I'm so sore today

Recently my bf said to me, "I'd like to lose ten pounds", so I give Mr. Works-out-six-days-a-week-for-the-last-couple-decades *the look* and he says "okay well, five pounds anyway. Well, an ounce or something. Why are you still looking at me like that? I want a little more muscle mass, okay?" Like as if working out with me instead of by himself is magically going to do THAT, I can't even spot him properly. What he really means is, "I know you've been gaining weight since the moment you met me, and I want to help you reverse that trend."

I had a personal trainer for over a year. When I met my bf I was going to the gym and working out with my trainer five times a week. Since I work in my home office and don't really know many people in this area (let's see, I know Sonny. Oh yeah and um, Sonny, and Sonny, Sonny and Sonny, haha) my trainer was the person I saw more than anyone else. I spent five hours a week with him. Then I started dating my bf, who I sometimes spend upwards of 40 hours a week with (it's like a full time job! One you really love) and I started realizing that spending time with my trainer wasn't that great. I was bored with the workout, bored with having conversations with someone who spends 70 hours a week in the gym and doesn't do much of anything else (except maybe watch porn movies and action movies) and doesn't really get my sense of humor. I mean, it wasn't that bad, it's just compared to my bf it wasn't that good, either.

About four or five months ago I stopped going to my trainer. Basically I stopped going to the gym altogether. I did join another nearby gym (I was intimidated by the idea of trying to muddle through a workout on my own with the-person-formerly-known-as-my-trainer right there in the same gym at the same time, probably thinking "wow, she really has no idea what the hell she's doing") but it's still basically under construction and I really never paid that much attention to what we were doing when I was with my trainer, so my original idea had been: I will work out with a PT for a year and by that time I will be really strong and have met a number of fitness goals and will switch several days a week to yoga or something and continue on with weights on my own because it will be such an ingrained habit by that time. The reality was more like: I have no idea what I'm doing, I never met any of my goals (like to be able to bench 150 pounds), it's really easy to completely stop going to the gym, and I still don't do yoga. It was my plan to stop seeing a trainer after a certain amount of time, but it wasn't my plan to then sit around and get fat!

Super Besitos Man to the rescue! Da-da-da-daaaa!

Now my bf and I are working out together three nights a week. It's been really great so far. It's a little intimidating, I feel a little self conscious, my bf is the type of person at the gym that inspires confidence and makes people say "hey homey, can you give me a spot?" and I'm more like...well, I'm the one making crow noises "caw, caw, caw!" in time with the reps and making jokes about my ghost trapezoids. OOooOOoooooo! (That's the sound ghost trapezoids make. You can't see them, but they can still feel pain.) I have a hard time doing some of the exercises with ANY weight (did I really have a trainer for over a year?) and I'd be very surprised if anyone besides MAYBE my bf asked ME for a spot.

Yeah but, despite our different gym personas, it's fun to go to the gym together. I just don't see how he thinks he can make any strength gains trying to get a spot from someone who keeps forgetting to count to ten. That's okay with me though, he is perfect the way he is, he knows twice as much about weightlifting as my former-trainer and if he wants to work out with me, I am just REALLY LUCKY. :)

So now, instead of just going out to the wine bar...we work out for two hours and THEN go to the wine bar! Well, not like we are going to go to the wine bar after every workout...just maybe once a week. The point is, we used to just go out and eat food (and probably drink wine), and NOW we are working out for two hours first. Not only do we get our workout in, but we spend less time with the eating/drinking AND probably enjoy it more because we're totally starving by the time we eat.

I'm soooo sore today I can hardly move, but it's so worth it!

What's up with IMVU Shoutouts?

The other day, I noticed ChattyNatty, AKA Marcus at IMVU, was running a shoutout on all the IMVU web pages. I waited and waited and checked other pages on the site, it was like the all ChattyNatty shoutout channel all the time. This kind of well, freaked me out because I pay money for shoutouts every day and now here his shoutouts were taking over everything. I didn't know if it was a mistake or temporary or what was going on.

Supposedly, you can't really complain about the shoutouts on the website itself, because I've been told that what we are paying for isn't shoutouts on the website at all, it is only shoutouts in the IMVU client. So, any time your shoutout runs on the website, it's like you're getting an extra free bonus. But of course, the fact is more like we ALWAYS get our shoutouts there, and this is something people usually take into account when deciding if it is worth their time, credits and Developer Tokens to run a shoutout, and if IMVU isn't going to run them for us on the website, they should let us know ahead of time since it may affect our decision to buy them.

I signed into the IMVU chat client and checked the shoutouts there. They seemed to be running normally with no ChattyNatty shoutouts in sight, so I wasn't quite so concerned but I still didn't know if this was a new thing IMVU was doing where shoutouts bought by members would only show up in the client or what was going on. The next day, I saw that we had the normal variety of shoutouts on the IMVU website, so I guess it was either a glitch or a temporary thing.

It bothers me that I don't know which it was. Shoutouts in general bother me. Let me tell you why...

First let's look at what it says on the Shoutout purchase page:

Messages are priced by the broadcast. For each broadcast you buy, your message will be be shown to approximately 3000 users - buy 10 broadcasts and your message will shown to about 30,000 users! Each broadcast costs 500 credits.

You can select a duration that your shoutout will run. Duration does not affect the total number of people that see your message. For example, buying 10 broadcasts for 10 days will show your message to the same number of people as buying 1 broadcast each day for 10 days. There is a convenience surcharge for specifying durations longer than one day.

Oh really? So, supposedly my message will be seen by 30,000 users if I buy 10 broadcasts? Will IMVU keep track of whether an individual user has seen it yet? What if it starts scrolling by on the screen of someone who is AFK? Is it possible that it could scroll across someone's screen 100 times and they aren't even there? Or will that possibility be minimized because it's actually 100 different (or 30,000 different people) who are seeing it? How do we really know 30,000 users are seeing it anyway? I would think that if that were true, then sometimes there would be no shoutouts running because not enough were purchased for the number of eyeballs out there, OR sometimes you simply wouldn't be able to buy a shoutout because there would be too many shoutouts and not enough members/users running the program at the time.

Seriously, we need some kind of statistics or something. IMVU has NO accountability when it comes to Shoutouts. I don't think even THEY know what is up with them. I have been to the IMVU offices trying to ferret out this information and spent time messaging and emailing and even talking on the phone to different IMVU employees and no-one can even seem to tell me who created Shoutouts in the first place (maybe Chris) and they don't seem too sure who is in charge of them now, and they don't seem sure of what is going on in the code, either. C'mon, people spend a lot on these things, and they are completely unregulated.

Well, not completely unregulated. Apparently they have some kind of approval queue for them, and if you are not a Pro dev then you have to have your Shoutout approved by an actual person. I can see why this is necessary, but what I don't understand is if a real person has to approve them, why do we have to pay MORE to run a shoutout for longer? Wouldn't it make sense to give a discount in that case? I basically refuse to buy a Shoutout that lasts more than one day because heck if I am going to pay a premium to do so! It's IMVU's convenience. They are lucky that I am pro so they don't have to approve mine by hand because I make dozens of new shoutouts a day.

Hmmm...maybe I should run some shoutouts from an avatar that isn't pro, just to see if I can drive the people at IMVU cray-cray!

