shhLIFE!

Happy new years!!

Hope it’s a great and relaxing one for you!

I happen to have some incredibly talented cousins.. you’ve all heard about my fab photographer cousin Erica Berger.

Another georgeous and awesome cousin Zeva Bellel has a great site called Paris By Appointment Only.

Now, one of my cousins from my dad’s side of the family has started this really cool project called The Grok Project.  Starting in november, Ian is going to spend three years steping through the entire history of science and technology by re-creating and experiencing as much of it as possible,  blogging about the whole thing (yay internets!).

Some of the cool things he plans on doing to “grok” science are:

• Make stuck stone tools
• make copper tools
• make woven cloth
• visit a copper mine
• impress cuneiform writing on clay tablets
• Measure earth’s circumference/diameter using eratosthenes’ method
• make a blowgun
• build hand-cranked rotary fan
• build a trebuchet
• measure the speed of light
• hot air ballooning
• assemble an internal combustion engine
• scuba diving
• build a telephone
• build a vacuum tube
• extract/splice DNA
• build a humanoid robot

and more!

Check out the project as it moves forth.. I smell a TV show coming on!!

Rock ‘n Roll Bride · Under The Spotlight – Erica Berger.

My cousin Erica has been featured on Rock ‘n roll Bride!  Go Erica!!

Court upholds Prop. 8 but lets marriages stand.

I’m incredibly upset about Prop 8 being upheld.  I’m glad that my mother and her wife are able to stay legally married, but I’m very upset that the courts decided that gay and lesbian couples are less “valid” than heterosexual couples.

I want to post all of my thoughts and feelings about it, but I don’t have the energy right now.  All I will say is this:

How dare one group of people remove the rights of another.

The fact that the court upheld this proposition disgusts me.

Hey folks,

minor change to the theme for my site.. okay, not really minor, pretty major. I was getting tired of the old one, so put in this new one which feels more lively to me. 

Anyway, nothing much more to report at the moment except that I went to see Fleetwood Mac with my lovely wife, my wonderful mother ‘n law & her awesome scottish hubby.  I was suprised.. wasn’t expecting much from the show, but they TOTALLY rocked.  We had a great time & my ears are still ringing.

If you’re even remotely familiar with their music (like me.. just remotely), go.  It was a great performance and many times I was like “oh.. THAT song!  I remember that song!”

When I was younger my parents used to play this Captain Zoom music to me and my brother for our birthdays.. Kyle sent me the lyrics today to say “happy birthday”, and Todd Elliot found an mp3! Sweet!

Captain Zoom

For those of you who grew up in the 70′s and 80′s, you probably remember this song.. it’s just too awesome for words.

Anyway, to celebrate my 36th, Penny brought the kids into lunch which was really lovely. They also brought Sprinkles cupcakes.. which are DELICIOUS.

Aurora got me a beautiful purple Ukulele with a dolphin on it. Sweet. And pen’s promised a guitar! woot! now I can learn to play guitar and become a rock star if this whole animation thing doesn’t work out.

Tonight is dinner at one of my favorite restaurants (Red Lantern in Redwood City.. YUM!), and sunday is passover with the family. Nice!

Oh! And the funniest part.. walking into our department meeting with the entire animation department at PDI singing Happy Birthday INCREDIBLY out of key & sync. It was…

well, it was bloody awful, but I loved it anyway. Thanks everyone!

The economy today sucks.

there, I said it. That’s right. you heard me.. it sucks.

I can’t tell what company is coming or going, our retirement plans are worth 1/3 of what they were only a year ago, stocks go down, up, down, down, uuuuuup, and then down again.  Mortgage rates are.. well, actually they’re getting better, so yay!  But getting a mortgage sure isn’t fun.

Every day there’s news about another ponzi scheme that suckers people out of their money.  Jobs are being lost.  Wages cut.  CEOs getting fired.  It’s all a bit crazy.

So we’ve decided to downsize a little bit.  The past few weekends we’ve been slowly (and I really mean slowly.  It’s tough to do anything quickly with two kids) going through all our stuff and trying to separate things into 3 piles.

1) Keep it ‘cuz we love it

2) Give it away or sell it

3) Junk it.

I’ve always had a hard time getting rid of things.. I always think  “This picture I drew when I was 8.. somebody somewhere is going to want to see it!”.  Or “This shirt doesn’t fit anymore.. but .. someday it might.”  Or “I love briefcases.  I never use them, but someday it might be cool to carry one to work.”

I have stuff from 15 years ago that I thought I’d use again someday.. but I never really do.  So finally.. finally I’m getting it through my thick skull that it’s not worth hauling this stuff around with me everywhere I go, and it probably doesn’t need to sit in the garage for another 15 years.

So we’re downsizing.  We’re not moving.. we’re just selling, donating, and getting rid of things we most likely will not use for a while, or ever again.

and it feels so good!

Another way I’m downsizing is in the weight department.  183lbs today.. that’s down from my peak of 199 in early december!  Yeehaw!

Today prop 8 (the proposition to make marriage illegal for gay couples) is back in court with both sides working to determine whether or not the ballot proposition was constitutional or not.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/04/MN6I16807P.DTL

My personal opinion is of course that prop 8 was insane. I feel very strongly that two loving consenting adults should have the same rights as anybody else.

I would be absolutely livid if my marriage to the woman I love (who happens to be a kiwi), was invalidated because some else thinks that marriage should be between Americans tells me that my marriage is no longer valid. They want to break up my loving family because of something THEY believe.

Screw that.

I’m sorry, but I think that prop 8 is a violation of a basic human right. My mother and her partner were married in september, and it was a beautiful, wonderful event full of love, joy, excitement, and validation of an amazing relationship.

Their relationship has nothing to do with anybody but themselves and their family. We all support it, so leave them alone Ken Starr.

http://www.hrc.org/endthelies/index.html

Finally under 190!!

I have been working out pretty much daily since I found out I was within a pound of hitting 200 pounds.. Yikes!

Well after nearly 2 months of cardio and weights I have hit 189!

Woo! Now to hit 180!

Yes. We did. « Margaret and Helen.

I occationally read this great blog called Margaret and Helen.  It’s written by two lovely and honest old women who have been friends for over 60 years.  They have no qualms about speaking however they feel, and I love it.

I don’t even know how many times they called Palin a B*tch.  Or Anne Coulter.  Or Elizabeth Hasselbeck.  Or Hannity.

It’s great.

Anyway, Helen just posted a great bit about how we as a country have moved past politics of old.. and poor rush, poor anne, poor elizabeth, poor sean.. they’re stuck in the past.