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Everyone, meet Daisy. Daisy, meet Everyone

Yoda

She is a chihuahua/beagle mix, just under 20 pounds, and very sweet. Not quite housebroken, but very sweet. She likes liver treats, jumping on people, and digging in the cat litter box. Her online role models are Martini, Mecca, and Roux and Max.

I grew up in Southern California with a bit of family money. I spent the first 20 years of my life on the beaches of LA, Orange County, and San Diego learning how to be a snob, which is why I left. I felt myself getting sucked into the status symbols of cars, clothing labels and dog brands. Don't get me wrong, I like nice things. I recognize that BMW produces a lovely, luxurious, sound vehicle, but I did not want to live among people that judge you based on your BMW vs Honda purchase. There are plenty of those people here in the Silicon Valley, but it feels less ardent.

For the last year or so, I'd been new car shopping. Manufacturers websites, Consumer Reports, word of mouth, the occasional dealer's visit. After a boat load of pondering, I'd come to the decision that it is time for me to get practical and get a small SUV. Small because a) I don't need a goddam 40 foot yacht of a car and b) I don't want a gas guzzler. Practical because I like to put junk in the car and I've never in my life had a four door. Also practical in that I've been driving a manual transmission for the last 20 years and commute traffic is getting to me.

I figured I would get a Japanese car. German's fine, but the ones that rate highly with CU are a bit out of my price range for the features I wanted. And I wanted features. I didn't want to go from a sporty ride with leather and a nice stereo to a fucking soccer mom conveyance with cloth and two speakers. I am trying not to be a snob, but I don't want to be an ascetic either, for God's sake. As for American cars, well, I'm unAmerican. I think they make fine trucks and I'll take damn near any 60's and 70's muscle car there is, but I'm just not convinced that their modern passenger vehicles are quite as up to snuff as, say, a Lexus.

This story is getting WAY too long...here is the point. After much effort and decision making, I went from Acura to Hyundai:

Before

After

I spent weeks TORTURED that I got a Hyundai. CU rated it highly, the warranty is awesome, I got most of the bells and whistles that the CR-V and the Rav-4 offered but for thousands less. It was a good decision, but I was still tortured. Until I saw an ad about a week ago that I wish everyone would see. I think it was for Hyundai, but I'm not 100% on that. I may be paraphrasing, but the tag line went like this "The name on your car says what the car is, not what you are".

I friggen LOVE that. I think it is an excellent campaign for a company that until recently has been known as the Yugo that survived. I feel like I want that on a bumper sticker. Shrugging off my So Cal upbringing is nearly a daily struggle and I have almost grown comfortable with my auto of choice, but it sure sucks being the kind of person that worries about this shit. I don't care if my friends drive 1978 Tercels, why do I care what _I_ drive?

On a side note, I also love the Kate Walsh Cadillac commercial where she said "The real question is, when you turn your car on, does it return the favor?" I have a straight girl crush on Kate Walsh, but that's for another post altogether.

Since The Break Up I've been missing the doglet, Kaya (see my blog banner) a great deal but I haven't wanted to replace her with a Rebound Dog and I certainly wanted to make sure my life was ready for a critter of the canine persuasion. For the last month or so I've been watching the dogs on the local Humane Society website and there was one that I was digging, but I just wasn't ready for it. Eventually, she was adopted out and she disappeared from the site. A couple of days ago...she showed back up. I took that as a sign that I needed to meet her. Before I went in, though, I knew I should pick a couple of pups to meet just in case Cur #1 didn't work out.

I went in today to see what I could see armed with four names. Gracie, my number one draft choice, Pumpkin, Chuwi (sic), and Leia. Leia had been placed that day-yey! And Gracie was returned for a reason. Apparently, she is really dominant with guests and circles around them yipping and nipping. For days. Like she never stops until the guest leaves. I wish I could deal with that, but I can not. As I trolled up and down the dog runs I met a few dogs that were nice that weren't on my original roster, but none that really tugged at me. Chuwi was terrific. She ran when I called her, leaned in for love and was just generally a cutie. Pumpkin was adorable but a little barky. A lot barky.