Really, that charging more thing bugs me...it's like Ticketmaster charging you a "convenience" fee to let you print out your tickets yourself instead of them mailing them to you. Who's convenience are you really paying extra for? Or the bank charging you a monthly fee for Bill Pay, which is really more convenient for them.

Let's not forget another thing that happens: problems with the client, the server, and the website. What happens when you've purchased shoutouts for a certain day and there is an outage for a day or an hour or whatever? Does that mean your Shoutout is seen less times? Do you get your time extended? What happens then?

Yeah so, Shoutouts...why aren't they more like adwords from Google? We should have more features. It should show users which Shoutouts people are clicking on and how many clicks we get and how many times our Shoutout was shown to how many people. It's an outrage that we pay so much and yet are kept totally in the dark about how it even works. But we all buy Shoutouts anyway, because...well...I guess it's better than nothing, probably. Maybe.

Want to know a secret?

Want to know a secret? Today I feel like telling you why I stopped developing stuff for There for a while.

It's partly because I was doing stuff for IMVU, partly the frustration with pricing (the pricing on some items just doesn't make sense, like for lamps) and partly because currency sales was taking up a lot of my time, but MOSTLY it was because I felt like a failure.

It started with the Wild West event. I had planned to make quite a few items for it, in fact when they were planning it I was like "ooh, oooh...I'll make this and that and I can make that other thing, too!" It's like I didn't want ANYONE else to make anything. I would have liked to make the entire Wild West all by myself.

I think I should be forgiven for this a little bit as I think it's natural for There Developers to be somewhat solitary, and the more people are working on stuff together the more they have to cooperate, which is not only hard, it takes time away from developing. My goodness, you should have seen Meret with his Christmas village. Not only did he want to do most everything himself, he wanted to enforce a huge number of aesthetic and other guidelines on developers, who were acting like cats trying to be herded, myself included. In the end, I didn't end up doing anything for that project, but my point is that developers are just like that. They generally want to be in control and they want to do what they want to do and they don't always play well with others, myself included.

I did do quite a few items for the Wild West. I made decks and buildings which I think were the first 40 meter dev items in-world, I made a water tower with couches for supports, a bunch of signs, benches, jail cells, a wild west bar which I believe had the first varied-level seating on it (one of the seats is ON the top of the bar, it wouldn't be weird at all now, but at the time it pretty much had to be snuck in) and a bunch of other stuff...I think I'm most proud of the staircase, which took quite a long time and is available actually attached to a second story floor, and I think without the floor as well. I also made a bunch of tombstones and some coffin seating groups for the Undertakers.

Despite all the items I DID make, I failed because of all the stuff I DIDN'T make, because I didn't allow enough time, I bit off more than I could chew, etc. There was supposed to be a whole general store and the only thing I ever got done for that was a catalog and a bench that had the catalog built into it. It was really discouraging...I don't know that anyone even noticed there was stuff "missing", but *I* sure did.

Then, I hadn't made anything for There for a while because of IMVU but I wanted to spend some time on There stuff again so I was going to enter this virtual world contest that was something about public spaces. I totally didn't allow enough time for this. This is my "Parkway" stuff. I didn't get all the pieces I wanted done with it, OR the matching website that was supposed to go along with it, and when nearing the deadline for entries I was frantically trying to put the pieces I DID have together. Argh...I am one of the worst in-world builders and I just couldn't get it together quite right plus some of the collision meshes weren't working the way I wanted. Basically, it simply wasn't done. I was really upset about this.

Then finally, I had a folder on one computer that held most of my There stuff and the folders starting with A, B and C just went missing. Poof, gone. This included a TON of builder items. Most of my builder items, actually. I thought maybe I had burned them onto DVD or CD to make room on my hard drive, but I searched everywhere and couldn't find those files. It was very strange and made me pretty paranoid AND very discouraged.

So there you go...that is why I stopped developing for There. But, today I am going to see if I can export a builder item from 3ds max...something that never worked for me on my old computers (I've made all my There stuff in Gmax.) It seems like TheChaz has done a good job of packing up the exporters to properly install, so I'm quite hopeful it will work. I just want to have some FUN making stuff, y'know?

Then later...maybe I will have some more secrets for you.

Ode to a bowl

Bowl, you were perfect
for popcorn
for brownie or cake batter
to mix up pizza dough
for ceasar salad
I'll miss you but
I guess it was your time to go

Haha...worst "poem" evar.

My mom gave me this bowl about maybe 14 years ago when I first moved to Boston. It was part of a set of items to make popcorn with, a big white bowl with a blue stripe near the rim, a hot air popper, some gourmet popcorn and some seasoning salts. It was an awesome (birthday I think) gift and I especially loved the bowl.

I guess it's moved about six times with me since then. I play favorites with bowls and this was my hands-down favorite and perfect for so many things. SO perfect that I just had to bring it to my bf's to make pizza this past Sunday. I guess it finally got knocked around one too many times...it got a big crack in it and bye-bye favorite bowl :(

I realized, though, that it's kind of immortalized in my Cheese Curls Party Bowl in There, so it's like I'll always have it.

I was right...and other There stuff

I was speculating about There approvals being delayed last week because of Sonny being on vacation, and I was right! Sonny sent me an email last night/this morning at 3:50am!!! "Why?" I wondered, "Why the HECK is he sending email at 3:50am, especially on a weekday???" Well, when I read the email I knew...he said he was up until then approving stuff! I don't know where Rosie was, but that new guy approver got pretty behind, I guess.

No wonder Sonny almost never takes time off. You kind of can't blame the new guy, though...I mean we have some pretty high expectations of approvals sometimes BECAUSE Sonny works so hard, but does that mean everyone is going to work as many hours as he does? (Or approve as fast as Rosie, who has been doing it for I dunno...four years?) Maybe the dude is hourly and wasn't authorized for overtime...maybe he just doesn't want to work 60 hours while being paid for 40, maybe he was askeered of approving all those things people try to sneak through submissions...maybe he wants to stand around chatting with Baloo about WoW all the time (oh no wait...Baloo is long gone...that was one of the old approvers, it would be nice to think they don't do that any more.)

I don't really care if my silly wallpaper and floors (I had some floor covering approved...whee) take a few extra days...it's not like it's going to be a runaway best seller or anything. I'm just hoping to sell a few copies once there is some matching other stuff to go with it, but mostly I'm glad to be redecorating my clubhouse slowly but surely.

Hey, I heard There is moving! Not like they are going far, more like next building over, but it's mention-worthy because Forterra isn't going with so they will finally be physically separated.

I was watching YouTube There.com videos yesterday. It's so cool to watch this stuff just to see all the content that is there somewhere in There. I mean, people don't always keep pazzes out all the time, stuff goes in and out of auctions, neighborhoods can be hard to find, so a nice lazy way to take a tour is by checking out all those videos. My favorite one is still the one Chagall did in 2004, "Party There".

Catwars

(Click for a large version)

I thought I had my desk mostly set up, but I guess not. I forgot to make room for my cats. If I don't make a place for them to sit, they will sit on my drawing tablet or stand on my keyboards and just stare at me while my computers and I start making very urgent noises about there being a problem, get paw prints all over my printers and scanner, in Rodney's case he will sit on the floor by my chair and cry plaintively and/or stick his claws in my leg. Nothing can really get done until they have their own spot right in the middle of everything.

