This Friday is our House-Cooling party, and all the Fun! Free! Used! Crap! you can get when you show up.
Just found out today that my sis in Philly will be facilitating east-coast storage while we house-hunt. RAWK!

Here's is an evolving list.  Everything that isn't spoken for by the end of the evening Friday will go to Goodwill (or more likely, Sunset Scavenger)

( Click to find out what's still available...Collapse )

Musical crap:
A wooden and a plastic recorder
Maya flute-y thing
Mini-harmonica
about 40 records the Neighbor doesn't want
My CDs collection -  primarily alterna mainstream from 94-2001.
Some in cases, others in binders

Camping/Gear:
Barbie-pink camping chair
single-mantle propane lantern, may need new mantle
flashlights, enviro lightbulbs, batteries

Tools
Stud-finder (hah hah!)
Other stuff

Various and Sundry:
Vacuum cleaner (small upright Dirt Devil, not strong enough for Neighbor)
Well-used K2 rollerblades for 9.5 shoe
Floor and desk lamps
Cheap poster frames
Stickers, glow sticks, other rave-ish crud
Certain of the stuffed friends

And finally, don't forget...
Shoe polish (woohoo!)</div>
Oh yeah, and our apartment is for rent in late November, in the ballpark of $1500. Say if you want us to put in a good word for you!

I was just informed that the recycling rules in SF have changed.

According to the SF Recycling website, the change is that plastic tubs can now be recycled. Oops, I was dumping those into recycling all along!

In the process of searching, I found an Oakland women's site with some great information. Especially her  FAQ and the pages linked from there.

• where plastic comes from (I think I was just having a conversation with someone about whether plastic came from oil)
• what can  be recycled, why recycling is downcycling
• her experiences in trying to reduce consumption to 0 - she's had to give up tortillas since they ONLY come in plastic bags

BTW, one easy thing I can recommend to everyone is to always take your own re-usable bag(s) shopping. Just leave one in the car/entry/wherever so you have it when you need it.  I know, you say that you use the paper/plastic bags from each trip for home purposes, but we've been doing this a while, and really, we always have enough back-store.  I'll happily discuss with you :)

And yes, I'm no angel. As one twitterer famously said, uh, yesterday

I subscribe to a google group mailing list SOMA Southern Station Newsletter dispatch.  I like that it's a way to find out what 's happening according to the police in our neighborhood.

The normal writing definitely lacks objectivity and written rather poorly.  Usually it consists primarily of drug and knife conflicts on 6th street.  This week though, the regular author "out of the office" and someone else is doing the writing. While the writing is a little more dry, it seems to cover a more realistic range of activities.

A couple samples ( after the cutCollapse )</div>

This mexico city trip had everything packed into 5 days that we planned to see in the 10 days of our previous trip.

Check out our travel photos on Flickr, and you might enjoy this animation of one of the innovations (useful?) in the mexican crosswalk.
( Click to show the video...Collapse )

We arrived thursday. Started taking photos and actually seeing daylight this trip. This is a beautiful chamber of the presidential palace just off of the Zocoló. Puts our presidential "palace" to shame. But hey, what doesn't. A few more photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindyboi/

because it might be easter! Already!

So my favorite annual-friendly-for-the-whole-family-until-noon-then-just-friendly-for-most  event is tomorrow, in Dolores park.

music, basket contest, the usual works! Hopefully nice weather too :)

Looks like we'll be arriving in Dolores Park closer to 11:30 am to try to score a bigger spot.  Cell phones are your friend, use them to find us.

Bands will be playing on and off from 12:30 through 2:30. And the hunky jesus contest (Everyone's Favorite Time of Year (tm) ) will be after 3.  Full schedule on the flier

If you're bringing more than just yourself, consider bringing an extra blanket for space.  And of course your preferred park bevarage/snack.

Oh yeah, and there's probably some tithing of sorts - if you want to support the work the sisters do (and putting on this show is WORK but so is the thousands of dollars they give to bay area causes every year) consider bringing a small donation. Of money, honey.

No, I'm not talking about beer.
A number of reasons why you are better off drinking water from the tap instead of purchasing (over-marketed) bottled water.

My favorites cited reasons:

• Americans buy 28 billion water bottles a year, all that plastic and the energy used for manufacturing and transportation is very hard on the environment
• Why would you want to pay more for a product whose quality is worse than the water that flows from the faucet in your home?
• City tap water must meet standards for certain important toxic or cancer-causing chemicals, such as phthalate (a chemical that can leach from plastic, including plastic bottles); some in the industry persuaded FDA to exempt bottled water from the regulations regarding these chemicals.
• For those who feel tap water is any less clean than bottled water, filters may be purchased; buying filter cartridges once or twice a year requires much fewer resources than buying bottled water each day

So, whether it's your budget, the environment, or the convenience, bottled water is NOT the way to go.

Like to carry it around? Purchase your own re-usable water bottle for less than the price of two "disposable" bottles! 

Plus remember, all that jazz about fresh mountain water? Usually a load of bull. Do you remember where Pepsi was getting its bottled water? c'mon, people.

And who's willing to be?  After enjoying the status updates on FaceBook I realized I wanted to go one further and try this "twitter" thing.

Same username for me, of course.

Seems like this could be useful for social/work coordination/synergy.  On the other hand, the wider the shared network, the less value my range of messages will have.

Seems like the way to do it is

1. sign up for the account
2. find friends (import gmail addresses, but also putting out this post to find who else is on it)
3. set up my cell phone and GTalk addresses for easy post access
4.  Set up the friends I want to monitor to use the IM address for twitters.

Then, free and clear. Use IM to twitter@twitter.com to set updates, and see updates from monitored friends. Use the web page for additional browsing, more friends.  It's the finding people part that's hard... That's why I'm posting this :) to find out which of you are already doing twitter or could be arm-twisted to do so. Lovingly, of course. For our mutual enjoyment.

Oh yeah, and for those of us still dabbling with FaceBook, no need to lose status updated - you can have your twitter and sync it too.

A bit of a complicated trope (I love that word!)

So here's the comic.  Enjoy if you can, and remember, there's no boy word for "whore" or "bitch"!

Glassbooth - Your results: I'm aligned with Kucinich.

Intresting non-partisan site.  Give it your issue priorities and strength of conviction.. and it will show how you compare with each of the candidates.  includes history of voting and choice quotes.

But, um, are we allowed to vote issues in the coming election?