Julie & Jo's Second Annual BFF Girl's Weekend in Portland, Oregon

On Friday, 9/19, me and Julie (note to Julie: I worded it that way just for you. hahaha) left our respective homes for the approximate 155 mile drive to Portland. However, because most of my trip is on a highway at 70 mph in places, I got to Portland about 45 minutes b/f Julie. I stopped twice along the way to stretch out the trip and I shot this sign at one of my stops. The weather was cloudy, of course, because I was traveling. We'd had about 3 weeks of sunny, warm days leading up to my trip and then the ocean air pushed in. So I couldn't see Mount St. Helens from the highway, nor could I see Mt. Hood or any of our other large volcanoes.


Crossing the Columbia River. I have this exact same shot from last year!!

I didn't take any pictures of our hotel this year, but we were at the Days Inn Motel, a few miles from downtown. It was, unfortunately, right next to Highway 84 and had a city bus stop right on the other side of the parking lot so it was extremely noisy. And the room was hot. We had and used the a/c, but it would always kick off right as the room was finally starting to get comfortable. Tried to keep the window open but it was just too loud, especially the sound of the bus' air brakes when it stopped.

Julie arrived and we checked in at about 11:30. We dumped our crap in the room and caught up for a bit, then we headed into the city. Last year, we were in the main downtown area, near the college. This year we decided to explore "Old Town" and we liked it way better than where we were last year, but for the fact that there really aren't that many shops and a whole lot of homeless people.

We had lunch here, at Old Town Pizza. It was sooooo good.

The interior of the restaurant is extremely interesting. The building is quite old and sits above the "Shanghai Tunnels". The restaurant very dark and filled with tons of antiques, stained glass windows, stained glass lamps, Victorian era furniture, toys & pot bellied stove. You wind your way thru the inside to different rooms. It's pretty cool. Supposedly haunted. I swear I heard, very faint, the sound of ghostly voices wailing and such, which I am sure are piped in. lol

After we ate lunch, we took a quick walk to Apple Music Row, because the time on our parking space was limited. Julie wanted to get some plastic stix for her drum kit so we popped into the drum store. I loved these tie dyed congas and bongos. Unfortunately, they didn't have any tie dyed drum kits.

There's Julie doing her best "Rock-n-Roll Drummer Animal" impression. The salesdude, Brett, was really funny and nice. He asked me to email him this picture so I did.

They had lots of autographed drum heads hanging on the wall, but I honestly did not recognize the names of any of the musicians as they were all from bands I don't follow. I asked if Mickey Hart and/or Billy Kreutzman from the Dead ever stopped in and Brett said no, they hadn't.

Still, they had lots of antique drums and originals. I really liked this one from 1936.

This sign cracked us both up.

A cool doorway in Old Town.

We were walking around, trying to find the car. We rounded the corner and saw this sign and busted our guts laughing. This would be Brian's Chinese name. *wink*

We made it back to the car with one minute to spare before the time limit ran out. Went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the day and evening talking and laughing.

Got up at 7:45 on Saturday, went out to breakfast, then drove along the Columbia River Gorge to Multnomah Falls. Again, we had a very grey, overcast day and it was misting the closer we got to the falls.

Multnomah Falls is the second tallest continually flowing waterfall in the USA. (The first is Yosemite Falls in CA). I'm sure this is much more impressive in the spring, after the rains and melting snow.

My plan was to hike as far as the bridge; Julie was going to the top. Although she did it in record time and didn't even break a sweat, I found the description of "40% grade with switchbacks" a bit too daunting for me. But then again, Julie also summits 20,000 foot mountains so it's all relative.


Here are the upper falls, taken from the Bridge.

Upper falls landing in a little catch basin before the water continues on it's downward journey.

Looking straight down from the bridge.

My glasses were fogging up every time I held the camera up to take a shot. I still use the viewfinder, not the screen. So I took them off and this is what happens when I try to take a picture without my glasses. It sure looked focused to me......

Fern & Western cedar.