First thing I did was make a place for China. I took a cat bed, placed an electric heating pad on it, and put a micro fiber dish cloth on top of that. Heated bed? Oh, she loooooves that, and the dish towel is perfect for sopping up snot. Hey, she is the Cancer Kitty and she needs a nice warm spot that isn't the closet.

Now, check out Rodney, on the right. Does he look like he is looking at China all jealous and stuff? Good, because that is exactly what he was doing at that moment. (And a lot of other moments not captured on film.) Rodney longs for that bed. Actually, he longs for anything China is using at the moment, the catfood dish, the water dish, the hammock in the other room, a certain corner of the bed, the grass on the balcony that he had ignored until China decided she wanted some, etc.

Being a little short of options at the moment, I set Rodney up with one of China's cat carriers (he loves both of them. Every time she comes back from the vet he will squeeze into the carrier du jour and take a nap.) The thing you have to understand is, China is just barely 7 pounds and Rodney is at least 14. (Yeah, I don't know when that happened, either.) He can BARELY squeeze himself into the carrier. Fortunately for me (and for China, who he has actually tried to sit on when she was in her bed) he can and does squeeze himself into her carrier...but of course he still stares longingly at her bed and sometimes manages to aquire it for himself.

Today I ordered a new little hammock bed that should go right beside the desk at the same height. Hopefully both cats will think this is great spot and they'll use it. Meanwhile, the cat carrier HAS been known to fall off the desk with Rodney in it. Ouch.

Months to assemble, minutes to eat

My bf and I have been meaning to make chicago deep dish style pizza for months now, but we needed to prepare first.

It started with a few books, then the gathering of baking/cutting and other implements, then gathering of the less perishable food items, like flour and crushed tomatoes, and then today we spent hours selecting cheeses, making sure we had cornmeal, etc.

Our pizza (shown above) wasn't perfect - I was a major dork and I put an extra cup of water in the dough and then I was frantically trying to scoop it out, and some of the other ingredients came out with it so I was trying to add back in some yeast, corn meal and flour, then I think the oven ran kind of hot, plus we were kind of following three different recipes at the same time (don't ask!) but in the end it was not only edible, it was very fun to make. I think we now have a Sunday pizza making tradition.

In case you want to make chicago style deep dish pizza, too...here is a list of items you may find helpful:

1. American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza - this is not only an interesting story for foodies, it has a lot of good pizza tips and many delicious recipes, for MANY kinds of pizza.

2. The Great Chicago-Style Pizza Cookbook - American Pie looked like the better cookbook at first glance, but this one has a bunch of great illustrated and captioned pages and we ended up following the instructions here more often during our evening of baking.

3. Chicago Metallic Professional Deep Dish Pizza Pan - A traditional Chicago-style pizza should be made in a heavy duty 14" pan like this one, and this one worked great.

4. Mario Batali Pizza Wheel - This is a biiiiig pizza cutting wheel, perfect for a big, thick pizza.

5. King Arthur Flour - one of my biggest regrets moving away from the East Coast is that I never got to visit King Arthur Flour in Vermont. I usually hate getting mail order catalogs for anything, but I find theirs quite drool-worthy. It's easier than going through their website. We got a bunch of stuff for the pizza here, whole wheat pizza crust mix, pizza sauce seasoning, yeast (which we didn't need), pizza dough flavor (which we also didn't need), churro mix (okay, churro mix doesn't help you make pizza. 'tth), ginger scone mix (yeah, yeah, i think it was on sale), belgian waffle mix (I promised I'd make belgian waffles...sometime) a lava cake making mix (we made that for dessert and it came out perfectly so pththththt!!!) etc...etc...I actually want one of everything they sell.

I can't think of anything else much I'd recommend. Grocery Outlet had crushed tomatoes and organic butter at a HUGE DISCOUNT because they freaking rule. We went to a specialty cheese shop and they actually told us to go to Safeway grocery store for our mozzerella cheese. I would recommend you get an oven thermometer that can both sit on and hang off of an oven rack to make sure your oven temp is reading accurately, but in general pizza making was REALLY FUN, pretty easy and has nearly endless variations, although I'm quite open to making, oh I don't know...caramel rolls or something instead if/when we run out of types of pizza.

Why, There, Why??

Okay, below I have proof that There does stuff with regard to the Developer program that makes no sense. Not exactly a newsflash, I knew this at least since 2003 when one of the approvers rejected a TON of my builder items for basically no reason other than maybe he didn't want to take the time to approve them right before they shut down the developer program for six weeks. Six weeks that were some of the most depressing of my life.

Yeah so anyway, I know we don't exactly have resource based pricing and I mostly understand that ('whatever) but...

I was submitting a few rasta style hairstyles, and I noticed I was accidentally submitting them as hi-res and I kind of panicked. OMG...I don't want to pay high-res prices for this little tiny texture! Turns out I needn't have worried. See the chart below...rasta hi-res is only 100 ThereBucks (or about 12%) higher in price than the "regular" version...


Now let's look at the item I just submitted. I submitted a house painter floor texture, which is 128x128 pixels. After submitting it, I wondered if I should have submitted a high res version instead. So, I checked out the pricing....


Both the rasta high res and the house floor high res have a texture that is four times the size of the "regular" resolution file, however, the hi-res floor texture is 133% higher in price than the regular texture. That is over ten times the increase of the hi-res rasta! What sort of crack are they smoking at There? I want some!

*disclaimer: I don't REALLY want any of the crack they are smoking at There, I'm just kidding. Drugs are bad, boys and girls (and thereians and There employees)...just look at what they've done to these prices!) You need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what to use when...although how many rocket scientists do you know that have time to develop stuff for There?

Not a There Hermit today

This past week, I've been spending some time in There in my clubhouse, which is ALWAYS deserted by anyone but me, and I've visited a few places like THE WATER and the amusement park (also deserted), but today I actually hung out with other avatars!

No kidding.

ZachC IMed me to tell me that he was with Nalora who was doing a video on Icons of There, and he was all like "I saw you signed in and I was like if anyone is a There Icon it's Jinx_tv", and I was like "yeah, haha...you're the icon. Nalora should be filming/interviewing you. Oh wait...that's why you're with her right now." Yeah, I'm a little slow like that.

So I spent some time hanging out with some different peeps like Nalora and ZachC and several others that you can probably see in my screencaps. It felt somewhat surreal to me to spend time with Nalora because it seemed like she held a grudge against me forever for making fun of some spelling mistakes her nephew (who is an amazing developer) made in his There auction descriptions. Sorry, I have a childish sense of humor and his descriptions made me laugh. I need a "doesn't play well with others" shirt. Then one day, she started buying ThereBucks from me and I was like, "that is sooo weird, I thought she wasn't even SPEAKING to me." Now she says she prefers to buy them from me. Maybe that's just her moving on while I'm obviously stuck in the past.

Yeah, so, these great diehard Thereians gave me lots of info/gossip (you can set the environment in pazzes now! The new "real" water can be turned back to cement in preferences! etc) and Nalora showed off her incredible pazzes, which you see here in my screencaps. I was quite flattered to find Jinx_tv stuff here and there, and btw I made those dice you see in the first pic :P

It's soooo cool to look around and be able to name the designers of half the stuff in her bedroom. AND to be included among them.

