I whipped out my camera right before I entered a drive-thru car wash and started taking shooting away. I wasn’t expecting most, if any, of the pictures to come out good at all since I didn’t set the proper settings on the camera. They came out better than expected and with some cool results.
DPTRONZ made a cool animated gif using these photos.
There’s this cool website that lists Halloween events called GooGhoul. It lists local haunted houses and other Halloween events based on your Zip code.
Add the movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy to the list of movies that people raved about, but I couldn’t finish seeing. Its just a dumb, unfunny movie. The characters are stupid and annoying. I’m a fan of Will Ferrell, but this movie really disappointed me. Other movies I thought were ok, but turned out to be painful to see and I didn’t finish were Charlie’s Angels and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Last month during the week of September 11, I watched a few minutes of a show on tv about the attack and collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers while I got ready in the morning. I don’t know what network it was on or the name of the documentary-type show (I was flipping through the channels), but a thing that was discusssed and which stuck with me is this: if you’re caught in a high-rise during a fire, do not to go up to the rooftop. Its one’s natural instinct to go up to a rooftop to get rescued, but as they explained on the show, it may take a helicopter up to 45 minutes to pick someone off a rooftop, drop them off somewhere safe, and return to the scene. That is if the conditions are safe for the helicopter to attempt such a rescue in the first place. During the attack at the WTC in 1993, officials learned that rescuing people from the tower’s rooftop was not feasible. After that incident, they stopped rooftop rescues and locked access to the towers’ rooftop. During the 9/11 attacks, experts on the show believe that workers caught in the towers’ attack may have gone up the floors trying to get to the rooftop…only to find the doors locked.
The fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 is being observed today. Here are my memories from that day…
I woke up at 8:10am Pacific time, to find out I had overslept. I was supposed to drop off my car at the dealer by 8:00am to get it serviced. I think I was having new brakes installed on it. As I got up and started getting ready, my mother tells me something big is happening and turns on the TV in my room. She filled me in on how airplanes had crashed into buildings in New York City. She had been watching this unfold since it began to be shown on the news, but decided not to wake me up. The news kept showing the second airplane crash into the second tower. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. By then, the towers had collapsed too. It was too much, but at the same time, I couldn’t grasp the scope of what was happening - especially since I had never been to New York City.
I finished getting ready and decided to drop my car off at the dealer in Sunnyvale to get it serviced. When I arrived at the dealer’s service area, it was business as usual, but with the added conversation of what was happening back East. I watched the news in a waiting room while I waited for the dealer’s shuttle to take me and others to our destinations. There were four or five of us who had to be dropped off. The driver planned his route and decided I would be the last one to be dropped off in Santa Clara. The ride included dropping a woman in Palo Alto - which was really out of the way. As we got on our way, I noticed a change of driving behavior in other drivers on the streets from what I was used to. Also, their faces were without expressions and always seemed to be looking up to the sky. Riding from Palo Alto to Santa Clara on Highway 101 was weird. It seemed like everyone was driving in slow motion. There were few airplanes flying around the area waiting their turn to land at San Jose International Airport and you could see everyone on the highway keep an eye on them. I don’t remember what time I was finally dropped off at my workplace.
Once at work, I went up to my floor, and into my cube. Not everyone showed up to work. Of the ones that did, they were on the internet watching and reading the news. My friend Dan, who sat in the cube next to me, had his radio tuned to the news. No one was really working. Everyone was walking from cube-to-cube asking what the latest news was. I don’t remember if we were told we could go home early, but Dan gave me a ride back home early that afternoon since I didn’t have my car with me.
Later that afternoon, my mother gave me a ride to the dealer’s to pick up my car. I drove straight home and watched the news coverage on the TV the rest of the day.
My sister, and only sibling, gave birth to a baby girl today! She is my first niece.
On Saturday, I went shopping at Nordstrom Rack in San Francisco. My wife and I frequent this store every so often. While looking around in the men’s department, I saw a stack of dress shirts that I liked. As I grabbed the one on top, something beneath the folded shirt pricked my middle finger. I let go of the shirt and figure that it was one of the dozen-or-so pins used to keep shirts folded. I carefully turned the shirt over and saw a pin sticking out as I expected, but I also saw something I wasn’t expecting which shocked me - a lot of dried blood on the shirt. Someone else had pricked themselves with that pin and bled. I then noticed more dried blood on another shirt’s tag.
I got upset right away as thoughts of being stung by a possibly contamitated pin ran through my head. I motioned to my wife who was looking at other items nearby to come over and I showed her what just happened. I then went looking for an employee to show them what had happened. I found one in the fitting rooms helping another customer. When she was done, I showed and tried to explain what had happened, but she immediately ran to get a band-aid. She thought I was the one who had bled. When she returned I let her put the band-aid on me, but I still wasn’t able to explain to her what happened because she wouldn’t shut up and her English comprehension wasn’t that great. She kept saying “Its ok, this happens all the time to me.” I’m sure she gets pricked by pins, but not by pins with blood on them. By then I was mad and I just wanted to get out of the store.
When I got home I called Kaiser and talked to an Advice Nurse. I figured I would need a shot of something. After I told her what happened, she set up an appointment for me to be seen by a doctor immediately. She said such incidents need to be treated within the first four hours. When I arrived at Kaiser, I was admitted immediately and was seen by the doctor. He examined my finger and looked over medical record. Due to the vaccines I’ve gotten in recent years, he figured the risk of me contracting something serious was low, but advised that I get a tetanus shot - which I did.
On Saturday, July 22nd, I went to see the Chicano Visions: American Painters on the Verge exhibition at the new de Young museum. It was opening day so there was entertainment, live music, speakers, book signing by artists, and the entrance was free. Cheech Marin was suppose make an appearance, but he didn’t make it due to an illness. The exhibition has been on tour for a few years and it is finally somewhere close where I could go see it. The exhibition actually is comprise of these three distinct exhibitions:
I bought the Chicano Visions book and had it signed by seven artists whose work is on display. The artists at the book signing were Ester Hernandez, Margaret Garcia, Carmen Lomas Garza,Chaz Bojorquez, John Valadez, Leo Limon, and Gaspar Enriquez. What impressed me most about a lot of the paintings were their size. The majority of the paintings are really big. I had seen pictures of some of the paintings on the web, but I had no clue as to their actual size until I saw them in person.