View of the Columbia River from the trail. That's Washington State on the other side of the river.

Lower falls.

I really liked the contrast of the feathery & regular waterfalls.

There were a few artisans set up outside the lodge. I nearly forked out quite a bit of cash for a gorgeous art marble, but realized we still had the Portland Saturday Market to visit, so I kept my credit card in my purse.

That is until I went into the lodge's gift shop. I want every one of these Seattle Glass Eye Studio paperweights. I didn't buy any of them, but I did spend about $40 on postcards, a magnet and a really cool cross stitch design of the falls and lodge.

These bad boys run upwards from $75. If I could, I'd collect them all. Unfortunately we have neither the money to buy them, or the room for a large, lit glass case. And we live in earthquake country.

Isn't this world one gorgeous? It's quite large too, about the size of a softball.

And of course the obligatory tourist shot.

Multnomah Lodge. I think it's just a day lodge with a gift shop and restaurant.

I liked this Union Pacific train bridge sign, listing the mileage to cities in Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Didn't realize that I'd also captured a semi traveling on the highway next to the train bridge till after I started uploading photos.

Looking west up the Columbia River. It eventually dumps into the Pacific Ocean. Lewis and Clark sailed down much of the Columbia on their historical journey in the early 1800's. It was the only east-west route thru the Cascade Mountains for the first pioneers.

Looking east up the Columbia River Gorge. Farther east is the Bonneville Dam, which provides hydroelectric power for much of Washington thru the Bonneville Power Administration. Oregon is on the right and Washington State is on the left.

We got back to Portland before 11 and went back to Old Town. This time we found an all day parking lot that only cost $6. We headed over to the Portland Saturday Market, which is under the Burnside Bridge.

It was overwhelming. I wanted to buy every single thing I saw. Nearly every single craft was created by a Pacific NW artisan. These guys make creative jewelry, wind chimes, and other items out of silverware and cutlery. Their most popular item is the head band that has one half of cutlery on one side and the other half on the other side. You put it on and it looks like there's a meat clever embedded in your head.

Or salad tongs.

These feathered masks were so exotic and beautiful.

The market spills out from under the bridge, around the side of the bridge and across the street. There was so much to see and so much to buy, but I was a good girl.

I didn't even buy any tie dye.

I would have bought this in a heartbeat.

Or this. I really, really wanted this. It's the most unique stained glass window hanging I've ever seen.

No, Red Green was not making the wallets. lol

A lot of the stuff for sale was of the Thai/Nepalese/Tibetan/Asian genre, which I also love (right Holly?). Julie scored a couple of really cool rings and a prayer wheel pendant necklace. She also got a cool hat. I bought a gorgeous purple batik blouse at a store near the market for a great price.

There was also a lot of live music and by far my fave was the Boka Marimba Band who were set up under the eating tent. I kind of wish I'd gotten their CD.
Julie in her jaunty new hat & holding my bag of purchases, at the entrance of the market.

We walked up on the Burnside Bridge so that I could get a shot of this sign.

We then walked around Chinatown for a little while. It's not very big at all, but I had to take pictures of the entrance gate, since I have Chinatown gate pictures from SF, Victoria and Vancouver.

I liked this a lot, even if they do portray Mt. Hood to be this ginormous mountain that towers over the city, when in reality it's only about 11,000 feet and not that close.

We stopped into this Asian antique store call The Monkey & The Rat. The first thing we were greeted with was extremely loud bluegrass music, which the owner eventually turned down. I really wasn't expecting to hear bluegrass in an Asian antique shop.

We were drooling over what appears to be a very fancy birdhouse. There was a young woman in there with her boyfriend and she really, really wanted to buy this. But then of course I had to point out how gross it'd get with bird poop and how hard it would be to keep clean.

We split for the hotel late in the afternoon, dumped off our crap, then headed out to find someplace to have dinner and were kind of in the mood for Chinese. We ended up at the Shen Zhen Seafood Restaurant, not too far from the hotel, so we decided to get take out.

