señor taco’s travels

alt="The Duck!" />

I left today for my cousin’s wedding in Kansas City, Missouri. I had never
taken Frontier Airlines before but
back when I was looking at airfare they had the best price and most direct
route. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised at the service. Frontier was
on time, courteous, and had just enough humor to let you know they don’t
just think of you as cattle, you’re their victims too! I liked almost all of
my flight except for the jackass behind me on the leg from Denver to KC. He
wouldn’t shut up and I could hear his droning over the music from my iPod.
[side note: don't ever loose your noise canceling headphones]

Aside from that it went great getting out here. I missed the festivities with
my cousin and such because I got in so late. Oh well. The picture is one side
of the tail of the plane I took from SFO to DEN. Frontier has animals all
over the tails of the planes. Cute stuff.

…well, one that I remember at least. I shall describe it here so I can find
it again later.

It starts out with my family and I driving in my car. My mom is operating it and we’re on Galveston Island.
Along the major city portion of Galveston is a sea wall. It was built after
the 1900 storm and raised the level
of the entire city by 17 feet. So, in my dream it’s a little different than
reality. At the west end of the wall it’s not 17 feet but about 100 feet and
very narrow. There are also factories or refineries along both sides. As
we’re driving along a giant storm has come in and there is water up around
the refineries and really close to the top of the sea wall. Pipes and stacks
are still visible and still billowing but there is very cool looking wave
action happening around them. At this point something goes wrong with the
narrow roadway and we end up careening off the side and into one of the
refineries. It’s amazingly open inside and quite calm under the water. Once
the car settles on some platform I open the door and it’s like we’re under
water, but no water comes rushing in. We can talk, but also swim around and
everything seems to work so I try to make a call on my cell phone, only I can’t
because I have no signal. As we’re waiting in the bowels of this refinery an
elevator door opens and this woman tells us she’s the caretaker of the place.
She lets us into the elevator. Once we’re topside we end up on the beach
with the 17 foot sea wall that is right next to the 100 foot sea wall and the
refinery is still under water. At this point the army is hoisting our vehicle
out of the water for us with some helicopters. Only they don’t pull my car
out the first time, instead it’s some other silver car that some other guy
claims is his, but when he gets into it it turns into a very futuristic
looking two wheeled motorcycle but with a large passenger compartment. He
drives off and then I wake up.

I love remembering dreams, it’s too bad I don’t do it more often.

alt="Patches' last picture" />

My parents called me today to tell me that the family cat of 15 years, Patches,
had passed away. She had been living with feline diabetes for 2.5 years so
this wasn’t a shock, but I’m still saddened to hear of it.

My parents did an admirable job of taking care of her over the last several
years (they even watched my cats while I was first moving to New York years
ago) and for that I thank them. I’m just glad I got to see her one last time
in December. She was even nice to me and not as much her usual hissy self.
She even let me pet her for a while. So long Patches, thanks for being a
good and lovable cat. Ironically, this picture of Patches is the last and best
photo of her I took on my trip.

Dear New York Friends,

With the onset of such cold weather in your region of the country I hope you
now see the clarity of my decision to move to California. As much as I say
it I really do miss you guys, but I do not miss the cold temperatures. Were I
to still be living in New York at this point I have no doubts that I would be
insane (or more insane than normal) right now. I salute you for sticking it
out and I just want you to know that if you want to warm up and enjoy the
weather then there’s room at my place for your cold and weary bodies.

Love & Slugs,

danimal

We all have odd dreams sometimes. I generally don’t remember my dreams and
when I do they always seem to be of the odd or disturbing variety.

The latest couple were just odd enough for me to write them down. The first
was me running around San Francisco as a cop. I was being chased by other
cops and bad guys driving a black van with flames on it. When they got close
to me they would throw a molotov cocktail at me. I kept calling for backup
but the guys on the other end of the radio would laugh and say things like
there were no available units. That went on for what seemed like hours and
then I woke up. I’ve been having trouble figuring out where the parts come
from that assembled in the dream, but that’s actually the fun part.

Another dream I had recently involved all my friends, but it was my vision that
was wacky. I either was constantly looking through an image that looked as
though it was a TV with poor reception (lines, fuzz, horizontal jitter, etc.).
At certain points it switched to having the surfaces of everything having that
TV poor reception look, not my vision.

