Should we talk about the weather?

The weather was really odd this past Sunday. I took these two photos a few seconds apart, turning to either side while standing in the same spot near Downtown L.A. It struck me as I was waiting to get let into a building that the sky to the left (northeast) and the sky to the right (southwest) were very different. The day ended up with the entire sky being like the bright blue one with fluffy clouds and it became extremely windy. It was an odd day.

In the days when we were swinging from the trees, I was a monkey stealing honey from the swarm of bees

Honey and Me

Sun Setting On Summer

Sunset over the Pacific

Cambria, CA

These Little Piggies

I had no idea, but apparently March is Adopt-A-Rescued-Guinea-Pig Month! I never thought I'd have guinea pigs, but I love them. My two cavy cuties below were rescued.

Pepper and Pickle

We're Talking Major Pizza Attack Here, Dudes!

This is one of my favorite people in the entire world. He loves dogs and Duran Duran, so how could we not get along? I'm not sure when exactly this photo was taken, but it was around 20 years ago.

It blows my mind that my brother Scott turned 27 years old today. What? How did that happen? I chatted with him on the phone earlier and we quoted the 1990 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (or "Turtles 1" as we call it) and laughed. He had a great birthday and I miss him like crazy.

Maybe I'll See You There, We Can Forget All Our Troubles, Forget All Our Cares & Go Downtown

Taken with low tech cell phone camera from the rooftop of the Downtown Independent

I've been falling more and more in love with Downtown L.A. lately. Maybe it's because I've been spending a lot of time there. It's been undergoing a revitalization for years now and truthfully, still has a long way to go, but there is plenty to enjoy.

Create Change

Where There's Smoke...

View of the smoke from the Station Fire, one of several blazes burning in Southern California right now, from the end of my street on Saturday afternoon. Bright white towers of smoke arose periodically from the black and gray stuff. It has seriously been looking like we've been nuked.

All fires are bad. The Station Fire is really close to where several of my friends live. The fire is barely contained and, today alone, it has tripled in size and burned down some homes. This is the one season I hate in SoCal and the one time of year I really wish for rain.

I'm in a comic store lookin' for some mistakenly priced comic I could make a fortune on & in walks the Fantastic Four. I say...that last issue is cool

I'm still trying to process what was the last five days of my life. I don't know if it's that I'm getting almost too-old-for-this-shit or that I was coming off of being really, really sick, but during this year's San Diego Comic-Con I was in some sort of daze. I'm not saying it was bad, I'm just so exhausted. I wanted to jot down some highlights before I can't remember any of it!

The Table: For the 4th year, Tired Girl Collective had a table in Small Press. For the 2nd time ever, we had a 4th Tired Girl, who happened to be a boy. For the 1st time ever, we had an honorary 5th Tired Girl who didn't sell any of her own merchandise, but was a great help to us (and fun to hang out with!) Every year, we've been lucky with neighbors on at least one side (and not so lucky....aw, never mind). Last year, both neighbors were excellent. This year we were on an end, so only had one chance and it worked out really well. I loved listening to Canadian accents all weekend!

The Friends: A huge aspect of Comic-Con for most people I know is getting to see friends. It's a little sad to say, but I see some of my L.A.-based friends more during the days of the convention than in the rest of the year before the next one. And then, of course, there are the out of town buddies, who make it a really extra special time.

The Panels: Thanks to some extra help (see The Table, above), I got to sneak away to a few more panels than I usually do. High points included the first-ever studio previews of upcoming in 3-D, including Q&A sessions with Robert Zemekis, Tim Burton, Joe Dante, and others, Caprica/Battlestar Galactica, Big Bang Theory, Chuck (complete with a performance by Jeffster!!!), Family Guy, and a cool TV Guide Sci-Fi hot list panel.

The Photos: Looking through the photos I took, I'm finding they are mostly of the panels and actually quite boring unless you are into those particular shows. It will be a while before they get uploaded anyway, as I'm still working on those from Maker Faire (which was in May!) and others between then and now. I'll make sure I link to friends' sets of the cool costumes, etc.

The Scavenger Hunt: One of the most fun things E and I did was a nighttime event to promote the upcoming Tron sequel, which had us running around the Gaslamp District with black lights and ending up in a replica of Flynn's arcade. Here's a great recap of the event.

The Celebrities: Comic-Con and celebrities go hand-in-hand. I'm generally not too star-struck, but was more amused by some of the folks who strolled, or were whisked by security, by our table. It seemed like more than in the past, which probably has to do with being located right by the back door. Adam West, Ron Jeremy, Richard Dreyfus, and Ray Bradbury passed through. In another part of the hall, I saw John Landis taking Matt Groening's photo. We saw Tania Raymonde (Alex on Lost) in an ice cream shop. Oh, and we saw Chuck Lorre and a few of the Big Bang Theory cast members in our hotel lobby (see below).