The place was pretty crowded and 95% of the diners were Asian, so we knew the food was probably going to be good. Out of practicality, we got the combo dinner plate so that we wouldn't have to throw away good food, and neither one of us wanted to cart the food home on Sunday. We had the sweet & sour pork, fried rice, vegetables & egg rolls.

As we waited, we started to take more notice of our surroundings. There were 4 large pretty fetid tanks of fish against one wall. Not a decorative tank of fish, but ones they plan on killing and serving. There was a large eel in one and a dead fish under it. The eel never moved so I can only assume it was dead too. We were glad we didn't get any seafood!! To kill more time while waiting and to keep my eyes off the tanks of fetid fish, I started reading the menu which had quite the selection of interesting items.

This one jumped off the page and I was barely able to keep myself from shrieking in disgust. Instead, I just looked at Julie w/ wide eyes, pointed and whispered, "Ewwww, look!"

Now, I just have one question. Why? Why would you eat a pig's rectum? Why would you eat ANY kind of rectum? And who was the brainiac who first decided to eat one and incorporate into the cuisine of one's area, which in this case appears to be Northern China. The fried pig's kidney is bad enough. But pig's rectum? Julie was as horrified as I was. So of course while we were eating our sweet & sour pork we kept asking each other, "So how's your pig's rectum?" Because for all we knew, that's what we got.

We had the best time and when we left, agreed "Same time, next year!"

Left Portland at a little after 6 a.m. on Sunday and was home by about 8:45 a.m. I passed by Mr. Right Winger's place along I-5 near Chehalis and shot a picture of this year's sign. Last year he had something on there about illegal immigrants. This year it says, "Can the Real Washington Make King County Secede? Re-Elect Rossi". It's a long, boring political story stemming from the 2004 Gubernatorial Election. Rossi isn't our current Gov., by the way, but he would have been if it wasn't for King County. I voted for Chris Gregoire and the second she took office, she blindsided us with a huge gas tax, which is why our gas is higher than everyone else except California and probably Hawai'i. She's been a huge disappointment and really bad for our state. And her mudslinging approach to ads is lame. Needless to say, we are crossing party lines and voting for Dino Rossi, who is running again.

A real stand up guy

Thank you, Michael Rosenbaum, for being such a stand up guy, for caring about your fans and for making my friend's day (week, month and year, probably!!). You have no idea how much respect and admiration I have for you now.

Alright already, I'm updating my blog!!!

I haven't had a whole lot to say recently, and I haven't felt "funny" either. I've been kind of retreating ever since Brian's lay off and Steve's heart situation.

But I received an email today from my cousin Cookie, telling me to get back on my blog. She must know that I'm Facebooking in every spare minute. OK, so she's right. I am. They changed the entire format of the site and I've been waging a war against the developers, along w/ some other pissed off people, all weekend. It will do no good, of course. What do they care if 5 million people want their old format back, when they have over 100 million who use the site? Fenwayspal will back me up on how cumbersome and confusing it is. Yet Holly thinks it looks neat and tidy. Ellen keeps cracking me up on her status updates; she ends each one with "....and I still hate the new Facebook." I toyed with deleting my profile, but I'd feel so guilty killing off all my virtual pets. And I've gotten back in contact w/ so many people from high school and college, and made new friends. So I guess I have no choice but to grudingly deal w/ the new changes.

