We get to have our munchies and eat them too"
And that is how I imagine this soy dessert came to be.

iPod owners, attention please. Stumbled across a fabulous little accessory, meet Lilipod.Mmmmm… accessories.

One good reason not to touch things when riding public transporation, (or anything in public for that matter). People get snotty, and when they have no manners, nor any cares, they wipe fling it on everything. This I witnessed on my way underground this afternoon, catching a train home for the day. One man walking next to me, had a huge, fatty-fountain of snot hanging from his nostril and he was blowing it out as hard as he could, seriously, Tarzan could have swung from it and reached the tip top of a tree. This mega-snot was about a foot or so long and eventually the guy ripped it off and flung it on a door, a door that thousands of transit users go through, and probably touch every day. Um, eeEEWWWWW!

Quietly I sit, hoping my typing will not be heard over the words and wisdom of my teacher. We are looking at some mini-projects built on screen last week; storyboards depicting the animation of words within a partiulcar poem. *sshhhhh*
My belly is feeling warm from excitement and anticipation of my upcoming trip to Europe. Over the weekend my reservations will be finalized for a little 3 day spree to Amsterdam, the rest of the trip is centered in London and all those plans have already been solidified. Adventures in London will include many exciting hours spent at museums and galleries, as well as quality time spent with some of the world's greatest designers at studios like Pentagram, also much anticipated visits with world class professors at Reading University and tactile experiences with ancient manuscripts and historical books at the British Library. After all that learning and beauty overload, many warms beers will be consumed at one of a thousand or so pubs. As for Holland, there are no concrete plans other than exploring the city inside and out by bicycle, trying not to pass out from the excess alcohol and hash consumption and photographing the intensly beautiful and creative architecture and print-based design. mmm…warm belly.

Kung Hei Fat Choi! | Happy Chinese New Year!

I finally got my sticky fingers on two of the most fabulous type specimens I have had the pleasure of, well, trying not to get sticky. Read Naked is a promotional piece for the typeface Sauna, and the best part (besides the uber-fabulous dingbats and the swashy italics), is that the book has been designed for reading inside a Sauna! The inks and paper were chosen specifically for high tempuratures and is completely water-proof. Much of the content within this beautiful book is hidden behind layers of heat-activated inks. Once subjected to tempuratures of 80 degrees celsius or higher, intimate stories about saunas are revealed.



Aside from the book, the typeface, Sauna, is really sweet and sexy, the best part (or one of the best parts, I just can't decide!) is the inclusion of fatty little dingbats! They come in a variety of styles, some of which are sampled below. What is incredibly unique about these seemingly animated creatures and objects, is a layering affect which can achieve the look of three-dimensions! The type geniuses at Underware created a layer for the background, dimlight, highlight and an outline which work together to create a fuller, squishier dingbat!




I urge you to put down everything and visit their website, experience their extraordinary type styles and support their cause for a world filled with new and exciting glyphs! While you are at it, check out these photos I took at the ATypI conference this year, where I was lucky enough to meet these insanely handsome boys.

The one day when I actually left my place on time, the bus breaks down. As inconvenient and annoying as this was, it would have been less so had the bus driver actually informed the passengers that the bus was in fact stopping and not going any further. However, she did absolutely nothing to let us know that we would need to get off and walk a few blocks to catch another bus, or that perhaps another was in its way to pick us up twenty minutes later. So, we riders packed like sardines in a tin can, watched the driver quietly step off the bus and walk about a block down the street and just stand there, waiting for something, but not knowing what. We sat and grumbled, eventually heavy frustration set in, the air becoming increasingly hotter and thicker and stinkier. Some people didn't seem to care, but myself, being ever so restless and a bit claustrophobic, decided it was time to get the hell outta dodge and I ran down the street for another bus. By this time I was already about 20 minutes behind schedule and in a very poor mood.
I do have some uplifting news, however, well I think it is uplifting. I get to vote in the States via Absentee ballot! I had been trying to find out whether or not I am eligible since I have been out of the country for approx. 1.7 years. I received, via e-mail, all my voter info and a note attached stating all I had to do was fill in my current address and they would send me a ballot! I even get to vote for all the Multnomah County and Oregon State stuff, though I am really only interested in voting in the upcoming presidential elections(since I have no clue what is happening politically in the state of oregon). Yes, exciting stuff, I know.