Also, this wasn't from Nalora and I'm not going to tell you who I got this info from as it's kind of gossipy, but I was told that WikkeDiva is not buying/selling ThereBucks any more because it got to be too much like work (I can definitely understand that...it's work for me, and not just like, really cool fun work, I like to compare it to being a night watchman, because all you're doing is babysitting stuff.) Also, it sounds like she had a hard time with people sending her money for ThereBucks when she was sold out, and then getting mad they didn't get any ThereBucks in a timely manner. I can totally relate to that, too. That used to happen to me at tbux.com, but it rarely happens to me on my new site...that's why my new site shows you EXACTLY how many ThereBucks I have for sale, it won't let you buy more than I have, and if somebody buys some, the number reflects that. It makes life sooooo much easier that way.

Oh, oh and...lookie! I had some wallpapers approved and not a minute too soon. Actually, this pic doesn't make it look very nice...I hate the compression of the ThereCam. My new approvals totally make me want to get some more stuff in (Like, um, WINDOWS, FLOORS, FURNITURE!) I really need to start making some models. I got really distracted using Adobe Captivate today and of course CHATTING IN THERE. Argh.

Tomorrow I can't make models because we are going to be making Chicago Style Pizza. If the pizza won't come to Jinx, Jinx will MAKE the pizza. :)

Irony: Comcast Style

So, today I'm trying to log in to the Comcast site in order to pay my bill. I eventually gave up because my connection was so bad the page kept timing out.

Yeah, that really inspires me to want to make the effort to pay my bill.

Are Comcast and ATT both actually part of the same larger corporation?

Maybe I shouldn't laugh at the stupidity of Comcast...for several months I had both Comcast and RCN, and RCN worked flawlessly the whole time. It got more/better tv channels, too. I really am not sure why I still have Comcast but no longer RCN...I guess I'm the stupid one.

Actually, the Philippines are RIGHT THERE

Okay, what do I know...it seems that There Philippines IS actually right on not just the There servers but right on the There planet mingling with the rest of us. This is great because I was on There last night and it was like being on a ghost planet, I think we could use the additional members.

Therian Water: found! There Philippines: merged!

So, last night I finally found the There water. Not like it should be hard, right? I mean, There is a series of ISLANDS surrounded by *ahem* water. But it did take me a while, maybe because I'm lazy.

So, I found the water by teleporting to where, a few Christmases ago, there was this amazing snowflake maze on the cement water. Sure enough, I was knee deep in water. With a skirt on. (That's pic one up there.) I tried to find something in my now meager wardrobe to wear, but was having trouble with it actually loading in. (That's the middle pic.) I tried a little retail therapy and bought something a little more appropriate. (Pic three...oh my goodness, check out that cleavage!)

I was trying to find a bikini or other swimsuit but there just didn't seem to be many options. I am loving the new skintone independent items, but there are soooo many in the catalog that aren't skintone independent. I noticed this most strikingly when looking through Mercuria's stuff...I was actually at that point looking for something my bf could (or would want to) wear in There when he visits it, something he has indicated an interest in doing. I figured he could just use the male avatar I already have...but what I forgot is that all that avie has left in his wardrobe is a navy sailor outfit and some pink boxers. 'doh!

So, while looking through Merc's stuff, which I adore, I couldn't help looking for myself at the same time. Of course she has new skintone independent tops, but all the old caramel, caramel, caramel stuff is still there, too. Maybe I expected it to all magically change or something. I think her inventory is much like the whole catalog, sure there is some amazing stuff...but as old items are still listed in auctions over and over and over and over, a lot of sifting has to be done to find the new stuff. It's really too bad the skintone independent stuff isn't in a separate section. Like, if it has a trans map, approve it into a slightly different path.

Speaking of a slightly different path, I read that There Philippines just merged onto the regular There servers. Not sure what that meant, I had asked Sonny if your avatar would be able to get from There Philippines to regular There or original There or whatever...he said he didn't think so. Still it's a bit confusing that they now, if their name is already taken in original There, have to have "_ph" appended on to the end of their avie name. It's like some kind of code telling the world you're a clone or a copycat or something. How could they merge, though...isn't the exchange rate different there? I mean...There? I mean...There Philippines?

'''drat

This morning, for the first time in a VERY long time, I woke up and thought "I wonder if I have some approvals in There today????"

I used to wake up this way all the time...sometimes I didn't know what day stuff might be pushed into the There world, other times I DID know what day it was supposed to happen (of course SORD can ALWAYS break) but either way, it was always a feeling of Christmas morning. Or like, potential Christmas morning, like you forgot if today was REALLY Christmas or not, or you were kind of naughty during the year before so you weren't REALLY sure Santa was going to visit you. There were days where potential There approvals were pretty much the only thing that got me out of bed.

So this morning, I thought "hey, I might have some approvals!" Wheeee! I got up out of bed and I fired up Outlook on my Alienware laptop. The laptop is old (I think about a month older than my There avie - I think it was the last Hivemind that Alienware ever made, it was also the last laptop they ever let anyone pick up in person - I flew to Miami to get it - and they erroneously labeled it an Area-51 so if it were a postage stamp it would be worth a fortune instead of an old laptop that might maybe be worth $25 or might actually cost me $25 if I were trying to take it to a recycling center), that copy of Outlook has been installed on there forever, and the email addresses that get downloaded there are also old (literally 99.9% spam and other junk, and lots of it) so I waited for a while for Outlook to boot up and check for mail (like, the mail that goes into my there/submissions folder) but I was impatient so I logged in-world on my shiny new computer that has all new apps on it and does everything super fast.

'''drat. There is no new wallpaper. '''sad. Wait...I shouldn't say '''sad, that's a kind of ugly face, maybe just 'sad. I checked the There forums to see if anyone was in the Developer forum complaining about how they didn't get their item approved, and then checked the Advertisements forum to see if anyone was advertising freshly approved stuff and...nothing. Hmmm...aren't approvals on Monday, Wednesday and Friday now? Which is actually friggin' amazing...three days a week! How spoiled we all are now. Oh, except no wallpaper. Maybe because Sonny is on vacation and the approvers are a bit behind? I've seen Sonny approve while on vacation. I've seen him approving items on Christmas Day, seen him approving while pretty much everyone else at the There offices is off skiing in Tahoe or going to a There Gathering. But...this time, I think he is really, actually not approving things.

I don't have anything to go with the wallpaper right now anyway. I'm hoping to submit some more items today and to fire up 3ds Max, but my bf is coming over for lunch today so I may not be able to do anything until later.

........I am still waiting for Outlook to download mail. Thank goodness that's not the only way to check for approvals.......

Oh...I just bought my first transparency skin-independent top Monday. Soooo cool! I'm not much of a clothing painter, but if I get inspired or something maybe I'll try it out just for fun, especially since I downloaded the latest beta of Stylemaker. It's amazing what TheChaz has done with it.

I've had a lot of clothing envy over the years, since I refuse to use Caramel skin, now I am very tempted to go on a little shopping spree. Oooh...must save ThereBucks for submissions, though. Right now I have a TON of ThereBucks, but those are to SELL not to SHOP WITH!!!

Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls is my Hero

One of my guilty pleasures is watching movies. Morning, noon or night I love to just get away from life for a few hours and sit there with a good comedy, drama, documentary or whatever. I'm on the six-at-a-time plan on Netflix and I never fail to get a decadent rush out of taking some time out of my day to remove a dvd from its red envelope and pop it in my PS2.

