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Meatlad's logs older logs » Lookin for a home - monday, september 21, 2009 - 16:25 Has it really been since last December that I logged an entry here? Jeez. Time flies, but in my defense, this year has gone unreasonably quick. Me and Julie are looking to buy a house. It's still expensive and I have no credit history as a result of using my debit card (which gives me frequent flier miles and rewards points thank you very much) and having no debt. I couldn't get approved for a conventional loan due to my not having any debt, ironically, but we got approved for an FHA loan so all good. We're looking in Oakland primarily, and saw a place in Glenview right by Dimond park we liked that was totally in our price range, but the real estate agent kind of talked us out of it saying the living room was too small. Eh. OK, I guess so. Work is slow but good. Pleasantly uneventful, with enough stuff to keep me busy most of the time but not make me work OT. I'm doing pretty well here if I read my superiors right, so all good on that front. Cats are good, still digging our place in Berkeley by the campus. Though the authorities on campus are starting to crack down on us after, what 4 years of doing parkour there? We've got regular jams were 15+ people show up though, so I suppose the fact we were able to maintain that through the summer and a while before that is kind of a miracle. We're migrating to a less-seen part of campus and gonna stay there till it gets dark earlier and we're less conspicuous. Becca, Heidi & Andy are good. Moved out of the parents' house and into a nice big place they're renting in El Cerrito. Andy is dissatisfied with his job and would like to go back to being a border guard and Heidi likes hers OK. They don't like how expensive it is up here and I think are pretty frustrated they can't own a house up here. Becca is cute as a button. Just turned 3. Super happy, sweet little girl. Heidi's ballooning out with #3, a boy. His name will be Alexander. Tis a good name. I think I want a hi-def video projector as much as a house. The year in review - wednesday, december 17, 2008 - 16:08 As we approach the end of the year, I realize my last log was in February! So I will attempt to recap the high points since February, minus a thing or two worth mentioning but not in public due to concerns of all interested parties. -First thing I notice after logging onto Oaklog, during the traditional what-is-my-ex-up-to-now? check-in, I find out that Skye went and had herself a kid! Congratulations Skye and Gabe! That's wonderful news and I hope you two and Helix are happy and finding time to get some sleep in every now and then. Remember: it's all about the cat naps. -I am still working at Wells, still doing mobile stuff, and got a small promotion, sometime in March I think. I am officially an e-business consultant. Which is suspiciously like being a business analyst, which was suspiciously like just about every other office job I've ever had. In any case, I was very happy to get it and am still pretty happy here, despite all the turmoil and bleakness in the financial services industry. -I pitched an idea to the PR department here for an ad or promo video of some sort for my team's product sometime around May that they actually were surprisingly enthusiastic about. Of course it involved parkour, and of course I dislocated my shoulder *again* filming some of it (I didn't file a worker's comp claim nor tell anyone at work the specific cause as I want to complete this thing and anyway didn't miss any work). That was a bummer and told me loud and clear I am not a young buck anymore, as the thing popped out when I basically did a very large monkey bar swing, but on scaffolding, and grabbed the bar wrong. Apparently you can't twist your shoulder with any force in what the doctor called an "impure movement". This always makes me chuckle as I do plenty of impure movements with my body and though I fully expect to go to hell someday because of them, I never expected to go to the ER. That took me out for quite a while but I got better eventually. -Julie and I had a bit of a relationship issue starting around April I think, but we've mostly worked it out, slowly but surely. -Julie and I continue to live in Berkeley, and currently have good neighbors. The german girl's little gray cat has taken to coming into our house and hanging out with our cats, eating their food and playing with their toys. Which is interesting because at least Boomer is a very dominant male cat who gets in a lot of fights, and the little gray cat is a shy girl cat. We noticed when the litter box started being used for the first time in months. -My neice is about 2.5 now, and adorable as all hell. Heidi is still living with mom & dad, and Andy took a job hunting Mexicans with the border patrol just south of San Diego till he can transfer back up here as a port police agent. He's very proud of his badge and loves taking his gun on the plane because a) he's allowed to, and b) it gets him past the security checkpoint. He's exactly my age and also feeling the ravages of years on his body, with his ankle and shoulder, only he actually has to use those body parts in his job. I'm not as down on that job as I once was. It's the volunteer wackos I'm down on more. He says he pretty much gets people trying to sneak across the border, takes their name and drops them back off in TJ. If they're sneaking over in boats or cars (dumb thing to try), they confiscate those and the gov't auctions it off. Seems pretty reasonable to me, and regardless of any federal policy on immigration, that job is necessary. So go Andy and I hope he gets back here to an easier job and his family soon. -Larry got engaged to Cherie, and I'm the best man! They get married next summer so I gotta work on a speech. No marriage plans of our own yet, though it comes up more and more these days. -Went to a ton of weddings this year it seems like, Julie's ex's Ken's, Ryan & Rachel's... well I thought I did. Maybe I didn't. Anyway RB2's bachelor/ette party on the Russian River was fantastic, and I wuv all my friends. Oh and Bert and Arwen are back together. Yay, all is well. -Parkour stuff has taken off a lot in the last year, def still a major thing in my life. Did just a ton of events and media pieces, and we're now getting over 50 people at monthly jams (when it's not raining), and jams in lotsa locations all over northern CA *most* days of the week. A guy we banned started his own local site and is pretty down on everything we do and everyone we partner with it seems, which is a drag, but we focus on the positive and it's a great way to practice being the person you want to be in situations where you have a detractor. We just did a big thing for YouTube, its first live streaming broadcast. A live pre-show demo, then 