Birthday Luvin

Despite my manic-Monday birthday, I actually had a kick-ass pre-birthday weekend. I'm really such a lucky girl. One of the surprises Brian had for me was a book of photo birthday wishes from my good friends all over the country. It definitely made me grateful for the wonderful friendships I've made over the years. And it made me especially thankful for having landed such a sweet, thoughtful husband. Guy has been planning this since July! Anyway, here are just a couple of the shots.








Oh, and this one's the best because it's my old boss one week after sexual harassment training. Why I insist on protecting him from himself, I don't know.

It's Monday, I'm 30, and it sucks.

The last two days of my twenties were phenomenal. Now I'm 30, it's Monday, and it totally sucks.

Another good one

Go see Into the Wild!! It is SO good. On top of being beautiful, insightful, and moving, it had this hot chick in it. Ooh, yeah. Little something for everyone.

Did I mention we saw Elizabeth: The Golden Age this weekend? Although visually stunning, it was nowhere near as good as the first one. Mostly, I just didn't admire the character traits they were trying to develop Elizabeth with. She was all wishy-washy and whiny and forgiving and shit. Not at all the Godfather-type badass from the first film. Mary Stuart was pretty badass though. Anyway, I'd recommend a matinee of this one, just to see how it compares. Just don't expect it to be better than the first.

Quickest girl in the frying pan

We're back from Atlanta! Bet you didn't even notice we were away. We went the weekend before last for our friends Greg and Allison's wedding. Atlanta was fun and fatty, although a bit too humid for my taste. I gained even more weight after this little trip. Anyway, here's the mister and the missus on their big day:

And here's Brian enjoying some fine southern cuisine.

And here's the way we all felt after our respective fatty southern meals.





Good times...

Let Me Borrow That Top

It's the new Kelly video! See how many cameos you can spot.

No sea lice for me, thank you.

We're back from Alaska. It was amazing. We had an awesome time. I'm sad to report, however, that I am unable to produce for you the picture of me with a live salmon in my mouth.

Yes, we went fishing. Yes, we caught salmon (10 in total between three of us). However, at the time I set the goal, I was unaware of one very material fact: salmon have sea lice. They're nasty litte crab-like parasites that stick to their sides and feed on their scales. They're revolting, and there was no way I was going to put them in my mouth. Sorry guys.

We took literally hundreds of pictures on the trip. Knowing my history of processing photos, odds are you won't see them for a while. But they will be up on here eventually. Then you can see my huge ass fish that I caught and video and pictures of us sled-dogging, bicycling and canoeing. So fun.

The other reason I'm posting is because I had a very thrilling celebrity sighting experience in Seattle over the weekend. First, the backstory.

When I was a kid, I watched General Hospital every day after school. I LOVED Frisco and Felicia and Duke and Anna. Duke was super hot and my sister and I had huge crushes on him.

Well, I'm standing in a small bookstore, in a trendy, gay part of Seattle, and I hear this guy with a Scottish accent standing next to me looking at books on the same table as me. I look over and, from the side, it totally looked like Duke!

I stared at his face for a second, then he looked up, saw me staring and smiled. Then I knew for sure it was Duke! I smiled back. It was this weird I-know-you-know-I-know-who-you-are smile.

On the one hand, Ian Buchanan (that's his real name) is such a small celebrity, there's no reason to get excited. On the other hand, the fact that I was one of the few people that knew who he was made it all the more special! I immediately called the two people I thought might know who he was. Only one of them actually knew; my sister, who freaked out when I told her. I'm telling you, he was dreamy back in the day. Anyway, that's all. Just wanted to share in case any of you know who he is. He's also famous for being on Twin Peaks.

It's Britney, Bitch

Not really. It's just me. I'm just about packed for our trip to Alaska. We're leaving early tomorrow morning. On the one hand, I'm super-excited, and I can't wait to get a picture of me with an Alaskan salmon in my mouth. On the other hand, it's going to be rainy, and cold as fu%k, so I'm not really looking forward to that part of it.

