The Mouse, The Moon, and Me

What do I do on Friday nights? Apparently I have parties in my head! Well that's perfectly fine. Could it be the first steps to my unhinging? A sublimely subtle slide towards my insanity, surely.

Well I was sitting outdoors at a tea place, under a crisp and cool night wondering why in the world would people prefer to sit indoors, buggered by incandescent light and lousy radio music. Not in a night like this. I mean ...the moon! Look at it. A silver crescent happily sleeping on its mattress of clouds.



Yeah. exactly like that.

The second one, I just added because I am fond of that expression. :o
Got if from a certain koala who does it a lot. :] oh ..i mean :o
And what moon wouldn't be nice with such an expression? Just look at his phase! (haha get it? phase..face...um... :| ) Yeah. Well if there really was a "man on the moon" (I don't believe it, never seen it) then his face should be thus.

Let me interject my own blog for a moment and say that as I was sitting there, sometimes doodling, sometimes partying in my head, drinking milk tea, there was this mouse...or was it a rat...that would scurry across the street beside me, and up the grass towards me to stop and stare. Let's say it was a mouse to make it cute, but I think it was really a rat. But a cute rat. Really. I didn't think there could be one too, but there it was! After the first flurry of scurrying, I thought I'd never see him again, but he kept coming. Closer too! Not 2 feet away from me, this mouse-that-was-really-a-cute-rat. It would slowly inch towards me and then ..STOP. With a pose that suggested it'd be ready to break in another scurry flurry if I dared even breathe. And of course I breathed, and I even threw a pepper at it, thinking that mice er..rats..will eat peppers. (he didn't)
(side note: squirrels like nuts, but not honey roasted nuts)



See? Told you it was a cute rat. It would do you well not to doubt me again, it would.

What a wonky rat, I thought. I wonder what it wanted. My food wasn't that good, and I didn't smell like cheese (I thought). Then I remembered that one of favorite books had rats that would talk. The rats from Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Yeah, go read it, and maybe you'll see cute rats as well when you finally slip into insanity on a friday crescent mooned night. And I did wonder, whether or not he was trying to talk to me and the scurrying was actually his way of telling me to follow him. Yes! Follow the rat to the underground, where all the liberated minds are! No not Berkeley. Better than Berkeley! You know..you type or spell that word a few times, and becomes a non-word. Berkeley. Berkeley. berk e ley. ber kel ey. Seriously.

ser ious ly. se ri iuos ly.

see?

So that takes care of the Moon, and the Mouse. I guess the Me is all over the place in this, but here's a doodle that unexpectedly came up:



:o
That should be the face of the cinder block.



...



The End. So what does it mean? Why don't we have you tell me. More fun that way. :]

:o

And that was my Friday night.
Right now it's Saturday. Prime time for jazz and cleaning. Positive outlooks ahead with 20% chance of boba. May your days be just as nice, if not crazy.

o:

San Francisco

San Francisco pictures cometh!

Took me long enough, I know I know. I'm not even really finished yet either. There are more than 600 pictures to sort through, and that's after the first pass already. It's just hard for me to let go of pictures from a city that I love. But then again, most of the pictures I took were architectural stuff, among the usual pics of meandering me and I figure not everybody would like to see my every step, and every alley, and every block I came across to, and so I just put in this quick compilation. They're mostly the "fancy-shmancy" shots that people like to see, so we'll call them "fancy shmancy compilation." If you ask me, I'd rather see the beauty in banality. Don't worry, I'll include those too after this.

So here it is for now: The Fancy Shmancy compilation of my S.F. Trip. <-- click.

Now, for the more adventurous of youz, (or maybe just plain bored), I'll put the day-to-day shots of the trip. (see below) :] I think it's neater this way, being a sort of journey I can walk you through. Emphasis on walk, as this time around, I literally just walked everywhere, purposely going down streets I've never gone down before in prior visits. I also tried to avoid the touristy stuff. If you wanna see those, you can go hit Google, right?