3 of our guys did a thing on stage with a hotshot from London and Ray Stevenson as a promo to Punisher: War Zone. I didn't realize till later that he was also Pullo from Rome, a series I got sucked into and loved. The afterparty at Hammer's was fun, a swanky restaurant/club in the Presidio where I was in my sweaty T-shirt and cargo pants and Austin was doing backflips. A pic of me is on the cover of a physics textbook too, ironically (I'm not good at science). I predict good things for 2009, rewarding projects, more classes, more growth. -Went to Boston and hung out with Mala and her hubby. That was cool, Boston's an alright city. Was there for a work thing, which was cool. What was uncool was my planned trip to Ireland to meet up with Robi that I had to scrap when I got to the airport and realized my passport had just expired. Doh. -I'm going to Mexico with Rue & Cyrelle in a few weeks for 2 weeks, which I'm greatly looking forward to. Need a vacation hella bad. Things are slow at work and I'm day dreaming about all the day and weekend trips this year, from Sea Ranch to Big Sur, and hoping I can get more in in 2009. Rue & I been talking bout getting to Hearst Castle, which I've been dying to get to for years. -Bent my elbow back the wrong way after falling out of a tree on a hike at Redwood park on Saturday. The tree was actually already fallen (by the French trail, after a fallen log-bridge), and me and Eric were climbing up it (on a steep hillside) from the top (bottom of the hill) to the root system base (up the hill). When I tried to climb over the root system, A branch broke and down I went. Now I have John McCain arm on my left side and am officially a gimp once again. We'll see how serious it is at the orthopedist on Friday. Hope I didn't tear a ligament or tendon. Funny how I never got hurt in my teens and 20s with all the stuff I did (freight train hopping, full-speed mountain biking bails, freeclimbing, flips out of 2nd story windows, jumping onto trees from bridges 4 stories up, jumping from one moving car to another... what was I thinking?), and now that I'm in my 30s I'm breaking myself on all these really small things. Oh well, I guess that's age for ya. Maybe not coincidentally, my next big challenge is conquering "The Fear" - that unseen subconscious, unendingly frustrating force that prevents me from doing all the simple parkour moves I know damn well I can do. Maybe it's me telling myself I should slow down. -Just saw Phantom of the Opera last night. Was an amazing stage production with cool special effects and great costumes. I'm not much of a musical guy and wished it was a bit shorter, but it's nice to go out to a show once in awhile. And get Julie out to the city too. Dream about squirrels - wednesday, february 13, 2008 - 14:41 Last night I had this dream that I was driving down the street in some random 'burbs, or rather I was in the passenger seat while someone else drove, and this squirrel jumped out of a tree and held on to the driver's side window. The window was closed, so it was just holding onto that rubber part around the border. I got really concerned, not quite freaked out, but definitely said "slow down! There's a squirrel on the window!" I didn't want the guy to get blown off at high-speed. We slowed right under a tree, and he jumped into it. I was relieved, then concerned that he wouldn't be able to find his way back, as we were several blocks further down the road by then. Then I hoped the local squirrel tribe would take him in and make him one of their own. Then all of a sudden, as we started to drive again, about a dozen or so squirrels all jumped on the windows. Like Cujo but with squirrels. Then I woke up. Half my mouf is clean - thursday, february 07, 2008 - 19:55 Got a deep cleaning yesterday. They shot me so full of anaesthetic that when I finally rinsed water shot out the numb side of my mouth like a catapult. Half my face was numb. I felt like I had a stroke. I'm not complaining though. Better than getting owies. Was going to go out and film stuff with Aaron this weekend, just be creative with a camera, but his sister's having some medical problems and he's looking after her kids and probably can't. Then on Sunday the monthly jam at the Oakland Museum of California. We have their blessing to get 30-40 traceurs to go out there and get crazy on stuff. That's pretty sweet. Heidi and Andy are living at my parents' house with their daughter. They came with me to the Under the Sea party at Bert's a few weeks ago. I think Andy's finding it tough to be there. I can't blame him at all. I think I would have to commit hari kari if I had to live there again. He just started a job at Starbucks, and Heidi's now working part time in SF, part time in Oakland, and part time at home as a genetic counselor for the same place as in Bakersfield. And as I can't envision writing out all my Italy stories in one go, I'll serialize it, and put a little in each post. In summary, I went to Italy for almost 3 weeks with Eric, a buddy of mine I used to work with in my group. It was from the end of November till mid-December, and the weather was quite nice till the very end. It was a fairly mild trip, with no good stories. But that just means that everything went totally smoothly and we got along the whole time. Part Uno: pissing off the tight asses at the Vatican In St. Peter's square I was jumping between these marble posts that are used to keep traffic out. A security guard saw me and drove up in this little golf cart and started seriously spazzing out. The thing is, it's real hard to look authoritarian while you're spazzing out first of all, while you're spazzing out in some foreign language involving a lot of gestures 2nd of all, and when you're spazzing out in a golf cart most of all. It wasn't even a golf cart with a star on it or anything. Very amusing. Then when we went inside St. Peter's Basilica we took a lot of (I think) funny pics, and I'm sure we're both going straight to hell when we die. Eric saw this one random rope hanging down from the ceiling. A nice one too, red velvet I think. Who couldn't resist pulling a random rope hanging down in a massive room full of people? Not Eric certainly. He tugged it and a bell rang. A guard came out of nowhere and we briskly walked away before he could pull out his ruler. How can thousands of tourists resist pulling that rope? Nothing cows the masses like Catholicism. Going around in that place I was reminded of what I couldn't help but notice--what no human could help but notice--the last time I was there: the unparalleled grandeur and opulence of that place. There was money wafting off of everything. Hand-carved marble around every inch of a room big enough to fly a helicopter in. For a religion that espouses the notion that the meek shall inherit the earth and blessed are the poor, they sure