Fish Sticks and Green Jello

I'm a night owl insomniac freak-o! I can be drooling on myself during the day and wide awake til 4am. Sucks. I'm heading up to good ole Corporate HQ tomorrow in Redmond, WA to take the "Buidling NetSmart Applications" class. Doesn't that sound thrilling? At least I can cruise Seattle with my co-worker and check out the town a bit. Usually when I head up that way it's to see family and we don't cruise the town... ever. Any good restaurant suggestions?

Second Renaissance - Part 2 is out now on the Animatrix website! loved Part 1 and can't wait to see this new one. It's a pretty fat download so it'll probably be awhile. Just thought I'd mention that before I head off to bed. Boring post, I know. I've already been told by more than one person I gotta liven things up. I'm working on it! Oh and it's only 24 more shopping days until my birthday! June 5th don't forget...

For some lame reason 20/20 was pre-empted on my UTV/DirecTV box so I didn't get a copy of 20/20 to watch which sucks! If for any reason someone is reading this and happened to tape it, email me so I can get a copy! Otherwise here's a link to the recap of "Lost and Found Family Reunited by an Amazing Coincidence" on the 20/20 website. (This is for you Jenn since you didn't get to see it either)

I read on a co-worker's blog that WMP 9 has new visualization and blogger plug-ins. I just installed them and now I'm trying out the blogger plug-in. Basically it will insert what I'm listening too into my blog for me. How Fun! How Automated! Whoopity Doo! Oh I'm also using w.bloggar now to interface with my blogger.com blog. I like it much better than mucking around on their super slow website. Plus this is the only way the plug-in works with the blogger service. It seems cooler except for some reason when I click on "Post and Publish" in w.bloggar it posts to my blogger blog but it doesn't publish to my website blog which is driving me nuts. I even put the FTP info into w.bloggar to get it to post for me. So it seems retarded right now to use another tool just to post one blog entry. Anyone out there know what the heck the problem is?

I just read on CNN that there's a new book on who the Black Dahila killer is. This time a detective named, Steve Hodel claims his late father, a respected LA doctor is the killer. The book is called "Black Dahila Avenger: The True Story". It's funny that I saw this last night because yesterday during the day my friend Cristy and I were watching the Johnny Depp movie "From Hell" on Showtime and were talking about why Jack the Ripper was such a famous case. I said that it was because at the time the killings were so shocking and notorious and the fact that they never caught anyone made it even more sensational. I said it was similar in my mind to the case of the Black Dahlia and how no one was ever caught in that case, and that it too was a sensational case (the body had been severed in half, pretty shocking for the 40's). When I read the article later that evening I read that the detective also likened his father to Jack the Ripper, which was an interesting coincidence.



I read a book that I picked up at Rite Aid last fall called "Daddy was the Black Dahila Killer" which was pretty bad. The author, Janice Knowlton claimed that her abusive father was the killer and she only realized this 40 years later after lots of therapy and memory regression. I'm not sure I'd recommend that one as a good read, but if you're into the Dahila case, why not. The most popular Dahila book out there is "Severed" by John Gilmore. Lots of photos, more seemingly factual than the other book, although in the last chapter(s) it exlains who the supposed killer is as well, which of course can't be proven. I'd probably recommend reading "Severed" first before any of the other two mentioned above. Although I'll probably read the Avenger book when it's out in paperback. I like unsolved mysteries, true crime books, stuff like that. Probably goes along with my love of the horror genre.

I have to add though that the best Dahila book I ever read was the fictional Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. Great story! He takes the characters and some of the facts from the original case and weaves his own tale of what might have happened. This book really made me a fan of James Ellroy. It's the first book in a series of 4 L.A .crime novels which includes L.A. Confidential (Black Dahlia, Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz), all of which are really excellent books. Here's the link to the the CNN article on the new Dahila book if you're a Dahila fan like I am and want to check it out.

On Sunday I went to the wedding of my boyfriend's friend Yvonne, who also happened to be my last manager at work. The wedding took place at the Mill Pond in Soquel which was a really lovely spot. My only real gripe about the day was the temperature and the fact that I wore a summery dress with a light shawl so I wound up freezing most of the day since the whole thing was outdoors including the reception.

When I first knew I was going to the wedding I wasn't really excited about it. I generally hate the idea of weddings because I'm not sure if I'll ever get married and I'm a bit bitter in general about love/relationshps. Sometimes I feel like marriage and kids are something that society tells you that you're supposed to be doing at a certain age and if you don't there's something wrong with you. I know some of my friends (not many) really feel strongly about it and are bothered by the fact that I'm not always sure about it.

I went to the wedding and loved it. It was such an incredibly nice wedding. I know that they didn't spend tons of money on it but it was so lovely just the way it was that I can't see how they would have put much more into it than they did. I really liked that there weren't bridesmaids and groomsmen, it was so simple with just the two of them. I also really liked the music they played during the wedding. The bride walked down the aisle to "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstong. The bride also wore an orange dress which she made. Now when I first heard it was orange I wasn't sure what to think but when I saw it I have to admit that it was very nice. It was Indian style with an orange (and red) beaded coat over an orange dress with a butterfly clasp. And you know that old adage about radiant brides? It was true. I don't think I've ever seen her look as lovely as that day. The food at the reception was delicious, and the outdoor woodsy setting with the pond was very nice as well. I'm pretty much gushing about it at this point but I was really impressed by it and one day if I ever get married I'm sure I'll want to steal some ideas from their wedding. Basically it was nice to see someone have a great wedding without doing the overblown $30K plus wedding. The two of them look perfect together and I know they are going to have a really wonderful life together. They're pretty darn lucky and I have to say I'm a bit envious. I wish them the best though.

I did get pretty emotional about the whole thing. It made me think a lot about life and the future and what I want out of it. I'm still not 100% sure but I think that I have a better idea now then I ever did before in my life. I'm always evolving as a person and I have to hope that if things are meant to happen for me they will. I really can't control my future but I can hope for the best.

My friend Xochi was kind enough to send me an email the other day saying that he'd found the pesky blogger code which was causing squids to flash and older browsers to not want to like my site. Here's what he had to say about it:

Your doctype is XHTML 1.0 transitional - probably not even your choice. I used XHTML on the Ashpool site since I had a lot of time on my hands but there's really no reason for it. And it breaks a TON of code that is otherwise copacetic within HTML 4.01. Check this out:

syntax check____
XHTML 1.0 file:
222 errors, 9 warning
swap out that doctype for the ol' HTML 4.01 TRANSITIONAL and you get:
HTML 4.01
18 errors, 1 warning
-----
What I took out________
(note from marian: I took out the < at the beginning of each line before !DOCTYPE since it was messing up how the line was displayed in this blog, add it back in if you're gonna use it!)
!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

What I put in__________
!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">
-----

Now this was what came with my blogger code so if anyone else has any blogger/legacy browser issues, take note! I haven't tested it yet. Pretty funny since I'm a tester but Xochi was kind enough to say he'd do it for me. And Allen if you're out there, let me know if it's still being whacko or if you think it's fixed.

AND there were some birthday's this week (and one more a few weeks ago).
So... HAPPY BIRTHDAY to:
CHRIS, my boyfriend/smoochiepants.
DAVE, My oldest/best friend and high school compadre.
AMRAH, My most lovely, artistic and one of the most widly gifted friends I have and last but not least....
XOCHI, another old friend who I haven't seen in ages, but who I promise to come hang with one of these days cause I miss him.