Archive for August, 2006

Occidental Osmosis of the allergic kind.

August 28, 2006 at 3:58 pm · Filed under Health

I booked my Osmosis appointment during the 3.5 hour drive up to Sonoma county, which included the services of one facial and an enzyme bath. Thinking that I’ll need the relaxation after and before my long drives, this treatment/mediation center seemed perfect for a little pampering – it is close to the place we were
staying and had curious substitute for the mud baths of Calistoga that
I’ve always wanted to try. I got to the inn at 5pm, which gave me just under 2 hours to check email and check out the surroundings before heading off to my appointment.

The town of Occidental is about 15 minutes from Sebastopol and is very cute and surprisingly diverse (not just from the tourists). Most of my fellow innmates [ :) ] were there for antiquing and discovering the brown yet fertile grounds of the Russian River Wineries. There were two main stays in the 8 block downtown, which looked like it  filled enough people to pack the 5 or 6 restaurants during the dinner hours. This place is definitely worth (re)visiting.

645, and I got back on the winding road called Bohemian Hwy towards Osmosis. The grounds there were beautiful; everything they promised it would be. The air was crisp, koi swimming, bonsai manicured, stream trickling and sand raked in pretty patterns. I went inside to get changed and immediately smelled the woodsy, musky toasted rice smell of the baths – it was really yummy. What wasn’t so yummy was the tea from tea ceremony performed for me by staff after my facial and before my enzyme bath. If you’ve ever tried to drink "diet tea" bought from a chinese or "oriental" food store, that is exactly what the tea tasted like. The other part of the ceremony was leaving me in a meditation room with the lights half on, over looking more serene gardening for half an hour.  Realize that I am a NY-er and hardly one to sit still and "meditate", panic quickly ensued. I busted out of that room, and when asked why I was roaming the hallways I said that I was scared of being in the room alone.

For the final act they led me to the source of the smell and my skin’s demise. The bath was basically a huge above ground hot tub filled with moist composite saw dust. The mulch consisted of rice bran, white fir, cedar dust and "600 natural plant-based enzymes", which I asked for the list of bu† they couldn’t produce for me. A nice crater including leg and neck rest was shoveled out for me and my bath attendant told me to strip, settle in and get comfortable. Luckily I was no longer shy of my nakedness in front of other women because the night before I went through my first kabuki (more on that in my Cah-weekend post)! I was now buried under 50 pounds of saw dust and I’m making caves with my legs and arms underneath. I was offered a cold towel for my neck and forehead while my attendant and I talked about dogs and our origins from the east coast. The experience was very pleasant and I left the complex with a warm fuzzy feeling.

I picked up j from foo and turned in for the night. The next morning after a 4 of 5 star eggs benedict breakfast at the inn I checked my email on the lazy-boy arm chair in the room. I noticed what looked like bug bites on my left knee and followed the trail upwards. My entire thigh was an angry mess of hives and rash. I look right and it was an mirror image. I look up and my flanks were not spared either. I look back and thought "man, ass cellulite looks better than this sh1t". It was in such a weird pattern but I knew it was from the bath because of the hive stitching across my stomach and legs (I was wearing disposable underpants during the bath – thank goodness). I took some pictures for flickr but j said it’d be too nasty, so I emailed them to QB instead.

Panicked, I went back to Osmosis and asked for a list of those "enzymes" they used so I could take them to an allergist. They couldn’t produce one there right away and I still don’t have a list of them as of today. They did refund me the cost of the bath and were very apologetic and courteous but I had a feeling that they really didn’t have clue what is in their baths. I advised them to warn clients with cedar allergies or sensitive skin, like they warn their pregnant clients not to use their baths in the future.

Today I made an emergency visit to an internal medicine doctor because PAMF’s dermatology department doesn’t believe in emergencies and their next available was Oct 26,2006. They looked, and poked, and questioned why I was stupid enough to let /holistic/non-animal tested/non-hypoallergenic hippies talk me into it. I told them I was driving for way too long and lost my head and reasoning on 101. Dr. Duncan Rx-ed me some industrial grade ointments and encouraged me to further the Aveeno-bath for symptoms. "… if the blisters start filling with fluid, come back in and we’ll extract and analyze it…". I think Dr. Duncan knew he hit a nerve when my eyes started to well up and added "… but this looks like it’s as bad as it can get…".

So, next time you’re in the mood for some new-wave new-age holistolic healing, ask to see if you can test the stuff on a small patch of skin first. Don’t be a fool stay out of the pool!   