do a good job of setting aside their principles to make a guy say "daaaamn". I came out of that country more sure than ever that Christianity (OK, most major religions) is a 2000-year-old pyramid scheme. They promise you a chance to see your loved ones again someday if you do what they say, justice for the exploiters if you give them 10% of your money, and to top it all off, if you don't, you'll go to hell when you die and the wretched life you just slogged through will all be for naught. Just worship their deity and follow his will (represented here on earth by them of course). The whole thing is very orwellian. From the rampant exploitation and wealth pillaging of every continent they can find to the justification for war. Astonishing, but you gotta hand it to them, they've done well as an institution over the last 2k years. Also sad how they quarried the ancient roman sites to build that place. They actually use the word "quarry" for the action of collecting building materials. Next up: Seeing the old Italian flame Sara (and her boyfriend and father) again and going to the hot springs of Saturnia. Dentist update - wednesday, january 23, 2008 - 12:23 Not so bad... 7 years, no cavities. I did, however, have a ton of calculus and require 2 more deep cleanings. They're also recommending replacing 2 or 3 caps from other non-cavities, which still look OK, but my insurance covers it so I might as well, they say. Funny how it all added up to exactly as much as my insurance covers for the year. I think I'll tell them to leave the caps alone and maybe come in for one more checkup before the year's out. The visit itself wasn't that bad. They gave me a shot of pain killer. I didn't feel anything, so it was pretty easy. Today is Julie and I's 3-year anniversary! Well, not yet 3 years till we became boyfriend/girlfriend, that happened many months later. But 3 years since we first hooked up at some hot springs. We will be going to Piedmont Springs to celebrate. Would've been fun to back to Sykes hot springs this weekend, but we're already going to Tahoe with some friends so oh well. But because the weather's somewhat rainy and cold it would've been pretty empty at Sykes, and I haven't been there since. Everything else is going ok. Got an appreciation award at work for something. Not sure what, they just said I got one. I think it's for the environmental stuff, my putting out battery recycling buckets and stuff. I have a theory as to why I got the thing now, but we'll see if I'm right. Hey, $50, I'm not complaining though. Oh crap, I have to put my Italy stories up! First dentist appt in 7 years - monday, january 07, 2008 - 10:35 Today at 3. And I'm very nervous. Last time I went was either late '99 or early '00. I was about to become a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. The dentist gave me a bunch of his cards to give to clients I never got. My teeth were fine back then, but I've ate approximately 65 tubes of cookie dough between then and now, not including all that other stuff. Maybe I should pig out on raw garlic and really spicy indian food today. Just to make it equally painful for both me and the dentist/dental assistant. Maybe that's like making fun of your torturer though. Maybe I'll bring flowers. I also went to Italy for almost 3 weeks with my friend Eric. That was a lot of fun, and I'll write more on that later. Basically fun, mellow, relatively uneventful. Italy shuts down in December. Place was a ghost country. Beatiful though. We had the Cinque Terre all to ourselves practically. And the weather was great. Rome is old. Walked around ancient stuff at night. Did parkour all over the place and it was super cool. Also did a Fox Sports piece for the launch of their new Bay Area site. It was good I think, so far no bad feedback but, you know, someone will always hate it. Ryan and Rachel are getting married, so are Larry and Sherry. Me and Julie are chillin' in Berk-town still. Heidi and Andy are up here and living at the parent's place and looking to get out. Token White People and Italy - wednesday, october 24, 2007 - 19:01 Did another news piece, KTVU this time. Vowed to do this one perfect, or at least say nothing any of the whiners and Internet-ragers can fuckin' complain about. Turned out well, good response from the community, if bland and routine. That's the thing - if you say nothing that anyone can complain about, it just ends up being uninteresting. I'm thinking next time (if there is a next time, they're a pain to organize, stressful and I've done enough of 'em) I'll go back to saying things that people haven't heard before a thousand times and let people get pissed off. It was cool, Bob MacKenzie did the piece, and though I recognized the name, it wasn't till I met him did I really recognize him. It was pretty cool because I grew up watching him on the news, and here he was. And he did a better job than other journalists too - not only did he respect our requests to not include flips or reckless things; not only did he ask us to pick the music; but he didn't pretend to understand what we were doing and represent us the way he thought we were. He just said something like, "Watching it doesn't make you understand what it is, but it makes you want to do it." Just got back from the CTIA conference. Saw the founder of Facebook give a talk today, and the Microsoft CEO yesterday. That guy, Steve Ballmer, just seems like a high school football coach. Testosterone just steaming off the man. And his keynote address was just one big salespitch. Lots of cool stuff on the way for mobile devices. Virtually nothing that will help in our little realm of finding stuff for commercial banking customers, but other cool stuff. Location-based services like pedestrian routes and turn-by turn real-time driving directions (that's already here) re-routing you if there's traffic, to pre-setting your car preferences like mirror angles and seat heating stuff and radio pre-sets on your phone so when you rent a car you just plug it into the car and bam! Your rental feels just like your car. Some interesting things with mobile TV, once the issues around bandwith are worked out. Eric and I are going to Italy! We'll fly into Rome on 11/28, rent a car and road-trip it down to Sicily and Tunisia, then up to Sardinia, maybe Corsica, maybe Elbe, then back to the mainland. Maybe meet up with Sara and Julie's friend Ana. It'd be cool if I could find my friend from the last time I went to Italy in 1999, Stefano Meani of Arese. Been busy at work lately. Everything's coming to a head now, so I'll be busy for another few weeks I think, almost until I leave. I can't wait to go to Italy. I want to look into run-down old castles too. I'm also planning on going to Kosovo and Montenegro next April/May with Robi. Maybe find something affordable there, but I doubt it. I got on Facebook. Got