can you see me now?

I went for my regular eye exam on Saturday afternoon. It'd been about two-and-a-half years since my last exam, and in that time my insurance added a new vision plan, which meant I couldn't see my old O.D.

I was thrilled when I found a new O.D. just around the corner from me, open on Saturdays, with half the copay of my old place. I called on Friday for an appointment, and they were able to fit me in the next day! This was perhaps the biggest shock, as at the old place they booked appointments, at minimum, 3 weeks out.

So I go into the appointment, and it's kind-of a cattle call: I was shuffled into one room after another for preliminary stuff with an assistant, before finally waiting to see the O.D. She was very friendly and welcoming, and started asking lots of questions about my daily reading, computer and driving habits. All good things when determining if I need glasses. Which I've never needed before. But with my turning 30 less than two months away, I thought I'd better go for my regular check-up and make sure the dreaded number didn't coincide with failing vision. ;)

So she does all the typical vision-exam stuff, then offers me the option of paying an additional $39 (not covered by insurance) to not have my eyes dilated, and instead try the new OptoMap technology that takes a digital image of your eye. I opted (hehe) in, because really? Who likes to have their eyes dilated? It really was a simple and painless process.

So the O.D. goes into details about my results (no problems) while explaining in lengthy medical jargon why I might need glasses. But when I ask her point blank if I need glasses, she says, "Well, not really. But since you're paying for your insurance, you might as well get your money's worth and at least get prescription sunglasses."

Wait a second. If I don't technically need glasses, then why would I need prescription sunglasses?

The O.D. leads me out into the retail portion of the facility, where a nice young man is waiting to fit me for glasses. I sit down and ask him the same thing -- I don't need glasses, so why am I here? He smiles and says, "Oh, but you at least need sunglasses!"

At this point I look around at the other folks being fitted for eye wear -- literally every person that I saw in the office cattle call and waiting room -- was now getting glasses of one kind or another!

I politely decline to purchase anything from him, and he leads me to a woman that can help me. (Apparently he's not used to hearing "no.") This time it's the shop manager (pulling out the big guns!) who says I'd be best served with a pair of clear glasses, as I'll really notice the difference when driving. No one seems to hear or care that a) I don't need glasses! and b) I'm not interested in purchasing anything.

What a scam! In all my years of getting regular vision exams I've never had one done at a place that also sold frames and lenses, so maybe this is common practice.

But one thing is for sure -- I'm not going back to this place!

mixing it up

my family and i went to our cabin for the Easter weekend. on the way there, my sister, her fiance and i decided to stop at one of the only local shopping centers and see what was new. turns out: not much, but i decided i wanted to go into Gottschalks since i'd never been to one, and to scope out their supposed 60% off merchandise liquidation.

what i found there somewhat surprised me.

i imagined Gottschalks to be along the lines of Mervyns and Kohls, which it was, but i wasn't expecting them to carry Lenox and Noritake or have an upscale cosmetics department with lines by Estee Lauder and Lancome. that's where my interest ended, however, as the rest of their merchandise was geared toward an older customer. much, much older, it seemed.

i wanted some new workout sneakers and thought they'd have at least a couple of pairs to choose from, and that perhaps i could score a good deal on something i needed. maybe it was because they were already in liquidation mode, but every single pair of shoes looked like something a grandmother would wear. they had zero even remotely fashionable shoes, much less any sneakers at all. it was puzzling, because apparently liquidation of this store had just begun, which means that they really weren't gearing much merchandise toward a younger consumer at all. sure, they had some apparel by Volcom and O'Neill but that was pretty much it.

this sparked me to comment to my sister (who was even less impressed with the store than i), "this is why they're going under -- they haven't managed to keep up with the times."

unknown to me at the time, others opined the same about Gottschalks skewing toward the older consumer. (sidebar: Labelscar is an awesome site for anyone interested in retail present or history.)

