Immortalized!

When I was a kid, I never really got into comic books the way other kids did. None of my friends were really into them, and my parents didn't really encourage reading of any kind, so it just never occurred to me. Now that I'm an adult geek, I've got cow-orkers who were raised on comic books. Not only that, I've got cow-orkers who WRITE comic books.

Back in the dreary days of September, when morale around the office was pretty low, my friend and cow-orker Scott Tipton asked if I'd like to be a character in a comic he was writing. Of course I jumped at the chance, and fired off a couple of pictures of myself and another cow-orker, Jeff Dailey, for the illustrator to use.

Three months later, the issue is out! Star Trek Captain's Log: Sulu

I'm taking a chance on angering the gods (and lawyers) of copyright, but here's my comic debut:

I'm the handsome devil, foreground left.

The illustrator made my jaw a little chunky on that one, but hey - I'm not complaining - I get referred to by name here! Woo!

Again, foreground left in a cool ZOOM! scene.

And my last scene, again foreground left.

How cool is that? Please support Scott by picking up a copy (I picked up 12!) from your local comic shop or online here: Star Trek Captain's Log: Sulu.

1/5/00

Ten years ago today, I moved from San Diego to Los Angeles. While my moves from Minnesota to Arizona and Arizona to California were farther, moving to LA was, in retrospect, the most significant move I've made yet. I consider myself an Angeleno. Not because I've been here for ten years (save a brief return to Minnesota), but because this is the first place I've lived where I have truly felt at home.

I love LA. The bad things about living here - traffic, crowding, cost of living - don't really bother me very much. The good things about living here - the weather, the location, the activities - make me happy on an almost daily basis. Do I wish it were not so damn expensive to buy a home here? Sure. But every morning when I step out the front door of my apartment and the sun shines warmly on my face (~320 days per year), I am happy to be here. Every time I hop on my motorcycle and find a gloriously twisty two lane road that lets me dance through a canyon or mountain pass or even a national park, I am happy to be here. Happy to be in California.

That said, I feel like I can't stay here indefinitely. Someday, I do want to own my own home, have a yard I can mow, a garage where I can work on cars and motorcycles. Unless my income magically doubles or triples, there's just no way I'll be able to buy a home like that in any decent part of LA.

So where do I go? I know myself well enough to know that I need to see the sun on a regular basis. That rules out the Pacific Northwest. I prefer to be warm enough to ride a motorcycle at least most of the year, preferably year-round. That rules out the midwest and most of the northeast. I'm not a fan of ridiculous humidity, so that rules out the Gulf Coast and Florida. I've done my time in the desert, so that rules out most of the Southwest. What does that leave me? A small slice of Colorado and maybe a tiny part of Texas? Maybe even a little bit of South Carolina if I were to be flexible on the humidity? I don't know.

My only real new years resolution is to make a significant change in my life this year. I can't stay at my job forever, and I'll never get ahead working for someone else. I'd like to try working for myself, either as a consultant or running my own business. It might even mean leaving LA to make it happen - I don't know.

Those last two paragraphs feel like a whole lot of "don't know". I do know that I'll miss LA. I love this city.

Things That Work: HD Radio

I recently bought an HD radio at a charity auction. I wasn't in the market for one, but when it came up at the auction, I thought it might be fun to have. I'd heard about the better quality sound, but given the utter crap that passes for radio in Los Angeles (NPR excepted), I wasn't expecting much. Better sounding crap is still crap.

Color me pleasantly surprised. Both of my favorite NPR stations (KCRW and KPCC) broadcast in HD, which sounds more like a CD than FM; a much better tonal range with deeper bass and cleaner highs than you get with analog radio. Most HD stations include information about the song, so the radio can show the station call letters, the song title, artist name, and a few other tidbits that scroll by on the display.

As a bonus, most HD stations broadcast in multiple channels. KCRW does not, but KPCC broadcasts two additional channels, one of them being a rebroadcast of The Current out of Minneapolis. How cool is that?

365:2010

Yep, I'm gonna do it again, another photo-a-day project for 2010. Last time I did this project, I started in 2007 and kept it up for 833 days. And a couple of weeks after I stopped, I began missing it.

My problem is, I've got a crappy memory. But visual things seem to do a better job of soaking into my head, so for me to be able to revisit those 833 days of my life is something that I love. What a great record of what I did, from the inane to the awesome (mostly inane).