***UPDATE: !! Here they are, the day-to-day takes of the trip:

click:

Day 2 - Walking around SF

Day 3 - At the Seal Cliffs

Day 4 - Short Drive through the Fog

Day 5 - Around the Metreon

Day 6 - Last Walk through the City

Day 7 - Homeward Bound

and..we're done! Geez I hope you guys like all that, cuz I'll have you know that my @$$ hurts from sitting at the boba place waiting for the uploads. I seem to have lost all (if any) junk in my trunk while walking those SF hills. But now that I'm back in L.A., I can imbibe on endless boba to facilitate my boba butt. (_|_)

Enjoy!

A Hike to the Icehouse

**NOTE: I wrote too much! You can scroll down to the slideshow if you don't like to read. But it is a nice story and you should be ashamed if you don't like to read in the first place. Shame!!!**

The bad news was: our planned super-hike to the bridge that led to nowhere was thwarted by the forest fires all over the place. Every trail west of Mt. Baldy was closed. :/ But wait..what about Mt. Baldy itself!? It just so happened that Melissa hiking buddy lived right below that mountain!! So off we went!

**Monica, I am sorry I couldn't inform you of this impromptu hike. I was going to call you but I knocked out after work (and was actually late in waking up to see mel for the hike) due to my non-sleepage. (read blog prior)**

Well, I wasn't sure what to see in this hike. I thought it'd be so-so, but I was quickly proved wrong. First off, despite the increasingly hot south cali weather, and amidst all the greenhouse effect the forest fire plumes were causing, this hike was COOL. Temperature cool! Must've been at least 10 degrees cooler up there. I guess it's expected as we start off at 4900 ft. above sea level. The only burn you get are from your calves, as this hike is all uphill. Immediately we were beset by even cooler breezes and lush greenery as we hiked along side a very lively river. Mel said that in winter, snow is all over this place, making it a popular destination for sledders and snow-ballers. I'm definitely comin' back when there is snow.

After a couple of miles you branch out from the greenery and continue the climb to the Saddle. The view just gets better and better the higher you go. Makes me wish I had a super wide lens to capture everything. This hike though, is one that follows the popular adage "It's the journey, not the destination." After the grueling and forever seeming climb up to this saddle, we were greeted by nothing more than a few fallen logs on a plateau. (We climbed up 2500 ft. for this!??) The winding path revealed more vistas than the saddle. I guess the Saddle was really just a crossing point for many trails around the mountain. Lookin at the signs revealed even higher points on different trails, but we just weren't ready to go hike another bunch of miles. (We both ran out of water too. A dilemma made even more obvious by the Korean church/hiking group beside us enjoying a full meal. No doubt bulgogi. Meanwhile, Mel and I were licking dust off our lips. No kidding. A lizard beside me does the same, mocking our human frailties.)

We started heading down when the Koreans started packing up, not wanting to be behind an updraft of bulgogi farts. Hehe. JK. They were all so pleasant and nice along the way up..always letting us pass and smiling. :]

You'd think the way down would be a lot smoother, as it's downhill. I guess it would be if you weren't carrying 10 lbs of gear, multiplied into 50 lbs by this thing called gravity and inertia as I sprinted down. And all this weight concentrated into my neck area..an already sore spot from all this laptop work and drawing (and blogging?) Man. I feel like my whole upper body is in knots even now as I type. Knot funny at all.

Anyway, Mel zoooomed all the way down, kickin dust so I can choke on it. She was kind enough to wait for me by one of the many pools of water we passed earlier, and we opted to dip our burning feet in despite the signs warning us of new zealand snails. Yes. WTH, new zealand? WTH, Haley? Why you gotta dump your snails on us? Apparently, this is a highly invasive species and can quickly out-eat local life by their stunning rate of reproduction. Woo! Go sexual snails you! And they're asexual so they're enjoyin it all by themselves if they must. Gotta please yourself, I guess.
Being as small as a grain of sand, these snails, we were warned to freeze anything that came in contact with the water to kill them off. Though we ourselves were not planning to be frozen, we dipped in anyway...and got frozen either way! The water was refreshing, yes. Super-cold, very. Feet were numb in less than a minute. The kind of numb that hurts. Twas fun though. I still washed my face (hoping the people upstream didn't pee) So now I might have new zealand snails in my eyeballs. Ladybugs were also everywhere climbing all over us and our socks. I think I accidentally took one home.