i am sad for those that will lose their jobs due Gottschalks ceasing to exist. most stores are located in already economically depressed areas, and more folks looking for work in a matter of weeks will not help anyone's situation. but it begs the question: could Gottschalks have survived, even just a bit longer, had they modified their merchandise offerings? it's a tough balance to strike, keeping long-term customers while attracting a new base. but for a 105-year-old company, they must have done something right along the way.

new era

finally. it doesn't take a genius to figure out this is the right move at this juncture.

what's more depressing than realizing that we plunked down *gulp* $126 million for this guy? realizing just how bad the discrepancy in his income versus your own. check it.

jump the shark

i was originally a fan of the ironic t-shirt fad, but i'm pretty certain that ship has sailed. not just because i'm tired of them, but because the best way to know a fad has ended is when people the fad was not geared toward start to participate in said fad.

picture this, if you will: a stroller-pushing, heavy-set, middle-aged caucasian woman wearing this



tight in all the wrong places. can you picture it? well i saw it live and in the flesh, so to speak. do you think she knew that it was an album reference "cleverly" disguised by some wizard at a t-shirt company?

i think it's pretty safe to say it's jumped the shark.

effing hipster.

it's like a trifecta of hate: hipster tourist dodger's fan, spotted at the train station.

iSick

i seem to be in the minority when i say i don't want an iphone. and really, i don't want one, my blackberry is fine and dandy. plus, with all the hype that's been surrounding the item, i want it even less! i do have to say that their original teevee advert for it, aired during the oscars, was awesome, but that's just because i love movies.



that malls and apple stores have had to hire security guards to tame the crowds makes me roll my eyes. it's a phone, fercryingoutloud.

it's news that steve wozniak is waiting in line for an iphone when there was a potential TERROR PLOT unveiled today.

thus, iSick of hearing about the iPhone.

(lis, hope you were able to get one!)

second opinion

"Managed care" is such a misnomer. I say this having worked in a claims office for HMOs before I started my current job. I'd roll my eyes as patients complained that surely chiropractic care was covered under their plan? I'd deny claims with wild abandon, as we were taught to do, that didn't meet the strict criteria set forth by the plan. Maybe that should be The Plan, as everything we did centered around an almost cult-like atmosphere

At the time, the concept of HMOs was entirely new to me, and I learned everything about them along the way. My family had a PPO plan, so the thought of having to be referred to see a doctor was foreign to me. That you couldn't just see a dermatologist because you had a rash, you needed "prior authorization" seemed ridiculous.

Fast forward 6 years and I am now an HMO subscriber with my own policy. The transition between PPO and HMO was interesting, but because of my former job I felt like any questions I would have had were answered. I haven't had too many issues.

Until I went on vacation and got sick. I went to the doctor I used to see when we lived on Maui, when we had a PPO, knowing that he wouldn't accept my insurance, but that I'd be able to submit it for reimbursement upon my return. After all, I was out of state, it's not like I had a lot of options. This doctor is awesome, and because it's half urgent care facility (or at least it used to be) and half regular doctor's office, he keeps irregular hours. Like when I went to see him on a Sunday. Not normal business hours for a doctor's office, but I got to reap the benefits.

So the bill, with medication, came close to $300. Figuring a) you can't put a price on health, and b) that my insurance would reimburse me, I didn't have any trouble forking my credit card over.

Fast forward to returning from my trip and trying to get my $300 back from my insurance company. According to them, I should have visited an emergency room and that's the only way the claim would be covered. The truth of the matter is that I wasn't sick enough to occupy a spot in the ER and would have felt guilty doing so.

So now I'm $300 poorer and pissed off at my insurance company. (And p.s. -- I'm still sick!)

