Geo-caching

Go right ahead and get all of those jokes out of your system. The best I've heard? "Geo-caching is how geeks spend time outdoors."

Heh. And even that is a geek's interpretation of caching.

Ok, so imagine this: Geeks all over the world think to themselves, weeeell, what if I hide something of little pecuniary importance and tell other geeks about it using a code and suggest to them that they will be superior to other geeks if they get here sooner than later...

That's geo-caching in a nutshell.

I love it and I totally blame bk for this mess. Bastard! I want to cache everywhere!

Here's a picture of where I went caching recently. I don't know if you can see it ... not being -- I assume -- an official member of geocaching.com. OK, yeah, that is a really terrible pic! It was hot! What's your point!?

Hmmm... So...geocaching.com. Check it out.

Site Updates

I've made a few small updates to the site that I hope will make it easier to use.

Subscribing - Check out the new Subscribe to Me buttons at the top right. In the old days, I kept a list of favorite blogs and periodically I would go to each site looking for updates. Inevitably, though, some authors don't update for months so you stop tracking them rather than take the disappointment of seeing the same old post when you go to their site. By subscribing, your reader service monitors your list of blogs and automagically lets you know about any updates. That means that you can learn about my fondness for Rainier cherries and Peter Gabriel in the same feed and with the same gravitas as finding out about the latest news from Iraq. There are lots of different reader services, but I've only ever used one so it's the only one I can recommend: Google Reader. Follow that link to find out more. Basiljaz uses NewsGator, so I think that's a good option as well. Trust me, once you start subscribing to feeds, your internet reading becomes so much more productive.

My Blog List - I updated the format for my blog list so that in addition to the title of the blog, you can also see a link to the latest entry and when that entry was made. The list always sorts the most recently updated first, but this should make it a little more meaningful. For example, if my link to Pound ever jumps to the top, it's probably worth reading. I have actually read both of her books and I think she hasn't updated the blog in a while because she's working on Book the Third. Check out her other website Candyboots and click on the individual cards on the right. You'll thank me later. Be sure to note that each page has a separate title (look at the title page on your browser) and if she provides any links in the individual pages, click on them. She's a hoot.

Last thing -- this blog entry itself is an experiment because I'm trying to post from my email account. We'll see how it works. Posting via Twitter comes next!

Art & Artists

Speaking of Dale Chihuly (and we were), I love his work. I have always loved glass, either as beads, or a mosaic, or a solid piece (or a worked piece, or a formed piece or ... just anything). My favorite glass pieces are hung in windows so that sunlight comes through them and they always look different.

This is a piece from my house and obviously not a Dale Chihuly, but it's very pretty. About 12" in diameter, and about an inch thick. It's hollow.

If you follow this link, you can see some of the works of Dale Chihuly, and you can see all kinds of ways he's created with glass and light. The link is fun, because it has a bit of embedded video.

This link is nice too, but it's a specific (temporary) installation in Venice. My favorite piece is the Campiello Remer. The Squero di San Trovaso is nice too -- it reminds me of those glass balls Japanese fishers used to attach to their nets.

Also -- just so that I can get all of the art news out of my system -- I went to the art fair recently and got a couple more pieces by Vivienne Lee. She's a chinese painter and I now have three of her prints. Her prints come matted with (obviously) the print, and a small original painting in the same vein as the print. I love her stuff. She does a sort of non-sensical landscape as a background (the three I have include an impossible hill, impossible lights, and an impossible forest), and then populates it with happy working people. People running, people on bikes, ducks, pigs, and -- in a new favorite -- fireflies.

This detail is from the one with the impossible forest (it's called Banyan Trees). In the print I have, the people are about a quarter of an inch tall (not including bikes). The print itself is 22 x 28.

Las Vegas

Sorry, I've been inattentive. To make sure I get this done, I'll break it up into a couple of different entries.

First, I went to Vegas 8/7 through 8/10. I hadn't been in years -- so long that I'm not even sure I remember the last time I went, which I think was probably for work. Anyway, I've decided I haven't missed much.

In some ways, many things have changed and in some ways nothing is different. The crowds are still horrendous. I was talking to RAJwantsabirdie and he said, "Yeah, you have that thing --it's not a fear of crowds exactly -- it's ... just ... an unreasonable seething anger at crowds." I think that kind of sums it up. I was ready to brain somebody on the walk from the Flamingo to the Venetian. I'm not sure that Vegas understands that the train should be cheaper ($5 one way, but if you have two people...that's cab fare).

While there, I did enjoy myself. I got to see a friend I hadn't spent time with in years, I hung out at the pool at my mom's timeshare (which is spectacular), then hung out at the pool at the Luxor (not so spectacular), I spent entirely too much for dinner at the Venetian (ok, it was very good, and the waiter spoke Italian to the Italian party at the next table, but still), saw Cirque du Soleil's O, enjoyed the fountains at Wynn's, and went to see the Dale Chihuly piece at the Bellagio. Here's a little piece of that last one.



The funniest part was probably the first night when my mom kept getting me drinks and so I ended up quite tipsy, standing in Wynn's at 1:30 in the morning (4:30 for me) with my face up against the glass at the Chanel store saying, "Pretty!"

My favorite part was getting home. ;-)

Dr. Horrible is Back!

Yay! Hulu.com is carrying Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog! Previously I posted about how great it was and included a link to the (stale) website where you could only watch the teaser. Now you can check it out for free, with ads. Enjoy.

Dr. Horrible!

If you're not already on the bandwagon with watching video on-line, let me be the next to recommend it to you. The commercials are short, the quality is excellent, you can watch all kinds of stuff you never thought you'd find. Favorite sites for me are:

ABC.com (Watch Samantha Who? and Pushing Daisies! Or Lost, seasons 1 - 3!)
CBS.com (Survivor!)
Hulu.com (Most NBC shows, lots of FOX, and a whole lot of other really great content. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- what could be better than that?)

What I've Been Up To

My friend from Oz asked me where I've been and why I haven't blogged in a while (thanks for noticing, family) and the answer is that I've been here but occupied with the silliest things. I have been trying to at least update the whole listening to/watching sections, because life does continue and at least those things have changed, but ... yeah, that's weak.

The straight story is that I've had some fun personal stuff going on, and I'm getting ready to go to Las Vegas at the end of the week. I really want you all to do your own blogs though (family) so I feel like I need to make this a regular thing, and the only way to do that is ... just do it. So I'll share with you two things that I found really interesting this week.

First, I found some beautiful Rainier cherries. I walked into the produce section on Sunday and absolutely had to have them. I'm not a produce person, not a great shopper, I'm not particularly adventurous, and I don't vary much from a pretty fixed grocery list, but these are gorgeous tasting. They're tangy and sweet and firm and juicy and, well, it sucks for you not to be eating these. They give me joy every time I open the frig and I wish I could take a picture that does them justice (this is God's way of telling me I should get a new camera).

Second, I've been re-listening to Peter Gabriel's solo stuff and that, too, is gorgeous. The music is so thick and has so much texture, plus there's something expressive in his voice that makes me want to crawl up into it and stay awhile. Sometimes I'll find myself playing a track or even an entire CD over and over. I love his new one too, called Big Blue Ball, which is a collaboration with lots of other artists that spanned over ten years. It's really skillful, but you can tell they had a blast while making it.

So, anyhoo, although I haven't done very much worth talking about, I feel comfortable that my advice for the rest of your week is directly on target: Rainier Cherries and Peter Gabriel. Find a way to make it work.