EDIT: The editor of the aforementioned website has removed the photo in question after seeing this blog post.

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Last night, I ventured into the kitchen to grab a glass of water. In addition to being thirsty, I was also dwelling in that particular hunger purgatory where you can’t quite decide if you’re hungry or not. It’s that sort of vague hunger that is at once impossible to ignore, yet difficult to satisfy. It’s more of a vague longing for foodness, rather than food, itself.  If that makes sense.

Anyway, while sipping my water I glanced a plate of leftover blueberry muffins. I stood there for a moment, trying to decide whether or not I wanted one or not. “Hmm…do I want a blueberry muffin?” “Naw, I don’t need a blueberry muffin right now.” “A blueberry muffin would be so perfect right now!” “I’m not really very hungry, it’s ok.”And so on and so forth. This waffling continued for a minute.

In the end, I decided against the muffin, and returned to the living room to work on some homework. Erin was sitting across from me, writing emails, reading news, etc. We sat there a few minutes, in silence, before she said, quite out of the blue, “Sure of course you can have a muffin, honey!”

“Wha…?”, I stammered. I was a bit thrown off.

“What? You just asked if you should have a muffin,” she replied.

I explained that I had not, in fact, asked anything. Out loud, that is. She swore that I did.

“I swear that you just asked me if you could have a muffin. I heard you. I swear.”

So, this means one of two things. Thing 1: I have a sad inability to both control and remember when I speak. Thing 2: my wife is creepily psychic.

P.S.: I ended up going for the muffin. It was spectacular.

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Spotted on Silverlake Boulevard. Earlier last week, Erin and I saw this VW Passat wagon sitting on Silverlake Boulevard. At the time, it was donning the boot. Today, as we drove by, we noticed that not only was it still wearing the boot, but it had apparently been rear-ended last night.

Notice how the boot stopped the car from rolling forward on impact, the front wheel crumpling after absorbing all of the forward momentum.

That’s what I call a bad week.

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Here are three pages of the calendar that I’ve completed so far. I’ll be posting images of the finished piece once I get it printed and assembled. Let me know what you think!

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After a nice breakfast, we journeyed to Glendale Cyclery to look at bikes. We’re looking to get Erin a hybrid of some sort, so that we can both enjoy bike rides around the neighborhood, and periodic rides on the many trails that snake through Los Angeles County. Hopefully we’ll be able to find something soon! After that, a lunch/pilgrimage to the Hallowed Hall of Roasted Chicken, otherwise known as Zankou, where Erin was introduced to the very best in Armenian/Mediterranean cuisine, and I indulged in half a roast chicken.

I’m currently working on a project for Graphic Design 1, where we’re designing calendars using typography and photography. As my subject, I’ve chosen to take photos of old signs, one of my favorite things in the visual world. So, after lunch and an iced coffee run at our neighborhood coffee shop of choice, Cafe Tropical, I decided to bike down Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards, to snap some pictures of old motel signs to use in the project. I’ve posted a few of these shots here on Flickr. Also, I’ve posted a map of my route on MapMyRide, below. I really love the mapping tools this website offers, and I’ll probably post more maps as I continue to bike around the city. I’m just such a hopeless geek for maps.

Right now, Erin and I are about to drive over to the Los Feliz 3 to watch Clint Eastwood’s Changeling. Tomorrow, we begin our duel stint at The Cheesecake Factory in Glendale, which should be fun. Life is good!

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Today I began my first day of (re)training at The Cheesecake Factory in beautiful Glendale, CA. Erin has been working there for a month or so while nursing school awaits, and I’m excited to join her there. As most of you know, the two of us met at The Cheesecake Factory in Overland Park (let out collective “aww…” now), so we’re pretty confident that working together ain’t gonna be no thang. And since my school schedule this term is somewhat more lax than previous terms, it seems wise to take advantage of the opportunity and squirrel away some money for tuition and rent. I’m really quite excited that Erin and I get to team up to make the money we need to do the things we need to do, and excited to hang out with her even more than we do currently (Considering we’ve been married for a couple months already, I think that’s a good sign, right?).

