iDoc Beuller's Day Off

Just some nice pictures to show you.

Back in November, I took a day off work, to sort my thoughts, get connected to my inner beauty, and go up to some place in the hills that I consider "mine". It was a total failure, mainly because it was a very sunny day, but too damn cold to go anywhere interesting.

I ended up wasting some time in Gaudalupe Park, down in San Jose, and reading in the cold at the duck pond we have across the street. I felt completely cheated and was even angrier at the end of the day than I was before.

But I did take 50 pictures of this beautiful great egret in the park, and some nice bright duck pitures at our pond. And a few shots of the weird duck-chicken-moose hybrid we have at the pond. Fascinating, but rather sad guy.

Check it out.

As a teaser, check out these beautiful ducklings, from the pond across the street from out complex.

SHE'S IN!!!

Marina got accepted into the San Jose Masters in Psychology program!!!!

Rejoice!

Marina Alejandra Cinella-Carmel, future certified Marriage & Family Therapist. I like the sound of it.

Send your congraulations to marinacinella at gmail. And tell her she should start reading this blog herself.

And here's me, on a cold morning. Pretending to be a big white turd.

Operacion Triunfo

We "invested" the last three hours watching the finals for the Argentinian version of American Idol (that's Kochav Nolad for all you ingnant Israelis)

It was a tense show, but girls vote more than boys, so Benjamin won.


But boys do vote a lot, so Luba did get third place (out of six finalists), and got multiple kisses from every man on stage.


Thought you might like to know.

Tahoe again

I already spent about 5 hours today working on the blog, so I'm not going to talk about it in the blog. Takes too damn long to tell everything.

I dont' really have that much to say about it actually, except that it was awesome, but we had to spend the night in a motel half-way to Tahoe, because the road was snowed.

Head over to the Flickr set and read my comments.

The Tahoe Adventure(s)

I've been spending a lot of time on this blogging deal, and actually having some fun with it. I love that you can do all the basic stuff so easily, but it's also easy to start playing aroung. You won't usually notice it, but I'm doing something new every week.
As good as the on line tools are, it's still a lot of work. It's hard enough to write the blog, but when you add the time it takes to get your HTML, CSS, and JS just right, selecting and croppoing pictures, and uploading to Flickr (I insist on not hosting them on Blogger because they compress and reduce quality. You can't notice it, but they do it. And I can't make up my mind on the BEST way to work with Flickr. There are just so many! This condition is commonly called OCD) it's a real weekend killer. As if it wasn't complicated enough already, I just got a Flickr pro account and started organizing everything in sets, and I just started to seriously work on putting some of our videos on the net. It took me weeks of work to decide on Flickr as my image hosting service, and video is SO much more complex. I've spent about two hours today messing with Windows Movie Maker and Vimeo, and I'm nearly shocked at how close they are to doing everything I need. Let's see how good they are at what I want. Speaking of Internet tools, big shoutout to my homies at Writely. Y'all was gonna change the net all over again, and then Google bought you, and they already changed the net, so you sorta lost that. But I still love you and use you all the time.

Anyway.

Between my hernia and Marina's studies, we've had very little time for traveling lately, and work effectively killed what was left. Almost eight months after the last time we spent a night away from home, we finally traveled outside the bay area again. To the same place we went last time - Tahoe.

Our previous trip was a camping trip last August. Lake Tahoe is so high up the mountains that the camping sites are only open three months a year, so you have to reserve months in advance. We did. After the Shasta fiasco (I really should put that stuff on blog. Some day...), we weren't sure what to expect in term of weather and activities. Renting a boat again is a bit boring, jet skis are so expensive that it takes the fun out of it, and the lake water is freezing even in August.

So we just relaxed and took it very very easy for three days, and the weather was just perfect, and even the water was bearable for a few minutes at a time.

We got there around midnight and started setting up our brand new tent. Our little blue $24.99 tent has served long and well, and is a pleasure to set up in total darkness. But this is America, and I'm making all these piles of money*, and everything is so cheap here*, and I figured that I deserve a tent that's actually longer than I am. So we went all out and spend 40 whole bucks on a bigger, fancier, not quite so easy to assemble in darkness, tent.

There was a great meteor shower that night. Here's a picture I took of the sky.


Apparently, I need to improve my equipment a bit.