back in touch with a guy I went to high school with, who looks way different now. I am also on LinkedIn, Friendster, Myspace, a blogging site (this one won that battle), Evite and Oaklog. and my pk site of course. I bet I'll use Facebook as much as I use the others, which is to say not much, but we'll see. Oh! I finally got to see the Hawaiian BBQ commercial Julie and I are in! It's crap! Just like the food. But she and I are clearly visible in it as the token white people so go us! Bass Lake - friday, september 21, 2007 - 15:55 Was fun. Did the backflip off the rope swing, but not naked. Drawing my boss and other senior management for the website for the company Christmas party. the theme is heroes and villains, so I'm drawing them as super heroes or super villains. It's a little weird putting my boss's face on a statue-perfect super hot super heroine body. Now to draw the head of wholesale services as Conan. Wholesale slaughter services! Yosemite and Greencine - thursday, september 13, 2007 - 21:16 First of all I'm getting a little disenchanted with Greencine. All the online reviews I've read have said that if you're in the Bay Area you have a, like, 3-day turnaround for movies from when you drop one in the box to when you get another. It's more like 6 or 7. Pro: they have porn. Con: all the porn is crap mass-produced porn and nothing interesting or 70s. Pro: they have lots of indie and foreign movies Con: all those movies I'd like to rent have a wait time of forever and a half. Pro: they have video on demand Con: everyone does and it's expensive. I'll just grab shit off bit torrent if I'm gonna do that anyways. YOSEMITE Holy crap is that place beautiful. Went with Julie and Eric and Julie's friend Jonna and her friend Biff... or was it Chuck? Dammit, why can't I remember. Dude was cool enough, just can't remember his name. Anyway, it was beautiful. Waterfalls and mountains and all that. One day we picked a lake that had no trail to it and was way over this crazy high ridge that went 2000 feet higher than our elevation over only like a mile and a half, and it was some serious scrambling and a bit of climbing. Glad it wasn't my suggestion because no one would've gone. Off to Bass Lake next weekend, then Eric's for takeout dinner party from Burma Superstar. They say it'll be the biggest single takeout order they've ever got. Bass Lake sometimes has a rope swing, but it's always on a different branch as rangers come by occasionally and cut the lowest branch off. I want to get a pic of me doing a backflip off the roap swing naked, but the water is cold and by the time I work up the nerve I'm too cold. Boomer had some UTI blockage, and we've been having to give him an IV full of kitty Gatorade. New York Times just covered the tree sitters right by my house. SFgate forums are full of people who just hate those sitters oh so bad. I don't know how people can get so worked up for or against those people. I posted something suggesting we get rid of the damn hippies... and the language dept cause sports makes money and languages don't. Teachers don't bring in cash like coaches do, so let's swap 'em out. People just get on those forums to go agro though cause they're scared if they use road rage something will happen and their insurance will go up. Had a couple funny related incidents today. Zan called, who is currently working the front desk at a bank office in L.A. He answers, "Hello, thank you for calling First Re-" and someone shouts "RAUL ____!" He is so shocked at this person's rudeness he just puts the phone down. doesn't put him on mute either. Dude calls a couple more times, and on the third time Zan tells him off. Says he can't talk that way and demands an apology. The guy does. Then Zan, hating his job and wanting out and not being able to help himself, says, "say it again." The guy apologizes again. Then he transfers him. I love that. "Say it again"... wow. Then at work, on another bank site, we're introducing a blog for customers to chat with each other. Suggest things and chat or whatever. Within 3 posts on the comments to the announcement, someone says "whoever would use this should be fired for wasting their company's time..." to which the fourth reply was "you're wasting your company's time and ours with your worthless comments"... and so it went. I've decided online forums just invite crazy people who are drawn to road rage but the Internet just facilitates them better. Haven't been on this site's forums for a good long time, but i seem to remember it not having a problem with that. Go Oaklog! Everyone's getting married and Bea Arthur is topless - saturday, august 25, 2007 - 17:18 Larry proposed to Sherrie, Ryan proposed to Rachel. Same weekend in fact. Crazy! I'm going to be Larry's best man, so I'm pretty stoked about that. Hopefully I can convince him to get a bunch of ninjas to jump out halfway through the ceremony, and I'll have him and I fight them off and save the day in spectacularly choreographed fight. Went to Mexico recently with Julie. I had a work thing in the O.C. and I stayed down there, saw Alvaro, and Julie and i drove down to San Felipe on the Sea of Cortez. The drive down was stunningly beautiful, but the town itself was unspectacular. The desert creeps right up to the water, which is warm but otherwise not good for snorkeling or anything like that. And the place was expensive, for Mexico. Alvaro's doing good. Working on Spongebob Squarepants. He showed us around where everything happens, and it was interesting seeing all the background painter's cubicles nad the storyboards and scripts and stuff. Mostly it looks like every other cubicle. When we got back to LA from Mexico, I hung out with Gabe from UCSC again with Sarah Rose and Al. Wow. Gabe hasn't changed a bit. He just got his embalmer's license and he's almost done with mortuary school. He works in a morgue during the day and a sex shop at night. He said they both ask what it's like at the other job. He's got some interesting stories about finding bodies in various states of decomposition, and I gotta remind SR to get me on the "tales from the morgue" d-list. Every square inch of his walls has pics of serial killers and old nazi flags and porn posters and stuff. Everything fringe and taboo. There was WWII propaganda vids playing on his TV and mounted in his kitchen is a framed pair of tighty whites, cum-stained in the front and mounted on porn mag cut-outs. He said he made it the day he got a vasectomy as a testament to the fact that he'd never reproduce. He doesn't endorse serial killing or nazism or any of the more scary shit on his walls, I think he just takes great pleasure in shocking people and generally living on the border between functional members of society and the colorful kooks who need to be locked up. He's got a caustic but otherwise friendly girlfriend and a sense