Took a hike up Diablo today. Got dark very quick, and I managed to walk with no moonlight at all back to my car. I am dead tired and this little script below shares all the details and pics so enjoy!
Ran my twitter account through a site called Wordle and it gave me these results. This is what I talk about most of the time on twitter. Some of it is obvious, other things are a little more surprising.
Its a coined catch phrase. One that for years, I believed.
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you”
After serving in the Army I learned a couple things. How I learned them will be my secret, let your mind wander if you want.
If anyone told you anything, they would loose their security clearance and be sentenced for treason. You would be forced to sign a worthless piece of paper that says the same will happen to you if you talk. Not as intriguing, but if the person that talks killed you, then there would be capital charges against them as well.
Bottom line, its worse for them to talk than for you to listen.
After hearing it in a movie tonight all I could think of is how stupid it sounds.
I am unemployed, collecting money from the government to go to school. (The only benifit from service in the Army, that exists). So its no secret that money is tight. Christmas should be an excuse to forget that for one day, but not for my wife. If money is tight, it’s tight. So what do you do for each other without spending any money? Spend time!
I bought my wife and daughter Christmas cards, and a box of candy for each of them. I think in total I spent about $15. My wife spent more on me though. She took me around San Francisco and to the Golden Gate Bridge for my first time. She spent more because I had to drive to Sacramento to get her, then to San Francisco, then back to Sacramento. I then drove 60 miles back home from where I started in the first place. I put a total of 345 miles on my car in one day. Which only cost $22 in gas.
This is a nice gift for me cause my wife knows all too well that whenever we go somewhere I pull out my phone and check-in on BrightKite. A service that I have only been using about 2 months, and that just entered public beta about a couple weeks ago. Everytime I check-in I get a bubble on my map. (I don’t know what else to call this thing)
Since I didn’t start using this service until after I moved to California I don’t have much on it. I have another map that I have been keeping track of countries for years, but BrightKite offers a lot more of what I am interested in. By looking at my map you can see where I live. The further away from home the more spread out the bubbles become.
Upon visiting my map page it automatically zooms to the level needed in order to see everything in one screen. Currently this is what my map page looks like.
Until yesterday, I didn’t have any bubbles on the pennisula. I started using BrightKite after I was in college so haven’t had a break really until this last week. 2 months isn’t much oppurtunity to just jump in the car and go either, but so far I am starting to like how this is panning out.
My little hobbie is trying to put as many thumbtacks in a map representing places I have been, before I die. My thumbtacks are just a little moderized.
We started in Golden Gate Park, then went to the Japanese Tea Garden. From there drove around for a good hour, both laughing and complaining about why anyone would want to live on streets where you drive a car with an automatic transmission like a stick, using both the brake and gas at the same time. Then went to the Golden Gate Bridge. Afterwards we had dinner in Japan town, and finished our night watching people ice skate in Union Square.
My gift was a total of 9 bubbles on my map. Granted one was a place halfway to Sacramento where we got coffee, but I am counting it!
No tree, no lights, no big dinner…, and to be honest. It didn’t bother me one bit. The beautiful part about being American is we can choose the traditions we follow.
Everytime I look at the pics from the Japanese Tea Garden, I have to tell myself that they were taken in the U.S.. The backgrounds and enviroment is so convincing that they look like they were taken in Japan. Except it didn’t feel like that when we were in the garden. It was overrun with pidgeons and grey squirrels. In japan the people running the place would have no problem killing them to fix the problem. Here PETA makes such a fuss we are forced to eat with them.
On second thought…, if this was Japan, there would be a lot more people in the background ruining the picture.