The Stalker: Okay, I just said I don't get star-struck. It's somewhat true, but I do tend to get really nervous, and sometimes just plain ridiculous, if I decide to approach someone and talk to them. Let's just say I *may* or *may not* have sort of stalked one of the people in the photo below:

A few of the folks above might have been in one of the bars in my hotel and I just possibly (with some prodding) may have approached and babbled. Oh, and then there's the part where a mutual friend called _____ and was told, "I'm hanging out at the bar with Jodi," on my prompting. I.am.a.dork.

I'll post something once I have photos up, hopefully no longer than two weeks from now. For now, I will sleep and dream of superheroes, standing in really long lines, Adam Baldwin, Hello Kitty Stormtroppers, giant hamsters, half-naked Pikachu, vintage 80's video games, and onions.

San Diego! Here We Come!

Believe it or not, it is that time of year again...San Diego Comic-Con. I'm still busy getting stuff ready, between hacking up my lungs (a different story), and hope to have lots of goodies by Wednesday when I head down for set-up and Preview Night. All the cool kids will be at Blogger Prom that night, but hey, I was never accused of being cool. I'll be hangin' with the dorks, nerds, geeks, and dweebs. And loving it.

You can check out the Tired Girl Collective site for specifics on our location, etc. We'll be joined by our buddy Nathan Hamill, who will be selling his newly released vinyl toy, Boris. Of course there will be lots of other cool people I can vouch for that you should also check out including JustJenn and Paul Horn, as well as many others I'm sure I'm forgetting.

From the vault. Frank the Pug and Jodi
San Diego Comic-Con 2002

Will I Ever Ketchup*?

When I have a lot going on that serves as actual blog fodder, I don't seem to have time to write about any of it. Various topics in the queue include a proper wrap-up of Maker Faire, a quick trip to the adorable City of Orange, the drive-in series that ended last week, the Hot Dog Death March*, an update on the beasties, the L.A. Film Festival, Comic-Con, which is approaching ever so quickly (!), and who knows what else.

In lieu of an actual post, I leave you with a photo that I took in Orange. Feel free to share your thoughts and/or title or caption suggestions.

I've played my role in this farce - a dying leader will guide the people to blah, blah, blah... frakking blah blah! I've been there, done that...

Mary McDonnell aka Battlestar Galactica's Laura Roslin
PaleyFest, March 2006

I met her last night. She is warm and kind and beautiful and all of the things you'd hope and think she might be in person. She held my hand and had genuine appreciation in her eyes as I tried to articulate how much her amazing performance of the character Laura Roslin meant to me. I couldn't quite get the words out through the tears, but she said she felt and knew what I was trying to say and didn't make me feel silly or stupid at all.

"...think about new & creative ways to engage young people in science & engineering, like science festivals, robotics competitions, & fairs..."

I know I bitched a lot about Maker Faire on twitter. I spite of that, I did actually have a good time. I mainly complained because it was a non-violent outlet for those moments when I really felt the need to stab people. Most of the folks I met were polite, intelligent, and eager to learn about our array of 3D displays. Then there were the a-holes. We had a lot of electronics at our table, such as projectors, LCD shutter glasses, paired still DSLR cameras, several video cameras. I was amazed that in the first half-hour an ADULT threw a pair of the expensive glasses across the table. I said "Dude!" and he mumbled "Oh, sorry" and walked off. Jerk. I grew weary of telling kids to stop pushing our tables. Most of their parents were present and watched as the kids continued to push the tables 4-5 times. Next year, we will put up a barrier. Oh, and SO many pairs of the plastic glasses we borrowed from the L.A. 3D Club were broken. We've been using them at the club meetings for years without such breakage.

While Comic-Con is a haven for geeks, Maker Faire is all about the nerds. Hardcore nerds. One of my favorite things at the event is the t-shirts. And they're nerdy, not ironic. Since I had my own hectic craft exhibit last year and worked at E's even busier booth this year, I only have a photo (above) from 2007. I made a mental note though of a few of my favorites over the course of this past weekend. I really wish I'd taken snapshots of them.

The cutest was one that luckily E pointed out to me. I would have missed it. The shirt had a schematic of a turbine engine, which contained a hamster wheel. Next to it was a little hamster dressed like an aviator. Unfortunately, it was a Shirt.Woot exclusive.

Seen on a shirt somewhere in San Mateo:

SCIENCE. It works, bitches.

When I was your age, Pluto was a planet.