of humor about it so hey - more power to him. That night also saw a Golden Girls Go Erotic-themed gallery opening. Topless Bea Arthur paintings, one of Blanch in a Confederate-flag bikini, and generally a whole lot of wrong. Speaking of a whole lot of wrong, my new guilty pleasure is chiming in on the sfgate.com's comment forum by stories. It's like watching a Jerry Springer-like talk show. Most of the people on it are right-wing reactionaries and crazy internet road ragers but I just can't help but chime in sometimes. Just got back from C's this morning, after GNO. Saw Tideland. Man that's one f'd up movie. And the roommates friends came home at 1am, minus C's wife who got thrown in the drunk tank. C was, shall we say, in no state to seek out police to talk to, so we just kept watching the Descent and figured he'd handle it in the morning. Turns out people in the DT just gotta stay there till afternoon the next day and learn their lesson. Optimus Prime, jihadist - friday, july 13, 2007 - 00:43 Optimus Prime is a total jihadist. Check it out: -He cuts his enemies' heads off -He was gonna put an explosive on his chest and set it off in the middle of the city -He decided to come to America after his homeland got all bombed to shit. -He and his small militia are going to hide among us, disguised as normal things, till they must strike -The first we saw of the Transformers was in Qatar. -In another scene at the end, Optimus Prime flies a plane (Megatron) into a building. Unintentional? Considering the weight of the other evidence, I think not. Finding a $64 BART ticket, Angora fire - friday, july 13, 2007 - 00:41 About a month ago on my walk down Claremont to casual carpool. that was pretty sweet. Buncha other stuff in the last 2 months... uhhhhh. Julie's gotten into Rome. Watched 2 episodes tonight. It's ok. I talked her into renting Caligula, which should be fun, especially on the projector. But after Heidi and Andy come up and leave for the weekend. Heidi's interviewing for a job up here, at her same company. Half the week in Oakland, half in SF. I hope she gets it, it'll be much better than Bakersfield. And better for Rebecca too. I can't imagine growing up in Bakersfield. Mom & dad bought a new place up in Donner. A few doors up from the other place, which they're now trying like crazy to sell. The place they bought was owned by this real old lady who had a hard winter - lost some toes and decided to sell the house one day and move to Hawaii. Can't blame her. But her sudden decision pissed off her family and they were doing everything they could to stop the sale, cause the place was offered for way cheaper than it shoulda been. Didn't work though. My mom walks her dog with this lady and soon as she heard she was selling it, they snatched it. Mom and dad got a dog. A pomeranian. Name is Sami. Like Rick and Claire's dog. Oh yeah, they bought a house in Emeryville too. Haven't seen it yet. And Julie's mom bought a condo up in Seattle. It's nice. She deserves to own and actually live for awhile in a place she owns. I love Seattle. We went up there and went on a road trip with Gloria, who brought her new cat with her. That was a little stressful but cute. Also toured the Angorra fire desolation last weekend. Julie's friends house (were renting) burned down. Funny thing is, all that was left was the "For Sale" sign out front. Got pix of them standing next to it in front of the burnt wreckage, the happy couple. Another real weird thing is the grass. A lot of those people watered the hell out of their lawns and as a result a still-green lawn was the only thing left of many houses. But you walk on it and a fine mist of ash rises under every footstep. Also got pix of burnt out cars and headlights that just melted and now look like closed eyelids. Lots of freestanding fireplaces too. Bummer, that fire, cause it was in a neighborhood where mostly locals live. Not many vacation homes. Jack, of Jack and Rebecca whose house burned down, works at the EPA up there so it was real interesting to hear his take on the fire and environmentalism up there. What else...? Oh yeah, took a road trip around Oregon with Karl after the Portlan Electronic Payments Conference. Went to the Oregon Dunes. Amazing place. Like the Sahara, but because it's on the coast of Oregon, kinda cool and rainy. But huge, fine-grain white sand dunes the size of buildings that go a couple miles in width and many many many miles in length. We camped by an oasis, smoked the rest of Karl's 5-year old weed (we're both terrible pot heads and couldn't figure out how to roll a joint... I have much respect for people who can), and went roaming. It's hard to find your way back because the landscape is so surreal--everythng looks the same, from the smallest pile of sand you can see to the biggest. Wind and gravity shape them both the same way. Macro and micro are the same, for almost as far as the eye can see. The whole trip we were making a movie. A travel documentary on Oregon, where we just made stuff up about wherever we were. There was a great supermarket called Bi-Mart that provided much material. After the dunes we went inland to this redwood forest where we hiked to some hotsprings, Bagby hot springs, and camped on the river. That place is super nice. Several hollowed-out redwood tubs, private rooms, japanese tubs all over, it looked pretty developed. But aside from the $5 forest service parking fee, it was free. Highly recommended - one of the best I've ever been to. Then we went to Mt. Hood, where even though it was late June, the runs were still open. We went from Tatooine to Endor to Hoth in 3 days. It was a blast. Karl and Marianne have set off for sailing if not around the world then at least down here, then the So. Pacific. He'll give me the footage to edit then I'll post. Work is still ok. Not terribly busy. Hope it picks up. I've gotten Eric, now-former coworker, back into parkour. He's improving quickly. A pk buddy my own age! Stoked. Michelle from work has joined us a few times but she's more looking to expand horizons than actually into pk. Still, it's fun being out there with them. Went to the True Colors concert - Cyndi Lauper, Erasure, Debbie Harry and a couple others. Rosie O'Donnell even joined on drums for a cover of an ABBA song they all did at the end. Cyndi Lauper - wow. She's still got it and was awesome. Erasure - I was never a huge fan but they were great (if not looking pretty old). Debbie Harry - looks like someone's gramma doing karaoke with a bad hip. She didn't even do any old Blondie songs. The whole stadium was cringing just watching her. Quote from Bert: "I was thinking, Why are there so many gay people here? Then I realized, oh, this is a benefit concert for GLBT." Yeah, went with Arwen, Bert, Larry & Sherry, Jim. Saw Transformers last night with Larry and Arwen and it rocked my world. I