I think I'm still a little down in the dumps about the whole Britney thing. By the way, Sarah Silverman's act was almost word-for-word the one she did for us in Vegas the week before. We must've been her test audience or something. I do have to give her props on her foresight. It was so appropriate to declare that Britney had already accomplished all she ever would after that horrendous performance. Way to call it ahead of time, Sarah.

I, on the other hand, was one of those suckers that thought Britney was going to do something amazing. I was super-jazzed to see her perform. I just knew she could somehow bring back the old Britney. That's why I took it so hard when she didn't care enough to put any effort into it. I felt betrayed. It's like, by keeping an open mind about her, and rooting for her, despite all of her horrific life choices, I feel like I was loyal. That she would be so careless with that faith just makes me mad. I feel dumb for believing in her. I also think she's an ingrate for squandering such a huge opportunity. That Chris Brown guy - oh, you could tell he was grateful for his fame. He put on a show! Jumped 3 feet in the air with all that energy, practically! Britney just acted like a baby and then put out less than the bare minimum. Just go home, Britney. You're done now.

:-(

Best Movie Ever

Alright, I'm calling it now -- many Oscar nominations for the movie 3:10 to Yuma. Go see this movie. It has so many layers of goodness. The acting was great (and I'm not usually a Russell Crowe or Christian Bale fan). Ben Foster (who I'd never noticed before in anything else) was super well-cast and did a phenominal job. The script was great. Apparently it's based on a short story, which is not nearly as detailed as the movie, and it's also a movie re-make. I'm super curious how it compares to the original. Anyway, it's a good time. Our movie critic friend said it's the best movie he's seen all year, and I'd have to agree.

Sarah Silverman is Magic

This weekend, we saw Sarah Silverman perform at the Mirage. It was so-so, and since I was super-pumped for the show, I guess that means it was a bit of a let-down.

On the one hand, she recycled a lot of her old jokes from the Jesus is Magic DVD, her energy was low, her timing was off, and she only performed for 40 minutes (that means the show was $2 per minute per person). On the other hand, we got to see about five minutes worth of new clips from next season of her show and she tested out some of the material she's thinking about using next Sunday night at the MTV VMA's. And, no matter how you slice it, it's Sarah SIlverman, who is pretty much the cutest thing ever, so, really, who can complain?

Spoiler alert!

Wanna hear the jokes she might use at the 2007 VMA's? One of the funny ones I can remember was about Amy Winehouse. She said something about Amy being Jewish, then asked, "She is Jewish, right? Well if she's not, someone needs to tell her face." I thought that one was hilArious!

Then she started talking about how it's weird that Amy WInehouse would have a last name like Winehouse, cuz that's, like, the last place she should be. "It's like George Bush's last name being Whitehouse, or Lindsay Lohan's last name being Behind-the-Wheel-of-a-Car." Ba-dum-bum.

Probably the most extreme joke she told was about Britney Spears. I have a feeling she'll use it too, since Britney Spears is expected to be there and Sarah's popularity sky-rocketed after the MTV Movie Awards earlier this year, where she bagged on Paris Hilton as Paris sat helpless in the audience.

So anyway, first Sarah talked about how much Britney has grown up. How a few years ago, she was just a little girl, dressed like a whore and writhing around the stage at the VMA's with a snake, and now she's a mom with two kids. Then Sarah pretended to take it back, saying it was mean -- that she shouldn't talk about Madonna like that.

Then she talked about how cute Britney Spears' kids were. Just as cute as the hairless vagina they came out of. "They look just like it too," she said. "Like this!" Then she smashed her lips together with her hands to make duck lips and turned her head sideways so they were vertical. Yes, like a hairless vagina. So vulgar!

Ah yes, that's the Sarah I love. She also had some choice abortion jokes. I think Sarah is at her best when she's the most crass. (See her Aristocrats video, for example.) Too bad she didn't have more new material and she was having an off night.

The one about the iPhone

One of the things I've been meaning to blog about is the iPhone. I know, I'm so timely and cutting edge. Shut it.