Don't think I'm not going to appeal their decision.

break the chain

Christmas morning and the celebratory activities have gradually given way to Christmas afternoon (late morning, at the earliest) in my family as I live about 30 minutes away and my sister is prone to sleeping in, especially after a late night. As such, we do more of a brunch as a family than a traditional breakfast before heading over to my uncle's (dad's brother) house in the early afternoon. This year I decided to bake a quiche -- I have an easy recipe from "Real Simple" from a couple years back that combines two of my favorite foods: bacon and blue cheese. The last time I made this it was a hit, and it's so easy that even I'm not too lazy to make it. The blue cheese for the recipe is in the form of salad dressing (this shortcut, along with an egg substitute, like Egg Beaters, is why the recipe is so easy) and as I was removing the glass jar from the fridge it slipped and shattered on the kitchen floor. I cleaned up the ridiculous mess fairly quickly before heading to the RiteAid near my house to see if I could get a replacement jar of blue cheese dressing there and avoid what was sure to be a mess at the grocery store. They didn't have it, so it was off to Safeway where I was in, out and back home in record time. I slapped the quiche together and got online while it was baking.

Over Thanksgiving, my mother posited that my oven may be in need of calibrating, as it took almost 4 hours to cook a mere 5 Cornish game hens. I had forgotten about this, as I most likely have not used my oven since Thanksgiving. So after the 25 minutes baking that the recipe called for, the egg mixture was still raw. I left it for another 15 minutes while I got ready and the situation was pretty much the same. After 75 minutes of baking, the "flaky crust" started flaking all over the inside of the oven, and all the while the eggs were still raw. I pulled it out of the oven to see that the eggs had partially risen and were pulling the crust away from the tin. Then it collapsed. My mother, ever with good timing, called at this point and wondered what time I'd be arriving. She didn't expect to find me close to tears, and comforted me and said we'd eat the goodies she'd bought instead.

I headed over to my parents' house and dove in to help my father set up the new tv he bought my mother, but for whatever reason the Comcast box wasn't working. My father called Comcast for tech support (which was a surprise in itself) and tried to get it up and running before giving up on the woman. He insisted I call back after we'd opened gifts, about two hours later, and lo and behold, I got the same phone agent. Still no luck, so we headed off to my uncle's house.

I thin I've mentioned before that my mother, sister and I routinely feel we're not welcome among my father's side of the family even though my father has done so much for all of them at various points. He has 6 brothers and sisters and each one has several children and each of their children has several children, so family gatherings on that side are insane. We were the first to arrive, which never bodes well, so we were hanging out in the kitchen talking with my uncle when I noticed a photo Christmas card on the fridge from my father's other brother, Dan, and his wife. I pulled my mother aside and asked if they had received one, and she said they had not. Later, after most folks arrived, Dan's wife (er, my aunt) wanted to take pictures of all the siblings but acted put out she had to have my father in the photo. She went around taking pictures off all the families and someone mentioned she neglected my sister, mother and I even though we were all sitting in the same room. She sighed and snapped one without much care -- we were barely in the frame of the photograph.

Her whole attitude, and Dan's, now, really ticks me off. My father had to hear about their engagement through the grapevine, Dan never told my dad. My dad was the only sibling not in the wedding party. My father wasn't invited to Dan's bachelor party. At the wedding, there was another "let's get the siblings together for a pic but leave ThatBeeGirl's dad out" incident. They're expecting (honeymoon baby, anyone?) and their child will be my first first cousin in years, and I'm excited as I never pictured Dan as a father -- he's always been more of a big brother to me. But again, my father had to hear it from others.

My father bought a house for Dan about 10 years ago and not that he should be forever grateful, it's just...show some class. I mean -- my father didn't even give me one dime toward my home (I'm not complaining, I'm just sayin').

Basically, I'm not my new aunt's biggest fan.

After we eat, it's time for gifts. As there are so many people, it was decided a few years back that the adults would participate in a White Elephant (the good kind, not the crappy kind) gift exchange with a limit of $30. Every year, someone gets their feelings hurt because someone "stole" the gift they really wanted. That's part of the fun of the game, says I. Anyway, this year I played it well and ended up with one of those massaging foot bath thingies that I "stole" from my cousin. It was her year to be upset, I guess. So as we're leaving, she comes up to me and says she really wanted it. I jokingly say, "Maybe I'll bring it back next year and you can get it then!" Then she says, "Well, it wasn't for me, it was for Paul, the vibrating is good for his senses."