was doing air guitar the whole time. If I was a Transformer, I'd want to transform into Julie's bicycle seat. Fuckloads of fun - monday, april 30, 2007 - 23:17 Since last post: -Julie's dad died -Julie's uncle died Those are the biggies. I also got flamed really hard for my channel 7 piece from some... well, i'm trying to stay positive and not talk shit, so i'll call them "dudes" in L.A. That part was a lot tougher to handle than I would've thought. My best theory for their rage is that I compared them to dancers, and that threatened their teenage-boy sense of masculine identity they're trying to form. They also hated on the term "fluid and graceful". But boy, did that raise some passion. Oh well, it's good that something like that happens once in awhile, if for no other reason than to make you learn how to deal with situations and people you can just avoid most of the time. And I took the high road, didn't flame back, stayed on their site just long enough to respond and then no more. One dude actually apologized. So that was good but put me off pk for a bit. Julie's dad dying has really sent her for a loop. He had been diagnosed with Parkinsons, and been showing increasing signs of dementia lately, which is a symptom. But it's onset is supposed to be very slow and gradual, and his was very quick. He went down hill really fast once Julie's mom put him in a home. Got pneumonia and died about a day and a half later. The leading theory now is that he was having small strokes that were affecting his brain, and one stopped him from being able to swallow. His lungs started filling with liquid, that brought on the pneumonia, and bam. Well, better in a way that he didn't spend the next 10 years hooked to a feeding tube, strapped to a bed and not knowing who he was or where he was. Still though, 71 years old... In a way it's better to get all this real bad shit out of your life at once, your cat, your dad, your uncle... because if you're already in the depths of grief, you might as well pile on one more thing. Not like it'll ruin your day. You're already there. We've done a lot of weekend getaways to get... you know, away. A B&B outside of Olema which was nice, with hikes around Pt. Reyes, the Petrified Forest, Old Faithful, camping at Harbin. Starting to get tired of that place though, and I insisted we get on the road at noon after showing up at 6PM last time. Russian River is beautiful. Road trips this summer: -Joshua Tree -Pinnacles -Yosemite -Baja Item: the Virginia Tech shooter sounds just like Napolean Dynamite. Others have noticed this too,and I just saw a vid with scenes of the movie intercut with his video. The sister and the husband just got custody of his little brother. I'm pretty worried about this cause it sounds like his parents just dumped him on them without the necessary conversations and thinking about it. Especially now that they have their own newborn baby and he's unemployed. Can't go into it too much in a public-facing blog, but suffice it to say I'm worried for them. We're going down to their place this weekend (probly) to get their cats (probly), so we'll see how it seems down there. I'm most worried about how they'll afford it. I also was just on the cover of the company magazine, Connections. Circulation 165,000. I now have this theory that any time anyone sticks their head up above the crowd, someone will take a shot at it. Not just cause of the pk docus of late that me & others have done (I still like most of 'em), but the Green Team thing too. Some economist did a companion article about ethanol production. Today someone emailed him and cc'd me for some reason, telling him off for even analysing the economic feasibility of ethanol in a 1-page piece. He wrote back very succinctly and bluntly telling the person he didn't need them to educate him because he's got a doctorate in Agricultural Economics and to try is a waste of company time and resources. Zing! Good for him I say, regardless of whether ethanol is a bad idea or not. He'd clearly gotten a few of those emails. One thing I've noticed, also with others in the media through work or whatnot, is that you've got to take responsibility for how you're represented. Even if you cringe seeing yourself and swear that's not what you meant. It's still what you gave them and you were complicit somehow in how it ends up. It's a gamble talking to a reporter or standing in front of a camera. But it's you gambling. Also went down to the Electronic Payments Conference last week in Santa Clara. First one of those I went to. Did demos all day. Was nervous at first but after getting into the groove and doing it a few times, really just switching to extravert mode, it was even kinda fun. But tiring. Phantom Cat Syndrome - friday, march 16, 2007 - 14:24 Beatrix died, and it's been seriously fucking with me. I think I loved that cat more than any other cat I've had. And i only lived with her for just under a year. She was the most affectionate cat I've ever met, hands down. All she ever wanted was to be pet. You could call her when she just sat down to eat after not having ate all day and she would run to you. I've been over all this so many times in the last week or so since we put her to sleep, so I probably won't document it very well. But we're comfortable that we picked the right time, not cheating her out of life but not waiting till she was suffering either. The one thing I regret is giving her sedatives before the vet came over. We thought it would make her mellow and drowsy so she wouldn't freak out when he came. But she had a little anxiety attack instead, trying to get away, her mouth hanging open and breathing heavily, but she was too weak from the drugs. That was hard to see. We went over to my parents' right after that and buried her in the back yard. I had a real mind-fuck moment before putting her in the hole: I thought I saw her chest subtly expand, like she was taking a shallow breath. I felt her to see if she was cold, from sitting outdoors on a cold night while we dug. She wasn't. The vet OD'd her on sedatives (normal process), but because she was a big cat I wondered if she wasn't just heavily sedated. Julie told me to just put her in and I did. I figure it's just my subconscious looking for loopholes to not accept the fact she's dead. I took a lot of time off the last few months to be with her and it's hard to accept. Other News: Julie's dad had a psycotic break the day before the cat died. He's got dementia from Parkinsons and will be in an assisted living facility for the rest of his life. How Julie is coping with all this I can't even imagine -- oh yeah, and her uncle, who she just visited a month ago, died the night before last. Cancer. My pic is in the March issue of San Francisco Magazine. Page 38. A quote too. the stone and NoSole (Austin & Brian) are now sponsored by FiveTen Shoes - I'm super stoked for them. And we did a pretty successful exhibition at the Exploratorium for their show Liminality. Though we had to end early cause it got too crowded. And the Channel 7 news piece aired again... a lot more people saw it this time judging from the number of people that have come up to me to say "nice". The Learning Annex called about us teaching a parkour class, but teachers only get 15% of class fees. Plus we offer the same thing for free through the site so we gave it to a guy who does a class at AcroSports. Wilbur Hot Springs Don't go there. It's overpriced, the water's either too hot or too cold, the facilities aren't that great, the communal kitchen thing doesn't inspire mixing with other patrons, and they don't mark their trails well. Though getting lost led to a really fun hike I thought, but Julie & Irene hated it. There was actually a sign in the bathroom that said "be sure to wash thoroughly, especially the private parts, before going in the pools." What are we - five? People are paying $85/night for a bunk in a dorm room and they need to be told how to wash? The only thing anyone might like about that place better than Harbin and maybe Orr (never been) is that there's way fewer people there. Just a few people around, and likely no sleazies. I really really miss Beatrix. I have phantom cat syndrome. Oak protesting - thursday, february 15, 2007 - 23:58 Well, just came back from the oak protest. Julie & I were in the tree for a whole 20 minutes before they rotated us out and someone else in. Then we conversed with Tom Running Wolf (is that his name?) a mayoral candidate and tree-advocate. Nice guy. A stressed-out but clearly excited & enthusiastic guy named Matthew was interviewing him. Normally I don't get so worked up about a few trees, but this time I think there's a few reasons: 1. There's a ton of open space in the Strawberry Canyon area that the UC owns. Population projections show this area getting more crowded, meaning a need for more space. I think we should preserve it, and if we don't stop the UC now it'll set a precedent that they won't get resistance. 2. The law in Berkeley says you can't cut those things down. If they can give me a goddamn parking ticket for parking illegally on campus they better fucking follow the law. No one-and-not-the-others. 3. It's obscenely wasteful. There are two buildings and building complexes a few blocks away on the Clark Kerr campus that have been abandoned for years. Why not build there? How about that mangy field at the top of campus by the RSF (recreational SPORTS facitlities)? I think they're testing the waters to see what they can get away with. And this is the same set of Regents that pulled a bunch of shady shit in the 60's, blocking protesters in Sproul Plaza and then tear gassing them. Is it a coincidence that the student activist movement came to a head here? I mean it was all over back in the '60s, but here it was epitomized, and i think if there wasn't so much fuckeduppedness on the part of the Regents it wouldn't have blown up as much. Not that Berkeley was a very activist place before the mid sixties nor much long after, and barring a vocal & aging few, now. It kinda scares me that all the war protests i go to are a majority white baby boomers. Where are the stakeholders? Stealing a body bag, going to the ER - thursday, february 15, 2007 - 22:54 Today I stole a body bag from work. There was this box that said "body bags" and I just couldn't help myself, so I took one. I guess it's for the disaster preparedness supplies. There's also portable toilets, but I decided to leave that there. If they really need body bags, they can double a couple people up. They're huge. American-sized bags. Like 8 feet long. I don't know what I'll do with it. Use it as a luggage bag (write "Anna Nicole Smith" on the bag and enjoy the looks on people's faces as it comes around the luggage carousel), give it to a homeless person for a sleeping bag, or use in some anti-war protest somehow. Speaking of protesting, in a couple minutes I'm out to sit in a tree in the Oak Grove at Cal. Gonna get the man. By sitting in a tree for an hour. Fitting, cause tomorrow I go to take a picture at a wind farm for the 2006 corporate citizenry report for my big company. Ha-ha, I lifted a body bag and am gonna be in a corporate citizenry report. Gotta go soon, but I also dislocated my shoulder last Tuesday trying to do an aerial. In the foam pit, of all places. I hit the side really hard and it popped out. The orthopedist said in all his 20 years he's never seen a shoulder dislocate that direction (downish). It hurt like hell, but I got seen at Alta Bates in like 20 minutes cause I was horrifically mutant-looking. Poor people in there had been waiting 5 hours some of them. Oh well. Worst part of the shoulder is, no parkour for a few weeks. I hope I can still do the Exploratorium show on the night of March 8th. Oh yeah! I was on the news! http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=sports&id=5002917 Channel 7, opposite some football game called the Super something or other, so I'm sure everyone saw it. But we aired 3 times that night, which was good. Though the quotes were a little out of context and they only filmed for an hour so they didn't get/choose the best moves. Pretty good overall. A bit generic, but it's a 2-minute piece for people who've never heard of pk so I forgive them. And I'm going to be in the Click section of San Francisco Magazine in the March issue, doing parkour. Sweet. Beatrix is dying. Lymphoma. It's very very sad and has been making me very depressed of late. She's the sweetest cat I've ever known, and I've known some sweeties. Julie is going to Tennessee this weekend because her uncle is also dying of cancer and she has to see to him. Good times! Thailand - thursday, december 21, 2006 - 12:59 My pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/jschoenhard Highlights: -Ate bugs in the jungle with this family who rented out a cabana behind their jungle house. -Played with monkeys. Gibbons are super nice, macaques aren't. -It was just on the border of uncomfortably hot there all the time. I went pretty much for the month of November, with the sun setting late and the water so warm it wasn't even refreshing--almost. Then I come back here and it's dark at 5:00 and cold as shit. -We were on a bus and they tried to rob us, but (I'm not a little shy to say) Nick & I pretty much organized everybody and we fucked shit up and got all the passenger's shit back. We broke a window (my hand still hurts and I fear I broke something), and at one point I was holding onto the driver's arm dragging him out as he tried to drive off. -Traveled with 3 Slovenian girls, 2 of which liked Nick and Nick couldn't decide which one he liked back and never hooked up with either. Which is a crying shame if I've