mmmm, links...

today i come to you with a message: GO VOTE! and i don't mean the politically. click here to vote for the 2006 bloggies - the academy awards of the blog world. my recommendations include dooce, overheard in new york, and postsecret. and while i don't read them (at least not regularly), i also hear good things about: not martha, fark, and stuff on my cat. sadly, i didn't make the list this year (ha!)...but i know you all would have voted for me.

in other news...thanks to my recent blog surfing i learned that my former (alright, still sorta) favorite female artist ("you say...i only hear what i want to") bared her ass for all to see recently.

oh, and the idiot state of the union is on tonight. but i'll probably be out having drinks here.

one of the many reasons i enjoy living in the bay area...

all times central...

i am currently sitting in a hotel room in san antonio, tx. why you ask? because i am attending my alma matter's association of alumni council meeting/board of trustee's retreat. for my first conference ever attended (besides the sorority related ones), it's not too bad.

my brief trip back to the lone star state started thursday afternoon with a plane trip to san diego, pheonix, and then houston. i enjoyed dinner and a quick breakfast with my dad and was off to airport again this morning. unfortunately i had to wake up at 445am (that's 245am pacific time for those of you bad at simple math) to make my flight. so instead of bitching about it, i slammed two cups of coffee in less than a hour and was jolted awake.

now, i hate to admit this next part, but during the quick flight to san antonio i became addicted to the new puzzle craze, sudoku. love it. ab-so-lute-ly love it. i loved it so much that i stole the southwest in-flight magazine (spirit rocks!) so i could have more to do in the hotel tonight. and actually, it was the second one i stole during this trip. i gave another copy of it to my dad so he could read up on some "garage wineries."

anyway, after landing and paying $30 (hopefully reimbursed) in taxi cab fares i arrived at the westin la cantera resort. nice place. except that the entire entry way carpet to my room is soaked and my room smells like mildew (i'm currently waiting for a confirmation on a room change). that and i'm paying 10 bucks to use the internet for the less than 12 hours i will be here.

regardless, the day has been pretty fun. i had a chance to see a fellow '05 graduate that's on the board, as well as a few current SU students. i also got the pleasure of meeting some other alumni at the lunch (which, of course, was mexican food. thank god...i was missing my queso again). the man sitting next to me (SU class of 60-something...64 maybe?) was one of the kindest people i have ever met. he spent most of the meal asking me and stephanie, another recent grad, about ourselves. seriously, when was the last time somebody sat down with you and discussed you. and actually wanted to hear what you had to say. this man was genuinely interested in how i felt and what it thought.

he started the casual inquisition with the normal introductory questions: where are you from? when did you graduate? etc, etc, etc. then it got interesting. he asked me and stephanie what our favorite thing about ourselves was. it took a minute, and as cheesy as it might sound, i told him it was "my desire to do something to better the world. or at least the community i am part of." all corniness aside, it's true. if i ever have a job that doesn't do something to improve the world i am part of i will be an unhappy person. if when i am a wife/mother i hope that i do everything to better my family's lives.

(sweet...i'm in my new, non mildewy room. and it has a better view.)

anyway, the gentleman continued with the next question: if there was one thing you could change about yourself right now, that would go into effect immediately, what would it be? my answer: "increase my self-motivation to get involved and do something active." in college it's so easy to get involved in things - clubs are thrown at your feet and all you have to do is choose. the gym is free and you walk all the time, so being active is a normal way of life. but you graduate and everything goes to shit. the only thing i'm involved in is my job and the most activity i get on a regular daily basis is up and down the stairs to my office. i keep resolving to start yoga again, but my lack of motivation is killing me.

question three: what is your job? "i work in an annual fund running the phonathon program."

question four: what did you major in? "bull shit." obviously i didn't say that. but really...if you want to, you can bs your way through both communication studies and english.

