Creations I Am Proud Of

This awsome illustrated pocket containing a Booty James musical Mix for Lindsay's birthday.
Stawberry Muffins (idea stolen from Lindsay) with whole wheat flour. DEELICIOUS!

AIR HOCKEY

Not much can rival my love for air hockey. Poo-poo on foosball, don't even mention it to me.
Am I good at it? Not necessarily. But I have an over-enthusiasm that makes up for any lack of skill. I don't think there's much more fun to be had than a great night of air hockey with the people you love. I'm really excited that Tiffany has given me all her pictures from the wedding weekend, and I've spent all morning delighting over them. I'll share more soon, but first I wanted to share the awesomeness of the hockey. I dream that one day, one glorious day, I'll have my own table at home, and I'll have tournaments all night long until my arm is quite broken from the strain, listening to awesome music.

Find the Kitteh

Mount Islip

This last Sunday David and I resumed our outdoorsiness by treking out to the San Gabriel Mountains for the first hike in a long time. I was overenthusiastic about my abilities, and picked a 5.5 mile trail. It's been a while though, and the road was closed a ways before the start of the trail, and Mt. Islip ended up rounding up to approx. 11 miles, round trip. Lets just say my body didn't take this gracefully. I also thought it'd be a good idea to put in my contacts instead of glasses, and I developed a big fat migrane half way up. At the top of the mountain, I had to take of my shoes and lay down on a rock for half an hour and try to summon the will to make it back down. It was just too much, the muscles in my legs became seriously pissed off at me, and yesterday and today I've been hobbling around the office & at home, in misery. I was so incredibly frustrated with my body, plus the fact that David was totally unphased didn't help. I'm still glad we did it, - it was an awesome hike too, so beautiful with views of the Mojave Dessert and the mountain side. But it was just too much to start back up with, so I think the next one will be a bit tamer. We did see a few really great places to camp at along the way up, and I hope we come back and do that - it was pretty secluded and goregous.

What the heck is this?

Oh, the outrage. Or the horror of it all, I don't know what bother's me most about this, the fact that they are totally flippant about out right lying about the evil that is corn syrup, or the fact that they find the public so incredibly stupid. No, as a SWEETENER it's not that bad for you, in MODERATION it's fine. But no one eats it in moderation when it's the number one filler substance in almost everything you eat. When it's the first ingredient listed in every packaged food. When we pound so much of it on a daily basis that obesity and diabetes have sky rocketed to new heights and now occur in children, which was never a problem before we started mass pumping into our diets. Also, it's not natural, during the process used to create it they add chemicals to it. Like I said, there's just so much wrong with this.

I also hate that this appears at a time when it seems like people are finally waking up to these social problems and at least becoming conscious of them if not taking huge action, and here comes someone to slap the blinders back on. I found on YouTube another clip of this woman who goes into greater detail demystifying corn syrup - how it's made, why it's used and the political backround of farm subsidies and how it's changed our food. It's long but I recommend listening, also go rent King Korn.



Maybe I've just been a little punchy lately, but I'm listening to the political coverage all day every day on NPR of the democratic and repbublican conventions, and all the different people analyzing and interpreting speeches and campaings, and I'm starting to feel this impending doom. I can't imagine four more years of the direction this country is already going, and how much deeper a hole it could dig us. The whole of my adult life has been shaking my head in horror at George Bush, and the thought of more makes me pretty depressed. Listening to Barak Obama makes me feel a pride and excitement I've never felt before about politics, and I can't wait to vote for him. So much needs to be set right, so much needs to be healed.

Enough of that now, I'm going to go eat a bowl of cereal, guess what it's made out of?

It's been a long time since big time hikers got in any hiking whatsoever. This is going to be remedied soon I hope. Most of the things we got in excess of as wedding gifts went back to Target in exchange for camping items. Camping items that can be carried on our backs to camp somwhere! I've never been backpacking camping, it's always been California camping in a car with many comforts in a designated spot surrounded by other people in a small campground with bathrooms right there. I'm excited to be doing the hiking now, and I'm curious to see if i can really do real camping and still love it :) I don't think we'll get to go until next month, so I'm hoping the summer weather holds on a little while longer. I'm going to start looking up places to go, David has said the Kern River is a good spot, and I think the San Gabriel Mountains are supposed to be a good place too. I miss our hikes a lot, and can't wait to get back out there.

LaborDay Weekend

A pretty laid back weekend here - Saturday was spend in Cerritos with family for David's mom's birthday; we all went to see Tropic Thunder and have lunch. Sunday I spent most of the day in Manhattan Beach with Agata and Bill, laying and soaking up the sun until it hid in the clouds and we retreated to The Kettle for beers and food. I spend the other parts of the day working on my Roatan sketchbook, adding some watercolor to my drawings and pasting in things like plane tickets and such.I made it out of an old Beach Boys record album cover, and I love how it turned out. I got so much writing in there, I can't wait to revisit it as soon as I've forgotten a little of the trip and get to enjoy it all over gain.

Monday made me restless in the house and I did a lot of reading. I finished Eat Pray Love and then headed over to Bill Botts park to lay in the grass and finish When You Are Engulfed In Flames. These were both really good books, and share the common themes of internatinal travel, which I suppose made me feel even more restless, even though I just got back from some international travel. David took my blues away by sweeping me to the Arclight to see Hamlet 2 and buying me a box of Milk Duds, most favorite movie going candy ever. I feel pretty relaxed today, and looking at the calander, which has every weekend in September already filled in with plans, I guess it was right that we took it easy this weekend.