A lot has been going on. 2 weeks in Madrid and Athens with Gene and Tami; started a very intense Summer session at Cuesta college; continued playing in Magnolia, the band I joined a couple months ago; gave up on Palm and got an iPhone; going camping this weekend with Rick and a bunch of friends …
I *will* update with pictures as soon as I get back on track with my work, school and music schedule! Promise.
I was lucky enough to get student licensing and save quite a bit of money on Adobe CS4 Master Collection ($525 instead of $2,499!). I use Adobe Illustrator for web design and am quite pleased to see that they addressed my biggest concerns in this update:
They have a number of tutorial videos to showcase new features across all Adobe programs at Adobe TV.
What a holiday-filled week it’s been! Rick and I went shopping for our Thanksgiving dinner supplies on Monday. He allowed me to take this picture of him in a Santa hat:
(I also have a picture of him in a leprechaun hat from St. Patrick’s day a few years ago. Am thinking of collecting pictures of Rick in strange hats.)
For Thanksgiving dinner, I planned to cook the turkey, stuffing and gravy from scratch and go with pre-prepared for rolls, mashed potatoes (the frozen ones from TJ’s are pretty good), sweet potatoes (microwave-in-bag), creamed corn, cranberry sauce (again, thank you TJ’s), pumpkin pie and whipped cream. The stuffing started out promising. Fresh marjoram, thyme and sage with minced and sauteed onions and celery. Sandwhich bread cut into 1/2-inch cubes and toasted in the oven. I put it in a casserole dish to bak during the last hour of turkey-cooking time. But the turkey took an extra hour to cook and I had beer and a headache and … it ended up burned. D’oh!
The gravy, which was to be made from drippings that cooked in the bottom of the pan with coarsely-chopping onions, celery and carrots, turned out fine. Even though I burned the veggies by not adding enough chicken broth in the first hour. While I napped on the couch, overwhelmed by all the burning, Rick supervised the last hour of turkey-cooking and turned out a juicy, well-roasted bird. Thank goodness. And then I burned the rolls in the toaster oven. Double d’oh!
Not too bad for a first on-our-own Thanksgiving, though. I had back-up stuffing in a box in the cupboard. And there were still rolls left over that I have managed to not-burn everytime we have leftovers.
I used the rest of the weekend to start on Christmas. Rick helped me put up LED Christmas lights from Costco:
View the rest of my Holidays 2008 pictures here.
And, I also got the jump on addressing and signing all my Christmas cards. Only have to get a few more Christmas presents and I can relax and enjoy the season. Woohoo!
I’ve been successfully using GTD with my Treo for 2 years now. This project/action management system served me well throughout downsizing and selling Mom’s house, transitioning from full-time employment to freelance, and moving to Los Osos from Los Angeles. Yet, I’ve always felt a niggling dissatisfaction due to having to use Palm Desktop to successfully sync my Calendar, Memos, Addresses and To-Do List with my Treo. And with the increasing number of mysterious application errors and lack of active development, the Palm Desktop problem has been coming to a head for a while now.
Answer: Missing Sync.
Missing Sync is a reliable, simple sync solution between Treo and the Mac OS apps: iCal (events and to-dos) and Address Book. It also includes Notebook, an application that handles Memos seamlessly. Instead of using a dated, buggy Palm Desktop to manage these buckets I can use the snazzy Mac OS apps.
Upon reflection, all this seems rather DUH! But I could never figure out how to make it work before Missing Sync. Well worth the $39.95!
I took my Canon SD 870 IS to Burning Man and a couple uses after I came back, the lens wouldn’t retract anymore. Since the cost to repair these cameras is usually around $200 (close to the cost), I thought I would try to repair it at home.
Before I cracked the case open and attacked it with Dust Off, though, I Googled a solution! Banging the side of the camera hard against the palm of my hand was successful. Whoo!
WWDN shares that “Newsweek is running a series called the Special Election Project. They had reporters inside both campaigns, with incredible access to candidates and staff, with the understanding that the story wouldn’t be written until after the election.”
I really like this bit from Obama:
So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”
Looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
I think I’m done traveling to LA for quite a while. Between Sushi Decompression, the Long Beach marathon, business meetings and seeing family I have already been down to LA 4 times this month and I. Am. Done.
Sushi Decompression on the 4th was a ton of fun, though. Seeing everybody wearing clothes, clean and with hair was quite a treat (as was the after-party at Robert’s house – thank you for hosting!) Here are some pics:
On the 18th, Rick and I celebrated Oktoberfest at The Old Vienna Inn with a couple friends. It’s a huge party, everyone eats family style and we met a very cool couple from Riverside who were celebrating their 1st wedding anniversary. Rick forced everybody to have Jager shots and a good time was had by all. The food was amazing, too (from what I can remember) 
By the way, History class is going quite well. We had a test recently and I scored 60 out of 60. w00t! Who would have thought I’d do so well at a subject I always said I’d hated?
No plans for Halloween as of yet. The thought of relaxing, watching movies and passing out candy is quite appealing, though.
And for your viewing pleasure, here’s a picture of Rick’s cat, (Fat Man) Puddin’:
A flyer for this product fell out of my mail the other day. As I stooped to pick it up, I saw it and the horror actually made me say, “Oh my god” aloud.
Rick and I went down to Long Beach on the 11th to pick up my running number, timing chip and and attend the TTES pasta party. Training with the American Stroke Association’s Train To End Stroke team was a great experience and has changed my life. The pasta party was full of fun people, good food and was a great source of support for the marathon the next day.
I finished the half marathon in a little over 3 hours (I swear 20 minutes of that was waiting in line at the 2-mile portapotties!). Gene finished the full marathon in a little over 6! I’m so proud of the both of us. But I don’t think my knees will let me do anything like it ever again 