The adoption counselor and I went over Chuwi's specifics--she was surrendered when her family moved and couldn't take her with. She passed every socialization test with flying colors and she doesn't appear to have an aggressive bone in her body. She's a 19# chihuahua beagle mix that crawled right into my lap when i met her in the getting acquainted area. She has almost no manners and even fewer tricks. By "tricks" I mean the ability to sit when someone says "sit". She definitely needs a lot of work but the good news is, she has NO idea what her name is so I can change that even though she is two years old. It's a fine name, just not the one I'd have chosen for a little girl dog.

Do I go for it? She's on a 24 hour hold so I need to decide by COB tomorrow. I've been hungry for a dog since Kaya left but afraid of making the wrong choice. I'm a little worried about taking on the big fat doggy responsiblity, but they are so, very worth it. I want to 'save' a dog, rather than buy a name brand one and I definitely don't want to go thru puppyhood again. At least not right now unless the right puppy came along. I'm not traveling for work as much as I used to so now is better than before. My cats won't like it, but they will get over it.

She's no Martini, but she is pretty groovy.

Chuwi

If you don't yet know Martini, you really should get to know Martini. I currently have the pleasure of being her caretaker for a few days while her mom is at work.

Martini in my living room

Martini profile

Martini in my bedroom

Martini resting

Martini meets Bunny for the first time. Neither of them really cared one whit about the other.

Martini and Bunny

Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

I learned two things in school. One concept taken from high school and one from university. Both taught to me by psychology instructors, oddly enough, and both have become driving life lessons, for better or worse.

The one I got in high school is "persistence equals success". My instructor pulled this from an Og Mandino book, but at the time he could have gotten it from the back of a cereal box, for all I knew. For whatever reason it really hit home and I apply it personally and professionally.

The one I got in college is "you can not infer cause from correlation". It has made me an argumentative, analytical little shit, but it's true, you can not.

Among many other concepts, Freakonomics by by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner embraced my second life lesson and completely ran with it much to my delight.

The two Steves took what should have been a very dry topic and really made it interesting. I let too much time go by for me to give a really detailed 'book report' but there were a couple of things I did want to point out, here. Very early in the book, so this is not a spoiler, they discuss the declining crime rate among youth offenders. They put forth the posits that are held by conventional wisdom: gun control laws, successful community policing, etc etc. The two Steve's however, invited us to think deeper, more outside the box, as it were. The chose to look at data over the last I-don't-know-how-many-years and pulled out the following possible conclusion. The youth crime rate decline can correlate with the passing of Roe v. Wade. We can infer that with the legalization of abortion, fewer babies were born into situations where they are unwanted, or with families that could not afford them, or into single mother homes. The idea is, then, that puts fewer children in a disadvantaged situation which leads to fewer children out in the streets committing crimes. My guess is that this would be a very unpopular thing for a presidential candidate to say, I'm sure it's totally politically incorrect, but they sure do have a helluva point and it really introduces you the nature of this book. The do go into more detail on this later on.

A few of the conclusions they came to were no brainers that anyone could have told them (the $3 penalty story) but for the most part, it evoked an "oh my gosh, of COURSE!" response. My only real complaint would be the time they spent on name analysis. It was a very interesting topic and I think most of it bore discussion, but I about had it with all of the tables of popular child names.

If you get a moment, I encourage you to go to the amazon.com's "look inside" function of this book to take a gander at the TOC. If that doesn't pique your curiosity, I'm not sure what will!!

I picked up Sex Lives of Cannibals by Maarten Troost accidentally. I had never seen books in the breakroom at work before, but this day there were 4. 3 of them were of the Danielle Steele/Sidney Sheldon ilk but this one was there, also. I almost judged it by the company it kept, but my mama raised me better then that.

At one point in the book, the author refers to it as a "travel journal" or something similar. I have to admit, that for the most part, I forgot that I was reading what is essentially an anthropological study. As educational as it was, he used such humor and heart to describe his experiences on a tiny Equatorial Pacific atoll that it really felt like nothing more than an entertaining autobiography. One of my favorite parts was when I figured out what the title referenced. It was a little bit "aHA! and a little bit of a sad "ohhhhh".