(Sidebar: This cousin has 7 children. Yes, 7. She'd have 8, but one of them, Paul's twin, died in infancy. Paul is severely mentally retarded, and hid twin would have been also, had he lived. Both children were abused by their former nanny.)

So I shrugged and handed her the foot massager, saying she made me feel bad. Which is true -- had I held on to the item I'd be feeling mighty guilty right now. In her defense, she offered a trade for the item she had, a griddle, but she tacked on, "Although I'd love to use in to make my family breakfast..."

I let her keep it.

Earlier that evening, a different cousin's husband was talking about how they were leaving for Tahoe the next day. My sister asked if they were staying on the south or north shore, and cousin's hubby said he hadn't made hotel reservations -- everything was so expensive . He wouldn't stop talking about how expensive it was, and they wanted to take his mother-in-law and father-in-law with them, so that added to the expense, blah blah blah. I thought this was odd, but didn't think too much of it until we were about to leave and they approached my father -- "Could we borrow your cabin for the week until New Year's Day, Uncle Joe?" Sonofa... Seems to me they had decided they'd ask a loooong time ago, but why the whole "ohhhhh, it's sooooo expennnnsive" charade?!

That was the last straw for me -- I asked my mother if we could go somewhere, anywhere, else next year. She, my sister and I are in agreement that we need to create a new Christmas holiday tradition.

stank

Two things worth mentioning this week (just two?) but I'll only make mention of one since someone told me to "get over it" in reference to the first. But before I do that, how's about I throw a little holiday (and gift receiving in general) advice in this ol' post:

It's always a good idea to thank the gift giver, even if you're not a fan of the gift. It's called being polite.

/Public Service Announcement

So that leaves the second thing.

At this evening's sewing class (what, you didn't know I was taking a sewing class?) I got to talking with the gal that sits next to me. We were talking about the upcoming holidays, and she asked if I had any plans. I told her mine, then asked what her plans were. She said her in-laws were arriving, and staying for "a short visit, about 6-8 months ."

I couldn't contain my surprise (my poker face is getting worse) and commented that that was a long time for house guests. She crispy responded, "In my culture, they are not considered 'house guests,' but family," before she abruptly turned away and went back to her sewing.

Well ex-cah-youze me. 6-8 months for anyone to visit is too damn long -- I'm fond of the expression that "House guests, like fish, need to be thrown out after three days."

jive talking

For the third consecutive year I'm hosting Thanksgiving. It doesn't bother me much because my father does most of the cooking, I just have to clean the house, provide appetitzers (my family makes meals off of apps) and make a pie or two.

Our menu for this year will be different from years past: Cornish game hens, fresh crab, french-cut green beans, spring salad, dinner rolls, corn, garlic mashed potatoes, cranberries, stuffing and my pumpkin spice pie with fresh whipped cream.

This year I'm feeling a little of the proverbial holiday stress as my mother invited her brother, John, and her closest friend, Judy, to join us. She's known Judy since they were 12 years old, so it's pretty much like having family over.

Uncle John is a different story. He and my mother have never been close, and after his recent divorce he moved from Southern California up here, about 10 minutes away from my folks. In the 7 or so months he's lived up here, my mother has made repeated attempts to invite him places, but he never calls her back . Seriously. So when he called, conveniently, on Sunday after all these months of not returning phone calls, my mother asked me if I wouldn't mind setting an additonal place for Uncle John.

Despite my family's dysfunction, I still believe in "family first" and making people feel welcome, so I said of course he was invited. My mother called him back and asked what his Thanksgiving plans were, if he was headed down south to spend it with his sons. He said no, they already have plans, so he'd be sticking around here. So my mother said, "We're headed to B's for Thanksgiving, why don't you join us?" He did the "aw, shucks" routine and said he couldn't possibly invite himself.