Every time you call tech support, God kills a kitten.

There are 10 types of people in the world:
Those who understand binary and those who don't.

I'm trying to catch up on life after the blur of the weekend and get moving on the next things, on which I'm already behind. Sometime in the near future, I'll try to post a couple of the five or so 3D photos I took at the faire. I know at least a couple turned out fairly decent and I still have a few to download. In the meantime, grab your red/cyan glasses and check out E's blog where he posted a 3D video of Eepybird's Diet Coke & Mentos fountain.

National Poetry Month: Haiku A Day #3

Today's haiku is kind of random. Something caught my eye and I snapped a photo. Hey, I never said these posts would be good or even make sense!

Stuff in the garage
Unicycle, Simon Pegg
A pet carrier

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking...

Sunset over Westward Beach from Point Dume

Malibu, California

3/15/09

That'll Do, Pig. That'll Do.

RIP Penny

Penny was with me for only four short months. She taught me a lot about guinea pigs. It took some time, but we really started bonding and I got pretty attached to her. I never knew Penny's history except that she'd been passed along to various homes. She was not getting very good care by the owner just prior to me, so I feel good that I gave her good quality of life.

Penny was doing very well up until this morning when she showed signs of serious illness. Guinea pigs hide their symptoms until they are very ill, so I had a feeling it might be bad. We saw a new, compassionate vet. Penny had an enlarged heart or a tumor in her chest with very little lung capacity. She's always had labored breathing and this might explain the respiratory event she had last month. It was a hard decision I had to make, but I know I made the right one and that she is no longer suffering.

I miss her already.

Post Op Day 24 Haiku

Still in doggy jail
That's why I have a sad face
Hope to get out soon

*Little Guy continues to recover well from his surgery. He's very bored though and pretty grumpy to be confined with strict limits set on his activity. He goes back to see the doctor on Friday for a 1-month follow-up. And then it will be only 2 to 6 weeks more of dog rest.

All I've got is a photograph, but it's not enough...

I've been organizing in our office and finding a lot of "treasures" that have made me laugh, cry, and smile. Magazine articles, programs from funerals, autographs from favorite bands are among the few things I've come across. A lot of the items, especially those from college, make me feel my age, but it's not a bad thing. I was amused by this photo from August of 1995:

The 12 of us in the photo, along with the person who took it, were gathered for a joint wedding shower for two of the women. This snapshot captured a group of amazing women and I feel so fortunate to have known all of them. At this moment, a little over 13 years ago, we were all co-workers.

Some random facts about those of us seen, and not seen, in the photo:

• 5 of us still work together. Yes, at the same company.
  
• 4 of us do not have any children (yet we all still work with kids).
  
• 3 of us (+ the photographer) attended the out-of-state wedding of another in the picture ~11-12 years ago (and had a blast!)
  
• 2 of the women are mothers of twins.
• 1 person died 5 and a half years ago.

Lots of memories, along with some harsh reminders about the unfairness and brevity of life. I met up with the dear friend of mine who took this old picture for coffee this afternoon. It was awesome to catch up with her and her sister, who I'm also close to. We won't wait so long next time.

I suppose this post is a reminder to myself to keep in touch and nurture friendships. People's lives changes, they move on and away, so it's often not easy. Sometimes all you have left is a photo and it's just not enough.

Little Guy Update, Post Op Day 14

It's kind of hard to believe that it's already been two weeks since Little Guy's surgery. It's even harder to believe I'll have to go back to work on Monday. He saw the surgeon today and had his sutures removed. The doctor was very pleased with how his incision is healing and said the 'knee' felt good. Along with that came the strong reminder that Guy's activity must be strictly limited for the next six to ten weeks, which will be challenging.

I took the above in the parking lot at the vet. Little Guy was very happy that we were leaving and that the doctor told me he could keep the collar off. Well...that didn't last too long and he's back in the collar. He was good for a while, but then started really licking the incision. In the interest of protecting the healing he's done and not opening it back up, we had to take action.

So, yeah, he's coming along nicely. We just have to keep him quiet and inactive as much as possible. Hopefully the collar can really come off soon.

Little Guy Update: 1 Week Post Op

Here's a brief update on Little Guy's progress since last week's surgery.

Little Guy is:

• In much less pain. He's still on some meds, but less.

• Tolerating his "pen" that we set up in the hallway.
  

• Sleeping through the night.
  

• No longer whining and moaning for hours on end.
  

• Pooping (as of yesterday)! This is a post-surgery milestone.

• Much more comfortable in his inflatable e-collar vs. The Cone.

It's still going to be a long couple of months and I'm carrying him in and out for every potty break. We've definitely come a long way in a week though.