Another guilty pleasure of mine is reading blogs. Not necessarily subscribing to them, I would rather just find one, read the entire thing from start to finish (or sometimes finish to start) and then move on to the next one.

My favorite kind of blog, and there are a lot of them out there, are blogs by people who weigh 300, 400, or 500 pounds and are trying to lose weight.

Does that sound kind of weird? The thing is, these are the BEST blogs. If you've EVER had issues with food, if you've been bulimic, anorexic, if you've hoarded food or binged, if you've ever had a parent or other family member suggest you might be getting fat, if you've ever been on a diet, had a job or coworkers you hated, had other people tease you or be mean to you, are bored with your life, depressed, or are in any way less than 100% normal or have issues about ANYTHING, you can probably find something to relate to in the best of these blogs. It's like the way we can relate to Woody Allen's neurosis...everyone is a little neurotic, we can laugh at him and with him because at least on some level, we are like him...we just don't show it as much.

We don't have to weigh 500 pounds, it's likely we have just as many issues...it just doesn't show as much, or maybe manifests in some other way.

I admire these (mostly) women who write these extremely personal blogs that let others out there know that they aren't the only ones who feel that way or who that happened to or who are pissed off about that (whatever "that" is). Of course they are mostly somewhat or totally anonymous, which gives it the feel of maybe finding and reading someone's personal journal on the subway (not that I would do that! Heh.) I sometimes feel like reading these blogs reveals the very essence of human nature to me, or like I'm on the verge of unlocking some secret of mankind.

That's why I like the blog of Amanda Palmer from the Dresden Dolls. Because she ISN'T anonymous. She is like "I am Amanda Palmer, and this is who I am and what I actually think and everything about me warts and all". No anonymity. I think that's great. (And that pic up there is her, she is not 500 pounds...although if she was I'm sure she'd write about that, too.)

I'd love to write a blog like that, but I doubt it will ever happen. I already walk the line between being open and speaking the truth and doing things like risking hurting my mother's feelings or violating my bf's privacy. Still, that's my ideal...to speak with such truth that I feel like people reading my blog can really KNOW WHO I AM. Of course I am also not a celebrity like Amanda Palmer is and my life is not so interesting nor do I have a gift with words the way she does BUT I still aspire to her level of candor. Or maybe I'm just talking crazy today.

Frappr is strangely cool

Yeah, I know...it's like I can't stop posting today. It's like I'm trying to make up for all the times I posted like, 3 times in one month. I just stumbled onto a Frappr map for Thereians and added myself to it and then I did a little search and I found there is a really extensive Frappr map for IMVU maintained by BoogiePanda not surprisingly!

I've never seen Frappr before, although it sounds vaguely familiar. I find it weirdly fascinating watching the different people go by with either their real or avatar photos.

Below is the There map (don't you love the way it ruins my page layout?) but I recommend you check out the IMVU one which has over six thousand people on it as I type this.

Oh, and Yoshitoshi put his full address in the There map...I so totally want to stalk him now.

I was searching for a map of my highschool on Frappr, too. Didn't find it, instead I found AdultBabyWorld. Scary. I dunno about you, but if I liked to dress up and act like an adult baby, I wouldn't put a clear picture of myself on a map that shows where I'm located. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I guess you have to decide how badly you want to connect with other people like youself, though.

A Glut of ThereBucks: Where is WikkeDiva?

I was looking at the books that ended up in the pic in my last post and I thought I would give you a closeup just because I think it's amusing that there is only ONE computer book in the whole pic, "Real World Scanning and Halftones".

You'd think I'd have a lot of computer books, and I DO, they are mostly in a big metal cabinet on the other side of the room and scattered in piles here and there waiting for me to buy another bookcase. Instead we end up with "A Passion for Potatoes", "The Complete Idiots Guide to Improving Your IQ", "Car Smarts" (I don't even own a car) and a book that looks like it says "Intercourse" but it really says "Intercourses" (see, it's actually a play on words) and is a cookbook with a bunch of recipes that contain ingredients said to have aphrodisiac properties. Personally I think the Passion for Potatoes book is enough for me...I effing love potatoes, but Intercourses does have a killer chocolate bundt cake recipe. I love to cook.

ANYWAY, that has nothing to do with a glut of ThereBucks, other than maybe the fact that I'm hungry and even though my ThereBucks sales are MOSTLY automated (that's why they're so fast unless there is a problem, which is why you should email me at jinx.tv@gmail.com if you don't recieve your ThereBucks in 30 minutes) I sometimes (like now) need to stick around to make sure sales are going okay so I can't go grocery shopping.

What is going on? I've had more people than normal selling ThereBucks to me lately. Is it because WikkeDiva closed her tbxbank.com? And why is that anyway? And if that means her sellers are seeking other places to sell ThereBucks, shouldn't her buyers be looking elsewhere as well so it would all even out? Where did WikkeDiva go? Is she coming back?

I love/hate a mystery.

It's great to have so many sellers selling to me, the only thing is it would have been great to have a little advance notice, ya know? It's like I've put all my discretionary income into purchasing them and I would have liked to be more prepared. I guess that's just life.

Please buy my ThereBucks! :) Oh yeah, and if anyone knows what happened to tbxbank.com, please, please, please won't you tell me?

Rollover Minutes...Or Not

Did I mention a few times how much I love my iPhone and hate the service (ATT) I am forced to use with it?

Okay but wait...check out the pic with this post. That's my new monitor that has a dock for the iPod. The iPhone doesn't work right with it, but it seems to recharge in the dock. Perhaps I'll eventually find some update or something that allows it to work properly, meanwhile it looks cool there except for the message that it doesn't work properly and do I want to turn on Airplane Mode. Also, when did the pedestal of my monitor get so dusty? It's totally awesome...it has four USB ports, a little speaker and a couple different memory card slots. Soooo convenient.

Yeah, so the monitor and having the computer mostly all set up finally makes me happy. AT&T...not so much. Yesterday, my bf was out of town and I sent him a couple text messages and I didn't hear from him all day. Usually he sends a bunch of texts and calls at least once, usually twice. I just thought that maybe he was too busy or something because of business or maybe he got out of town and realized how happy he was to be away from me and just decided to never talk to me again. Well? I don't know...it could happen...I mean, not even one text message? I went to bed all sad and stuff.

This morning I woke up at 6am, which trust me, is very early for me. I think I woke up because my cat Rodney threw up all over the catfood bowl AND the water dish and so both cats were rather hungry/thirsty and restless/jumping all over me, but anyway...I sat up in bed and went "did AT&T bill me this month??? What is the date today?" I checked online and sure enough I owed them money. I have the pay-as-you-go or prepaid minutes plan because when I signed up I was having a bit of a hassle with it and it was looking like I was going to have to go to some ATT/Cingular wireless store in person to get it taken care of when I found I could do the pay-as-you-go with no trouble. It costs about the same, I guess a little more, than the regular plan and you aren't locked into a two year contract. Actually, I would suppose the bit extra you pay would probably add up to about $200 over two years and so it's just about exactly the same as paying $200 to get out of a contract, but whatever...it was what I ended up with at the time.

