Feb 18 2013
Spent a little time online proxy voting my six Disney shares for the Board of Directors (of which I voted for all ten members), two company-introduced proposals, against two two shareholder proposals and one ratification for the company’s accounting firm.
Would be nice if they gave me an annual pass discount for re-electing them back into office.
Feb 08 2013
Trying to regularly keep up with all the different online services I belong to or moderate is pretty much impossible. And that means that each one of them is guaranteed to suffer from my lack of involvement on a rotating basis. No pinning to my boards for a couple of days, or no posting updates, or no tweets, or no G-plussing (when are we finally going to get vanity URLs anyway?), or, most sadly, missed blog posts. I haven’t uploaded a photo to my 500px account in ages. My tumlbing is practically non-existent lately. Don’t even get me started on my Posterous page. And my Foodspotting is dying of virtual starvation. The site I’ve devoted to my mom’s recipes hasn’t seen daylight in forever. I even have a blogspot site devoted to interesting things about my closest friends, which makes it seem like my friends haven’t done anything interesting in a very long time. I have a less important Shutterfly page that I still feel guilty about. And I have a travel blog that has yet to see a single entry.
Needless to say I have overextended my online self.
But today was try to catch up a little on Flickr day. That doesn’t mean I added anything. That will come later. No, for now I just updated a few old photos with additional descriptions and tags, replied to a few comments, allowed some of my shots to be added to other groups and, out of curiosity, checked my views status.
Boy was I in for a surprise when I saw that back on January 28 I had a one-day personal best of 3,691 views. (The day before had also been a record.) I had never broken 3,000 before. My curiosity peaked, I wanted to find out which one of my Comic-Con cosplay girls was the culprit, since they are by far my most popular images.
Surprise the second. For some reason a batch of photos I took back in 2008 of a remodeled bus-turned-into-family-motorhome was the basis for my surge. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful vehicle called the Peacemaker Bus with all wooden fixtures and amenities on the inside, but I would like to find out why so many people all of a sudden decided to view these photos.
Someday when I have some non-existent more time I’ll look into it. But for now I’m just going to revel in my new record.
Feb 06 2013
My sister, Beata, and her husband, Bill, were on local San Diego TV this morning promoting the upcoming International Dance Festival happening this coming Sunday in Balboa Park. Besides promoting the festival, they were asked to demonstrate some dancing live on set and they obliged with a couple of waltz-based performances.
My mom waved at my sister on the TV.
Feb 04 2013
After a quarter of a century of exceptionally reliable service to our family, I helped my mom finally retire her old 1988 Honda Accord. And by retire I don’t mean taking it out back behind the woodshed and putting it out of its misery Old Yeller-style. Nor do I mean sending it off with a gold watch to sit on a front porch somewhere and yell at kids in the front yard. No, the good state of California has a program for purchasing older model vehicles in an effort to take less efficient, gas-guzzlers that have difficulties passing smog checks off the streets. The ironic thing is that this 25 year-old Honda got better gas mileage than the six-year newer ’94 Infiniti that she drives right now. But it was getting long in the automotive tooth and was always the car with the most rust whenever any of us drove it around town. It just looked awful. But as long as it’s paid off, has all the doors and is drivable then there’s a very good chance that California Department of Consumer Affairs’ Consumer Assistance Program will give you at least $1,000 for it.
Not bad for a deteriorating piece of transportation.
After a minimal amount of forms to fill out and receiving a Letter of Eligibility from the state, I drove it one last time down to SA Recycling, the only facility in San Diego that officially accepts retired vehicles. My mom followed in her Infiniti.
It was a bitter-sweet journey. It’s embarrassing to drive but it has so much history with our family. At least it got to see the SeaWorld Skytower, the bay, the downtown skyline with the new library, and the Coronado Bay Bridge one last time.
Jan 30 2013
A friend of mine, who for the sake of this post I will call “Sylvia”, took me to a thrift store in the city in which she lives, which I shall refer to as “Pretty View”.
Knowing that I collect calendars of certain specific kinds she located one for me which, unbeknownst to her, I had been searching for. It was brand new and still shrink-wrapped. And instead of paying the regular $13.99 asking price, here she picked it up for an unbelievable $1.99.
My calendar cockles hadn’t been this warmed since last December when I found some for half-price.
Since I was heading over to their house for a visit anyway, she told me we could go back and I could check out all the other calendars they had for sale. (As Chandler Bing might be want to say, “Could my cockles get any warmer?”) As we scanned through the boxes I slowly began to realize that almost all of them were unfortunately of no real interest to me. She had found the one that I would never have passed up.
