giant anise flower stalk among the redwoods purisima creek open space preserve
i took that picture a couple of days ago while hiking the whittemore gulch trail. it was such a surprisingly pleasant hike. four out of five stars!
anyway, back to the main topic. oh, how many people do i know whose birthday is this month! my siblings alone there are four of us. and friends, let's see if i can get them straight.
03 kirk
05 thai an
13 missy
21 nootz
22 maura
25 trang, matt, orion, tatiana, and me!
28 bettina
now that i've taken a good look at my all the birthdays in my book, it looks like there are more october birthdays than june. hm... who cares. it's my birthmonth. and i declare june is better. way better!
should your birthday occur in this fortuitous month, leave me a comment. i would be more than happy to give you a shout out. rabbit rabbit!
i got to see a free screening of that movie last night at the kabuki 8 courtesy b-dog. it's more or less the same shenanigan as the documentary released a few years back except for the part involving tyson. he gets da bone!
i made jg take me to scrap this morning. i spent half and hour turning the bins upside down and ended up buying nothing. i was going to get $1.50 worth of junk but was told, "like, we seriously have no change for a $20."
but look what i got in the mail.
that's a mix cd from cutting edge m. i have been hurting for new music for some time and had been soliciting everyone left and right. today, i am saved.
1. access text messages
2. put an image on a tee shirt
as you may or may not have heard, i was out camping all weekend. monday morning after i regained full coherence, i noticed that i had an envelope on the corner of my cell phone screen. i never knew that my phone had text messaging capability. i have had this phone for over a year now and, believe it or not, it was only two weeks ago when i learned to control the receiver's volume.
anyway, it was a message from m reminding me that i had a tee shirt design tutorial appointment to keep. it was 7 pm and off i went.
m lives smack in the middle of downtown sf so it took three trips around the block before i found a parking space. then we walked over to a joint that is rumored to be the best thai restaurant in sf.
m in the mirror
note loner eating+reading at top right
after two hours of okay food and poor service, we went to m's flat. i had warned him well in advance that his entire life would be on schmeebot. here it is:
m giving me a tour of his patch of fine earth
living room
studio
there was a huge canvas on a wall height easel to the left of the picture above which i failed to take a picture of.
m showed me a closetful of his paintings but i had no space to photograph them. he also showed me a whole mess of his tee shirts. i'll show you the two i like best.
neat experimental design that changes with each wash
one in the bliss series
close up
i like the crackled effect lots. two years ago m sent me one of these terrific bliss shirts for my birthday. it's got entirely different images. i'd love to show you except i left it in sb.
then we got down to business. m discussed methods he's familiar with such as silk screening and gel gluing except we had equipment for neither. so we settled on the least complicated method: iron-on.
first we had to create an image. as it was our practice run, i decided to lift the image right off threadless.
m cleaned the design in photoshop
then he printed it and i cut it out. we had a heck of a time separating the paper backing from the iron-on transfer. it was possibly the most time consuming part in the entire process.
then i carefully arranged the images on the shirt and, with the iron set on max,
m pressed it on
some thirty seconds later, lift off
not bad, eh?
we did two more practice runs while m smoked a bunch more cigarettes. he played around on photoshop and decided to make the last trial image pink. it didn't turn out very well but he used it anyway. check it.
"it takes a very sexually secure man to wear pink." -bqk 1992
i have decided to break the m-fest today. i've also decided that i'm generally tired of people whose names start with the letter m. let's celebrate someone from another part of the alphabet. why not someone whose name starts with a vowel?
may 2005
that's a picture of my friend anett taken by her boyfriend in death valley. isn't it a great shot? there's something about it that really strikes me.
anyway, anett is from elsterwerda, germany. i met her back in april and i think she's swell. her studies at stanford end next month so she won't be around for much longer. i'm going to miss making fun of her english. i will also miss learning things like the pronounciation of volkswagen. she calls it fau vey instead of vee dubya. those germans.
jg dragged me out of bed this morning at 6:17 to see that there is direct sunlight in our living room. he was inordinately cheerful about being able to see both where the sun rises and sets from our north facing window. "it's true solstice!" he announced.
taken at 6:39 am
that's the same direction where i normally take pictures of sunsets. the gleaming reflection on the window is of the sunrise. neat, huh?
that's an old photograph of me and my brother binh. you can tell by the ears and the total lack of eyebrows that we are related. my momma took that picture of us when we were three and ten. we were the youngest of all her kids.
i use 'were' because he's not around anymore. he passed away three years ago. it would have been his 41st birthday today. and it would have been very happy.
jg went to a bachelor's party last night. before he left i packed him with cash and actually advised him: if you want to keep all your teeth, don't touch the lap dancer.
around 1:30 am, i got a surprisingly coherent phone call from him requesting for a pick up. it turned out he did not make it to the strip bar. i am still unsure which one of us was more bummed.