question five: if you asked your mother right now, what would she say was the biggest difference between when you started college and when you graduated? i had to think about this one for a few minutes. my final answer was this: "that i have become a better balanced person." (am i right mom?) looking back at the things i have heard my mother say to me, especially around graduation time, i realized that this was the impression i got. after becoming part of several organizations on campus and holding a couple different jobs i feel like she thought that i had dabbled in enough various aspects of life and that i was a better person for it. i suppose this is the point of college though...

the final question never got answered, but it made me think. he asked: what do you want to accomplish in life? ahhh...the infamous "what do you want to do with your life" question. rather than answering him i spent the next 10 minutes or so listening to him tell us about his son who's about to graduate from college. he talked about how his son's plans had changed over his college curriculum and segued into how he never thought he'd be where he is today. but that when he looks back at the path he took he knows that it's where he's supposed to be and that all the stops along the way were just pieces of the puzzle. deep huh?

so during the afternoon conference sessions i spent a chunk of time pondering this man's story. and i realized that my answer to that question is still "i don't know." i've never really known. but what i do know is that if 30 years from now i can look back and see how each of my puzzle pieces fit together i'll be a happy person.

no broken bones...

well, i made it back unharmed (with the exception of a few bruises here and there)! so since i'm alive to tell the story, here it is:

on friday we left for our winter wonderland adventure. thanks to jen we got to stop at a few local wineries on the way up to truckee. the first place we went to was run by a couple who just started their own winery for the fun of it (cough dad cough). they had okay wine, but we all agreed it needed to age a bit more. the second stop was cool as well...but i was more interested in touring their awesome house than seeing the tasting room. but the third place takes the cake.

the green family winery, located in auburn, ca is run by a man named charlie. charlie has two dogs. both of which almost died when our caravan drove up the road. stupid mutts must have been sampling wine before we got there because they both decided to run out in front of our cars. charlie's winery consists of about 8 acres (if i remember right). his tasting room is in a barn. and his "bar," well, it's a fold out table. we heard all kinds of stories about charlie from the other two wineries. "old cook," "crazy," and "one of a kind" were often used to describe him. and they were appropriate. charlie was a hoot. and his wine was good. so we drank...but only because his policy was: "once i pour the first glass, and finish talking about the wine, its up to you to get your own refills!" and so we did...

after grabbing something besides wine to put in our tummies, we continued on to the cabin. it was dark when we arrived, but i couldn't hide my excitement as i started to see snow banks next to the road. the next morning i woke up to a breathtaking view. it's been a while since i've seen that much snow, and it was like being 10 years old at my grandfather's house in new mexico all over again.

and now the part i know you've all been waiting for: skiing! once tim and i waited to rent our skis and get our lift ticket we were off. unfortunately i was in large amounts of pain. the boots they gave me were cutting into my ankles and causing me to be unable to walk. but...up the lift we went.

it took about a half hour for me to get down the slope. after falling off the lift at the top and re-adjusting my painful boots, i made my way down 20 feet at a time. i thought it would be the skiing part that was hard, but it was actually trying to get up after i fell that was worst. there was absolutely no part of my first run that was fun. and that goes for both me and tim. at some point on the way down i'm pretty sure i saw flames coming out of his eyes, but thankfully his patient side got the better of him. after 3 or 4 spills i finally reached the end, but not without tears in my eyes. i removed my boots to find that my shins were already bruising and my feet were numb.

being the baby i can be at times, i told tim i quit and that i would watch him ski for the rest of the day. luckily, he convinced me to see if they had other boots while he did a few of the more advanced slopes. and sure enough...new boots = new danielle.

over the course of the next 3 hours i only improved. i still fell a lot, but i succeeded in getting off the lift in a more graceful manner than the first time. but, the best feeling of the day was when i finally went down the hill without falling at all. i felt like doing some kind of victory dance, but i realized that doing so in a pair of skis could cause injury.

even though i "pizza-ed" all the way down most times i was really proud of what i did. and you can ask tim too...i did well. and i'm totally up for going again. except next time (if i'm there long enough) i think i might try snowboarding.