No news on the job front for Brian. Nordstrom, a very hoity toity retail clothing/home store wanted Brian to work in their Workers Comp dept. The pay would have been comparable to Weyco. The hitch? It's in downtown Seattle, near Westlake Center. Ain't no way Brian's going to be commuting to Seattle. Driving is out of the question. There is a train, but the schedule is limited and it ends near the stadiums. He'd then have to take a bus, or buses, to get to Westlake. It's not convenient. In fact, I was the one that talked him out of it. He thought he could deal w/ it, but I KNOW he will be miserable. We did not move here so that one of us would end up working in Seattle. I just did not see him in the howling wind and rain of the winter, getting on a crowded city bus which then slogs its way thru horrific traffic to King Street Station, then getting on a crowded train for another 45 minutes to an hour, and he might not get a seat. At his age, and with his health issues, it's just not something he should be undertaking. I should know. I commuted by bus from Fairfax, in Marin County, to downtown San Francisco from August of 1993 through February of 1996. It sucked out loud. 4+ hours per day, round trip, spent on a bus. What made it worse is that my stop in Fairfax was at the end of the line, so after making the hellish trip thru stop and go traffic on Highway 101, we then got off on Sir Francis Drake Blvd. and stopped about 20 or more times in the 10 miles from the exit to my house, also in bumper to bumper traffic. Pro-mass transit people say, "Oh you can read or sleep!" Not when you can't get a seat. And reading/sleeping got old real quick too. I'd look up from my book after what seemed like an eternity thinking we were near the exit to SFD Blvd., and see that we were still creeping along in Sausalito.

I'm sorry but after doing the mass transit thing, I am wholeheartedly against it, unless it can deliver you door to door, the way MUNI did when we lived in San Francisco. My bus stop was on the corner of my street, and the 38 Geary dropped me off at the bus stop in front of my office building. One bus, straight shot. I could even take the express bus if I wanted.

We just don't live in a society that's conducive to carpooling or mass transit. They keep trying to shove light rail down our throats here in Washington and the people resoundingly defeat the measure in every election. Do they get the message? No. They put ANOTHER light rail initiative on the next ballot, only to see that fail as well.

Too many people have things to do after work, appointments, childcare issues, etc. People go to the gym after work, go shopping, schedule their dr. or dentist appts. Whenever I'd commute to SF, and I wasn't feeling well or needed to leave early, I had to wait till 4 pm for the first buses to start going to Marin County from SF. Anything before 4 pm took at the very least 2+ hours, and I had to change buses in San Rafael to get to Fairfax. Then there was the year that a fire broke out very near our townhouses. Brian called to say that he was spraying the cinders w/ our garden hose, but as our place backed up to a hill of dry grass, conflagration was a reality. It would have taken 2 or more hours to get home had I taken the bus. Instead, my boss, Catherine, stuffed a wad of cash into my hand and told me to take a cab, it'd be faster. It was. It was also $75, with tip. No thanks, I like having the convenience of a car, and so does Brian.

Steve's doing really well, but we think he's overdoing it. He has come into the office a couple of times, for about an hour. Everything's fine here. We're busy culling files for closing. We have boxes and boxes of paper that has to go to the professional shredding place. You know what they say, "Save a Tree, Kill an Attorney." But the office looks like a different place. I could kick myself for not taking before and after pictures.

I'll be heading to Portland on Friday morning to meet up w/ Julie for the 2nd annual BFF trip. I can't wait to see her!! Brian suggested I bring my laptop, since the hotel has free wi-fi, but I thought it'd be kind of rude to be on the computer when we're supposed to be spending quality time together laughing and chatting. Last time I checked, the weather was going to be iffy. It figures. It's been hot and sunny for the past 2-3 weeks, but of course when I'm going to travel, we get the ocean air pushing in.

Not much else is going on, except my abject fear that the "Sheeple" of America are going to vote for McCain, and he's one malignant melanoma away from that psycho, right wing, book burner Sarah Palin being our president. She scares the hell out of me. She's a very dangerous woman. I don't see the big attraction to her, just b/c she's a "mom". So what if she's a governor? Most metropolitan areas in the lower 48 have more population than the entire state of Alaska, which tops out around 650,000. It may be our biggest state land-wise, but it's one of the least populated. The Mayor of Seattle has more constituents than Palin does in her entire state. She tried to get a librarian filed when the librarian refused to remove books that Palin objected to. BOOK BURNER!!!! NAZI RIGHT WING BOOK BURNER!!! She couldn't care less about the environment and she's so anti-choice that she doesn't even believe in abortion for rape and incest victims. She's sick.