Morning came, and we started to work on breakfast. Note that every site gets its own picnic table, bear-proof locker, wooden shelves, and camp stove. America.
And the awesome new tent.


The camp chef made some omelets.


And the neighbors came to sample the leftovers.


Later we hung out on the beach below our campground.





Chipmunks were everywhere.


We drove up above Emerald Bay.
Looking at these views, I think this summer I'll post pictures from down below, from the boat I am going to rent after all.




Evening descended...


And the camp chef started to work on dinner.
It took me over an hour to get the fire started, because I forgot you need to wave. I'm an embarrassment to Israelis everywhere.


Day two: More of that hanging out on the beach stuff.

I know, I know. We need to get out in the sun more often. STFU.








OK, enough with the pretty lake. Time to go home.

We've never had really good luck with Tahoe weather, so of course it started raining. In mid-fucking-August! Just like it did in 98!
Apaprently, Writely doesn't let me embed flash in the document. So I'll just put links to Vimeo. Like this.
Like most of our videos, this one ends with Marina asking how to turn the recorder off.

A while later, the rain stopped, and we saw the wind turbines at Altamont Pass for the first time. Thousands of them!
I was quite excited and took a million pictures. Video.


Sunset. Video.


Crossing the the bay on the San Mateo bridge. Look how close we are to the water!



* not really

Con Voyage (WonderCon Finale)

Last thing to do before we're don't with WonderCon: A special screening of Sin City with Frank Miller, followed by Q&A, followed by a special "mixer" hosted at Berkeley Comic Relief, current holder of the "Best Comic Shop I've Ever Seen" title, dedicated to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Whew!

Took this picture on my way out of the parking lot. Karamba!


And took these on my way out of the McDonalds at Berkeley. Where would people defecate if it weren't for McD?


The sky was, in fact, just as red as it seems here, and Berkeley is, in fact, just as nice a place as it seems here.


Frank Miller came in, gave a short introduction, we watched the movie (Yeehaw!), there was some more Q&A and we headed on to the "party" at the comic shop.


It was a nice little party. A "mixer", they called it, because you meet new people and stuff. And some people there really had some mixing skills. Me? I lurked in the corner, awaiting the high point of my life, the moment when I would ask someone to take a picture of me with Frank Miller. Me. With Frank Miller. I kept thinking about all the funny things I would write in the blog when I uploaded the picture at some late hour of the night, when I finally got home, after partying all night with Frank Miller. The man who gave us The Dark Knight. The man who reinvented comics. The man who, about 30 minutes into the party, went out for a cigarette and never came back.

At least I got to drive on the upper deck of the Bay Bridge at night.

If you're ever in the area, visit the Comic Relief shop. The used bookstore (right next door) alone is worth the trip.

The fun Con tinues (WonderCon Day 3)

OK, let's get going. I still want to write about at least one more thing today.
Some things you never get tired of. Even on day 3, I was still constantly stop people and ask them to pose for me.

Green Lantern


I love Batman's dead-serious expression. I ran into him a few time during the day, and he never lost it. Cool.


YES! All you losers are behind me, because I've been waiting here for, like two hours, and I sat through the whole Spongebob presentation.!
But what could be worth all this excitement?


Frank Miller! So close I had to remove the red-eye caused by my flash.
I didn't think I'd enjoy an interview where the interviewer gets called a dick three time. OK, of course I did, but anyway, Frank became (more) famous recently for writing, drawing and co-directing Sin City, his exciting and realistic account of life in L.A. Awesome stuff. But the reason he is so high on my I'd-give-him-my-sister scale is the Dark Night Returns, the comic book that changed everything - for the industry and for me. After 15 years, it's still better than anything that doesn't have "Allan Moore " written on the cover.
Frank talked about some of the stories behind his stories, about how Batman really is a dick, and uh, I don't remember what else.

Did I mention that I was in the first row, right in front of Frank? Did I?


Eric Powell. Writes The Goon, one of my favorite recent discoveries.
It's about this bug, The Goon, who goes around beating people up and hate vampires. Good, clean FUN.
That's me on the right. The tiny bit of mustard visible under my sweatshirt is my new "Time for some thrilling heroics" T-shirt. I'm just as crazy about Serenity as I ever was.


These two must have some serious dinner table arguments around election time.