In this book Troost really turns the spotlight on a culture that is rarely discussed. These are a people that few are aware exist and that are touched by western culture and consumerism without having the infrastructure to handle fundamental things as waste (human or otherwise). We learn about other nations' (including USA's) beauacratic do gooders that throw loads of money at these tiny island nations without having any understanding of the end result. We learn about how these two big city Americans (Troost by way of the Netherlands) turn into island people after seeing the beauty in some of the customs and lifestyles they resisted when they first arrived.

I finished this book 3 books ago, so I've forgotten a lot of the detail that I wanted to impart, but I would like to recommend this read for anyone just looking for an unusual, funny, interesting non-fiction distraction. It wasn't terribly long, and it went easily but it was certainly worth the time.

That is the noise you hear when the car in front of you on 101 North kicks up a weird pipe with a sharp, flattened end and that pipe punctures the plastic under the bumper of your brand new car and sticks there, dragging on the ground. When I pulled over to investigate, I had to use leverage to yank that fucker out of the hole it created. It's under the car, no big deal, no engine damage, but the car is  NEW...Petty, I know. I choose to whine anyway.

Shiny new hole.

Piece of shit pipe

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Last night M and I went to see the Plain White T's with Teddi. Thank you VERY much to my buddy at Bimbo's 365 Club. They were adorable on stage and put on a nice, sweet, not at all rocking, but enjoyable show. Nothing like live music at a great club.

So, my place is a dump. When I signed my papers, I was a just turned 31 year old single female in Silicon Valley, not making a lot of money, no former husbands to have earned savings from, and a dad that managed to turn himself broke ass since my mom had the bad taste of dying on us all. Point is, I didn't have much financial help or acumen so when it came time to buy, palatial in Los Gatos was not in the cards for me. Shitty in South San Jose was way more my speed.

I signed papers on September 17th 2001, a sketchy time for taking on a mortgage when you rely on the travel industry and a healthy economy for your livelihood but that is not the issue at hand, here. The issue is that I planned to move into a 3 bedroom house by myself and try like hell to make it. About when I was packing my crap to get out of the super groovy house I rented in San Francisco a friend of mine from work was invited to move out of the apartment he was sharing with his girlfriend. Figuring I could use help with rent income, I asked him to move into the two other bedrooms. The master "suite" is pretty huge so this arrangement worked just fine for us both.

Other roommates came and went, but Ray, the original friend stayed constant for a few years. April of 2004 my most recent BF moved in. Ray got a job in Berkeley within a couple of months and moved out. For six years I have owned this place and it's never truly been MINE. I've never done what I want with the other two bedrooms. Although I generally made any remodel decisions, I always at least polled those around me and had them weigh in on major changes. Even when one bedroom was my office, I still had to store shit in there that I didn't want to due to others in the home.

*Jeezus I am sounding like a selfish bitch*

Some of you know I had domestic issues and with the crumbly relationship came The Move. He found a nice apartment not too far from here, took the dog, got a really gorgeous new moto and left. I think (hope) he is making a really nice go of it. _I_ now have this house that I planned to have 6 years ago exactly. I'm a wee bit freaked out because I've never not had a roommate to offset the mortgage, but I think having my house at least for a while may be worth it.

I have a lot of work to do. There is long overdue painting required, I need to rearrange my 'entertainment center', build crappy new Target furniture that wishes it was as nice as Ikea (ha), and figure out what to do with the room that isn't my office. Right now my bicycle and other sporty stuff is in there, but I feel like I've got an opportunity here to do something fun. Breakups suck and I don't mean to minimize that at all, but I'm choosing for the purpose of this post to focus on this one positive thing. I finally get My house. My piece of shit, crappy, embarrassing in a Pretty in Pink Drop Me Off At The Corner Because I Don't Want You To See Where I Live house. But it's mine. And the bank's, but mostly mine.

I realise that now is the time for me to work on all of my houses. Physical, mental, emotional, and maybe even spiritual. Let's start here, shall we?

Need I say more?

Oh, fine, I'll elaborate.

So, M and I decided that we are jet setting rock star style partiers and flew to Vegas for one night, Saturday, to see Linkin Park play on the Summer stage (read: bleachers in a parking lot) at the Hard Rock Hotel. We made reservations at a crappy hotel across the street and, as icing on the cake, days before we left, literally, we got approved to go to a private party during the VMA's hosted by Linkin Park. M has some serious awesome event mojo because she hooked us up with all of the good times.