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…with love

August 21, 2006 at 11:05 pm · Filed under Food and Drink

J’s got a huge day tomorrow. Presenting to his superiors 4 tiers up about a cause that he believes in is not the simplest or relaxing task, and yet he made time to fulfill my request of making dinner tonight. Why do I not remember that we almost tore each other’s throat out, that I walked out on him several times and resulting in a couple of new cellphones (he threw mine across the room), that he didn’t get me a valentine’s day or birthday or anniversary gift? It’s because of these small 30 minute (meals or) acts that make me sigh and put up with the garbage that isn’t taken out NOW, laundry that is only my burden, the towels that weren’t picked up, the fact that he dragged me across the US and away from my home.

I am just that simple.

flavorful fog fills
happy nose, hungry stomach
my burger awaits

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family style, not made for the giving.

August 19, 2006 at 9:16 pm · Filed under Food and Drink

I went to Palo Alto’s Tamarine today for their early bird dinner. Ok, they didn’t really have an early bird special per se, but there was no crowd which is always good when you have two uber-SV-guys at one table in PA. (The "OMG! ARE YOU BLAH BLAH WHO MADE BLAH BLAH?!" is annoying after awhile.)

Anyfoo, this Tamarine place is a Vietnamese fusion place and food was served family style. If you don’t know what family style is, then you must have grown up in an orphanage or your parent(s) were drug addicts and never was home to care for you. So for all those better-off-without-parents people, family style is when you have a larger plate of food bought to the table, and is then shared between your family or friends. A classic made famous by HBO/Sopranos food that is served family style is spaghetti and meatballs.

What I realized about family style is that it is usually not for the faint of heart. It’s either eat or starve environment and particularly so for a fancy pants place like Tamarine where the plates of food were only big enough to serve one person (that’s why we had to order appetizers AND 4 entries AND dessert). So j and I came really hungry, we only had a toasted bagel for breakfast today, and A was nice enough to tell our waiter to place our appetizer orders in ASAP.  We "all" talked and talked about SV-tech stuff for a bit, then our spring rolls and calamari came. j’s voice in the convo petered out then, and when asked he was quiet he muffled "… can’t talk eating.". He ate a share and a half of the small plate of yummy calamari! LUCKILY the other plate was a pu pu platter who had 2 units of each specimen so j couldn’t over step his ration.

I thought to myself, man he’s hungry!

Then our entrees came and I have say they were disappointingly small OR maybe that was the hunger talking. The conversation went from who’s working with who behind the scenes of which SV startup to talking about how A & M’s cat was Don Catleone of the Mountain View sect. Maybe M and me were giving off some negative vibes about techie love but I think it’s because one of the 2 of our SV stars dropped off to stake his claim on the bass! then the beef rolls! then the lamb chops! I didn’t even see him coming! Everyone was being graceful and sharing and my man was thinking solely about filling the tank up faster than the FIFO could let out (he went to el bano twice).

I’m not ashamed or angry at him, I just realize that family style + fancy small dish/tapas means that if you snooze you lose! Everything else aside it was a great meal and j & i will definitely make some more opentable reserverations there. This is definitely a compliment from two NYC food snobs!

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FITTY : more than a hustler.

August 16, 2006 at 3:10 pm · Filed under Television

Last night I watched a program of the life of 50 Cent on some cable channel. It was an artistic, biography, and autobiography of that man’s life.

This guy is charming the pants off me! First he’s true to his songs – he has been there done that around the block; openly stating that he’s pushed all kinds of drugs and hookers and drugs+hookers.  Second, at least the documentary claims, that he changed his focus to making music because of his son. Maybe I’m just hearing what I want to hear, but his goal is to provide for his son and be there for him. He is so protective of his baby that he puts a bulletproof vest on him and his child when they step out. Third, he has just a smooth voice that every swear word (and there are many) seems like he is really saying "flower" instead.  Lastly – east coast.

(According to the show) He has gone through his mom dying, drug dealing, pimping, stabbing, and shooting, taking all that and moving to the other world of music. I’m sure there are dealing, pimping, killing, hoe-ing there too, but because this guy’s been through all of that, he’s just not scared. He’s not scared to walk out and make the music that reflects his life – in fact I think he even enjoys telling people about his hardships.  He doesn’t refrain from saying what he’s done or where he’s from; a leader like his grandfather says.

Most importantly, he’s still making music and money. I hope we can all take our experiences and misfortunes from the past and turn them into strength for today.

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lunching

August 12, 2006 at 2:01 pm · Filed under Me

at  lunch today we had baked ziti, heirloom tomato salad, caesar salad, and ice cream.  my sweetie exclaimed after we overstuffed ourselves (dangerously high statistic of this when eating with crowds) "this was really good!". I automatically said, "no, not really.".

the take home is comfort food is just that, and purposefully not made with no need of much talent or superb raw materials (ok the tomato salads had really good tomatoes). it’s not necessarily GREAT FOOD, it’s just very comforting.

here’s a profound yet honest quote: I think Mr. McGee was the most pleasurable person to meet. There are so many people attending that have moved the world with technology or science, but without food there would be nothing!