Something else of note, and something that has somehow gone un-blogged up till now, is that my car seems to have decided to cease its earthly life. The ‘98 Dodge Stratus which I was graciously gifted by my father last year has tripped the portentous “Oil Pressure Light”. Upon taking the car to the dealership, it was revealed that something was dreadfully wrong with either the transmission or engine, and that it would cost $500 to have the specific problem diagnosed. Since the cost of fixing the car would surely be more than the car is worth, we decided not to pursue the problem. And since the oil pressure light usually means “Don’t Dare Drive Me”, we’ve left it parked on the street for the last month and a half, rather than risk the car spontaneously combusting on the I-5. Also, It’s definitely worth mentioning that the car decided to do this about a week after Erin moved here with her own car. If this were to have happened in, say, June, I don’t know what I would have done. Thankfully, we have one car between us, and though that’s a bit complicated in LA when you’re juggling work and school, we make it work. The goal is to find a new(ish) car sometime soon(ish), once we can afford it.

Finally, tomorrow I will be voting. I’m pretty sure that I’m more excited about the end of the election season as I am about the election, itself, but whatever. Anyway, remember: vote early and vote often.

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The other day*, I got a Facebook message from a friend. This friend and I attended high school together, seven years ago. I haven’t spoken to her since graduation. She messaged me to say that she had had a dream where the two of us engaged in a…ahem…coital encounter. The circumstances of the dream were quite bizarre (something about me having to fly to India, and needing buying a Detroit Tigers baseball cap), and she thought it was humorous enough to share. And indeed, I was amused. It was a completely random dream, and given the fact that our friendship was more of an acquaintenceship and not terribly weighted with that particular sort of romantic fondness, the story seemed rather innocent.

But then I thought about it some more.

And the truth of the matter is this: if she had contacted me in any other way besides a Facebook message, I would’ve been somewhat creeped out. Imagine receiving an email from somebody you haven’t talked to in seven years, who is just writing to let you know that you were the subject of a humorous sex dream of theirs. Or, imagine receiving a phone call to the same effect. Stranger still, imagine receiving a handwritten letter. See what I mean? Truly, social networking sites have not only changed the way we communicate with one another, but they’ve created an entirely new manner of socialization, simply by virtue of the casual and somewhat anonymous act of collecting social contacts. We’ve living in a world where its perfectly acceptable to contact people whom we haven’t talked to in nearly a decade, simply to inform them that they just co-starred in a funny dream of ours.

And that strikes me as incredibly fascinating, and definitely worthy of a moment of reflection. And that’s pretty much it. I just thought I’d put this out there. I’ve been ruminating about this for a while now, but have for some reason forgotten to blog it until now. And I’m wondering. Has anybody else noticed this? Do you think of it as a good thing? A bad thing? Just a thing? What does it mean when our society begins to pivot from being based on a few strong social bonds to a society based on the collection of a gazillion weak social bonds? Eh?

* - I use that term very, very, very loosely here. In actuality, I recieved this message about 10 months ago, but you know. That’s still technically an “other day”, right?

Note - On the off-chance that said high school friend is reading this entry, please forgive me for airing this all right here on the blogosphere! I beg your forgiveness if you are at all offended.

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It helps that I’m only taking four classes, as opposed to the five that I’ve been taking in previous terms. It also helps that the classes I’m taking aren’t as time intensive as some of the other courses I’ve taken.

The decision to take only four classes (Interactive Design, Typography 4, Graphic Design 1, History of Graphic Design, if you’re curious) was motivated by two things. Firstly, I needed something of a break after the mental/emotional/spiritual cheese grater that was this past summer. Secondly, I desperately wanted to have a bit more free time to spend with my new wife. Both of these things are happening, and I couldn’t be happier.

Our project this week in Interactive Design was to create a website in Dreamweaver utilizing tables and image hotlinks. The website we created should serve as a virtual tour of a building of our choice. I decided it would be fun to create a tour of the new apartment that Erin and I rented two months ago, showcasing some of the things we’ve done to make it a home, and some of the things we have yet to get around to. I figured this would be a fun way to show our new home to friends and family, and give me a good way to learn a bit more about Dreamweaver functionality at the same time.

So, if you would like to see the new place, click here! Enjoy!

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Lanie, the bravest of the conspirators, did a pretty good job carving a jack-o-lantern face into Fierce’s back, although the “mouth” of the face might have ended up a bit too far from the nose. A pretty good first try, though, if you ask me.

And with his new ‘do, Fierce is definitely a big hit at the dog park (mostly). Although nearly everybody who walks up to pet him is delighted by our bold attempt at carving a jack-o-dachshund (which in turn delights an attention-hungry Fierce), a few people seem downright disturbed and offended, as if they’re a heartbeat away from speed dialing their local PETA rep.

So please, I know we are cruel owners, but don’t pass this on to PETA. Thanks!

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