I'm planning to use the same web home for the new project. I've even wrangled some new and some old 365 friends to join me. If you'd like to join us too, send me an email. It'll be a good thing.

Also, I've moved the old site here. It has a new URL, but the site is exactly the same.

Fun day at work.

Most days, my job is routine. But one of the aspects of my job that I like best is that I get asked to do odd things that don't fit into other people's job descriptions. I've become a go-to guy for weird stuff, which is just fine with me.

Today, I had to test-fire a confetti cannon in the courtyard:

The part where I danced around like a jackass was just icing on the cake.

Redemption.

The Grilled Cheese Truck has fully and completely redeemed itself with delightful cheesy awesomeness. Back on the 27th, I described my disappointment with The Grilled Cheese Truck on their debut night. Since it was their first night in business, I decided to reserve final judgment until I was able to give them one more try, which happened tonight.

They were parked at The Brig in Venice again, and this time, there was no line at all. The same lovely woman who gave me a ticket for half off a sandwich for my wait last time was there to collect it, and she thanked me profusely for coming back. She also made me promise to tell her what I thought of tonight's sandwich.

This evening, the plan was to visit a handful of trucks parked along Abbott Kinney, so I only had a bag of tater tots and the same Cheesy Mac and Rib sandwich that I almost liked last time. This time, it was excellent. Bread was perfectly crispy on the outside, and the inside of macaroni and cheese with sharp cheddar with BBQ pork, and caramelized onions was ample, well melted, and damn fine tasty.

I was happy to report back to the lovely woman in the truck that tonight's grilled cheese was excellent. I love a happy ending.

Los Padres

I've been posting far too infrequently and seriously as of late, and that's a habit that's no fun for me, and certainly not much fun for the two of you that I haven't yet managed to scare away. So without further adieu, I offer a little trip report on a ride I took a few weekends ago up to Los Padres National Forest.

Los Padres is about an hour's ride from my home, and is located a little bit northeast of Santa Barbara, California. Here's the route I took:
My trip starts out at the little green box at the bottom right of the map, then went around the top loop clockwise before doubling back home. The little red pushpins on the map are where I took the photos below. Shockingly, the weather that day was gorgeous. Okay, so that's not so shocking in Southern California, but I was still loving the sunshine and blue skies.

When I go on these rides, I rarely have a specific destination in mind. I usually dial up a map, draw a 60 mile radius around my home, and look for some roads depicted as really squiggly lines in that radius. If the road goes somewhere cool, great. If not, that's ok too - the road is the part I enjoy most. This trip featured the delightful CA-33, Cerro Noroeste Road, and Lockwood Valley Road.

Los Padres has some fairly tall mountains, and one, Mt. Pinos, features a paved road that takes you pretty close to the summit. Mt. Pinos Road is a 9 mile long dead end that splits off from Lockwood Valley Road and ends at the summit, so there isn't much traffic and the views are spectacular. The elevation at the top is 8,300 feet, and the weather is about 15 degrees cooler than the lower elevations.On the day I was there, a group was doing ski patrol training at the Base, so I didn't hang around long - the place was busy.

Heading back down the hill, I got back onto Lockwood Valley Road, which loops back to CA-33. It passes through an area burned in what was called the La Brea fire a little over a year ago. I didn't see much of the burn area, but did pass a few charred trees.Since little of the burn area is visible from the road, most of the views are beautiful, and I even got a little sample of what passes as fall colors around here.Whenever I go on these rides, I always bring my cameras with me, thinking that I'll stop and take a lot of shots of the scenery - but I rarely do. The roads are so much fun to ride that it takes my mind off the photography.All I want to do is ride, ride, ride.

Food Trucks: Fleeting Fad, or Fun Future of Feeding?

I'm not completely bowled over by the recent LA food truck phenomenon, but I am amused. There are a few trucks I enjoy, and even a couple that I follow on Twitter. One truck I follow just for amusement since their truck always breaks down (I'm looking at you, Coolhaus).

Some people can't fathom the idea of eating food off a truck, but the trucks I've seen are a lot cleaner than most diners, and really - it's just a small kitchen on wheels. Get over it. Other people can't grasp the idea of waiting in line for food, which I can certainly understand. I don't like waiting for food either, but there is a social aspect to hanging out in a food truck queue, and I've met some very nice people while waiting with friends. The waiting in line novelty hasn't worn off for me yet.