So, I needed to pay money for this new month of service, but they didn't call me, didn't text me, and didn't even send me an email to let me know. And I was sending text messages and they LOOKED like they were actually going somewhere. If I hadn't checked, who knows how many days could have gone by where I didn't have any service while meanwhile I grew more and more depressed thinking nobody wanted to talk to me? I thought I was set up for automatic renewal every month, but um...I guess it wasn't working? Meantime, I lost what amounts to about 400 rollover minutes. This is the second month in a row I have lost my rollover minutes. I have to wonder if they do it on purpose or something...like, if you have at least X number of minutes left, then don't notify you of needing to pay because *mwahaha* then you'll lose them.

Oh well, it's mostly just irritating...it's likely the rollover minutes would have just gone to waste, otherwise I wouldn't have had so many to roll over. I just wanted to say again that AT&T sucks.

There is expensive!

It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've submitted anything to There. According to my submission page, almost exactly two years. That's not quite right, though, since I did a commission a little bit more recently than that.

Yeah, so imagine my STICKER SHOCK when I started submitting some stuff today!

I'm really excited because I FINALLY got my nice new computer connected to the Internet and up and running. I got it with Windows Vista because I wanted to play with all the shiny new buttons, and I was askeered because I heard there were tons of incompatibility issues and places not supporting drivers for Vista but SO FAR, even though I don't have my second monitor hooked up yet or gotten my second hard drive working in there, the using of Vista hasn't been a problem.

So, I'm submitting some stuff and I'm planning this BIG SET of coordinated items and then I remembered why I've never really submitted more than a few versions of anything...it's so expensive! To submit a little 128x128 wallpaper texture costs basically $3. You could submit oh...let me think...a whole um...crapload of IMVU items for that same price! I know There has a real human being approving stuff, but WALLPAPER? Now I just need about a zillion other items to go with all the wallpaper I submitted...floors, windows, ceilings, paneling...wait, maybe I don't need paneling, I'll have to think about that. I forgot how addicting this is. Too bad I'm not addicted to making sexy cleavage tops...I could make a lot more ThereBucks.

Newsflash: vMTV is freaking U-G-L-Y

Okay, not exactly a newsflash.

My bf is out of town so maybe that is why I spent some time today visiting both There and Virtual MTV (Laguna Beach? I don't know what it's called any more) today.

I started in There, where I thought I might check out the non-cement water (yes, that's how behind the times I am, I've never seen the "water" in There). I ended up checking out my clubhouse, which I'm sort of surprised I even still own, and noticing how I have NO furnishings for it any more. I think I sold them all. I have this vague memory of maybe selling everything off thinking it would force me to make something new.

Not a bad idea, but I have to get my other computer working properly with the drawing tablet and all first. At least I found the driver cd for my wireless Internet card. I ordered a computer with no wireless network card thinking I'd save like, ten bucks or something and cannibalize my old computer that was having problems. That hasn't worked out so well. I tried getting this USB wireless network dongle thingy, thinking again that I was soooo clever...and when that arrived it didn't come with a driver cd...it just said to download the drivers from the Internet. Ah...AHEM...who's brilliant idea was it to have people download drivers from the Internet that are supposed to be used to connect you to the Internet? It's like when you call Comcast because your Internet connection isn't working and you get that recording that says "did you know you can get help right away by going online?" Um, screw you Comcast hold voice lady...if I could go online I wouldn't be calling you this time or any of the other times, either!!!

Yeah so...what was I saying? Ah yes, so I went in There to see the water and I ended up checking out the amusement park instead. That was very cool. Last time I saw that ferris wheel, it wasn't even animated! It was kind of spooky because the area was totally deserted...I decided that wasn't too surprising after a while because really, once you've tried each ride and then maybe tried each ride with a friend or five, why would you go back again? It's like Great America, you're not going to go there every day all summer long. Well...actually that sounds kind of fun.

After the amusement park ghost town, I decided to check out vMTV, where I hadn't been since I signed up for it over a year ago. First I had to FIND it again. In fact, that was sort of the theme of my entire time with vMTV today (well, that and "welcome to uglytown".) I had to find the site, then find the download, then find the Galleria, find the developer site, find the developer downloads, find some documentation for the developer downloads, find a decent hair color. Erm, well, I never found a decent hair color.

My god that place is a mess. First of all, it looks like someone took There and hit it with the SecondLife ugly stick, including the UGLIEST BOUQUET OF FLOWERS EVAR, which apparently is actually a beverage and you can drink it. Uh-huh. I heard there is a really ugly teddy bear, too, but I don't know how you find that. I assume it is also a 250 sip beverage. Also note in the pics that my face color doesn't match my skin color.

The website is a total mess, with a lot of links that don't work and missing navigation elements (like, good luck getting back from the forums) and I found it was really hard to do anything in vMTV. And of course, I have never seen Laguna Beach or The Hills so I totally don't get any of the references to anything. In fact, MTV isn't even one of the cable channels I get. I did see Pimp My Ride once, and I must say the pimped out cars in vMTV look pretty cool. I bought myself a black cadillac, but maybe later I'll get one of those pimped cars. I have to go back now, because I submitted a few things once I finally figured out how.

Oh, besides Pimp My Ride, I also liked the streaming music feature. I just wish I could have figured out how to change it or skip songs or whatever and it seems like if I find a song I like I should be able to...I dunno...bookmark it or buy it or something? vMTV is such a weird place. They totally don't seem to want to follow the There way of letting member developers create most of the cool content, so they end up with mostly a bunch of REALLY LAME content. Someone should give each MTV person who works on Virtual Laguna Beach a copy of "The Long Tail". In fact, it's available as an audio book, so they could listen to it on their commute to work or while working out or...whenever...they should just listen to it. Maybe they're afraid that if they encourage members to make new content, they will make stuff that is just sooo much better than what their advertisers have that the advertisers will be upset?????

iPod Touch

I'm probably the last to know, but I just found out about the iPod Touch, a hybrid of the iPod and an iPhone. My first thought was I WANT ONE, since after using my iPhone I find the screen on my video iPod to be totally puny.

Then, I realized this thing is only 16GB. That's twice the storage space of the iPhone, but 1/10th that of the latest iPods. When you have an iPod that holds basically your entire audio library including dozens of audio books and a bunch of movies, who wants to move backwards and get something so much smaller? Plus it seems like they COULD HAVE made it hold more if they'd really wanted to. Thanks but I think I'll wait for 60GB or more. If I didn't have an iPhone already, I might feel differently.

My third thought was, "this would make soooo much better of an Ultimate Prize for the IMVU Street Team than an iPhone". I mean, c'mon...you don't need to pay a $100 a month cell phone bill to use it, and it's available/usable WORLDWIDE. Somebody should go rethinking what "Ultimate" really is. Of course if they're going to do that, I'd still like to cast my vote for the Wii being the ultimate prize.

I am not like my mother!

Next month my bf and I are taking a ten day trip. We haven't quite finalized plans for it, but the most important part logistically is that my semi-retired mother is coming out here to cat-sit for me while we are gone.

So, last night I was talking to my bf about buying my mom her ticket. I can't just...you know...buy her a ticket, because it has to be on the right airline so she can get her frequent flier miles and I have to buy it during the right time period so she can get double ff miles, or so she has informed me, and she wants to make sure that the miles will get credited to HER and not, say, to ME.

I jokingly sent my mom an email asking if she'd like me to have her routed through Memphis so she can get even MORE miles, and she emailed me back quite seriously that yes, that would be good if the times were convenient. So, I was laughing about it to my bf. Like, imagine if I'd been planning to buy her ticket using FF miles? She probably wouldn't come catsit, because then she wouldn't get any miles. Like, maybe she's coming out here for ten days just for her Northwest Worldperks. Heck, if it were me, *I* would pay MORE money to get a more convenient nonstop flight and screw the miles.