after returning to the cabin exhausted i had a fun night of partying to look forward to. the plan: grill up some steaks, play some poker, and do a lot of drinking. and that we did. i even made it to the final three in the poker game and won $1.75. can you tell i'm proud of myself?

the next morning i rolled off my deflating air mattress to find nothing but pain. the backs of my f'ing knees hurt. who knew you could even hurt that part of your body?! but, i knew i had to work through my pain because there was one more thing i had to do before we went home: build me a snowman!

it took some coaxing, but i drug tim outside and started working on phil. after about an hour, maybe and hour and a half, our masterpiece was finished. complete with coal for eyes and icicles for hair. he was a cutie, but sadly i had to stay goodbye.

in summary (for those of you just skimming): i had a fantastic weekend in truckee and returned completely intact. i only fell about 8 times when skiing and built me a handsome snowman before i left. my new favorite alcoholic beverage (thanks to demetri) is a pomatini. oh, and the toilet that clogged on the first night we were there...yah, well, let's put it this way: if i break something, i fix it.

french fry...pizza...french fry...pizza...

tomorrow i will be leaving work early in order to drive to tahoe. well, not really...we're actually going to truckee, but it's really all the same thing. mountains. snow. cold.

now, i haven't been skiing since i was somewhere around 10, 11, 12. and when i did, it wasn't pretty. i recall one point where i had lost both of my poles and was attempting to steer myself down what (at the time) was a huge hill. i went in and out of some trees...missing branches by inches...and finally slid into my dad and ski instructor promptly to fall on my ass. like i said..."graceful" would not be my choice word.

anyway, so tomorrow i embark on an adventure to try once again. i'm pretty pumped about it all. tim and i are going with a big group of people, wine tasting on the way up, and piling into somebody's ski house for the weekend. i doubt heaters will be needed with all of the bodies we'll have crammed in. we'll probably venture into "downtown truckee" too, which i'm sure will be like most other ski-towns: lots of little over-priced shops and tons of places to eat/drink.

so monday i will probably have pictures to post. i'm sure they won't be cute by any means. they'll probably consist of me looking something like this:
but at least i'll have proof that i tried! and hell...if all else fails, you'll find pictures of me sitting by the fire drinking cocoa.

it also kills sheep....

i am not usually one to listen to morning radio talk shows. i usually find them rather annoying and full of stupid jokes and obnoxious sound effects. they remind me of the days when i carpooled to school with 4 other people and listened to "sam malone and the morning show" on 104 KRBE (who by the way is now on mix 96.5). i wore out my interest in stupid games for people stuck in traffic and contests that i would never win.

but recently, i've noticed that at least one of the morning shows in san francisco is not like that. sure, it still has your typical morning radio show characters: your goofy, funny-voice making side kick, the girl that sounds hot but really isn't (that's why she's in radio!), and that random slacker dude that makes an appearance every now and then and usually says absolutely nothing intelligent. and sure, they still play dumb games with people stuck in traffic and have contests that i'll never win. but the thing that makes the difference is that they talk...they actually have conversations. they don't just yell random things at each other and fight over which hollywood star has "become anorexic" next on their to do list. every time i've tuned in this week i've actually enjoyed listening to what they are discussing.

now, maybe my view on radio shows has changed because now i am one of those drivers stuck in traffic...commuting to my daily hum-drum job...counting down the hours to 5 o'clock from the minute i open my eyes...and living for the weekend. or maybe i've just been lucky and randomly tuned into a good part of the show on more than one occasion. or perhaps, i've changed and enjoy different things than i used to. who knows...