Oops, I wrote too much. I told myself "no more blogging!" when I started this blog. Just pictures. But some things are just better with a little story. er..not so little story. I think I'll write a note to skip all this up on top. Anyway, enjoy what I got. Hopefully, those who are here in LA, can come with someday. Despite the sometimes strenuous climb, this hike is definitely one of the more beautiful ones I've done. I doubt my pictures can make you feel the awe of standing among mountains and looking down on ranges and ranges of evergreens that are taller than buildings. Nor can it make you feel the blessing of wind helping you trudge uphill, and definitely not the feeling of the snails moping around your eyeballs, but just take my word for it. It was tight. Ok bye.



-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. :]

Welluh..

welluh, welluh..It's been awhila. Again. Been so preoccupied as of late, what with new gadgetry and boba and work and boba ..
I apologize to those I made cry. I apologize to those whom I never said goodbye.. But here I am now...with what? I don't know actually. I am just spiked on boba at the moment, and thought I should make use of it while I gots the juice! Got some pics to upload, but I forgot what's in 'em. They might be nice. Hmm. Let me take a gander at it. (meanders over to the state of gander)

***
Well I fell asleep. Now it is two days later, 3 AM and yes, wired on boba yet again. Maybe I'll go sleep in the bathtub, and rig the shower to wake me up in a few hours. I read that there is an alarm clock out there that flies, making you chase it to shut it down. Someone get me one of those.

Okay, so yeah, here are the pics of yore. I hope they won't bore. Cuz though they be mi amore, it really was a chor-eh to...lesbian.

eh? Yes. According to a friend in late night chat (r.i.p.)(the chat, not the friend), "lesbian" rhymes with everything. And guess what? It does.
On that note, enjoy the pics! Good that I got this out right now. This coming weekend is all about an all new awesome river bridge hike that has the promise of pictoral abundance. No not pectoral. Lesbian.



-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. :]

PS - Boba place closes and I get in my car, and look what I see when I flip on the headlights:

me! In duality even. One side is ['o'] The other is [._.]

Dimsum and Then Some

Mmmm~ Dimsum.

But also: sweetheart patties and lanterns and balloons. Someone named Sammy and food with no spoons. Yellow jackets and grubs and fish that eat fingers and buildings and bridges and sunsets that linger between strings of light at that sublime time before day becomes night and after all this I still want to go out and take pics of the city, kinda silly cause it's three and I'm really kinda sleepy so zee upon zee upon zid, she's a sister, little kid, and she cooks a mean squid.

Maybe.

oh, and, "Clasps."

zzz.


-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. :]

Blahdeeblah

Haven't given myself a chance to get out for another photo adventure, but I've taking shots here and there. Mini-adventures, if you may. Mostly as I drive around between point A to V. Peace-


-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. :]

Mechanical Musings

Friday! Wow this was a quick week. Only three days of work, yet I am open arms to this weekend. -takes in the weekend air-

Well, earlier, as I stepped out to do my usual lunch-break walkaround, I was waylaid by this saucesome machine! Some sort of tar layer-upper I believe. (or layer downer..would be more appropriate) I dig these mechanical things..dunno bout you. >:]
I dig detail (if you hadn't noticed already by now) and I dig moving parts.
And doves.
Dig the dove down below..dubiously dining on dirt, that dove.




-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. :]

in some knee, act

..I should've been asleep, but now I have to wake up.

0_O

Continued the unending process of cleaning/packing my room. My floor, now visible, draws me to lay down on it. Then roll around it, ...while taking pictures of things. Roll, roll .. and sleep escapes me. Drinking a liter of iced tea doesn't help. If i sleep now, I'll wake up on Thursday. No good. roll, roll..