Jenna and I have had some pretty stellar food off a few trucks; Kogi for Korean BBQ and Nom Nom for Banh Mi are two of my favorites. But tonight, we had epic disappointment.

Tonight was the opening night for The Grilled Cheese Truck. There is no way I can overstate how much I wanted this truck to rock my fucking socks, for two big, enormous reasons:

1. Grilled cheese sandwiches! Fuck yeah!
2. On a truck! YES!

Since tonight was their first night, and they'd been taunting and teasing the interwebs with pictures of great looking sandwiches for months, I got there early to beat the line - 7:45 arrival for the 8:30 start. 'Round about 8:40, word came from the truck that there were griddle problems afoot in the truck, but they graciously served a few free helpings of hot soup while we waited. And waited.

And waited.

Mechanic arrived to fix the griddle at about 9:20. We were 5th in line, finally got our food at 9:40, two hours after I got there, and over an hour after they were supposed to start. Fine, I understand mechanical problems - can't be helped. They were kind enough to give us the soup samples and a coupon for half off our next sandwich. Good service in a bummer situation. Cool.

But then we got down to eating our long-awaited grilled cheeses. So sad. Even though we only walked about one minute from the truck to sit and eat, our sandwiches were already cold, and the cheese on our "Plain and Simple Melt" was barely melted to begin with. Then we realized they shorted us the side order of macaroni and cheese we ordered, and J had to wait in line for a refund after being told "we aren't making that tonight" even though they took our money for it. Ugh.

To be fair, it wasn't all bad. The "Cheesy Mac and Rib" sandwich was tasty and interesting despite being cold, and their tater tots had great seasoning and were yummy, even though they started out as Ore Ida from a bag.

To be extra-fair, I think The Grilled Cheese Truck has the potential to be great, once they get their shit together and the bugs ironed out. I'm going to reserve final judgment until I give them one more try, maybe two or three weeks from now.

Insult to injury moment of the evening: Jenna and I got $60 parking tickets for being parked on Venice boulevard after 10pm. Grr.

Ah, dad.

Stefanie's excellent post about her dad reminded me of some thoughts I've been having about my own dad recently. I've written about my dad before, and I don't think it's a secret that he's a strange dude and that he and I have a rough history.

My dad doesn't have long distance on his phone, so I'm responsible for calling him. Sunday afternoon is our usual talk time, but I haven't called him in almost two months, and I've been feeling a little bit guilty. Not because I haven't called, but because I haven't even wanted to call. No desire whatsoever to talk to him. His conversations inevitably cover the same topics; NASCAR, how I should not have broken up with my ex-girlfriend, and the weather. While I don't mind those topics, I just don't have the patience to hear the negative lectures anymore.

Last week while I helped work on the remembrance celebration for my friend Blair, I marveled at the way he surrounded himself with an awesome group of warm, loving, and positive people. Unfortunately, my dad is none of those things, and I've realized (finally?) that I just need to limit my contact with him. Life's too short to spend it with people who aren't a positive influence.

Memento vivere

I've been spending time on a cool project at work the last few days. I'm scanning photos and editing a video to be played at Blair's celebration party that's coming up Sunday afternoon. The photo scanning has been fascinating - I've been learning a lot about him and his family, and it's impressive to see how well they documented the good times. One of the coolest photos (I wish I had it here to post) shows Blair on a beach, and you can see the tattoo he had on his left bicep. It was just plain text, and it said "MEMENTO VIVERE". Not being well-versed in Latin (I only took it in 8th grade), I had to look it up - the literal translation is "remember to live".

A simple reminder of something that is so easy to lose sight of. For me, it's incredibly easy to get distracted by the day to day routine, doing the things that need to be done to pay the bills. Lulled into a trance that keeps me from taking the crazy tangents or even the minor sidetracks that are the adventure in life.

Fear has something to do with that, too. To fully invest my heart and soul into something that's not a sure-win scares me back into the safe cave of inaction. Looking back in my history, there just aren't many times when I have taken a chance and put everything I've got into something I cared about. It goes deeper than "you get out of it what you put into it", but that's some of it.

I suspect these thoughts that are a minor revelation to me are common sense to everyone else. The older I get, the more I know that there is an infinite supply of that which I do not know. This little gem, "remember to live", is one that I am glad I learned and desperately want to put into action. Now I just have to figure out how to do it.