Mount Whitney

 

My Mount Whitney Trip is quickly approaching.  I leave tomorrow morning for a 4-day trek up the 14,496 foot mountain. Wish me luck and say a prayer.

 

Photo by Paul

Weekend Update

• Did some running at the gym for the first time since Erin’s foot surgery three weeks ago. Yikes!
• Porto’s for breakfast with the wife.
• Checked out Erin’s cousin’s new house.
• Dinner at the new Don Cuco’s in Burbank.
• Finally hung some pictures on the walls.  It’s only been a year and a half since we moved in.
• Bike ride to Lowes, I needed a little more picture hanging hardware, and then down the Chandler bike path to Porto’s for breakfast again.
• Shopping for my backpacking trip to Mount Whitney this week.
• One Cent frame sale at Aaron Brothers. More stuff to hang on the walls.
• BBQ hamburgers with the in-laws and then watched the Starlight Bowl firework show with some friends.
• Church
• More hamburgers and a long afternoon nap followed by a viewing of O Brother, Where Art Thou and pizza.

NOHO

This made me miss my old hood.

LAX Noise Complaint System

This sounds really cool.  According to NBC Los Angeles "Users can access the system at www.lawa.org by clicking on the "Noise Management" link on the left hand side of the page." Now, it's too bad the service wont work for Burbank.  I'd be logging complaints all the time, although that might not be fair since I live so close to the airport.

Sales Tax Increase

Happy Sales Tax Increase Day!  Today in Los Angeles County the sales tax increases to 9.75%. Yes, that does seem incredibly high.

 

There's an article over at the Daily News about the increase if you want to read more.

Weekend Update

• I realize this doesn’t really count as part of the weekend, but Thursday night I watched Lars and the Real Girl.  Much, much better than I ever could have expected. If you haven’t seen it you need to.  It’s a really touching story about friends, family and love.
• Grilled bacon wrapped filets in the backyard. I over cooked them a little but they were still good.
• Most of my weekend was consumed by Vacation Bible School.  This year’s theme was Rome.  I played Marcus, a member of the underground church. It was fun, but exhausting.
• Watched The Go-Getter.  A coming-of-age, road trip, love story with a good soundtrack. 
• Mowed the lawn in the heat.
• Sampled Jack in the Box’s Mini Buffalo Ranch Chicken Sandwiches.  Not terrible.  Would have been better with more sauce.
• Watched Enchanted while clipping coupons.
• Washed dishes and did a little laundry.

Why all the Death?

What’s up with all the death lately?  In the last few days we’ve seen the passing of Farrah, Michael, and Billy.  To top it off, just last night I heard news of an acquaintance who died of swine flu.  Is it the onset of summer?  Or, is something else happening?

Twitter, TMZ and Michael

Yesterday was an interesting day to be a Twitter user. As I'm sure you've already heard from all the news outlets, Twitter was abuzz with tweets regarding the deaths of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.  When TMZ first broke the news of Michael's death I headed straight to Twitter to see what everyone else was saying.  It was interesting to see like-minded individuals not wanting to believe the news until one of the "more credible" news outlets confirmed the TMZ report. In a way it's funny that we were still hanging on to the idea that the old-fashion, news heavyweights were going to be the most accurate.  What Twitter proved to me yesterday, however, is that times may be changing. 

 

With a powerful service like Twitter we can be connected to people immediately in times of tragedy.  We can know information instantaneously. Yes that can lead to the rapid spread of misinformation, but that's no reason to dismiss the power of such a potent communication device.  I think the correct and most accurate information will prevail in the end regardless, so it really should be of little concern. 

 

I think, yesterday, we saw something change.  Twitter, a service which so many have written off as being useless is turning out to be useful. 

Defining Music

There's an interesting article over at Relevant Magazine about the bands and music that will define generation Y.  It's a good quick read. I myself fall at the very end of generation X, depending on who's defining the generations, but the article hits on some points that are definitely shaping my musical experiences. 

Weekend Update

• Watched Away We Go with the wife.  We really enjoyed it. Definitely our style movie. Be forewarned, it’s rated R for some language and a little sexual content. It’s about a couple’s journey to find home.
• Saturday morning I walked around downtown Burbank in the rain, while Erin had a breakfast meeting at Grandville. It was a quite enjoyable morning eating bagels, drinking coffee and wondering about.
• Visited the brother-in-law in Irvine and the mother and father-in-law at their hotel in Newport (that’s where they stayed for the weekend).
• Attended Mission Viejo Church of Christ Sunday morning.
• Visited my parents for a little
• Looked at the mustang and tried to solve the fuel line issue (I don’t have the correct fuel line?).
• Got home at 11pm after being away all weekend and went directly to bed.