So anyway, I got my iPhone back in July, about a week after it came out. Brian had literally been waiting years for this thing to come out. We had the same crappy cell phones for about 4 years (well, I got mine replaced 2 years ago after I lost it at my bachelorette party, but I got it replaced with a crappier phone, so it shouldn't count as a new phone), so we were due for an upgrade anyway. Plus it was Brian's birthday, and it was all he wanted, and I can't say no to my sweet lover. So we got ourselves iPhones.

Overall, I'm happy that I got one. It's super-handy to have the internet available whereever you are, plus email, yellow pages, maps, YouTube and weather. And it's a damn sexy device. It's slim and well-designed. And the visual presentation of everything is really cool. It's just an artfully executed piece of technology. When it's working well, it's really cool.

Now here's a list (which, ironically, I keep on my iPhone notepad) called "Things I Hate About the iPhone." I don't actually hate it, it's just got some room for improvement. So if you're thinking about getting one, here are a couple of things you should consider:

1. The setup - I refuse to believe that most people had my experience, so this may never come into play for you, but it did take us a total time investment of about 13 hours over the course of two days to get our phones activated. The AT&T store didn't give us some code they were supposed to have given us, and when they finally gave it to us over the phone, we couldn't activate the phones anyway because the people at the store had typed in our address wrong. AT&T and Apple customer service did not work well together at all, so we kept getting passed around. It was a total nightmare. The only thing I can say is maybe it's better now that it's been a few months.

2. Fingerprints, make-up, and ear sweat - Probably the most impressive part of the iPhone is it's touch screen that somehow manages to stay scratch-free. It does not, however, stay grease-free. It gets really gross all the time. Although it comes with a screen cloth, that gets mucked up pretty quickly too. I know there's not much that can be done about that, it's just an inherent problem for a touch screen, so I guess you just have to buy cleaning cloths from the Apple store and just clean it after each use.

3. Very limited texting abilities - Ironically, I could do more with texting on my last crappy phone than I can with this one. You can't mass text everyone in your phonebook with the iPhone. In fact, you can't even send the same text to more than one person. You have to type and send each text separately. Also, you can't receive or send picturemail text messages.

The only solution I can think of to these two problems is scrapping texting all-together and just using email. If you can get your friends to email you their text messages, it should be no problem. And if you can get their cell phone email addresses, you can mass mail them using the email function. Otherwise, the text function is just a one-on-one text only instant messenger. On the plus side, the back and forth conversation is displayed in dialogue bubbles, so like with instant messenger, you can see the entire conversation in one screen.

4. Battery Life - You can get about 4 hours of constant use out of it or one full day of intermittent use. But you must charge it every night or it will be totally dead the next day. I've adapted though, and just keep it on its charging dock at work during the day.

5. There are no games for the iPhone - And the games I bought recently for my video iPod do not work on the iPhone. Not even Solitaire. Not even Tetris. Not even Minesweeper. No games for you. That just feels like a step backward to me. Oh well, I amuse myself with the internet when I'm waiting in line now.

6. The keypad - It takes some getting used to. At first, it's extremely frustrating that your fingers are way too big for the little keyboard that pops up when the phone is being held vertically and that it has no texture, so you have less control over which button you push. It's especially frustrating if you try to use your thumbs like you would on a Sidekick.

I will say though that the auto-correct feature is very effective and that I can type the fastest when I'm not concentrating on punching the right key. You just have to trust the phone is going to correct you as you go along and then proof-read once at the very end for mistakes. And use your index finger at all times!!

Another solution is to make the screen horizontal whenever possible. This magnifies the size of the keyboard and results in greater typing precision. Unfortunately, you can only bring up a horizontal keyboard in the internet window, and not in the texting, calendaring, maps, weather, and email windows. I've heard that they are doing a software upgrade though so that soon all of the functions will be able to be viewed horizontally. That will be very cool. It pisses me off that I can't read email horizontally.