Pshaw, says my mother to herself. Why the heck else would he call after 7 months, oddly coinciding with a holiday?!

Anwyay, I'm excited to have a few extra people over. I have a seemingly endless to-do list to prepare, but at least I got one major one out of the way yesterday: new dishes. I have a set that originally started with 8 place settings I've had for about 5 years and it's dwindling. I headed over to Crate & Barrel yesterday and picked out an inexpensive pattern and bought 10 settings. If had really planned ahead I would have gotten new flatware. Mine has definitey seen better days, and I'd love to have settings for 10 or 12. That'll be a purchase for another day, or maybe Santa will bring me it...

For those that celebrate it, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

dumb luck

I've been called for jury duty. I registered in this county when I became a homeowner, a change from the county my parents live in. I'd been called three times with my registration in their county, but never had to show up as my number wasn't called. Apparently, this county does things a tad differently than I'm used to. This county assigns you four days worth and service can be at one of seven different courthouses, the farthest one at least 45 minutes from my home. So when am I scheduled for jury duty?

(wait for it...)

December 26-29.

For those keeping score at home, I need to call or check online twice a day for each of those days to see if I need to serve my civic duty.

Starting the day after Christmas.

foiled again

Again, thank goodness for the Blackberry.

I am at an all day conference on one of the most boring topics. But secretly I am excited, as it's my first professional conference and this will allow me to obtain a pretty neat certification, making this the second certification that I hold professionally.

When I first heard I would be attending this conference, my head spun with the thought of getting away from work for a day. Oh, the possibilities! Where would the conference be held? San Francisco,maybe? Some place even more exotic than my daily routine, certainly.

Someone has a sense of humor, though.

The conference is held literally across the street from my restaurant where my main office is. Literally across the street.

I'm the only one not laughing.

* I forgot the best part! Because I am so close to work (and because a couple of staff members called in today) I got to go back to work on my lunch break and work the lunch rush! It just doesn't get much better than this. Even my boss (read: father) said today, "I'll bet you wish you chose the corporate world today!" But the truth of the matter is nope--this works for me.

i'm not even in a bad mood!

Stuff I Don't Get Why People Like:
(aka Stuff I Dislike)

U2


Hot soup in the middle of summer (my gumbo Saturday night notwithstanding)


Hearing the same song over and over and over (and over) again


Lukewarm anything


Larry the Cable Guy


Eggs


Coldplay


Horror movies


Christina Aguilera

hotter'n blazes

'Nuff said.

go your own way

I've been going to the pool in my complex several days a week. I rather like night swimming, mostly because there are no screaming kids at 9p, but also because it reminds me of living on Maui and how we used to swim all.the.time, especially at night. I spent a bit too much time down there on Saturday after tennis, and got a bit burnt. But I wanted to stay as long as possible, if you can believe it, there was not a soul down there at 11a! I ended up sitting out for about two hours, alternating reading and cooling off in the pool.

Then.

Then the kids arrived.

You know the ones that scream and yell and splash and are generally annoying when you're trying to relax? ("Oh, how you forget you and your sister were once those kids too," my mother says to me when I relayed this story.) The ones that use the life saving device on the fence as a pool toy? The ones that use their boogie boards (a complex no-no as it is) as surf boards? The ones whose parents always seem to be looking the other way, or screaming at them in a foreign tongue (not that there's anything wrong with that)?

Yeah, those kids. Whatever happened to the days of "adult swim" when it referred to more than a block of shows on the Cartoon Network?

---

Speaking of my condo complex, I noticed signs posted several places around the property:

(camera phone pic)


I think they forgot to add "no fun" while they were at it. As if the "please" helps that they're outlawing fun.

But who am I to talk after the curmudgeonly rant on kids at the pool? Apparently this complex has a lot of old folks like me.

the hits just keep on coming*

And so as if the laptop issue wasn't bad enough...