So we get to our non cool hotel and without any sort of apology or softening of the news the chick at the desk announces, "oh, we are walking you". A) you don't tell a guest you are 'walking' them because that is vernacular and B) try to do it with a little fucking finesse, why don't you?. They had already charged my credit card for the room a week prior so I tried to work that angle. They did not care. I tried to pull the meeting planner angle. They did not care. I was this close to the "Big Mistake" line from Pretty Woman, but I'm guessing they would not care.

Thankfully, M has a friend in Henderson who we were already meeting for lunch that has a humongous house with two open bedrooms that we could stay in. I was disappointed to miss the whole Vegas experience since I always go there for work, but free accommodations for the price of a rental car wasn't bad at all. She also had a pool we chilled by Saturday night and Sunday morning. There were no hot dudes to look at and no waiters bringing frosty cool adult beverages, but it did not suck at all.

Saturday night was the show. We had dinner at AJs Steakhouse in the Hard Rock which was amazing. They have family ties to Morton's so I was easily sold. We shared a bone-in rib eye, asparagus and a baked potato. For the first time that weekend I asked for my standard dirty Belve rocks and the guy poured me three Belve rocks. I did not ask for three, so he poured two of them into one glass and charged me for one. I gave the third one back. Interestingly, this happened again at Rain, but the drinks were free so I didn't mind so much.

Linkin Park was AMAZING. We had outstanding seats in a small venue, they started on time and played for about 90 minutes. Chester had his shirt off enough of the time, that I was pleased. They played an amazing set, old crap and new crap, the sound was good, the lighting ok, but not great. But who cares about that.

After the show, we hung around the Hard Rock for skank, I mean people watching. I knew that this hotel/casino/bar was full of 'hos, but during VMA weekend, there was way more talent out than normal for even this venue. No, I'm not jealous and bitter. I'll take my 37 year old ass with real boobs and a reasonable make-up level over those teased and tucked strippers any goddam day. We happened to be sitting next to these two guys that were people watching as well and we just talked shit for a couple of hours before M and I decided to head back to beautiful suburban Henderson. One of the guys, Fat Matt, was a Vegas tattoo artist. It must suck to own a tattoo shop across the street from the Palms (see, Hart Huntington). One thing I was stoked about is that there was more ink in that room then I have ever seen, but I still managed to get a lot of props on my back. I am proud of it.

Sunday was The Big Day. First, I'll tell you the lies as they were detailed to us on the information sheet for the private party. Check in at 2pm, buses head to the Palms at 3pm, dress trendy but classy, you can not bring your camera or cell phone, there will be no food, LP will not play. Let's start with the timing issue. We got there at about 2:10 and hopped into this midsized line in between the VMA standard line, which was huge, and the tiny lines for the hospitality suite parties. It was lovely out there. We were in semi club gear, hair and makeup done, standing in line for an hour in 100 degree las vegas heat. That part did not rule. What also did not rule was farting around in the sun until 4:40 for the bus. No water, no tents, very little shade. It wasn't too bad, but worth whinging about a wee bit. Oh, and "classy" was a term that some of the lay-deez took very loosly...

So we finally get bussed to the Palms and herded into Rain which was really empty when we got there. We made our way up and found a seat up against the glass. We thought we had it made. We were wrong. About 20 min in the security guards got all excited about our black wrist bands. Turns out, we thought they were all access special but really they were 'on camara' special. We had been casted and expected to be up on the dance floor stage. And, lo, there was a full band kit up there, exactly like the one we had seen the night prior....Not playing?? Hmmm....

Did you watch the VMA's? Didja see LP play abour 90 minutes into it? Yeah, we were right there. Right friggen there. Did you see us? No? Well that means you blinked because we did make it on camara momentarily. Milimomentarily. Nanomomentarily. They played Bleed it Out, of course, which wouldn't have been my choice, but it still ruled. I've told everyone I felt like the girls on the Ed Sullivan show when the Beatles played. All crazed and weepy.

Turns out, they played right on time, because M and I had a flight to catch at 9:25! We hauled our cookies out of the Palms at about 8:05 and hustled across the street to a cab, grabbed out luggage, and made it to the airport. All in all, a totally effing ruley weekend. I am exhausted all day today but it was totally worth it.

THANKS M!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!