7. No ringtones - As far as I know, you get the ringtones that it comes with and that's it. I haven't looked into it, but I'm hopeful they'll start making better ringtones pretty quickly here. What would be super cool is if you could edit your own ringtones from your song library. I know that's never going to happen though. They gotta get their separate ringtone revenue.

8. You can't actually play all YouTube videos - At first, it seemed like there were only like 10 videos total available for the iPhone, but now they've stepped it up a lot. Mostly, they still only have the most popular, but it's a lot better than it was.

9. You can't use regular headphones with it - Or a regular line-out jack for that matter. This just seems messed up to me. Like they're trying to make it incompatible with all the iPod accessories I've already bought just to make more money. The headphone jack on the iPhone is deeper, so you can jimmy your old headphones by carving off some of the rubber to make it fit, but it's hard to get a good fit, so you end up with static. On the plus side, the thing has little speakers built in, so I mostly just listen to it that way at work.

10. No GPS - It'll tell you how to get there, but don't expect any help if you make a wrong turn unless you can pull over and type in where you are.

11. Cannot highlight, cut, copy, or paste text. - Yeah, this gets annoying. They really need to fix this. Luckily, most features remember the last thing you typed. Not the notepad though. And you're screwed if you want to copy and paste anything from the internet.

12. Slow internet - The iPhone currently uses the Edge network. It's pretty slow. It's actually quite a deterrent to using the internet. And although the phone can automatically find wireless hotspots that could presumably speed things up, most wireless networks are password protected. So unless you're at Starbucks, Panera, the airport, or some other place with free wireless internet, you're pretty much at the mercy of the Edge network. I've heard that the next iPhone model will likely run on the 3G network, which is enough to make me buy a new one when it comes out. The YouTube videos still play at decent speeds, and its not quite as slow as dial-up, but it is slower than what you're probably used to.

13. Sometimes it seems to get confused - This manifests itself in many forms. Sometimes, if the battery isn't fully charged, the touch-screen won't register that I'm trying to use it. This results in missed phone calls and a very frustrated user. Sometimes, if the internet is still loading and I try to type something else in, it will crash. Sometimes, pictures on emails will not load properly, or it will take a full day or two before they can be viewed. Sometimes it'll tell you you have an email, but it won't load its contents for a few hours or a day. Sometimes voicemails will be received but you won't be able to listen to them right then.

14. You can put birthdays in your contacts, but it does not automatically sync them with your calendar - Maybe I'm just being picky now, but you would think that if I was typing it into the addressbook, I wouldn't have to go back and type it again into the calendar. For $600, I don't think I should have to type it twice. Or at least they could let me copy and paste. Bastards.

15. Very limited photo options - Once you've snapped a photo with the pretty high quality phone camera, it gives you a couple of options: Assign the photo to a contact; email someone the photo; or use it as wallpaper. But what if I want to upload it to my myspace profile while I'm on the go or post the photo on my blog? Not going to happen. You only get three options. It does not keep your photos in an accessible drive like on your home computer. Don't get me wrong, you can still take it home, hook it up to the computer, download it and then do whatever you want with it from there, it's just that when it's on your phone, it's not as versatile as it is on your home computer.

The work-around I found was to email yourself the photo at Flickr or somewhere like that that uploads photos via email. Then access that site in the phone's browser and link it to your blog. So far I haven't gotten the Blogger moblogger feature to work with the iPhone. I've used Flickr's email blogging function, but it's not consistent. I don't know why those programs don't like the iPhone. And it pisses me off that if I could just send a picture text, I wouldn't have to be messing with all of this, since most moblogging programs use sms texting.

Oh well. So that's my iPhone experience. Like I said, overall, I'm happy with it. It's got a nice camera and I like being able to watch YouTube videos in line at the post office. it's just definitely got room for improvement.

Oh, by the way betch...

So I went to see the comedian who does the Shoes video, Liam Sullivan, last Friday night at the House of Blues. The show was good - definitely worth the price of admission.