I dropped my digital camera today, the LCD is cracked.

You know, the one I bought in DECEMBER?

If there's one thing I can't live without more than my laptop, it's my camera.

Off to Best Buy again, if I can muster enough courage to face them...again.

---

*So I went to a different Best Buy than the one I went to, um, Monday and Tuesday for the laptop, cause I'm chickenshit like that.
The Geek Squad guy takes a look at it and goes, "You dropped it, didn't you?" I go, "Noooo. It must've hit against something in my purse?" (quite unconvincingly, in my opinion). So then he says, "Okay, if it's in the system, we'll send it in for repairs, and if it's not, we'll give you a new one and say it was defective." Because I needed to get the last word in, I asked him, "Defective? Is that kinda like 'wink, wink, nudge, nudge?" cause it was very obviously my fault, not a manufacturing defect.

So it wasn't in the system, and bing bam boom, I got a spankin' new one. On.the.spot.

I hope this experience is indicative of how smoothly things will go for the laptop repair. Best Buy has gone up in my estimation after this!

shake it loose

What a week.

It started out to be a pleasant one -- see the pics below for proof:

Then it started.

So as the GM for three (soon to be two--explanation later-later) restaurants, I'm in charge of staffing. Most of our staff has been with us for years, and problems are fortunately few and far between in an industry plagued by high turnover rates. But every once in a while the shit really hits the fan, as it did this week.

Part of the problem is that we have quite a few folks related to each other working for us, and this is where the problems usually arise. In this case, the husband works at store #40 and the wife works at #51. Store #51 has been slow, so I decided to cut hours across the board. I knew there would be a problem with this husband and wife set, because we're in the final stages of selling store #40 and we're nearing the end of the close of escrow period. The problem is, the new owner will be bringing in their own team of employees and not need our staff, including the previously mentioned husband. In other words, if I can't find another store to put him, he'll be out of a job in a matter of weeks. I obviously knew this situation going into cutting hours at #51, but business is business, no matter how "tight" my staff thinks they are with me.

So Tuesday I go in and meet with the staff at #51 individually and tell them about the sluggish business lately, and by and large they understand. I mean, most of them would rather have a job with reduced hours and the promise of those hours returned than not have a job at all. Plus, they're not stupid, they see how it's been slow lately. I also let the staff know individually that I'll be giving their biannual raises in the next pay period, so that helped to soften the blow.

I meet with the wife half of the husband/wife pair and go around and around with her, she's disputing the whole thing, and after 30 minutes of this, my patience is wearing thin. We end the conversation simply with her saying, "My husband is going to have something to say about this," which, of course, I already knew. He's quite outspoken.

The day progresses, and I'm on my way home in the evening to meet up with some friends when I get a call from her husband, completely up in arms about everything, so much so that he's not speaking clearly or intelligibly. I explain over and over again the situation but he's not hearing me, apparently, and is shouting over me to get his point across. I keep telling him I want to speak to his wife, not him, because she is the person that this about, not him. This goes on for several minutes until he says, "Okay, well I quit and so does she." I wasn't thinking clearly, obviously, when I said, "Fine," because I was so heated at this point. I can often do without one staff member, but two is pushing it as far as floating back-up staff members around.

Plus, he's the cook.

Did I forget to mention that?

Yeah.

Long story short (too late) a call was made to grovel so that he'd come back at least until store #40 is sold. Because I'm fairly close with the staff (a mistake sometimes) I know that they can't afford to have both of them be out of work. I mean, who can, really? So a compromise is reached whereby he'll return to work and his wife will too, at decreased-but-not-so-dramatically hours, and the condition that I'm not to speak to the pair, his terms. WTF?!

Yeah.

So even though it was a short week, by Friday I'm feeling like I need a stiff drink, and I don't even drink. Instead, I get a call from the folks I used baby-sit for, and I haven't seen them in so long that I haven't met their youngest, a two-month old girl.