I did end up picking out one more, though, a beautifully illustrated calendar themed on the Civil War. We each also picked up a hard cover book, both in almost perfect condition and each for $2.95, mine being Michael Crichton’s “Pirate Latitudes”, published after his death.
It was a good day for collecting paper products.
Jan 27 2013
A group of us Comic Fest committee members along with spouses/significant others met for a birthday dinner for Fest organizer and Comic-Con co-founder, Mike Towry and his son, Ryan, at Filippi’s Pizza Grotto in the Little Italy neighborhood of San Diego.
After more than a dozen of us (which eventually grew to nineteen) nudged our way through the front store waiting line we were seated at a long table in a back room, which is a terrible environment for any decent group photos. I got one usable shot, mainly because I only took two. The food is always great here and the portions are enormous. I had the lasagna/spaghetti combo which I’m pretty sure is my usual whenever I eat here.
There was no cake with candles so Mike asked me to take a couple of shots of him and his son blowing out straws in a bread roll, which I would then add flames to “in post”, hence the two fake photos.
It was loud and fun, and there were the inevitable work discussions about the upcoming 2nd annual Comic Fest in October.
Jan 25 2013
Took my mom for a followup doctor visit to check on her cat scratch wound from last Saturday. After waiting only about five minutes we were ushered into one of the exam rooms by a polite and very friendly new nurse named Regina who basically narrated everything she did, including which buttons she clicked on the computer monitor when inputting my mom’s vitals. Blood pressure, blah blah over blah blah…blood-ox level, blah blah…left arm…patient seated…female…temperature, blah blah…favorite novelist, not E L James…tattoo of Richard Nixon on left butt cheek…two strange carotid punctures on the left side of neck…patient arrived wearing Wonder Woman bustier…one glowing red bionic eye..and so on. She also talked about her now two-years deceased husband whose mother had tried to call right then, probably because Regina’s son’s birthday was today. She decided as well to tell us that when she was a little girl she had to have her frenulum linguae cut because it was restricting her tongue’s movements which made it very difficult to take her temperature.
Paging Dr. Toomuchinfo…
A n y w a y . . . my mom’s regular primary care doctor wasn’t available so a very nice, and newly arrived to the hospital from Dallas, Dr. Gupta spent a friendly fifteen minutes examining her and making sure she was overall ok. She thought my mom’s arm was healing very nicely.
After the exam was completed we decided to go have breakfast there at the hospital. We were surprised to find that it had been completely remodeled since the last time we ate there. It was a lot more open and bright and modern. Plus, they named it “The Cove”. Ooooh.
We each ordered an omelet, hers a cheese and mine a veggie, along with some bacon and hashbrowns. We also ordered one pancake to split. It’s been a really long time since I’ve had a big American breakfast like that. There was a really loud 40-something year-old visiting German doctor sitting at a nearby table comparing procedures or something between Thornton and his practice back in the Fatherland.
Except for learning about poor Regina’s late husband, hearing about her sliced frenulum, and then having to listen to that volume-impaired Teutonic treater of the tortured, it was overall a very positive visit to the doctor’s office.
Jan 19 2013
So before she went to church, my mom stopped at my brother’s house to drop off a kitten calendar that was a gift from my sister. My brother has five cats, three of which are black siblings and one of which is named Mr. Blue.
My mom reached down to say hi to Mr. Blue and for whatever reason he clawed at my mom and tore open her left forearm. My mother, being of an advanced age, has very thin and brittle skin so even a slight bump or scratch can do some serious damage. Her wound bled badly enough that my brother advised her not to go to church but to go back home to take care of it. She instead went to church.
Some events happened after the service that included a trip to a local CVS Pharmacy Minute Clinic and also at an ironically closed neighborhood after-hours urgent care clinic, but suffice it to say that when she got home and I saw the wound I took her straight to the ER at Thornton Hospital up at UCSD.
We arrived around 7:00pm, registered with reception and sat on comfortable chairs in the waiting room. I ended up watching most of a two-hour special documentary on the TV about Lance Armstrong while we waited. The sound was turned down so I had to read the closed captions for the entire episode. We waited for almost an hour and a half.
Among a room full of people waiting to be seen were two loud couples talking and laughing about wine country trips and how to correctly use smartphone apps, a younger visitor who occasionally would take off his glasses and bury his head in his arm while he cried for someone in one of the inside rooms, a younger girl and her girlfriend who was there because of a sprained ankle, a group of younger kids who were there for an non-obvious reason but who kept going in and out of the waiting room getting drinks or food, a husband and wife (who wore a mask the whole time) and their two young daughters, and one guy in his late twenties who could hardly breath or stand up straight because of kidney stone pain. He showed up last but rightly went in first. I did my best to Dr. House all the conditions that everyone was presenting with.