...either way, the point of me writing was to talk about the subject of the alice 97.3 morning show (or at least the 20 minutes of it i heard). joe rogan...stand up comedian and host of fear factor...graced the bay area with his presence this morning. and at the moment i switched to their station the topic was a combination of isolation tanks, a dean koontz novel, and whether or not substances can go up a man's urethra. yah, your ears would have perked up too...don't deny it.

anyway, the conversation continues and a few people call in asking joe rogan random questions about his comedy, books he's read, and drugs he's done. i guess the first thing that struck me as different from all other morning shows (or other stations in general i guess) is how freely they all talked about doing drugs. everyone on the show admitted to participating in taking some drug or another...either while they were in college or last night. i guess i was surprised because in my mind i see some cop eating his do-nut on the side of the road, listening to alice 97.3, and leaving to go arrest the people at the radio station as soon as discussion turns in that direction. but i do realize that perhaps my thought process is not too realistic.

regardless, the topic of drugs led to a discussion about DMT (dimethyltryptamine). DMT is a hallucinogenic drug. it can be chemically produced, but is also found in the human brain during the REM cycle. you can smoke it, snort it, or eat it. joe rogan has done DMT 5 times. he even encouraged other people to try it. that is, if they can get their hands on it. apparently it's rather hard to come by and highly illegal.

wikipedia says: if DMT is smoked, injected, or orally ingested with an MAOI, it can produce powerful entheogenic experiences including true hallucinations (perceived extensions of reality). a trip sitter is often employed to assist the drug user stay physically and mentally healthy, and, in the case of smoked DMT, to catch the pipe when the user loses awareness of it. induced DMT experiences can include profound time-dilation, time travel, journeys to paranormal realms, and encounters with spiritual beings or other mystical/trans-dimensional modalities that, by most first hand accounts, defy verbal or visual description.

joe rogan says: DMT allows you to see through your "3rd eye." he says that you ultimately leave the world we know and enter another dimension. apparently the things you see can not be described with the words we have. you interact with other entities and "talk" to them without using words. he says it's the happiest place not on earth. oh, and the effects of taking DMT only last for about 15 minutes...and you don't remember any of it once it wears off.

joe rogan also claims (as does wikipedia) that some believe this is where the idea of alien abductions came from. most documented alien abductions take place early in the morning, when your REM cycle is at it's peak and producing tons of DMT. so supposedly, these people enter another realm and meet beings from "outer space." studies have even shown that people under the influence of DMT often experience interaction with similar, or even identical, creatures (terence mckenna calls them "self-transforming machine elves"). this might explain why people often have similar descriptions of aliens. ultimately, putting all this together, this means that alien abductions are not abductions at all, they are just people communicating with a dimension that many of us have not entered (or if we have, we don't recall our visit). and the door to this other world is within us all...and our brains naturally produce "the key" to open it.

also, going back to the "profound time-dilation, time travel" that wikipedia mentions...i was reminded (thanks to tim) of a history channel special about prophets like nostradamus and other future-seers. it had mentioned that one 20^th century man would look into the future by entering a trance-like state similar to your REM cycle. while he appeared to be asleep he would describe the events he saw, but when he woke up he remembered none of it. and what about de-ja-vous? i’ve always thought that it occurs because you’ve dreamt it prior to the moment your experiencing it. could DMT be the cause of all of these things?

what i find most intriguing about all of this is that all humans naturally produce DMT. it's one of the things that makes us dream. and how many times do you forget your dreams...or not even remember that you dreamt at all? and nobody ever remembers what happens when they are on DMT either. so what happens when we sleep? or when people smoke DMT? is there a way to “trigger” it without “doing” it? does it make you see into the future? or that there is an alternate dimension we all enter when we close our eyes at night? supposedly, you must dream or you won't survive. does this all mean that without the natural production of this illegal substance the human race would unravel?

either way, regardless of what is really true, i was entertained on my way to work today. so thank you alice 97.3 for making your morning show worth listening to.

happy friday (the 13th)...

every morning when i get to work...before i even check my email...i go through my bookmarked blogs to see if there are any updates. it's the equivalent to reading the morning paper. it's my news from my personal blog circle. this morning one entry in particular stuck out to me. and i wanted to share. click here.

gossip...

new mom brittney spears was declared the worst dressed of '05. no surprise there. any former pop sensation turned knocked up by trailer trash slut is not going to dress well. it's like combining a millionaire's closet with the shit that good will can't even sell.