The evening went well, even if the little one spent most of the time screaming her little head off. I stopped at the drugstore on my way home to pick up some film I dropped off earlier (can I just say the highlight of my week was getting film from my new Lomo developed?!) when I dropped my cell phone. I guess it had been dropped one too many times (I'm hard on phones) and the screen went completely dead. I figured it was no big deal since I have the insurance, so I head to Cingular first thing Saturday morning, only to find out that, yep, it's gone beyond repair. I decide to buy a new one, cause it is my work phone after all, only to find out that we're on a national business plan of sorts that has to be dealt with differently to get promotional pricing, and the earliest I can get a new phone is Wednesday.

Let me break it down like this: this is my work phone, home phone, cell phone all in one. I absolutely cannot go incommunicado for that long, if only for work purposes. The idiot at the Cingular store suggests I buy a prepaid phone to use temporarily until the new one can be sent from the business headquarters.

What.a.friggin.idiot. Yes, let me buy TWO phones, please! So I cave and buy a phone on the spot for the full price, a ridiculous amount of money equal to a good portion of my Christmas bonus. But! (Of course there's a but.) It needs to be "unlocked," so the idiot at Cingular sends me to some shady place two towns away to pay another $40 to have the phone unlocked for use, then tells me to come back so he can extract the numbers from the old phone. I do as I'm told and go to the shady phone guy, return to Cingular only to find out they cannot extract the numbers I had stores because they were stored on the actual phone, not the SIM card. (You knew that was coming, right?) Beyond frustrated, I go back to the shady phone guy who offered to extract the numbers for a mere $15 after I talked him down from $25 only to find out it really cannot be done.

So.

I'm now trying to contact all the folks I think were stored in my phone to have them send me their numbers. More importantly, I lost all of the phone numbers for my employees that were stored in my phone! That'll be a bit harder to trace, since half of them change their numbers with great frequency.

On the plus side, if there is one, every time I answer the phone it'll give me a thrill to guess who is calling, since the caller ID will simply show a series of numbers that I won't recognize! I mean, c'mon (COME ON!) who memorizes phone numbers these days?! ;) Oh, and I have a cool Razr (ridiculous spelling) too.


Other than that, not a whole lot is new. Heading up to SF today with the fam for some dinner and other family related goodness. My uncle (mom's brother) is moving from the O.C. (don't call it that) to Northern California (today, actually) so it should be interesting to see how it all plays out since they don't get along very well. If anything, I figure my cousins might come up for visits frequently and that'll be rad, since we get along well. He and my aunt got divorced last year, and everything just got sorted out...

If you've made it this far, I congratulate you.

This verbal diarrhea is why I don't write very often.

Phew.

"People are fed up with us - and so are we."

Word of this could not have come soon enough.

"Coldplay is Splitting Up"

Let it be known here that I cannot stand Coldplay.



Chris Martin said it best himself: "People are fed up with us - and so are we."

Fony?

Big business is finding more creative ways to catch your attention, and perhaps more importantly, your money. Or should I say desperate? (No one wants to look desperate.)

First came Starbucks', shall we say, innovative holiday marketing campaign in SF, now Sony is attempting to appeal to the city masses by using graffiti artists to create "street art" to promote its PSP.



Of more interest to me is that critics of this campaign are grafitti-ing over Sony's ads as a way to express their disapproval.

"AD"

('ad' post, be warned.)

i've never before watched anything religiously on fox.

not 'the simpsons,' not 'family guy,' not 'america idol.' nothing. i can count the number of times i've actually tuned into fox without removing my shoes to count--it's that few. why? they air dumb shows, period. the majority of programs they air are geared towards the idiots of america, which are increasingly becoming the average american, as far as i am concerned.

and it's about to get even fewer and far between.

fox is pulling the plug on the best show ever.

yes, it's only a tv show. but it's a SMART tv show.

now i remember why i looked upon fox with such disdain.

they're bloody morons.