..and the record, spin spins.. Spinning a scratchy lullaby that tempts me to the sheets. no..

so I drink more tea.



-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. (-__-)zzz

Into the Gardens

I finally made it to the Huntington Library and Gardens, and quickly realized that I should not have procrastinated. It was pretty pretttyy hot, lemme tell ya. I should have come by when the weather was cooler. I was beginning to wonder if a hot camera was a normal occurrence, but then, I thought about all those hardcore extreme photographers and the elements they impose on their gear...so I started diving through waterfalls and tumbling through brushes, clicking all the while.

Kidding.

Well, here you go. Enjoy trip through the desert..Japan..China..and tropical forests even (minus the crazy wildlife.) Tis a shame that the place is only open for 6 hours at a time. The place is too big for just one visit. The time frame also doesn't allow for the nice natural lighting that you only get around dusk and dawn. (The Huntington's hours were 10:30-4:30) I didn't even get to go in the mansion and the museums! They have some awesome sculptures and paintings, but they'll have to wait till the next trip! :]

http://www.huntington.org/ <-- Come see for yourself!


-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. :]

Adventures in Anime and L.A.

Anime Expo 2009!
yay? Nay. :[ I fail at being paparazzo.
It was still fun though. I guess I was expecting more of a comic-con kinda level of an expo, with booths and booths of toys and movies and such. Turns out, the only movie I would've lined up for, The Last Unicorn, was cancelled. -__- Last indeed.

Well, enjoy the trip! From the train-station, through Los Angeles and back and then beyond to the uptown of our Old Town...hope you find something you like.

Oh..and if anyone can enlighten me as to who these characters really are, please do! :] I don't know much aside from Cloud, cloud, ..and then..there was cloud...
Yeah. You can click on the picture and leave a comment on the Picasa Album.


-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. :]

Brain in a bottle

As requested, here is the brain culture I keep in a bottle on my desk. You can see that a pair of eyes have begun to develop. Not much longer now, it will become sentient and I'll have myself a girlfriend in a bottle.

o_O

Okay. yeah. Um. The rest of the pictures are just me chasing around the sun on my way home from work yesterday. Nothing fancy. It's tough to find a place to park in LA so I can shoot.. Especially around rush hour. Maybe some Parkour action is necessary for those tight city shots.






-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. :] Enjoy!!

Chantry Flats revisited

Back at the flats!! This time, with some sun! For comparison, check out the chantry flats hike from two weeks ago here, and see how it is when you're hiking inside a cloud.

Twas a good hike today. My friend Melissa came along and acted as my personal camera assistant. I fired her right away. Then I lost her, as I was busy zooming in on an uncooperative spider. This is a common occurrence in our hikes, so I wasn't worried at all. Though, I did see a bear along the way. Hm.

Anyway, I tried not to take the same shots from last time, focusing now on how the sun affects things. The non-misty-slick rocks also permitted me to go further into some cooler places. I Hope I captured it well for you guys to see. I also stuck with the 18-50mm kit lens this time as opposed to the telephoto zoom from the last hike. But I really wish I had that all-around 18-250mm lens now, more than ever. So many critters this time around and I had to miss many shots because I knew I had no time to pull out the zoom lens. blahhh. Owhell. You'll have to settle for Melissa as the critter. ;]

enjoy!





-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to switch to my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa album version, and hit Full Frame or Slideshow there, for the full effect. :] Enjoy!!

Mid-Week Randomness

Well, I kinda held off from posting more pics...wanting the green forest to stay lush in my head. (and yours) But I've been harassed and coerced to post, and so this is what you get: randomness! :]

Not like I have much to take pictures of anyway, being between weekends and all. So this is mostly the usual drive through L.A. pics as I go to work. Moonroof musings and the like. There was an interesting rolly polly though. He looked like he must've been running away from something. Maybe a koala. I heard that Koalas like to peel pillbugs. Peel-bugs if you may. Unrolling the rolly-polly.