After we were finally escorted back to room 17 we ended up waiting another half an hour for a nurse to come by. She told us who the doctor was who would eventually see my mom and I saw from the computer monitor that he had seven other patients to take care of. This was going to take a while.
The nurse eventually returned and gave my mom a tetanus shot with a whooping cough booster. Then we waited some more. After two and a half hours the doctor finally could come by and take care of my mom. He rinsed her wound, cleaned and disinfected it, and finally wrapped it up in non-sticky dressing.
The nurse returned with one amoxycillin tablet to take immediately, instructions on how to care for the wound, and a prescription for six more days of antibiotics.
Everyone we dealt with was extremely professional, friendly and polite. We just happened to go there on a busy night and after a little more than three long hours we were finally able to go home.
My mom never did leave that kitten calendar at my brother’s house.
Jan 01 2013
My younger brother and his family came out for a New Year’s visit, which is when we decided to hold our annual family Christmas get-together and dinner. No photos of the actual dinner exist because it was a bit of a haphazard, some eat now, some eat later deal, but at least we got everybody (except Jeri who was unfortunately not feeling well and RJ who was with his own family) to sit for a casual family portrait.
This turned out to be an unexpectedly, well-balance photo with a lot of crossed appendages. Kind of strange, though, to realize that everyone is staring and smiling in unison at an inanimate object about ten feet away.
Dec 17 2012
All the members of my San Diego family gathered for a belated birthday dinner for me this evening. They included my mom, of course, two siblings, a nephew, his girlfriend, my favorite niece and a brother-in-law. There were no gifts, as is always my want. (Lisa! But thanks for the poop calendar.)
This was the first time in recent memory that mom didn’t ask what I would like for my birthday dinner (wienerschnitzel with mashed potatoes and red cabbage), but I was totally fine with the choice of spaghetti and garlic bread. I do love spaghetti and garlic bread, especially with a tall glass of cold milk.
My mom took the extra step with my cake of designing my Hungarian nickname “Peti” and age (mumble/muffle) into the two-tone batter before baking. Unfortunately, that meant no frosting on top, but the cake was still really good.
Another year down, who knows how many to go. That’s why I feel it’s so important to journal events, even the seemingly insignificant ones. (My birthday is not one of the insignificant ones.) Nobody should ever eventually become nothing more than a series of hard-to-remember memories.
Now I’m hungry for spaghetti again.
Dec 14 2012
Collected all of the Happy Birthday wishes I received on Facebook into one single image. Thankfully it always turns out to be a lot of work and that’s a great complaint to have. I am very grateful for all of the good wishes, but I’m not sure I’ll want to do this again next year.
Dec 08 2012
Had a quick lunch with my mom at Waldo’s Chili Dogs in Clairemont Town Square. After all these years she has finally grown to love hot dogs. They’re quick, delicious and cheap.
My hound of choice for today was a Pastrami Dog. Very tasty.
Dec 07 2012
So Google introduced a new feature in their Google+ social environment: Communities. And that was my cue to jump in as quickly as possible. I understood right away that this was something that Google+ had desperately needed to become a more interactive place for all gmailers, not just a few who wanted something other than Facebook.
Communities were being created as quickly as people could discover them. I myself signed up for six of them: Trey Ratcliff’s “The Photo Community”, “San Diego Zoo Fans”, “MiceChat” (a Disney blog), “The Official San Diego Photography Community”, “Disney Parks” and “Disney Photography”.
I commented and posted, and got some immediate feedback from a few people. Not a lot, but it was more interaction than I was seeing before the Communities launched.
I quickly learned that I needed to adjust the notification settings in the Communities and with my gmail. Within a day my little red Google+ notifications box hit 18 (usually it topped at 2 or 3 every few days), and my mail notifications reached 139. Unfortunately, I also learned that most of those notifications were of no interest to me. I even toyed with the idea of creating my own Community, but I couldn’t think of a really interesting one, plus I honestly didn’t want another online forum to moderate.
We’ll see where these Communities take both me and Google+. I really hope this is the jump start that people needed to make it all worth investing their time on.
Dec 02 2012
Upgraded to the new version of iTunes. It looks much cleaner and better organized and I’m sure it won’t take very long to get used to the changes, especially since I literally use iTunes ever single day. Most of the issues will arise from trying to find where all the links have been placed in the new layouts.
Old vs. New iTunes Store
Old vs. New iTunes Music
Old vs. New iTunes Podcasts
Nov 28 2012
Got this quick shot of our neighbor’s house during a full moon. This is where I sometimes house-sit with eight black cats and occasionally one black dog.
Good thing I’m not superstitious.