ever heard one. Also traveled with a Canadian brother/sister duo. They were cool too. Everyone thought they were boyfriend/girlfriend. @ one point, before I knew they were bro/sis, when I was shouting down the bus driver (above), she said they stole her birth control, and I pointed to Craig (brother) and shouted "now this guy can't get laid!" Ha ha. She waxed his chest, which I thought was a little wacky, but otherwise they were stand-up kids. My new friends in Vancouver. -The most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life. Too bad my camera broke a few days into the trip. Good thing other people got pics. -Thailand is officially rebounded from the tsunami. There is no more priority there higher than development. nick's a civil engineer and was horrified the whole time at how there is no building or electrical code and everything is a disaster waiting to happen. We were locked into our hotel one night with now opening windows or back door, and the next day we saw a building under construction just collapse under its own weight. They're a bunch of coconut farmers who at some point were told "you'll quintuple + your income if you stop picking cocunuts and build hotels. Don't worry about urban planning or even sewers. Build it and westerners will give you piles of money." And they're right. -Nick is one tough dude: he had a broken ankle the whole time and didn't know it till he came back and got it X-rayed. We walked all over, and he said it hurt like hell, but you're only in Thailand once, right? Other stuff but nothing major and I've told the stories a thousand times and will commit them to posterity here later. End of year update - thursday, december 21, 2006 - 12:35 My god, was it really September 26 when I last wrote a log, and checked up on oaklog? Wow. Since then I: -Went on my first paid business trip. To Minneapolis to take a business writing class which I totally didn't need but my boss was at a loss as to how to help me with career development so he sent me there. More below. -Went to Thailand for 3 weeks with Nick. Was fun, more next post, just to break up an otherwise really long post. -Made a lateral move at work from the departent where nothing was happening (for me anyway) to the Mobile Technologies group where we'll be doing all kinds of brand spanking new things with cell phones, Blackberries and who knows what else. All bank stuff. They're giving me a brand new Blackberry so I'm stoked on that. Gotta find out what they do. The move is good because it's all high-priority and high-visibility and stuff. Maybe no more slacking from home on Friday though. -KGO Channel 7 wants to do a story on us. I'm coordinating but slacking on that cause everyone's gone for XMas & new years. And Claudia the fashion photog wants to do another shoot, same deal. And another thing, possibly paid, but I'll hold back on that for now. -Our cat Beatrix has cancer. We're very very very sad about that. She's the most affectionate cat I've ever met. And not too old either. When Julie got her she was told Bea was 3. So she'd be 6 now. Julie's crying a lot, and I'm pretty torn up too. The chemo drug gets Beatrix stoned I think. I thought those were harsh drugs, but apparantly only for humans. Cats love the one we've got her on. The next one we're planning on giving her in a couple weeks, however... -Skye's getting married? Whoa. Crazy. Congratulations for her and Gabe. They met on oaklog, I think, right? i wonder if that'll be the first oaklog-originating marriage? Minneapolis: More later when I can get to my email when I'm outside of the work firewall. Sent something to my mom about how obscenely gluttonous and overwraught everything is there. Rollerball, Harbin, converts - tuesday, september 26, 2006 - 16:06 Saw the first hour of Rollerball the other night. Was good. I thought I had seen all the 1970's era sci-fi thrillers. I like them cause they're really prophetic in general ways. I like how in Rollerball there are no governments anymore, just corporations. The Rollerball game starts with the corporate anthem, that's cool. Uh, there was a bunch of other stuff too that I noticed and wanted to write down but didn't and now I forget what it was. Me, Julie, Larry and Trevor went to Harbin last weekend. Nice'n relaxing as usual. Larry was funny, he kept wanting to do stuff. Just sitting still and doing nothing at all isn't really one of his core competencies. The Springs Nazi had to tell us to be quiet several times and I had to remind Larry that there was no talking above a whisper in the warm pool generally. Though the Springs Nazi was giving a lot of people a lot of dirty looks. I had to drive into town to find an internet cafe to do testing for work. The project I've been working on since June of '05 finally went into production. So a couple hours of that, then back to the pool. I ate a cookie, we went for a hike, and then chilled in the pool some more. It's nice being on the cookie in the springs. Trevor did the whole hike naked. We were all walking single file with Trevor in the back, talking, and Larry remarked at one point that it was weird because once in a while he would turn around and realize the guy he was talking to was buck naked. That's why I can never be a nudist/naturist. It's one thing to go skinny dipping once in awhile in certain places, but I don't think I could ever get used to actually doing stuff naked. What if I wanted to climb a tree? Or fell down? Or ran into my boss on the hike? Or got sunburned... and then ran into my boss? I like clothes most of the time, but water is a big exception. Water just feels nicer to be in without a suit. Also actual nudists tend to be a different, weirder sort of person that I don't identify with. That's why I like Harbin. It's more like a bunch of Mission hipsters (and hippies) than those weirdos on Baker beach. PK going well. Yesterday we had 5 guys individually come up to us to ask us what we were doing, or asking "are you doing parkour?" Three of them actually stayed to do pk with us. One guy is a total natural. Did inline skating for 8 years so he knows how to move. I got wallspins over concrete. And standing backflips (on grass). Gym vids: http://www.schoentell.com/parkour/Gym_PK_Clips2.mov http://www.schoentell.com/parkour/Gym_PK_clips.mov Geoff told me about something I liked: in the current issue of Outside there's a story about these two climbers, and they say that no matter how the climb went, even if they only went ten steps, they always tell each other one thing they liked about the climb. Last Thursday was an off day for me, not being able to do this one kong to cat, and it kind of set me off everything else that day. But I got the backflip that day. So I'm trying to make that the thing I remember about that day. Going to see the Science of Sleep for free on Wednesday with Rick, Claire and Bert.