Counting is hard Mr. Hat?!

Sorry for the title, I just had to get a little elbow jab in at Kerry for her five, er' seven things post :D

I tend to shy away from tag replies, predominantly after being burned from having been poked to do it so many times on DeviantArt, but alas, a request from Kat seems ever so hard to decline and Kerry already took the plunge, so what the hell right? This will probably be the most personal post of this kind that I've done.

One: I was raised in a Very religious household. In fact my father was a minister. I know have an incredible amount of guilt for trying to spread that religion as a child. I really do feel that I should have known better. Today I am an ardent Atheist. And while I don't hold it against my parents for having raised me in a religious household, I regret not having been raised with no religion.

Two: I am a classically trained violinist and have taught myself with the help of friends and family growing up to also sing, play guitar, electric bass, and enough piano to do a fair bit of midi work. I love to pick up or make new instruments and incorporate their unique textures into my art.

Three: I've always wanted to be a rock star and still wish I spent more time making music. Though since I've found other ways to create strong art, (photography, games, sculpture, etc.), my urge for that lifestyle has waned and I now just want to ensure I am in a life environment where I can continually create. Happily, I've been able to keep that a reality and see no reason for it to end.

Four: I started smoking at roughly fourteen years old and quit smoking on February 12th 2001. I am now more sensitive to smoke than anyone I know and have a hard time not lecturing and/or physically assaulting smokers as they pass by on a sidewalk.

Five: Six months after I quit smoking I had the wonderful and enlightening opportunity to hold a human lung riddled with a form of lung cancer and emphysema. It felt like a leaky latex sack full of golf balls. The memory doesn't haunt me in the slightest, but did help put things in perspective. I haven't smoked a cigarette since. I recommend it to everyone!

Six: I, (Kerry as well), have an extremely strong passion for travel that I hope is contagious. Kerry and I continually debate whether or not to put everything we have in storage and teach English and volunteer in a foreign third-world country for a few years. It still could very well happen at some point. Related to that, also regret not having learned more languages in my early youth.

Seven: Although I do feel somewhat guilty about it, I have to admit that I do look down on people who believe in the supernatural, including religion as being horribly mislead, and am confident that so long as we can survive as a species we will socially evolve past religion and the supernatural in anything past entertainment. I reject the notion that people require self-delusion and belief in figments of the imagination in order to have positive hope or reason for kindness, caring, or sympathy.

Well, that's it, time for some good times with Kerry and the now visiting LISA!!! So excited!

Okay Okay- 5 things (Kerry)

My friend Kat over at Kat's Meow (http://kathyahn.com/) recently challenged Isaac and me to write 5 things most people don't know about us on our blog. It's a kind of chain mail thing, where you do it and ask others to follow along after. I won't be asking others to do it, although of you are reading this and feel like taking the plunge go right ahead and let me know so I can check it out. I will let Isaac decide if he wants to post 5 things about himself, since this is a shared blog. And while I deeply admire Kat for being so open about her life that she posted 5 things that were very personal, I'm going to half ass it as usual. Oh shit, Isaac just reminded me it's 7 things. Fuck.
1. I started living on my own at 16 (that's personal and surprising, no?)
2. I grew up on a mini farm, where we raised/slaughtered our own chickens and had goats, ducks, and a horse.
3. To be honest, I never really wanted the horse or appreciated having one. I still feel ambivalent about horses. I don't dislike them. I did and do LOVE goats, however.
4.I have always wanted to see the pyramids of Egypt- I wanted to be an archeologist through most of my childhood. I know they won't live up to my expectations when I actually see them.
5.My first paying job was collecting night crawlers after the rains and selling them to a nearby bait shop (I was about 7).
6.I dated a 26 year old when I was 17 (tee hee).
7. ummm... I'm running out of facts about myself. I used to have my tongue pierced? yes that will do. no one else who went to college in the 90's had facial piercings....

Dirty Thirty? No, clean thirty!

So, last week, Isaac asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday over the weekend (since actual birthday falls on an uber-lame Tuesday). Like many women, I had certain feelings about turning thirty. And those feelings were centered around a blinding, all consuming rage over turning thirty and not having a walk-in closet. You see, dear reader, we have lived in a 1 bedroom apartment in San Francisco for the last 6 years. And it just so happens that the apartment also just had a birthday. It just turned 100 years old. and 100 years ago it appears that they didn't have closets. So our closet (and might I add it is the only one in the entire apartment, poor Isaac has a even smaller Ikea wardrobe)is an afterthought- a tiny little thing added sometime later in the apartment's life so that the apartment could legally be listed as a 1 bedroom. This thing is small, and contains suspicious water stains over a lifetime of wallpaper and paint layers(see first photo). It will not properly contain all of my clothing, which is not even that much for the NYC "sex in the city" lifestyle I am so clearly living. Le Sigh. So, Isaac and I looked at the closet with fresh eyes and figured we could knock the top shelf out, raise the bar (literally), and add a second bar. The result is perfection! I have a bin for socks at the bottom, another bin for pajamas, and all of my coats, tops and bottoms now fit in the closet. Don't ask about bras and underwear because I had to find another solution for those, but they are out of sight now. we bought an over the door shoe rack(I know... duh) and even had enough space that I am allowing Isaac to keep his three pairs of shoes there too. Now that I'm thirty, I have a big girl's closet! Hooray! And for those of you who think it's lame that that's how I spent my birthday, please remember that my life already has plenty of boozy cocktail parties and absolutely no bathtubs or walk-in closets. Hence I spend much of my free time dreaming of the day when I will live somewhere with a bathtub and a big closet. Now the closet gods have been appeased!