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lindsey lohan is now an officially eating disorder victim. thank you for finally admitting it and showing all 15 year old girls that the only way to look like her is to puke your food up. well, that and get a boob job, deny the fact until your 65 and finally have to admit to it because your boobs aren't on the floor like every other old-hag around you.

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and finally...drum roll please! the big news that'll be on magazine covers for the next month (who am i kidding...i'm sure something else will come along tomorrow)...brad pitt and angelina jolie are pregnant! well, she's pregnant. and i couldn't be more excited. not that i was one of the crazies wearing "team jolie" t-shirts during that whole fiasco, it's just that i'm happy for the two of them. there are a few reasons for this:

1. they are finally publicly admitting to doing "it."
2. they have successfully provided angelina with a non 3rd-world child.
3. there is now hope that my future son or daughter may be able to marry brad pitt's child. if i couldn't be his wife and have his babies, maybe my kid can have his grandbabies. and i'd be okay with that. talk about great in-laws.

rebate me...

a few months ago i bought myself a tivo. i spent $200 on a device that would end up being the lifeboat for my drowning prime time t.v. watching ability. and i even got a deal! a rebate form was in my box and lucky me only had to pay $50 after the usual 6-12 week purgatory that all rebate forms must pass through before they get to their final resting place.

well, upon returning from texas and knocking down the leaning tower of pisa called "my mail," i discovered that my rebate check had not yet arrived. "humph," i said. and thus began the search.

after numerous attempts to track it online i finally learned that my check for $150 was printed on november 29th and was mailed december 3rd. over a month ago. now, i know that during the holiday season snail-mail becomes old, decrepit, snail-mail...but seriously, over a month!?

and so i called. and was redirected to the rebate line. and finally (after verifying i am who i say i am for the 2nd time) was told the same f'ing information. at that point, i very clearly stated "yes, i know this. but my check is not here yet." the reply: "well, it should be." my thoughts: NO SHIT...don't you think that's why i am calling you!?!

after a short pause, i was asked to verify my address. this is what i heard: 3 "M" "T" Diablo Boulevard. no apartment number. no city. no state. no zip code. and "M" "T" should be "Mt."

so i told her my address. and she repeated it correctly, but still without the apartment number. she tried again. but had the street number back down the 3. still missing three more numbers. i had to very slowly say my address and spell it all out before she got it right. seriously...all i want is my 150 bucks back. and my rebate form really would like to get out of limbo.

maybe i'm a little irritable today...or tired...or something. but the venting about stupidity of other people somehow makes me feel better. thanks for reading...

dear katie...

one of my favorite things about you is how you are able to make me laugh for 10 minutes straight for absolutely no reason. i treasure the times we have stayed up late whispering and making jokes. every time i laugh it reminds me that i have the best little sister in the world.

i love you,
danielle

conversion factor...

with a new year comes new things. and that "new thing" for me just happens to be an apple powerbook G4: the computer god's gift to women. just imagine: 15" for your viewing pleasure, easy wireless access allowing you the answer to any questions you might have, a sleek titanium outside for excellent protection, and speakers to serenade you with love songs at any time of day. not to mention that you can take wherever you go...or leave it behind when you need that "alone time."

yes...i converted from my pc desktop to an apple laptop. and it was the best decision i could have made. and trust me, it was a big decision...i haven't done that much research on something since i wrote my first college paper (you know, before you realized that you can get away with hardly any research and still get at least a B). and for the past week i have spent any and every free moment i have had setting up all the nifty little things i can, downloading pictures, transferring music, setting up e-mail and internet, and much more. seriously, ask tim...i think he feels a bit ignored now that stella (yes, i named my laptop) has entered my life.

and thanks to an additional $99 (on top of the arm, leg, and right index finger i already gave apple), i am able to attend 1 hour classes once a week to learn more about being part of the apple "cult." and you better believe that i am damned excited about it. but not as excited as i am about finding the perfect "outfit" to carry my little baby around in...