I have this curse, an electronic purchasing curse. I went back to the Future Shop to return the memory card I bought, that turned out just fine and dandy after 10 minute wait in the wrong line, and then a 25 minute wait in the correct one. And what do ya know, it was cheaper! (I came this close to buying a new phone, but thankfully talked myself out of it. As well as those beautiful, beautiful shoes at the shop next door. Mmm… shoes.) What on earth was I talking about in the first place? The shoes took my attention away and I haven't had any coffee yet.Curse, yes. I need a microphone for my desktop computer, my laptop has one internally, however I like to use ole desktop at home when chatting with friends. I specified a USB microphone to the gentleman at F.S., alas, they did not have one. I tried the store down the street and I found a plethora of mikes, so I picked one up and went on my merry way.
Later, I arrive home and rip open the package, start up iChat and anticipate the awesome convenience of chatting in real time, with yer voice and not yer hands. This is about when I realize what a retard I am. I failed to purchase a microphone that has a USB connection. I bought one that plugs right into a specific microphone jack; Apple doesn't supply their G4's, or other towers I believe, with a mike jack, and I knew this.

Will I ever get it right? Can't I have only one, or how about zero electronics shopping experiences a week without having to return it the next day? *sigh*

Time to let off some steam. But not too much, I might get myself into trouble. I am giving up on trying to keep in touch with people, friends. I try and try and in return I get nothing. In the time it takes to sit in front of a computer, go online and read my weblog (I do have a record of visitors), I would think, or hope anyways (possibly I am too optimistic about friendship) that in that time period, a reply to my emails or a short and sweet hello would be quick and easy to do, that perhaps they would want to give a shout out to the homie up north. Alas, this is not the case and I am left exhausted and hurt.

Should I have began this entry with Dear Diary?

Buy some Feces now!

The Future Shop. I have yet to have a pleasant experience shopping with them, and I always complain, it never fails. And what do I do? I go back, again and again – it is quite convenient now that there is one open on west Granville – and once more I will complain about my experience. It is always the same situation, roughly. I am looking for something very specific, usually a cable, but tonight it was a cable AND memory card for my camera. I ask a salesperson to help me locate it, this person gladly does and attempts to know what I and they are talking about, however, the end result always suggests they have no idea. My last visit (prior to tonight) was for a 6-pin to 6-pin firewire cable. I couldn't find where they were located and after a brief training session I gave on what a firewire cable is used for, I was taken to the ethernet cable section, then USB cables – both of which I politely explained, were, in fact NOT firewire cables. That evening I spoke with two salespeople who tried to tell me that USB is what I was looking for, and that they did not carry firewire. Well, I eventually located it on my own and showed it to them; the lead salesman said, "Oh that isn't a firewire cable, that is the USB cable." I quietly held the package to his face and showed him the firewire logo and walked towards to register.
Tonight was a little different because I was somehwat confident in what the salesman was telling me, yet eventually I became displeased with the information I was given. Like I said, I was looking for a cable, first and foremost, then decided to look into a new 256mb memory card for my digi-camera. The cable, they were out of (possibly), so I asked about the memory cards and told him the make and model of my camera, "Oh yes, I know what you are looking for." Because I had failed to bring my camera with me, or even take a look at the current card before I went looking for another, this entire situation may very well just be my own damned fault – however, I repeatedly asked him if he was sure this card would fit in my camera, "oh yes, we carry that camera and I know for a fact this Pentax uses this type of memory card." Well, OK, he seemed to know his stuff. So, one hundred and sixty Canadian dollars later, I get home and of course, the memory card is completely WRONG! I at least was smart enough to not trust the future people and hesitated to touch the packaging, so there will be no problems making an exchange. Will I go back to make more purchases? At this point I say no, but I am lying, as always. One day I will be headed to the Skytrain and will have some crazy shopping impulse and decide I need a cable for, something.

rarrg. I have spent so much time trying to get this site XHTML 1.0 compliant (I feel I have to prove to myself that I can do it), and though it is damned close, it still isn't valid. Almost every single error is within the blog itself, code provided by Blogger. At first most of it was caused by my old school, HTML 2.0 coding techniques, which thanks to Tricky Pup and the beauty of iChat, is now mostly fixed and my knowedge base has been updated. I'm gonna keep workin on it, I have a few more pages to clean up, but I am so tired of code I can hardly think straight.