So then, since I like to rant about things, I start ranting about AT&T (you're suddenly quite jealous of my bf being stuck in the car with me for several hours, aren't you?) and about how people on the west coast get kind of screwed with free "evening" minutes because they don't start until 9pm, but you can't call anyone on the east coast using your free minutes because for them it's midnight. Meanwhile, people on the east coast can call people on the west coast at 9pm and people on the west coast are getting that call at 6pm, and it's like, soooo unfair. Then, after ranting for a while about how much AT&T sucks and how unfair it all is, I suggest that maybe HE should get AT&T, because then he'd be "in my network" and all our calls to each other would be free.

I realize this is a somewhat ridiculous suggestion, since he makes phonecalls all day long and probably 95% (or more) of his calls are to people on some other network or maybe on a landline phone or someone in another country, and all I ever have to say about AT&T is that they suck, but still...my phone always makes a point of telling me exactly how much time/money I used up and have left at the end of each call and it drives me crazy and never is ANYONE I EVER talk to in the same network I am.

It was about this time he went from just sort of smirking to OPENLY LAUGHING AT ME. "Yeah, your mom and her frequent flier miles", he says, "at least I know where you get it from."

What???? I am NOT like my mother! Argh.



p.s. to my mom: Sorry Mom, I don't know how to get the owl hoot ringtone on your phone. No idea.

The Truth Behind the Numbers

My two current obsessions are condo cruise ships and gambling (my mom will be so proud).

About a year or so ago, I learned about a cruise ship called Residensea's "The World". This ship travels the world taking about four years to circumnavigate the world, stopping for two or three days in this or that exotic or not so exotic port and then eventually visiting them all again. What makes it different is that people don't just go cruise on this ship for a week or two, they LIVE on it in large luxury condos.

I've been thinking about it again lately because I just saw a one hour special about it on the Travel Channel. Hey, for around two million dollars, you could have a residence on Residensea. Considering Bay Area housing prices, that isn't too bad...except then you have to figure in about another ten thousand per month in fees for the running of the ship and dock fees and all the other expenses that the residents share, although I think you get a couple thousand of that back as shipboard credit in places like the restaurants and the deli, maybe the spa?

They say you need to have a net worth of about ten million to be able to afford to live there. The cool thing is, the tv special showed this real estate couple in their 50s who still work, they just do it from their shipboard condo. They each have a desk with a computer and anything else they need, with a fabulous ocean view of course, and they just keep working. Woohoo. I would LOVE to do something like that in my 50s.

I kind of lost some interest in Residensea after learning last year that they don't accept pets. What? That blows. But this week I learned there is a new ship being constructed, due to be completed in 2010, called the Magellan, which IS going to take pets, if they are under 15 pounds (no jokes about Rodney please, he's not an ounce over 14 pounds!) on three of their decks. Now I really really really want a net worth of ten million!

Haha...I don't know...it could happen.

And that brings me to the gambling obsession...

Nonono...it's not what you think. I'm not running around being a gambling fool. I've just spent time studying gambling and reading statistical books that explain the odds of different games and how you can actually win. They basically all make me NOT want to gamble. At least not with any actual expectation of winning.

Here is a statistic I got from "The Lottery Book: The Truth Behind The Numbers": If you played the lottery twice a week (because generally that is how often they draw the numbers) and you played $100 each time, on AVERAGE it would take you 11,589 years to win the lottery. (so even if you lived 11,589 years and actually spend $200 a week on the lottery, chances are only 50% you'd actually win by then.) Hey, I want to live eleven thousand years!

Now it's been tenthousand years
man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew - now man's reign is through.
But through eternal night the twinkling of starlight
So very far away - maybe it's only yesterday.

Heheh...I love me some Zagar and Evans. According to them, we won't be around to see that 50% chance of a payout anyway.

So, something with a little better odds...we went back to the racetrack Friday. I need to study horse racing a little more, because although we didn't do as bad as in the past, I think we could do better. And, by do better I mean not lose quite as much money. The problem is, if a horse/jockey is favored to win, you can't make much money on the bet, like twenty cents on the dollar. What fun is that? It's way more fun to play a long shot. I guess maybe I shouldn't complain, since we aren't actually betting MY money.

China countdown: 11

According to my google calendar, as of today my cat China only has 11 chemo treatments left. I think my bf is actually sad about this since we have been having lunch together every time she has a treatment ever since we met. I guess he has a point...I'm not sure we'd ever go to Paradiso in San Leandro for lunch OR dinner if we weren't waiting for China to have her treatment, and Paradiso is a nice East Bay treat.

Besides, there is something about getting away in the middle of a weekday that always feels so decadent.

I was going through China's paperwork yesterday. I was planning to add up all of her treatment costs to find out exactly how much it really was. Argh, there are so many, though. At least they are getting cheaper. Her first trip to BAVS was about $2200...something I totally freaked out about at the time. AND she was going once a week for a while, AND I had to hire a car and driver during that time. Now it's more like $220 or 1/10th the price of the original visit each time and she goes only once every four weeks AND we have a nice lunch. Oh, plus she seems to have finally gotten used to it and hardly freaks out at all. She didn't even hide in the closet when she got home today.

I realized how lucky we are today when I was talking to a woman in the waiting room at BAVS who said she has been taking her pet in THREE TIMES A WEEK for radiation treatments. Whoa. Radiation is expensive and time consuming. It also has weird side effects. China's radiation treatments seem to have somehow robbed her of her ability to purr, and they think that it may have been the radiation that turned her into a crazy sneezing snot-blowing machine as well, although I think that might be from the exploratory surgery she had at the local vet where they also removed most of the lymphoma mass from her nasal cavity before she ever started at BAVS. She now sprays snot all over my monitors, bedding, windows...nothing in the path of her constantly running nose is safe, and I'm afraid she may continue doing this indefinitely.

Hopefully China will actually be looking forward to her chemo trips by next July, because we are thinking of still bringing her there after her treatments are over, just drop her off and go to lunch...it makes such a nice tradition.

That's the ultimate prize???

Yes, I like to complain about stuff. Looking around me, I don't think I'm alone in that.

Today's rant is about IMVU's latest Street Team "woo woo" invite all your friends thing. Refer 30 friends to sign up for IMVU in one month, and you're entered in a drawing to win a 4gb iPhone. They call it the "Ultimate Prize".

I've seen IMVU give away gameboys and whatever the latest little gadget is before, and I guess that's cool but I just wonder why the four gig iPhone is the "Ultimate Prize". First of all, couldn't they have spent an extra hundred bucks for the 8gig? That would be so much better of a prize, IMO. I have the eight gig and I already have more than four gigs of stuff on it. 4gigs just isn't that much space. Also, if you get the iPhone you are talking about a VERY EXPENSIVE phone bill.

I mean, I have people emailing me every day asking how they can get cheap credits or free credits because they have no money, have no credit card, they are only 14 years old and their parents won't buy them any credits, etc. etc. Now you want to give them a prize that is 1.) The wimpier iPhone that doesn't hold that much data and 2.) comes with a phone bill of about $100 a month? I think most of the people that might potentially scramble around for a month trying to get thirty people to join are probably people who either don't want to or can't afford to pay one hundred dollars a month for a cellular phone which only works on the Cingular/ATT network.