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Notables Part 1

August 12, 2006 at 1:49 pm · Filed under Current Affairs

De-evolvement is cool!

self-organization vs natural selection: need both

emergent evolution- complex parts develops by relaxation of selection

lazy gene Fibonacci spirals – fix the parameters and just keep going

random walk – spatial relation vs temporal relation

segmentation: duplicates. parts are then becomes specialized because other parts picks up the slack – i.e.lobster, all segments start with legs, but a couple is now used for oxygen– nature allowed the duplicated segments to change

redundancy allowed for degradation: LOSS OF AUTONOMY the parts were duplicates and all different but then they get stuck next to each other they degrade, specialize and now are dependent on each other.

Masking certain functions allows other functions to compensate for the lack of something natural: feral bird’s songs are less diverse than domesticated finches – because domesticated mating depends more on color than any other attribute.

self assembly – autonomous things getting together and becoming non autonomous

auto-catalysis + self assembly

- gerbil experiments : gerbils can change selection (rewiring the brain) while being domesticated

Niche contruction

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I’m not all PETA

August 7, 2006 at 9:44 am · Filed under Me

Some art is just crap and some are really inventive. I think that this art is interesting and does not give me any discomfort, but I would like to hold Mr. Stennett’s head down in the water.

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I wish I was a history major.

August 6, 2006 at 2:13 am · Filed under Current Affairs

I wish I had taken more history courses because I want to know what came after the period of philosophy. Maybe it’s the crowd, but I hear a lot of talking about social this and social that and the value of being social. I also see a lot of things (software) to help everyone be more social in one form or another, and because of these things "virality" it’s still all voluntary – which is great. I want to start thinking about it further – namely how can we go beyond Peace Corp and start Drafting. How does drafting make everyone feel? Will it succeed, will it be semi-successful like communism, or will it flop and there will be a revolution in the making? How does one paint things pretty while knowingly herding humans into the squeeze-machine to get their shots Temple Grandin? Since there is no magic 8-ball, we can only learn from what we already know about human nature and its response to these stresses.

Maybe I’ll ask Joyce.

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The Descent

August 6, 2006 at 1:41 am · Filed under Film

First time I heard this movie title I thought, descent of what? With scifi being so obscure to me most of the time, I just couldn’t be sure! Then I saw some more trailers and YTB-ed it and understood that it was  about the characters descending into a cave for exploration.

I don’t need to say much more about since it’s everywhere from the movies, to spoilers, to the actual movie online, but I found it very entertaining, definitely skin-crawl-tastic, and worth going to the big screens for. My dearest describes this as the "cat jumping (out)" effect and he hated it – left me for about an hour alone during the movie.

Aside from the "why did the US water down the ending" controversy, I just want to know where Juno found her eyeliner!?  Dude, every girl needs that black eyeliner, especially us yellow folks! I swear it looks perfect even up to the last scene where she is a ghost! Go Juno, you fine murdering adulterous minority!

++Juno for the makeup
–Juno for sleeping with her friend’s husband
–Juno for not killing her mistake
++Juno as good feed for mutants (this chick works out!)

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Insync

August 5, 2006 at 5:53 pm · Filed under Me

Just dropped off darling at Ron’s house and decided to drive down to my future town of PA, sit in a book store and do some work. My route ended on Cowper between Hamilton and University because of a parking spot I couldn’t couldn’t refuse (hey it’s TOUGH finding parking in downtown PA). Got out of the car and started to walk towards University when I completely phased out gawking at two ladies holding a "Prolific Oven" box. First time I saw one of these, it was in other woman’s hands in the elevator of my new complex. I asked if it was a good place for baked goods and she replied "… one of the best." . So flash back to the present and me drooling in front of two women and a box. I was tempted to ask where is this godsend but thought that I really don’t need ANYMORE carbs after having a huge plate of vermicelli.

I past the two ladies and no more than 50 feet ahead I saw the burgandy awning "The Prolific Oven". Went in got an eclair and coffee, sat down feeling true guilt and logged onto here. Why didn’t I get something fruit based?! Like JELLO?

But the point is I logged on, in a wifi enabled pastry-house, typing away on my black macbook. I have arrived! I just hope my sweetie’s meeting is longer than 1 hour since this wifi card is for 4-hours!

P.S. Blogging I find is very personal, and for me it is done the best if done immediately after the subject event namely because I just don’t remember that much after 6 hours…. except for the sequel to Snakes on a Plane – Bees on a Wheelchair. LOL AHHAAHAHAHAAHAH. I am so self entertaining….

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