Those dreams aren’t so bad though. The ones that you don’t really feel like
analyzing are things like you dragging people outside at work and hanging them
on meat hooks. Where does that come from? I mean, geez, I would never do that
in real life…even if I thought it.

Well, Thanksgiving this year was just as good as last year. Once again the
group of former Blue Sky folk got together and cooked some mighty fine vittles.
Andre got a turkey from him employer again this year so the gathering was set
in motion. We had 11 people, 6 types of sides, the fried turkey, and 5 pumpkin
pies (Keith accidently doubled the 2 pie recipe and someone else brought one
over). All in all it was a good time with much delicious food and not a lot of
left overs, except for pie. Mmmmm, pie.

Pardon me while I act clever and blockquote myself:

I was sitting at lunch one day and I felt that there had to be a way to see my
friends that I don’t live near. Not every day, not even every week, but over
time. One of the blogs that I started following is the photblog href="http://www.tenyearsofmylife.com/" title="Photoblog: Ten Years Of My Life">
Ten Years Of My Life. On it Matthew Haughey has taken on the quite awesome
project of taking one picture every day for 10 years. The href="http://www.tenyearsofmylife.com/about" title="Ten Years Of My Life:
About">about page for the project has a head shot of Mr. Haughey for every
month. Then it struck me, that’s the perfect way for me to see the progression
of life for my distant friends (in fact, that would be cool for all my friends
to keep so that we can look back and see the past without the clouds of memory).

So here we are, here, this is Me, My Face, And
I. Every month I will be putting a new head shot up so friends, family,
and strangers can see me over time. Sometimes I’ll be smiling, others I’ll be
indifferent, and once or twice maybe I’ll be scowling. This isn’t about me on
my best days or when I’m happy, it’s about me not wanting to lose touch with
those I can’t see all the time. Once it’s setup it will take very little time
every month. I’ll be trying to get my friends to start doing this too and as
they come around I’ll link to them here. Contact me if you want more
information. For those interested the layout is whatever you want, suggested
image size is 100×100 to 200×200. I’m going with 175×175. Make sure to label
your images with the at least the month and year they were taken. More exact
dates are fine as are more than one picture per month (who knows, maybe you
want to show off that awesome new red hair of yours :)

So, Ladies and Germs, I give you title="Me, My Face, And I">Me, My Face, And I. I’ll be contacting friends
and acquaintances soon to see if they’re on board. Hopefully there will be
more than a few people that join in.

I’m releasing my images under the title="Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0">Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. You, however, are
free to choose any license or restrictions you want. Have fun.

So, on Saturday I went over to Mitch & Deb’s and help them cook some food
for a barbecue that they were hosting. There was mucho food and drink. Many
people eventually showed up. Keith and Colin came over and had the most
amazing queso dip I’ve had in a long time. That plus the guacamole was
heaven, heaven I tell you.

Later in the evening Ryan (M&D’s cute as heck little boy) was watching an
Elmo DVD before bed. He ended up chilling on the couch with Colin and Mark
(who were also fascinated by the Elmo DVD):

alt="three cool guys" />

So then, Ryan got enthralled with Colin and was crawling all over him. He was
so darn cute:

alt="Ryan! The Cutest!" />

So, a fun time, good food, and dessert (a great cake from Nina)
was had by all.

My friend Jan has been a director for many years in the animation industry. He
just started at Wild Brain (well, a few weeks back). His inaugural mission
with the company is at least two months in India helping to get production
for a children’s series going (it’s being produced by Wild Brain, just the
animation is going overseas). I had a chance of going, but the fine folks
at the studio in Bangalore have their act together on the technical
side of things (such is life, I would have liked to have gone, but I’m not
going to fret over it).

So, since Jan leaves the Bay Area on Friday a few of us got together and
planned a little party to send him off right. We all met at the Whitney House
(home of Keith and Colin, party masters) and had some drinks, talked, and had
some awesome food. Two kinds of ribs, hot wings, Keith’s amazing broccoli
casserole. It was all so good.

I’m pretty sure Jan had fun. At least we were able to send him off so he knows
that we’ll miss him. Now we just have to plan the party for when he comes back.

I took the day off work yesterday to hang out with my parents and sister. They had been in town since Saturday and flew back home today. It was good to see them (I also spent Saturday and Sunday with them).

Yesterday (Wednesday) we drove down to Monterey and visited the aquarium. I actually thought it was going to be a little bit bigger than it was, but it was still really cool.

I got some pictures, I might post some later.