The iFilm chick, with someone carefully chosen to represent the average Con atendee.


iFilm is a neat place to waste some time and bandwidth. Check out their WonderCon coverage - girls (obviously), Frank Miller , and everything else. If you watch the girls coverage, and who wouldn't, you will not only see the world renowned and lovely Miss Christy Marie, which you will all remember as the girl who put the "us" in "God damn, that is one seriously hot Leia", but you will also see the guy hiding me from the video camera, while I was taking yet another picture of Lara Croft.

Here's Christy again, because we can, we should, and we want (Thanks, Super Skrull . You've madeus all very happy)


And if that wasn't exciting enough, there's Grant Morrison, casually chatting with Karen Berger and a pretty woman I'm not familiar with.
In layman's terms, that like seeing Bruce Springstien, casually chatting with Quincy Jones and a pretty woman I'm not familiar with.


And that was that. Three days of mind-numbing fun were over. But were they?
Next stop - iDoc and Frank Miller go to the movies!

Long Con Silver (WonderCon Day 2 continues)

Flickr actually has everything I need for these photo stories. I get to put a title about the picture and some comments below, and it's easier than copy-pasting all these links (although I quite proud of the JavaScript I wrote to help simplify that work. Go Greasemonkey!).

So just head over to Flickr and see/read the rest of day 2.

Wrath of Con (WonderCon Day 2)

OK, tired of writing, and you're not reading anyway. Pichurs!

The Red vs. Blue guys. They're funny and nice and great guys. RvB is great.
Maybe I'll let you watch the DVDs I bougt from them. My signed DVDs. Or maybe I won't.


Troopers troopers everywhere.


Getting closer to the pretty ladies. This is Terry Moore, write of Strangers in Paradise. SiP precisely the type of comic you'd never expect me to read. I'd never expect me to read something like it. I certainly wouldn't expect to find myself completely hooked on it. It's about two chicks, one of whom is a beautiful lesbian ex-hit-woman and ex-hooker. OK, maybe it is just the sort of thing you'd expect me to read.
Seriously, though. I love it. For the story!
And the lesbian sex. And here's Terry giving me the horns.


This here is not just a toilet paper holder I saw in mid-crap. This here is a Rollmaster 3000, and it amused me to no end.


Our first hotty of the day: Batgirl (from the 60's TV show, not the lame movie)


Richard Mayhew, the guy in the Chewbacca suit. I couldn't get a better picture, because I think he was charging for pictures.


Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane in the 1940's Superman TV show. Was that name some agent's smart idea?
The 40's Superman you see in the picture is George Reeves. And if that's not cosmic, I don't know what is (you know what I'm talking about, right? Please tell me you know)


Whoppa! Now we're getting somewhere.
There were eight booths at the rear corner of the convention hall where these, uh, ladies were selling photos, and posing with drooling fans.
You know how they say it's all Photoshop and nobody's that hot in reality? They don't know shit. Them chicks is HOT.
I grabbed these two pictures of Tiffany Taylor (Miss November 98) Justine Joli from a distance, because I was just too embarrassed to come close and ask them to look at me for a sec.




After orbiting them for like 6 hours, I managed to gather the nerve to ask Justine if I could take a picture and she said sorry, it's $20. THEN I was embarrassed.
I moved away and tried to take some more pictures while hidden in the crowd. You know, for journalistic purposes. But I felt like a criminal for trying to get them for free and couldn't take a single shot. I felt like everyone was watching me, which is as funny as it is pathetic - these women around me, and I think people are looking at me.

On the thirtieth time I passed by her booth, Linda Tran started to chat me up. Not that I was able to speak or anything. She seemed very nice for a person who wants to steal my innocence and destroy my immortal soul.
She gave me her card. Maybe I'll call.

Stormtrooper Elvis. Didn't we meet at ComicCom?
I took this picture while waiting in line to get my Dark Knight books signed by Frank Miller.


Yes, that's FRANK MILLER signing MY Dark Night book, and my #1 Adventures of Batman and Robin.
And that's me, getting ready to kiss him on the lips.


Zatana was behind me in line. 'Sup?


Warsies do the best costumes.


I don't need to know what you're dressed as to take your picture. I just need to like you.


Green Lantern and Freakazoid and their stuffed underwear.


Kids are always cool. And beards sticking from under helmets.



Miss Croft. Always welcome where nerds congregate.


And that's just the first half of day 2. More soon.