I turn into such a drama queen in my dreams. I commonly wake up with tears welled up in my eyes from the stressful nighttime encounters and the unpredictable and incomprehensible behavior of my cerebrally rendered friends. My most recent late night drama was spawned by a bit of real-life research into travel accommodations for an upcoming trip I am taking to Europe. Nothing too stressful about that, however my sleeping mind wanted to throw a little action into the mix, so it, she, my sleeping mind that is, created situtations that made for a very difficult journey through unfamiliar territory and public transportation. I am not going to relate these encounters in full, for most of it is just dream filler, garbage anyways, but I will point out a couple of interesting events that likely led to my heartache.
—Party in the hotel room, all my closest friends were there, and my bladder was so full it was ready to spill over onto the rugs. My adventure began.
—There really were no available bathrooms, of course. What fun would it be if there were any convenient toilets? None. I tried the lobby, which really resembled more of an old folks home/mental institution were everyone co-habitates in the TV room and says absolutely nothing to each other. People wearing very blue outfits, by blue I mean a hazy, greyish blue. The toilet was situated right in the middle of the room, inbetween two magenta colored couches, covered in quiet, grimy people. It was enclosed by a semi-shower curtain, stained linen drape-esque shroud, one that I was so afraid to touch for fear of it sticking to my skin. As I stepped in it seemed the people suddenly moved in closer, as if I was going to be the next show on the tele, perhaps I would give them the entertainment they so desired in order for their little mushy brains to generate a little activity, maybe put a smile on their faces. However, I would not dare give them the pleasure for the entire thing was far too uncomfortable for me to handle, so I quickly left this horrid room and continued my search.
—Rather than simply looking for a bathroom to rid my body of it swish-swashing liquid, to make things more complicated and edgy, a countdown began for my departure back home. There was a bus waiting outside and if I didn't get on this bus, I would forever have to reside in this hotel/institution.
—Next stop, women's restroom in the basement. Now this place was incredibly dirty, not just the restroom, but really the whole building. It was dark and covered in a thick layer of dust and mold. The shower curtain/linen drape theme persisted throughout and everything seemed to be hidden behind these sheer materials. I stepped into what looked more like a janitors closet, to find a very mean looking couple standing in front of the mirror, pissing on it. I asked the man if he could please leave the bathroom and I wish I could remember what his response was, but all I can remember was his dirty, red leather Beat It jacket and his mangled, rotten teeth.
—The remaining moments of my dream were very fast paced and this is when everything starts to blur quite a bit. As you can see, my dreams are quite vivid and I am able to retain most of the detail of the environments, but somewhere along the line I get confused and my brain overloads. I did try another bathroom, but this time I stood in a large shell-shaped, white porcelain sink. A woman approached me and said, "You know honey, I just filled that sink with bleach and Ajax." I jumped out, extremely agitated, looking at my socked feet, now covered in a white slime. I know I said something rude to her, however I don't remember. I ran out and from this point I don't know whether or not I actually got to release my bladder. I do remember laying on the ground in a fetal position, I was wearin a black tank top and stone-washed jeans, the ultimate white trash outfit. I layed outside next to a picnic table where all of my closest friends were perched. I yelled and cried and complained to them about my horrifying ordeal, but no one seemed to notice, nor care for my pain. Eventually I said my good-byes and boarded the home-bound bus, relunctantly.

Thankfully, I woke up in a very dry and comfortable bed, with absolutely no need to take a piss. Though I could feel the left-over tension, as if the adventure were in my recent past and my feelings were freshly injured. This lasted only a short while, maybe 2 minutes, and after a good sit-down with my trusty keyboard I have only a recollection of the imagery and I am ready for a stiff cup of coffee.

Oh, and this is one of the scariest things I have ever seen.

so. tired. must. stop. remodelling. ugh. FYI, photos are now under "schtuff", and uh, a couple of them are working. correctly. i think.

Update I just previewed in three browsers: Safari, Mozilla and IE5. IE, of course, renders everything just the way it should be (it's primarily CSS). Safari, well much better than before, but the text size is much larger and line spacing is horridly tight. Mozilla, well, *sigh* Mozilla seems to think that the old site still exists, therefore I am unable to open new content. Maybe I wasn't as tidy in my clean up methods, maybe I am damned tired and I want to go to bed.

I am in the middle of a remodel, as you can see. Things should be back up and running very soon, some link may be broken and I have yet to readjust all my exterior pages. I am still a little uncertain about elements here on the main page, so things will be shifting around from time to time. BUT, good news is, this baby should be multi-browser friendly. I haven't actually checked it, so I might be totally wrong. But I am trying.

ok – all day long, through two academic, primarily lecture couses, I have been thinking about and sketching ideas for a new website. I have decided to take on this task, now, beginning in the next few minutes, with a target date of completion: Tonight, or in the wee morning hours of tomorrow. I am attempting a seriously, simplified site with minimal color and 2 columns, configured via CSS. Should be easy to do, since I am going to cheat and utilize one of them fancy Glish templates (thank you!) with a bit of configuration. I just ate a slice o' pizza (not good, but energizing. hey I am lazy), threw on my jammies, and will consume a double espresso in approximately 2 hours, to keep the high going. Wish me luck. You could even come say hello via iChat or AIM => zara yy.

thank the, uh, clouds above for restoring my high speed service! And also for allowing me to listen to Aphex Twin while I burn through the net, bloggin my little heart away.

