Meg and Charlie's Christmas

This year for meg i set up an appointment for a makeup consultation at MAC and also a gift card to use toward the products. The idea being that meg would get some instruction and objective input on colors and her skin tones etc. Ever since we began dating meg had held in reverence the mac brand, and always said "someday when i can afford it i am going to wear that makeup", i decided that she deserves that luxury for christmas this year.

we started out today with a field trip to the newport bay wilderness preserve, ogled some plants and animals, and then went to cha for tea for lunch. then we went to omar's and spent some more christmas money on a new stand for charlie. you can see the old stand he was using on the left, it was plastic that was barely staying together. i still need to add a skirt to the sides of the base to keep the dog out and the bird in-but that is what i have a dremel for.
then we went to meg's consultation. she was uneasy at first but seemed to be having fun when i returned to pick her up. she looked very nice, the makeup was incredible. and now she has a souvenier that she can wear whenever we go out.

post-thanksgiving vacation

We had a very nice thanksgiving with the kaisers, but for the fact that i left my camera at home. they have a new baby cockatoo that is adorable and lives to be held. their parrotlet felt otherwise.

friday morning i had to work so that afternoon we drove up to my people's in sunny and warm Hanford , California. that night we opened our christmas present from my parents-as it is likely that meg will not make it up ther for christmas due to work-, which was incredibly generous (thank you again, so very much). after the small festivities we all went out to the hanford christmas parade, always one of my favorite events. it is a small town parade, lots of kids, lots of 4-h-ers , trucks pulling hay wagons full of children and a small gasoline generator that is powering more christmas lights than would fit on your house. The vendors pushing their carts of various inflatable and light up googaws and cotton candy past the crowded sidewalks . highschool acquaintances sit in lawn chairs bundled under blankets and wool caps as squeaky versions of jingle bell rock are belted out by sweaty marching band members. it is quaint, campy, divine. one long standing tradition was sadly dark this year. the furniture store that converted its windows into giant holiday displays featuring animatronic forest critters frollicking had gone out of business, and with it took the fuzzy robots of yesteryear.


Saturday we went shopping . meg bought clothes and i got a dremel. i feel about it the same invincible way i felt about my leatherman. with this tool, i can do anything. at present i have not used it for anything more than defacing the box it came in-but I COULD do so much more...

we had a nice time , took photos with the folks and went home on sunday.

adoption day

so, today the new computer came, it is incredible, better than i had fantasized. it does it all, quickly and very big (except the keyboard). transfer from the old computer was easy. my new favorite feature is that it can play/record live tv, and then export it to my ipod (where i can watch it in the car {when i am not driving, officer}, or wherever when i have a few minutes). awesome. plus i can set it to record my shows so i can keep doing homework-thats the official party line. mostly it's the ipod thing.
the keyboard is diminutive, like if you took an "us weekly" and tore it in half top to bottom. and only as thick as 2 quarters. "chicklets on sheetmetal" it has been well described. not at all awkward, surprisingly.

new addition to the family...

on wed of next week we (i) will be adopting a brand new 24" imac. i held out as long as i could, there were screen issues, there was a new operating system that needed compatibility checking, a new wireless keyboard design. and finally i could no longer foresee a future that involved meg's 5 year old hand-me-down imac g4 (the one that looks like a table lamp). it is (obviously, since i am on it right now) still functional, and will be given to a very deserving family.
so now you're wondering where the largess comes from, admit it. i took it out of my g.i. bill money. (i just couldn't stand to waste it all on education). but i solemnly swear that the rest of it will go to ensuring a brighter tomorrow for america's (aging) youth-namely me. just wanted you all to know. the new technology will allow for better content on this page from now on, maybe video posts too, as i like talking better than typing.

(bet you thought we got a new pet when you saw the title)

Barbara: patron saint of compromise

so, friday night at 6 i woke meg up for dinner (she was on call thursday) and proposed we take a roadtrip to the grand canyon. we both had the weekend off, and that happens so rarely that we should do something about it. meg wanted a quiet weekend at home, and so instead of driving all night we got up early and drove to santa barbara. I love driving, so the first 2 hours of the day were bliss for me, and since we had never been to santa barbara the rest of the day would be an adventure. we got to town around 10 and after grabbing a greasy but filling breakfast at mcdonalds we went to the zoo. it was a nice medium sized zoo, about the same as fresno, and slightly larger than santa ana. we had a good time, you could feed giraffes, which we did, and then it tried to strip meg's arm of a hand. cool though to be so close. then we wandered up and down state street browsing the shops and generally being touristy.we had lunch at a little deli. then we decided to spend some time on the beach. we brought a blanket and some martinellis and had a romantic little time on the beach. it was nice. the fog started rolling in (it was around 430) so we drove back into old town and dragged the strip again to find a nice place for dinner. we ate a les valentien who seemed startled to see people at 530, we both had very good steaks and then creme brulee for dessert. we wanted to see a movie, but by the time we were finished it had already started. so we drove home. moderately foggy. wee made it home by 9.

happy halloween!

(lazy, and creative)



meg, chris, and mahtab


Rebecca, meg, and others

Meg got invited to a couple of parties saturday night by the nurses she works with. meg's costume is brilliant, in case you haven't figured it out she is the "operation" board game. i couldn't come up with anything better so i went with the old standby of fatigues. the nice thing about the costume is that with your face painted, no one recognizes you, which is fine when you don't know anyone, it is social as well as natural camoflage. meg's friend/fellow trauma surgeon, Chris, came as a geisha which was especially cool since he's a dude. very impressive makeup. another favorite was the marie antoinette costume.

mods...finally

seasons greetings from the santa ana cemetery

so what is the point of having an overwhelmingly customizable car if you don't make it your own?! so today i did just that. i put in LEDs in the footwells, (and eventually in the trunk) it is a pretty cheap trick, and good old fashioned fun with electricity. it was pretty easy to get in and on, but to make it work exactly right and look clean tripled the time. it is dual controlled, they come on when the door is opened/unlocked, and they are switched so that when the door is closed they can be turned on for mood lighting/cruisin' etc. that took the longest time. it has 7 colors, strobe and fade options, but i like the green.

SPOOKY!