23june05 at 1:45 am
note bar stamp on wrist
i found him grinning like a goofball at a shady corner of stockton+california. he wasn't at all drunk despite wreaking of alcohol and cigar smoke. he told me about the entire outing on the way home. it was a good recount except in between sentences, he would grunt, "urgh, that goldschlager, urgh." it was sadly entertaining.
the grunting stopped this morning but he still looked just as goofy.
good as new
may your weekend be chockfull of shakas and, of course, grunt free.
that's me 33 years ago. i'm going to a wedding later today. i hear the cake will be four tiered. do you think they'll let me take a picture like that with their cake?
last friday i was invited to a wedding rehearsal dinner, a benefit from jg's groomsmanship. the restaurant was in the embarcadero four so afterward, jg took me over to embarcadero five, the building with the cafe that spins around at the top.
tiny jg in voluminous atrium of the hyatt regency
beam me up style elevator pods
view from the express pod direct to the equinox
i love the equinox. years ago when my webmaster lived in san francisco, he used to take me to this restaurant every time i visited him. i just can't get over the fact that it spins!
creme brulee+coffee for jg
mango madness+mocha for me
it was surprisingly pleasant. we could hear nothing but faint conversations and real mellow ambient music. we had just left a pretty big dinner party so the down shift suited us just fine.
we hung around until well after sunset
saturday we didn't get out of bed until 9. that's very late by jg's standards. he made breakfast as he usually does on weekends.
here is the chef in the process making gourmet bacon egg muffins
and here is the birthday babe stuffing her face
i could only eat half my breakfast. how could anyone eat when there are presents to open?
how much i love this box from g
oh, i got loads of goodies. loads! cards, letters, toys, music, you name it! i can't remember the last time i feel this spoiled. i will be boasting about it for years to come. you'll see!
me and half the loot
saturday afternoon jg and i went to saint dominic's for frank+gabbie's wedding. i arrived late; the wedding party was already on stage. good thing jg left an hour before i did.
catholic ceremony complete with japanese wedding crashers
i got to hang with jg for a few minutes after the ceremony. we got one photo of us together from the entire day.
me and one of the five groomsmen
note the super festive amyville necklace
sunday morning jg woke me up by declaring, "it's your birthday today!" then he said how he would be at my disposal and that he would take me to any number of shops i want. then he promptly got dressed and went to work.
i picked him up at 1 pm and we went to japantown for lunch.
sanppo udon in a caldron the size of my head
bowl of miso ramen, also the size of my head, for jg
after an hour of eating we made no dent to the food. we gave up and took our lunches to go. we went directly over to room+board and browsed all three floors of their furniture.
interesting landscaping at storefront
i sat in every chair in sight
so did jg...
when he's not studying them
we were to hit irving street next to check out the shopping scene but we got foiled by the pride parade. it took us hours of detour to get back toward our neighborhood. i got car sick from the stop and go traffic and decided to go home.
as the shopping looked hopeless, jg decided to drag me to marin. we ended up at china camp.
he biked while i hiked
i took the bayview trail, a disappointing workout but an excellent photo op. i took over one hundred pictures on the 2 mile loop. unfortunately, very few are visually interesting. these next two are neat coincidences.
now you see it
now you don't
this is the only view of the bay i found on the entire trail
head size fungus at foot of oak tree
one of many beautiful manzanita trees
manzanita bark, much more vibrant than shown
a fear inducing surprise
a sky full of gnats
jg unwittingly collected some
jg actually finished his loop and biked up my trail to find me. he asked what took me so long. what a show off.
leaving china camp
next, we headed up the road to mcinis park so the old man could live out his skateboarding fantasies.
jg in ready mode at the kidney pool
i knitted while he zoomed around. you can see a short footage of him if you like. check his dramatic deathlike ending.
going home, 8:28 pm
looking up at south tower of golden gate bridge
that's pretty much our entire weekend. i had a cakeless but very eventful extended birthday. thanks to everyone for having sent me your happy wishes. i am very happy indeed!