If she becomes president, she will make faith-based decisions, and this country was NOT founded on Christian principles. Our founding fathers realized that the separation of church and state was tantamount to the new country's success. Those lines have gotten increasingly blurred over the last few years. I do not see a hardcore Christian going toe to toe w/ North Korea, Russia or the middle east. In fact, it is my prediction that should McCain die in office, Palin will lead us into WW3 and we will face certain nuclear anihilation. We're on a slippery slope. Wake up and smell the latte, people. 4 more years of the same bullshit is not acceptable to me.

I urge you guys to go to this site and read this article about Sarah Palin:
http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege

I am hoping that it opens some eyes, although most of my readers think the same way I do. I apologize to my European and Canadian friends for the boring political post. Although I have a message to Canada: You guys should pay close attention to what's going on down here b/c we share a continent with you. The radiation & fallout is gonna blow into Canada. I hope that, if you do elect a new Prime Minister in October, or even if Stephen Harper prevails, that the PM does something to protect Canadian citizens from the runaway train that is America. We're out of control. SAVE YOURSELVES!!!! In 8 long years, we've allowed Bushco to completely gut the country. Someone please give him a blow job so that we can impeach him!!! Fat lot of good that'll do now, though.


McCain is a doddering old man. He's so fucking elitist that he doesn't even know how many homes he owns. OK, so his wife has money. But still. Millions of Americans are losing their homes to foreclosure and this guy doesn't even know how many homes he owns????? He has no clue about the internet; doesn't even use a computer. Yeah he was a war hero blah blah blah, but is he going to ride the Vietnam POW thing forever? It was 40 fucking years ago. MOVE ON.

(Kris, please don't take offense b/c I don't lump you into the same category that I put other Christian zealots like Sarah Palin. You are more open minded than most).

I received the following in an email from my former boss, Jim, in California:

"* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000
people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable."

So I'll be back with a new post after my return from Oregon, with photos!!

The "Sympathy Card" Goes a Long Way

I'm happy to report that Steve is doing A-OK. Debby and I went to the hospital this morning for about an hour to see him. We were both so relieved to see him sitting up, drinking coffee, with good colour and his sense of humour absolutely still in tact. Apparently he's been quite the cut up in the Critical Care Ward. He wants to go home now and may be discharged today, but he will be out of the office 4-6 weeks.

Meanwhile, we've been canceling everything on his schedule for the next month or so and formerly "difficult" opposing counsel have become extremely concerned to the point of offering their services if an emergency comes up in any of our cases. So our 3 regular "go to" attorneys have blossomed into 5-6 attorneys willing to help. Clients who were selfishly screaming, "ME ME ME ME IT'S ALL ABOUT ME" have been put in their place with the sentence, "Steve had emergency bypass surgery" and have all backed off. I tell ya, the sympathy card goes a long way when stuff like this happens.

Thanks so much for all of your thoughts and prayers. I am already much calmer than I was over the weekend (when I was stuffing my face with sugary comfort food). Seeing him sitting up and looking so good alleviated my worst case scenario pictures of him hooked up to machines and tubes.

Onwards and upwards.

I'm running out of shoes to drop.....

And the fun never ends.

Please think good thoughts, say prayers, send good karma, whatever, because my boss, Steve, went in for a routine angiogram and has to have open heart surgery, TODAY. You guys know how fond I am of him. I wouldn't work for someone this long if I didn't like him, and we are really like family.

I'm sure he'll be fine. The surgery is so routine these days and I think they do it w/ lasers now too. Still, you can't mess with your ticker. It's always a concern. It was just a bit of a shock to be blindsided with this news today, when we expected him to be at work tomorrow.

He'll be out of the office at least a month, and Deb and I are scrambling to clear his schedule.
Well, gotta run!!!

UPDATE: Surgery went well. He had a double bypass and one of the arteries was badly blocked. But the doctors are extremely optomistic.