The opening act was this hilariously crass chick named Amy Claire. Then came Liam (aka Kelly). He showed a couple of his sketch comedy videos and then came out as Kelly to perform Text Message Break-Up and Shoes live.

We also got to see the brand new, unreleased Let Me Borrow That Top video. It was pretty frickin' funny. As funny as Shoes, I'd say. It's got all the same actors as the Shoes video, plus a few cameos by Margaret Cho, Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls (WOO!), and Dave Navarro. Oh, and here's a little bit of trivia: Kid Rock's sister, Jill Ritchie, who you may recognize from Arrested Development, plays the bitchy beauty queen next door in the video, from whom Kelly wishes to borrow that top. It's really so good. I can't wait for it to come out on YouTube.
After the show, Liam Sullivan greeted some of his fans. He was whisked away shortly after he met with us, so it was cool that we got to meet him. We talked about the Dresden Dolls and how he's in their new video for Shores of California. He said he didn't even know who they were until after he shot the video, but now he loves them. How funny is that? Alright, so here are some pics from the show. How cool is he??

Children of Marfan

July was a really good month for us. So good, I didn't have time to blog apparently. The big things were: two trips, one stay-at-home-mini-vacation, Brian's birthday, getting iPhones, and a job change.

Our first trip was to Palo Alto for the National Marfan Convention. We had a really good time. I got to re-connect with my heart doctor and heart surgeon from Stanford and we got to meet a lot of other people with Marfan Syndrome. We got some good information too.

Here's Brian just after we arrived:

One of the biggest surprises was that my heart surgeon, who was a speaker at the event, actually used echocardiogram video of my heart in his presentation - only he forgot to take my name off of it or ask my permission! Probably not such a good idea to use the marfanoid lawyer's medical records to violate HIPPA laws. Oh well. Good thing he's in my Top 5 Favorite Human Beings list or else he'd really be in trouble. Here's me and the guys that probably saved my life:

Like I said, I also met other marfanoids while we were there. (During our stay, we determined that the following were also acceptable terms for persons with Marfan Syndrome: children of Marfan, Marfanite, Marfanaut, Marfanid, one who has been marfed, and one who has been given the gift of Marfan.) Not all marfanoids are as tall as me, but there were some who were. Even taller actually. Here's me again with my surgeon and two other women he's operated on; one is 6'6" and the other is 6'8", I believe.

Oops, it's time for bed now! Gotta finish this blogpost later. Damn, I'm a slacker.

Captain America pees just like you and me

Captain America pees just like you and me
Originally uploaded by Cladeedah

Alright, well, maybe just like you.

Familiar face

Familiar face
Originally uploaded by Cladeedah

Oh, hello there Bad Jason.

So freakin' cute

So freakin' cute
Originally uploaded by Cladeedah

At a strip mall in San Diego...

At a strip mall in San Diego... Nowhere near the convention center.

On the way to San Diego

Barstow In-N-Out

Mo Better Blogger

Man, I hope this works. If it does, it means I just learned how to moblog on my new iPhone. We're en route to San Diego for our annual ComicCon trip. I'll try to be a better blogger now that I can blog on the go.

Mini-vacation

We decided to spend some time at home this week, so Brian and I are taking Thursday and Friday off. This means I only have to work one day this week - Tuesday. That's a nice feeling. :-)

It'll hurt if I swallow!

It was an all-around day of learning yesterday. We started the day by going to our CERT class and learning some first aid. That was pretty fun. Here are some photos, courtesy of Shannon.

Here's Brian lamenting my death.

Here's me being positioned so I don't swallow my tongue or choke on my own vomit.

Here's me bandaging up Brian's wound.

And here's me stopping Brian's bleeding by elevating his wound and pushing on his brachial artery.

Later, we went to see Sicko, the new Michael Moore movie. I didn't need to see this movie to know that healthcare in this country sucks. I have my own healthcare system horror stories. The movie was still fun though. We're discussing our relocation to France now. Of course, with all this new CERT training, maybe we'll just be able to take care of ourselves. (Yeah right.)