Happy Dirty 30 Kerry!

Atheists saving the world!

Isaac and I recently heard about Kiva.org, a non profit website where anyone can make micro loans (any amount you want, but $25 is the default amount) to people in third world countries who need loans to improve their living conditions. Isaac and I donated $25 to 2 different groups of borrowers, each in Cambodia. Isaac and I have seen Cambodia's poverty first hand and I can imagine that getting a loan to start a small business is make or break for a lot of people there. We also saw that you can join a group of lenders, where whatever you lend is added to the group's total. The coolest part is the second largest group is an atheist/freethinkers group, who are out to prove that Atheists are altruistic and not the nihilists we are often made out to be. You can check out the group's blog here. They are called Atheist-Monkey, how perfect is that?! So please consider making a micro loan today, and if you feel inclined then join the atheist group first (we didn't join until after our first loan, so that one doesn't count toward the group's goal. Learned that after.) I won't go on and on about how it works, but the main point is you get paid back, which you then can keep (it's your money after all) or you can lend to someone else. So basically you get to keep helping people at no extra cost. If you want to help out the group of borrowers we helped, the link is on the right hand side of our blog. After they get all the money they need the picture will be replaced with another lender's profile.

Thanksgiving, part 2

Here we are with my dad, Marc and Lisa, and my grandma and her new boyfriend. Yeah, you read that right, my 92 year old grandma has a new boyfriend, and he's awesome. And she's awesome. Don't believe me? Here is a photo of her in 1933 on her high school's women's basketball team.



I'd like to see what your grandma was up to in 1933. Because I bet it wasn't shooting hoops.

Thanksgiving

Tired of seeing pictures of me and Isaac? I didn't think so! I know you bitches love to look at us- that's why you read our blog! Well, I have a special treat for everyone. We went home for Thanksgiving so here are lots of pictures of us, and our families. You're welcome.

Obama ♥

"Red stickers mean "I Voted!"


This was by far the most amazing election ever. Isaac and I always vote, but this time it really felt like it mattered. Seeing the lines at my work (we are a polling place) was incredible, and my coworkers and I kept running down to peek all day. It really felt like everyone cared this year. After work our neighbors Layla, Merritt, Pierre and their twin babies came over for homemade pizza, big salad and champagne. I like to pronounce it Cham-pag-ney to Pierre, because he's French. He doesn't mind. Being French I mean. I think he might mind my pronunciation. Anyways, we watched the news and tracked the results on the web (see the picture with the guys looking at the results- even the baby is happy!)and when it was announced that Obama was the winner, we all ran outside shouting and laughing. Every car on Valencia street was honking it's horn and everyone on the street was yelling, singing, and high fiving complete strangers. It was magic. Then we went back inside and watched Indiana go blue, for the first time that I can remember. Merritt is from Indiana too so it was special for all three of us to see that. Hooray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Halloween!

Isaac's costume is Billy Mitchell from King of Kong. Mine is a pumpkin.

Karaoke!

We FINALLY rented a Karaoke room with 8 of our closest friends on Saturday. It was a lot of fun and everyone sang as loud and as drunkenly as they could. I think we all agreed Ed and Isaac's duet of "Dick in a box" was the evening's highlight. And we all got a kick out of sneaking flasks of alcohol in, since everyone in the room was well over 21. ahhhhh... high school memories. The first picture is Jess before and immediately after knocking a light off the wall. Fortunately the guys were able to reattach it and no one was the wiser. After karaoke we went to Kat's house and almost set her house on fire because we started a fire in the fireplace with the flu (sp?) closed. we had to use a fire extinguisher to put it out. Oh yeah, and before that we almost got kicked out of BAR, BAR for god's sake, because people were getting a little bit naked. Just a little so they ended up not kicking us out. Crazy kids!

Dirty Thirty

Isaac's Birthday! Woo-hoo! We went bowling with Jen and Garland. Lunar bowling. Being the birthday boy, Isaac pooled all his birthday super powers and easily won every game. we were all suitably impressed. And even though I was a bad girlfriend and didn't get even one birthday-themed balloon or hat, the group in the lane next to us was coincidentally having a 30th birthday party for one of the bowlers. So there were "dirty thirty" signs and balloons everywhere. See? No need to decorate! The universe takes care of these things. Unfortunately, Isaac's birthday luck had run off by the time I bought him a bowling-alley lotto scratcher. Oh well.

Muir Woods!

So as I sit here writing this in... ummm... August or late June or something... we just went to Muir woods with dad! yeah! It was a lot of fun. Dad had never been so it was a nice drive up to Marin over the bridge. Parking at Muir was terrible but once we got parked we were able to wander around for several hours. After we ate some delicious Pho and garlic noodles at Sunflower (Turtle Tower is not open at night). Dad tried to get the waiter to tell us what the "secret ingredient" in the garlic noodles was. Silly dad! they won't tell! Not ever. Isaac says fish sauce. I say crack. I think I'm right.