I suppose if you win this phone, you can always sell it on eBay or Craigslist or something. And, if you are in a country where the iPhone is not available you could always sell sexytime with it, but wouldn't it make more sense to just give away a Wii or something?

Actually, if it were a Wii they were giving away...I might be tempted to try and rustle up 30 friends myself!

Giant Chocolate Buttercream Cake

Well, that sucked.

Yesterday morning I woke up completely unprepared to try being a locavore for a month.

I realized I couldn't have any coffee...it doesn't grow in California or anywhere else in the U.S. mainland. Argh. No chocolate, either...check out the entry on Wikipedia under "cacao" and you'll see. As far as I can tell, no tea is grown here, either...although I can't find any reason why it wouldn't be possible.

Soon, I have a roaring headache. I figure I should go to the Redwood City Farmer's Market for the first time this year. They should have some good local stuff there. So I grab a big bag to fill with purchases and hurry out the door. They are only open until noon, and they get busier and busier until that time, plus there may be things (like quarts of freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, although it's probably early in the season for that) that will be sold out by now, but at least I won't miss it entirely. I don't totally know what is in season. I ordered a local foods wheel, but I don't expect it to arrive until Tuesday at the earliest.

I stop at the bank and since I am not prepared for this trip, I'm completely unprepared for being a locavore, I have to take money out of PayPal using my debit card, which costs me an extra $3. Sometimes the Farmer's Market just seems sooooo expensive. I think part of it is because spending cash just makes everything seem more expensive than using plastic. If they took credit/debit cards at the Farmer's Market I think I'd spend soooo much more...it would probably be worth it to them to pay the fees to the credit card company if you crunch the numbers...but it's kind of cool to think nobody is paying those fees at this market today. Well, *I* just paid $2 to my bank and $1 to PayPal for the privilege of using cash but um...the people with the stalls aren't paying those fees today.

Before even getting to the Farmer's Market, I pass Boulanger. I get...weird at the farmer's market with the crush of people, the chaos and my indecision and sometimes I won't buy anything at all, or maybe just a few portabello mushrooms and some baby spinach, but then I will almost always get a cappuccino at Boulanger, and then come home and maybe sip it on my balcony with a croissant or a bagel. I can't do that today...the coffee is not grown locally and neither is the milk probably or the sugar...or the flour in any of the pastries. No Boulanger for me today. Or tomorrow. Or next week.

The first food I encounter at the Farmer's Market is two different bread stalls. They each have rather different selections and both look very tasty. I think of asking them where they get their flour, but both stalls are rather busy and I decide not to. I make a big circle around the market. There are two flower stalls and I wonder if the flowers are grown locally. They COULD be...I should ask, but I don't. Maybe next week.

I'm looking for the stall that sells the wonderful walnuts, dried apricots and apricot preserves, but I don't find it anywhere. I do find the stall that sells all the different types of mushrooms. I buy two types of potatoes and some corn. I am thinking about how the butter I have at home is from New Zealand and I can't use it. Last night I was trying to send my bf home with a bunch of the non-local food I have, but I forgot at the last minute, so I have butter and cheese from New Zealand, a GIANT CHOCOLATE BUTTERCREAM birthday cake, and a bunch of other stuff I shouldn't eat, like vegetarian corn dogs and frozen Trader Joe's taquitos.

I buy some pluots or something. Like I said, I have a headache and I'm really not paying that much attention. The sun is beating down, and a few vendors say to me "it's hot out today, isn't it?" Which, since they live in the San Something-or-Other valley, where it is about 110 out every day this time of year, and it's only about 80 right now in RWC, I think they are just asking me because *I* am looking rather hot and wilted.

I am determined to buy plenty of stuff whether I feel like it or not because otherwise who knows what I will eat in the upcoming days...although my bf has promised to take me to the Palo Alto Whole Foods on Sunday. They sell locally grown raw cheese and milk that I want to try...I don't think the Whole Foods in Redwood City sells this same brand. But today, I am at the Farmer's Market, and there is no dairy and no eggs in sight, sadly, so I buy some weird looking beans I have no idea how to cook, and some weird looking cucumbers I hope aren't just for pickling or something, a bag of mixed salad greens, a few onions, some peapod type things, some eucalyptus honey I hope doesn't actually taste like eucalyptus but at least it's sweet and locally grown, some heirloom tomatoes so I can be just like every restaurant in town right now, except now I need some locally grown balsamic herb vinagarette and buffalo mozzarella to turn the tomatoes into a salad. Finally my bag is full and actually quite heavy and I've spent most of the cash I took out, so I take it all home and collapse.

Once home, I eat the raspberries I bought and drink some water. Blech, water...where is my coffee??? Or tea? The raspberries are really flavorful...wow...even better than the giant chocolate cake in the fridge, but the chocolate cake might actually have some caffeine and the raspberries certainly do not. I have some pistachios that were locally grown, so I eat some of those. After a while I realize they are SALTED, and I don't think the salt was locally grown. By now my bf has sent me a text message telling me I should probably just *try* to eat locally as much as possible but make some exceptions like for coffee or for when it just isn't convenient, which makes me feel rather stubborn and like "no, I really want to do this", but realizing I'm eating non-local salt I am really wavering and realizing what I got myself into. Because of my headache, I decide to take a nap.

Waking up, I still feel like crap. Last year I didn't have caffeine for four months and I did feel a bit bad at first but today I just really...well, I just really have a GIANT CHOCOLATE BUTTERCREAM CAKE in my refrigerator. Argh. Maybe I should make an exception for stuff that is already in my apartment. I mean, it's probably worse to waste the food than to eat something non-local, right? Right? I realize I'm really trying to rationalize eating a piece of that cake right now. I'm thinking I have some local cheese and eggs and I could make an omelette and even throw some mushrooms in it. Oh wait...the olive oil I have is from Italy and the butter is from New Zealand and the cooking spray, who the heck knows what's in it and where it's from. Oh hell...

....

....I eat a big piece of cake. Or really, I mostly eat the buttercream icing. Who cares about the cake part? Actually, who cares about this damn locavore thing? Yes, I want to be more aware of my food choices, and I'm happy to spend the month of September becoming more familiar with locally grown foods, but this has the potential to cause problems for...

The movie we are supposed to see Sunday

The restaurant, Paradiso, we always eat at when China goes to the vet (Wednesday)

Going to the horse races (Friday)

Going on that tour of the Healdsburg vineyards via horse and carriage with a picnic provided later this month

Trip to the Giants game next week

Just about everything else

So, I ate the cake, and I ate some more pistachios, and then for good measure I ate some bread with flour of unknown origin with New Zealand butter on it, and I had a few cups of very strong tea. Today I'm out of coffee but I'm having some more tea and then I think I am making hashbrowns...in New Zealand butter.

Let's just call it "local food AWARENESS month". I'm still going to The Cheese Board in Berkeley later this month to check out the local cheeses and I'm sure this will be a great month to eat at some "slow food" restaurants that use MOSTLY local ingredients. I can also cook more at home using my local food wheel and a seasonal cookbook I have kicking around somewhere. I may also try a few different Farmer's Markets around the area and maybe seek out some farm stands, too.

I just wish I'd gotten a cappuccino at Boulanger yesterday. The day would have been so much better.