A Rest Stop on the Information Superhighway

Sorry, I've been busy Facebooking and have neglected my blog. For one thing, I haven't had much to say. For another, not much has been happening since I got back from San Francisco. We spent the long weekend just kicking back, watching TV. I got all 150+ trip pictures put into my photoalbum, with captions and other doo-dads. I'm also studying all my Oregon maps and tour guides in preparation for the Second Annual Jo & Julie Take Portland By Storm Weekend, in a couple of weeks.

I did a bad thing over the weekend though. I'm so pissed at myself. I went on eBay. I saw. I bid. I won. Marbles. 2. Just 2. Shouldn't have done it but I got sucked in. Again. I really wasn't mad about the sulphide b/c any time you can get a sulphide for under $30, you gotta get it. It's the modern art marble that I should NOT have bid on, esp. not when it went over $100. But this sucker is gorgeous. I couldn't stop myself. And the name, "Madame Butterfly Deadhead Shuffle".... how am I supposed to resist a marble called "Deadhead"? I'm not quite sure why, but there is a part of it that does like the Stealie lightning bolt gone mad. Maybe he didn't mean "Deadhead" as in Grateful Dead fan-Deadheads, but I don't care. And Brian's no help either. Most guys would be all, "I'M OUT OF WORK AND YOU SPENT HOW MUCH ON A FUCKING MARBLE?" Nooooooo. Not my hubby. The second I won I was kicking myself, wailing, "what did I just do?!!!!". Brian's all, "oh well, don't worry about it". "We only live once and we can't take it with us. Who cares." That's his mantra when it comes to spending money; I'm the uber tight wad of the two of us. And this is AFTER I've already ordered an Oregon road atlas from Amazon.com, and needing another product to qualify for free shipping, I ordered not one, not two, but THREE DVD sets of Bugs Bunny cartoons. But all our fave cartoons were spread across Volumes 1, 2 and 3. It was a spendy Sunday to say the least. But I digress.


Brian's still looking for work and his demo from the studio sessions in Sausalito came out great. If you want to hear his commercial for Winchell's, click here
http://www.freeworldradionetwork.net/ShakedownStreet/ The audio link is the first blog post, dated today. Hopefully he will get some fill-in voice over work till he lands the boring 9-5'er. In the meantime, I'm absolutely SICK over the health insurance issue. The cheapest I can find is $377 a month, with a $500 deductible. Steve can cover some of it, but said he thinks I'll need to pick up some too, b/c he's going to have to compensate Debby the same amount. I don't think that's fair at all. For one thing, she voluntarily dropped off the firm plan to go on her husband's plan, years ago. I don't know if she was given extra money because Robyn and I were still on the firm's plan, but I don't think she was.


When Robyn left, I voluntarily went on Brian's plan to save the firm a ton of money, b/c I was the only one left on the policy. Now I have more of a need than she does for the insurance and he's going to just outright give her the equivalent of my insurance? I have to use the $ to pay for the damn health insurance bill, she just gets $300 a month richer. That's not fair at all. I told Steve that I need every penny of my paycheck now to pay the bills and can't afford to pick up the cost, so I'll have to go to the $170 dollar plan with the $1,000 deductible and no prescription medication benefits at all. In other words, unless I get into an accident, I'll never use up $1,000 in one whole year of doctor visits, while paying full price for all the meds. Steve doesn't want me to pick that crappy plan. So I'm very stressed out and upset about it right now. And this is just to cover ME. Brian won't HAVE any insurance AT ALL once his severance package runs out. Steve and I are going to have to discuss this more in depth.

So as I was on the MSN homepage today, I scrolled down and discovered that there's a Sagittarius daily horoscope on the page. It creeps me out that MSN knows I'm a Sagittarius. But I had to smile a little bit, because this is what it read for today: "As you take another step upwards today, dear Sagittarius, you may suddenly realize that there is a large portion of the mountain that you had previously unaccounted for. Perhaps this steep portion of the climb was not visible from below, where you started the trip. Do not panic. By overreacting to the unknown, you may lose your balance and go sliding down the face of the mountain. Instead, collect yourself, rest, and plan your strategy one step at a time." Well, the large portion of the mountain is of course the health insurance issue, and I had previously accounted for it, but the rest of the advice about not panicking and planning a strategy couldn't be more spot on.