Friendster is beginning to freak me out a little, I keep seeing people from my distant, but not forgotten past, lurking in my personal network! It is a small world after all. Perhaps I will change my identity so that I can stay hidden in my little section of the planet, or perhaps and more realistically, I could stop being a loser and spending time on Friendster.

Please read this amazingly hysterical article by Choire Sicha.

The one weekend in which I have the time and the intentions to do lots of foolin round work on the web, my internet service goes down. For two days I have been cleaning, organizing, working out and reading, you know, productive stuff. All the while staring at my computers, sitting side by side, waiting in anticipation for a little bit of ethernet magic to make them come to life. I have one more full day of this, well one more full day off from reality, one more full day to stare at blank screens and get stuff done, one more full day to feel the aching in my bones and brain, aching for just a little bit of e-mail or at least one blog for me to read. Yes, I am on-line right now, but it is only temporary and not even on my own computer (though a very nifty, new lil' iMac). We had to get a dial-up number to check our e-mail so that our heads would not explode, there is no phone jack where my puters lay, only sad, empty patch fives. For now, I wish for and dream of blogging, wasting time and writing e-mail (for all of you who I don't write as often as I should, I thought about writing you every minute, but could not! woe is me…). Speaking of dreams, I had crazy ones last night! Mainly about travelling. I went to Japan, and there was a huge illuminated lantern and boat show, after the sun sets all of these boats covered in wonderful hand-made lanterns float out onto the sea and fill the sky with beautiful light. I decided to be a part of this so a cute boy and I swam out into the ocean to wait for these floating lights. But the waves were far too strong and we could not stay afloat, we began to fear the crowds of boats and concluded that it would be in our best interests to get back on shore, for we may not live through the event, treading wild and crazy sea water all night amidst a thousand flickering boats. We swam back to shore safely and enjoyed the festival of lights from a small sushi stand; the last thing I remember saying was, "Isn't it great to be in Japan?" Rather than wasting time I suppose I shall return to land of responsibility and try to get a few things done. I could draw, listen to music and write; I could watch the news; I could finish my book and start another, etc. etc. Ok, nuff talk - must do.

So far, Panther has caused me absolutely nothing but problems and I am unhappy about that. I am still trying to work through bugs on my laptop, but finding there are just no solutions that I can think of. Installation of the new OS is complete on my desktop puter, however I am afraid to look at it because there will most likely be the same problems. Here are a few samples of the bugs I am running into: -Internet Connection (fixed) -e-mail sender scrambling(had to turn headers off completely, annoying as hell) -line height in all Mac applications are set extremely high, making my address book, email, iCal, etc. virtually unreadable. Think 10/50. (10pt type with a 50pt leading, or line space) -Maybe it is just Safari, but most text on webpages are scrambled as well, all words completely indecipherable. Help me Jeebus!

My Scrabble© Score is: 19. Get your scrabble score here!

This could very well be the last couple of days that I will have free time, I am contemplating the idea of re-designing my website, again! I just need to simplify it (I always say that), but I ran into an issue with Blogger. Not to dis my web log provider, since they do provide me with a very good, free service (I don't really have a right to complain, but I am going to anyways). As you know, this main page is full of content, the bulk of what I post is here, front and center. The obstacle I have been confronted with is going to force me to re-design the site, or at least the main page. I am not talking about complete overhaul, but just some much needed readjustments and better organization techniques. Blogger seems to have a limit on the amount of characters within the HTML template, so when I was adding some tags and such it began to delete the tags at the bottom of the code, to compensate for what I was adding. At the time, I was forced to just go through all of the code and erase empty spaces, allowing for those few characters I needed to add in order for my new links so show up. My code is an absolute mess and I cannot live with it this manner. Maybe if I take on this project, I can finally try and get this thing running for all browsers! Wouldn't that be nice.

Don't get too excited, this is just a thought and I could change my mind in the next few minutes. Or not?

