I <3 TXT, or My Recent Brush with Fame

So, I was sitting at my window enjoying a nice Oakland sunset:

When my phone alerted me of an in-coming text message:

Isn't that sweet someone is thinking of me. I replied:

I was totally surprised when I found out it was:

There was only one logical assumption as to which Celine this was and this was funny because I was just thinking of her.

Not without a little disappointment I received this message:

Who is this Mr Phelps and why would Celine Dion be texting him. I decided that it was best to be civil with Celine-- she is a powerful performer-- so I used a sweet emoticon.

Then this:

Listen here Celine! I don't know who you are out gallivanting with but I assure you I do not and moreover will not associate with anyone calling themselves by such a bizarre assortment of words: peace justin zen.

Then I remembered that I hate Celine Dion and tried to angrily flip my phone shut, alas I don't have a flip phone so I pressed the end button and swore off "The Power of Love" forever.

SF is calling it's daughter home

but no San Francisco you are too expensive and I am having too much fun in Oakland. No matter how you woo me by decorating your streets with giant pictures of me I will not move back.

Everything I own is from Craigslist

I love Craigslist.org but not as much as the W.D. Craigslist is really an amazing community making portal. I love having a way to connect with people that have what I need and with people that want what I have. It is nice to see your old stuff go to good use. Every time we move we become wheelers and dealers in the grand Craigslist exchange community. But this time W.D. took craigslist-ing to new heights.

Here is the running tab.

Sold:
Our Grandma couch.
To some nice young college girls that were new to the city and couldn't understand why we were even selling it.

Our Bed and Mattress:
To a lady that made up a lie that her son was sleeping on the floor and really needed the bed in order to haggle us down. Little did she know that we were just glad to be rid of it.

My broke-ass dresser
posted for free and was gone in 2 hours.

Dani's Ipod mini
to the cutest little teenager having his first craigslist experience.

My manual typewriter
to sulky teenager that wanted to be a writer and needed the old school typewriter to feel authentic.

My Playstation and games
to an odd guy buying because his sister was visiting with her kids and he wanted to seem cool

Dani's Lesbian themed videos
to a woman in the south bay that hosted goddess poetry nights and repeatedly wished us a good life.

Dani's computer keyboard
to a nice lady

Our extra ukuele case
to a crazy lady who's antique uke was stolen and then recovered by the police but with a broken case handle. This sale hasn't actually happened yet because the women is so crazy she can't schedule the pick up but she keeps calling.

Dani's Desk
to an odd little hippie boy who asked us unanswerable questions like: "So its a desk... what have you been using it for primarily?" um... I don't know, mostly we've been using it as a...desk.

Helmets
Still for sale


Bought:
Our new apartment

Movers
Two Cal students that move people for extra cash

Boxes for the move
Free from some nice rich guy that just bought a house in Potrero

Ikea Couch
From a nice guy that was getting his first "big boy" couch and dry cleaned the slipcover of this one often.

Bed, hypoallergenic mattress and side table
From a super rich woman in loft that accidentally locked me out for 1/2 hour in my socks.

Super sweet orange Schwinn Varsity bike:
From Harvey a cute Stanford student.

hmmm... can't think of anything else. Dani please fill in the missing items.

Cube Master!

This is a photo of my triumphant first solve. It took me 4+ days to ensure my spiritual transcendence by perfectly arranging these brightly colored "cubies"(as true aficionados call them.) Below is a six year old dressed as spider man doing it in 37 seconds.

My feat of intellectual agaility wouldn't have happened without the help and support of chessandpoker.com or Andy who gave me the gift of cube.

Oaktown, Oaklandish, Oaksterdam

Goodbye SF :'(

The new place is freakin awesome. Its the top unit of a totally remodled victorian with 2 bedrooms and 2 baths. Dani will be in cooking heaven and I've been having dreams of the dishwasher and built-in microwave. Not to mention we have and even better view of The Sutro!


These are the crime stats of the new neighborhood.
It seems in line with city living pretty much. Right?

30 Days

60 days

Wake Up Leggy Wake Up!

I have the sinking suspicion that this photo is more truth than metaphor

Fans rest easy I am back!

It has been hard for me to keep up with my personal blog since blogging has become one of my work duties. For some reason it's hard to convince myself that the exact same activity can be both a chore for work and something for fun. So I'm trying out personal blogging from work (don't tell Andy)Anyway this post will just be a miscellaneous smattering of things I've been doing recently. Which to be honest isn't much. The camping weather is long gone and I've been sick. I can now count myself among the few who have vomited tuna through their nose (or am I the only one.)

This is an open truck bed of dead pigs. There are so many things wrong with this I don't even know where to begin. Hooray for being a vegetarian. Not for the sake of the poor little piggies but who would want to eat something that's been dead in the back of a truck for who knows how long.

A Christmas Tree, loved intensely for less than a month and then carelessly discarded like an abandoned truck full of dead piggies.







Dani and I went to Coit Tower for New Year's Day. One more San Francisco landmark to cross off the list. I've already forgotten the interesting facts I learned about Lille Coit who wore a fire hat all the time and smoked cigars and gambled like mad.


I especially loved the socialist leaning WPA art on the ground floor that delayed Coit's original opening day.

The End

TEE VEE!

Andy and I went on SF Live, a local public access show, for work! I'm too scared to watch. In my mind non sequiturs and silly, awkwardly constructed sentences fell out of my mouth and made everyone uncomfortable. I'm sure my memory makes it worse than it was but I will probably never watch it (unless I get attacked by some beast-like curiosity.)

But here it is for everyone else to see:



P.S. I made the StickLove video, but no one is supposed to know

Death Valley Pt 1

Andy and I went on a sudden trip to Death Valley in early October. It was amazing.

And then Andy turned into a giant.

Lost Burro Mine

Darwin

Death Valley Pt 2

A place just marked 'mine' on the map.

Rhyolite Nv

Andy and I took WD to the desert with us this time.

Keene Wonder Mine 8hr hike.
It was just plain awesome.

Then we had a snowball fight in Yosemite.