You shouldnt believe anything I say really. It's 4 in the morning for cryin out loud.

Cya!



Too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to view them in my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa version, and hit Fullscreen there, for the full effect. :] Enjoy!!

Chantry Flats

Finally, the weekend! Time to catch the sun!

[-__-] No. No sun for me today. Once again, the sun has eluded my camera eyes. But no matter. I dig the mist, and it made for some nice forest ambiance. Besides, this is Los Angeles, and days like these are already few and far in between. Best enjoy it while it lasts. :]

So, ahead of you are the pics from Chantry Flats, not so far from my house. They're not as green as Louisiana bayous but, this is about as lush as it can get around here, really. And the misty rain actually polished some of the leaves quite nicely.

I had time to go to the Gardens, but decided to put it aside for a brighter day. It'd be a shame to dull those bright colors. Maybe next week then. :] 'Kay, enough talk. Enjoy the slideshow!

*edit - I told my friend who lives in the area of this hike about how misty it was, and she says, "Oh yeah, you were probably in a cloud." o_O That is sweet. I've never walked around in a cloud before. Felt fluffy.



-too fast? click on pause, and manually move it, or click on the picture to view them in my google picasa album. Also, certain broswers may chop the slideshow frame. Best click on the picture to go to the picasa version, and hit Slideshow there, for the full effect. :] Enjoy!!

Yet another day

Today we have:

More cityscapes for those who live in the bayou,
A frog that came all the way from Dallas, Texas, with aspirations of space travel,
The journey of a lady,
The blue tiles of Tokyo,
and the all too elusive boba.

Squirrelz and Stuffz

Bird Launcher and a Bee

Not much goin on here..

I might have to start taking requests! :]

Lemme know if you have any!

Birds and the Beach

This one's for those of you out there who miss the beach. And birds too, if you like. ;]
Amongst other things..

enjoy!

Sum sum

If I stand in the middle of our wide street and look up, cropping my vision to see only the towering trees, I can pretend I live in some beach. Until a car hits me.


Then I say "You sunnova beach!"

hahahe..he..er...um..ok


anyway, wow slug. They jump at ya, to hitch a ride between your toes. That's why socks and flipflops are ok. [u_u] yes.

wowz

Funded by DARPA, it says:

Metal Gear??


o_O Awesome. On that note, I've just discovered how genius the Picasa app. is. Yes, fox, I said app. APPS!

Google is so efficient, it's great and scary at the same time. But hey, I'm gonna ride this wave.
Wolfram.com is another crazy thing you should check out. Makes me wonder how close we truly are to putting human awareness into artificial things. What if I am artificial?! Sent here to catalogue human habits and emotions, documenting reactions, and testing human limits. Maybe that's why I feel so ambiguous at times -- feeling like I can never really fit in, but then again, able to blend and mingle when I let myself to. I am an app! Alas. Well I hope Sony made me, if that's the case. They're great. orr...am I just programmed to think that..? o_O

too doo roo!!!!

*shutting down

New Camera Test Run, Part II !!!

I got trigger happy, so I just put it in a slide-show. Still learning the ropes, but I hope you enjoy it as much as did! Thanks koala-chan for all your photo-expertise help! Now calm down! ;]

*note - If you're using Internet Explorer, the slide-show may be chopped. Click on the pic, or download Firefox instead. Firefox's total body ver. 3.0.11



*Shots were taken while cruisin around Los Angeles.

New Camera Test Run!! Part I

Feeling out my new cam! :]

June Gloom o_O


June Gloom's Blooms


I think he said it the camera's waterproof



Zoom Zpee! <.< >.> o_o


aw caw-mon, don't fly away :þ



the ninja-bag from blorg prior



Of course, leaves with droplets. Every photo blog should have 'em.
This was when I was in the jungle...


...of LA



The following are for Sid:


nom
What? no HD boba pics? Be patient, dear readers..