At the same time, I am going to finally turn this baby, as in my computer, into a panther puppy, but with hesitation. I made the switch to Panther on my laptop a couple of days ago, and although I am very excited about some of the new features, I am not able to connect to the internet! My ethernet connection is showing a valid and running connection, but nothing actually happens. So after a minor freak out, trying to troubleshoot and venturing into dangerous OSX territory to try and find some sort of solution to the problem, I slept and dreamt of troubleshooting and never being able to connect to the web again! (I ended up riding on the back of a little pig, through the snow, in much of my dream. The pig then turned into a baby in a little red jumpsuit that I nurtured until he was ready to brave the wild on his own.) I was just informed, however, by my roommate that it is not a panther problem, in fact it is an ISP issue, I need a new IP address. Soooo, I am going to make this leap and hope for the best – my little jumpsuit piggy is going to make it, I have faith in him.

Being the pen obsessed person that I am, I just want to pass along this little quote from the blog of witold riedel –
"use your pens, use them often… (Don’t let them grow bitter over time…)"

Bembo, Perpetua, Sabon & Garamond walk into a bar… The barman says, "Oi, we don't want your type around here!"

tee hee hee

I can't help myself! The super hero generator is consuming my every creative thought! Meet Jimmi:


BUTTERFLY OF JUSTICE! (credit to tricky pup for the name)

…and his Mighty Rod!

Ok, so this snow filled day has found me playing on this website, creating my very own army of sexy men superhero! Here is a sample. Mmmm…

This morning as I stood at my front door, watching the new snow build up on top of the snow left behind days ago, I pondered my winter outfit and whether or not I could bear the cold without a scarf. I was wearing a large, woolen turtleneck underneath my heavy-duty wool empire waist coat, so I figured I was probably prepared enough for a light snow. Within an hour the snowfall turned into a thick blanket of white air, a centimeter or so piled upon my shoulders and furry hat, my turtleneck keeping the snow out thankfully. Word spread throughout the morning that school was going to be shutting down and after 3 hours of listening to a lecture about paradox, the design process and Carl Jung's typology theory(I am an INFP), we were dismissed from school for the remainder of the day. Basically what that meant was that the next hour or so would be spent trekking through ankle deep snow, getting on and off of buses and trains, competing for the least slippery spot on sidewalks and trying to get some supplies for the next couple of days, in case the markets decide to close for awhile. Although this crazy winter weather is terribly exciting, going anywhere is out of the question. However, this does give me a very good excuse to crawl up in my bed with a hot cup of tea and a great book. The snow is supposed to fall steadily for the next few hours and into the night, I assume there will be no school tomorrow either, as cold as it is outside, the snow will not be leaving anytime soon. AAhhhh, I really do feel like I am in Canada.

Back to school time, and I don't think I am quite out of vacation mode just yet. Not only am I having difficulties getting my ass out of bed, but I don't feel all that well, knowing I have to go out and brave this Canadian winter, with a still painful ear ache. Oh yeh, by the way, I landed myself in the emergency room in Portland on New Years Day, for this ear ache, which thankfully is much better than it was (antibiotics & vicodin took care of that), though believe me it was bad enough to put me in the hospital begging for medical mercy, almost had to walk 5 miles in the snow, bare foot! Almost. I was certainly ready to, since the roads were nothing but packed ice and snow, driving for many was not an option. But luckily I have a good friend with snow tires – she served as my ambulance. The important thing now is that I can once again enjoy my little iPod.

I just had my very first iTunes shopping experience, and I must say, I really quite liked it. Maybe I like it because I am using a gift certificate (thanks to John), money that did not originate from my own pocket; browsing a very decent collection of music at a very decent price, without having to leave the comfort of my pajamas, without having to get off my ass, without having to open that shitty plastic packaging – all bundled up in a sweet, personalized and highly organized interface; this, my friends, is the future of shopping and the future is sweet. I was skeptical at first, I figured that the music collection would be weak, I am not one for the mainstream/contemporary genre, however I was pleased to see that the first three albums I have been wanting in recent days are up and ready for purchase on iTunes. They not only give you track listings, but provide you with much of the same information that Amazon does, in regards to similar purchases and reviews. And you don't miss out on the album artwork, well not the cover art anyways. I suppose that is my first complaint when it comes to sharing and swapping digital music – there is nothing tangible, no booklet, no mini poster, no interesting paper folding methods or paper choices. I am one of those people that enjoys the experience of looking through album art, examining the designs and reading the lyrics while I sing the songs. But I hate the shitty plastic wrapping.

I'm back in cold-as-hell canada, i'm serious it will freeze your nips off. Not much in the mood for talkin bout stuff, so I am going to just put a little Panther action on my puters and make them a little happier, then try and bust out some photo pages for this site, a little eye candy from my trip down south. I promise I will try and write something worth reading soon.