Meanwhile, I drown my sorrows in Facebook for hours every day and enjoy swapping applications with my many new friends. That got me thinking about how these social networking sites have really made us into that "small world." It occurred to me that being on Facebook with all these people is a little bit like being on Dead tour. You are all coming from different directions, but all headed in the same direction. Now the blogging that I do, which once seemed so instantaneous, is more like a rest stop on the information superhighway. I pull off to the side of the road, check in with the blogs, then get back on Facebook and zoom between Newcastle and Australia for the virtual pillow fights I've been in with Alison and Julie, run up to Canada or the east coast to swap eggs with my many egg hunting friends, send virtual birthday items to my friend Louise in Manitoba, and take care of everyone's virtual pets on Pet Pupz, Pokey Puppy and The Hatchery. Louise in Canada, Jason in Seattle and I sent a round of Canadian beer back & forth on Friday to celebrate the long weekend. And Susan and I have exchanged a ton of great gifts too. My faves are growing gifts, hatching eggs and waterglobes. You have to wait a couple of days for the gifts to grow, hatch or be visible in the globes. It's so cool to see what your friends pick out for you.

The games are addictive as hell. My rock band, Kay Mart & the Blue Light Specials, is a level 49 "Rock Legend" band but struggling financially; but what great rock legend hasn't seen their share of lien times and poor business decisions? The private jet was a really bad idea. lol
My Pet Pupz Alsation, Sirius, is kicking butt with his training and competitions. My dragon, AbraxasToo is 23-32. I have over 3,000 eggs since July 1, and 21 out of the 22 limited edition/special eggs. I get a huge kick out of Facebook, I really do. I know that the virtual gifts aren't real and all, but it still makes me feel good to give them. I have always loved giving gifts and this is the perfect way to do it. You don't even have to spend any real money. Most of the applications just award you "hatchy points","treats", "green bucks", "puppy points", "vampire money", etc. and that's what you use to "buy" everything. It's awesome. And I LOVE the scratch tickets too.


In fact, thanks to FB, I hear from a lot of my friends more often, sometimes daily, and have gotten back in touch w/ people I haven't seen since high school and/or college graduation. I'm very much enjoying catching up with so many old friends, and meeting new ones too. That's because we are all playing on FB at the same time. The other day, I commented on one of the application message boards and mentioned I was from Bonney Lake. One of my FB friends, in Iowa, messages me within minutes that her niece and niece's family live in Bonney Lake!!!!!! And it totally tripped me out the other night when I was having the virtual pillow fight with Julie in Australia....it was 6 pm my time, but well into her workday the next day, yet we were playing in real time.



There's also an application on there that calculates where all your friends are, the average miles for me to travel to get there and how far away my farthest friends are. Care to venture a guess on who lives the farthest away, at 10,540 miles? Axe, Nush and Sir Ivan Bruce!!! I would have thought it was the people in Australia, but apparently S. Africa is farther away. I have about 124 or so friends, nearly half of them only play the egg hunter application called Hatchlings (although as time has gone on I've discovered I have common ground with several of them, like my friend in Manitoba). BTW, Tess, me and Susan miss you on FB!!! I know some of you guys have FB but don't keep up w/ it. But FYI, there are a lot of Vincent/Bobby things out there in FB as well. I'm happy to report that Kris and DH are on there as well!


Yeah I know, some people find it a colossal waste of time and all, but I wouldn't be doing anything at night anyway, except watching TV, so I might as well make some new friends while I'm watching the tube.

Welp, I'm just about done with my rest area break, and I received notification that I have to head back out on the information superhighway, to nail Alison in the UK and Julie in Aussie with virtual pillows and collect a hatching World Egg from my friend in Iowa. See you down the road at the next rest stop!