New Camera

After many good years with my not top of the line digital camera, I decided to get a new not top of the line digital camera. The lens on the old one kept getting stuck, resulting in severely out of focus pictures.

So here is the new camera.  It is much smaller, and it is "wasabi green" (it was, like, $30 cheaper than black). 
Admittedly, it is ugly.  But at least it won't easily get confused with anyone else's camera (except maybe Shrek fans, or something). But all in all, I am happy to have it.  

Can you tell the difference between my new 10 megapixel camera and my old 2 megapixel camera? Both files are the same size. 

Flushy

Many of you may have heard that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is in trouble.  I was born and raised in beautiful Illinois, but I don't know much about the guy.  I had nothing to do with this scandal and haven't lived in the state for about 8 years now.  I do know he wasn't liked much by his downstate constituents.  He refused to live in the governor's mansion in Springfield, which really caused a stink.  Also, I know he didn't think much of Pike County (read God's country).   

Emily and I were at a tavern in gorgeous Pike County once and overheard some old timers talking about the governor.  Apparently, he had recently purchased the grand champion steer at the state fair and didn't know what to do with it.  When asked about it he said that he might release it in Pike County let everyone there hunt it down or something like that.  

I was curious about my memory of this story so I found the actual quote, via the capitol fax blog.

After reading the quote, I don't know if what he said was actually derogatory towards Pike County seeing that it is a popular hunting destination.  But he certainly did not mention Pike County with the reverence it deserves.  For example, Pike County is typically predicated with the adjective "beautiful".  

Anyway, the quote does make him sound like a total crazy person or at least a drunk person.  I wonder what he finally did with the steer.  

Toby Keith

A week ago or so, Casey and I were watching A Colbert Christmas and Toby Keith was one of the guest stars. He sang this song about A War on Christmas, and it's actually a pretty catchy song, and a fairly funny video. But I know almost nothing about Toby Keith, except that he got in a big fight with one of the Dixie Chicks and he loves Ford trucks. So was this song a joke, or not? Toby Keith doesn't look like he's joking. But he really portrayed almost no emotion whatsoever,so it was really hard to make any assumptions about his intentions. So this instigated a period of intense interest in Toby Keith.He's from Oklahoma, and very proud of it. He really does seem to be a genuine good ol' boy. He worked at an oil rig and played football in Oklahoma for a long time before his music career took off.  He is intensely patriotic and very into supporting the troops (which I guess was the cause of the fight with the Dixie chicks) but is actually a democrat. The weirdest thing about Toby Keith is his unnatural Ford truck fascination.  It is integrated into everything he does. 

So, as it follows, Casey and I watched the movie he wrote and starred in, "Beer for My Horses".  We actually enjoyed it, even though there are several parts that really don't make sense. He basically just tried to jam in as many parts for old country singers as possible, which led to scenes of him talking a plumber for no reason, or running into a circus troupe, etc.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

A Colbert Christmas: Toby Keith Sings

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

So, conclusion is, I can really see why Toby Keith is popular. He just seems like a really genuinely nice guy, and he does seem to have a pretty good sense of humor.  He is very unpretentious, without making a big show of being unpretentious. He doesn't seem to really take himself seriously and doesn't seem to really think that his work is necessarily all that important, which I like in an entertainer. So, I learned a lot this week about someone new, although I did not buy any Toby Keith albums, in case you were wondering.

No more video chat

During the past year or so while Casey and I were living apart, we would spend at least 30 minutes a day talking to each other on iChat. Right before I finally moved out Casey took a few pictures for us to remember the experience, since, hopefully, it won't happen again.  I just figured I would pass the good times on to all of you. A little slice-of-life, if you will. Videochatting actually really helps a lot to make a long distance relationship a little easier.

Pescadero, Part II

After eating a seafood lunch and browsing one of the two stores in Pescadero, we decided to stop by a local dairy that produces goat cheese.  I love goats. I think they are very cute and their cheese is delicious.  Here is a picture of me in front of the goats (and two llamas, I guess).  They all seemed to really want to stand on a pile of dirt on the left hand side of the yard. It was getting pretty crowded over there.

We took a different route home and stopped at the beach. 

 The tide was out and we had a good time looking at all the plants and animals in the tide pools. Here is Casey looking quite dapper at the beach.

Good times!

trip to Pescadero

After I got back into town, Casey took a day off of work and we took a trip down to Pescadero. It is a very small town on the other side of the Santa Crus mountains from where we live.  On the way through the mountains, we stopped for a short hike at Memorial Park.  It was a lovely day and the park was practically deserted, except for park rangers. Here's me next to a large tree. Very California.  We are slowly accumulating a fairly large collection of pictures of us near large trees.

Here is a totally gross picture of a banana slug.  There were a lot of them on the trails, and since it is fall, they look just like some of the yellow leaves that are falling.

Here is me thinking about slugs and barfing in my mouth. 

I really don't like slugs.  I guess I never have. I can remember going into the garden at night and coming back in with a slug on me and freaking out. They used to all crawl on top of each other to die in a huge pile when we set out cups of beer.  But my true hatred came when I went to college in Oregon and there was a bad slug problem the first fall.  They were all at least 6 inches long and I stepped on one on the way to the dining hall.  It totally popped and I got slug juice on my shoe and it took weeks for it all to come off. These slugs were totally pavement colored, and shiny with slime. Ugh. I guess it really scarred me.  

Casey and I were wondering, are slugs good eatin', like snails?

Also at the park was a much touted "swimming hole".  Here is Casey next to it.  Looks pretty weak to me. 

I'm back

I returned to California last week and Casey was at the San Jose airport to meet me and my 80 lbs of luggage.  He brought me to a romantic little spot in Santa Clara called 99 Chicken. It is a Korean restaurant that specializes in, well, chicken. The restaurant was patronized mostly by Koreans and the waiter (Casey says he is the owner, but I'm not sure how he knows) spoke English quite quickly and confidently, although I couldn't really understand him.  We told him that we wanted some beer and he told us that we wanted this: 

1.5 L of OB (Oriental Brewery)! Here is Casey enjoying his first delicious glass. We also ordered the assortment platter of fried chicken, which included regular fried chicken, fried chicken with sauce (kind of a sweet and sour), spicy sauce fried chicken, and fried chicken with honey on it. This really was some of the best fried chicken I've ever had. All the varieties were delicious (well, "sauce" was kind of boring). Here's another picture Casey took of me with a huge plate of fried chicken in front of me to add to the collection:

From these pictures you can also see the interesting choice of wall decorations.  They seem to be movie posters from Korea and pictures of people eating fried chicken. 

We had a very good time and the food was delicious!