Change of adddress.
Well, I'm still working on it, but all the archives seem to be up at guavalog.wordpress.com. That's where to go for new posts too! See you there, beautiful blog people.
Been blogging in Bulgaria.
Ok, not really. But I have been blogging elsewhere. Only about three of you have ever met me offline (I conveniently forgot about all the monkeys I met, maybe because it was in a group setting and sometimes not as "Guava"), and one of you has a page there too, so 1/3 of you potentially already know this, given that I have a photo of myself connected to this other blog.
TypePad is nicer. In many ways. Still, I was surprised at the number of comments I got over at the other place, from the start. One of the other people blogging there mentioned signing up for blogspot (the same place where I started, way back in 2001) in order to escape various technical difficulties, and then coming back anyway because it felt like being cast adrift on an island.
And that's how I've felt. Even before I removed comments from each post here. It's not all bad feeling that way. Maybe I even like feeling that way and having the advantages of that sometimes. So, I will be back from time to time. The other place is too cheesey to last anyway. Hmm, that makes it sound like I have a MySpace page or something, doesn't it? Nope.
Tagged.
Four jobs I’ve had in my life
Babysitter
Usher
Fair housing tester
Research assistant
Four movies I can watch over and over
Home Alone
Speed
The Fugitive
Romeo + Juliet
Four places I have lived
Koreatown
Claremont
Oxford
Greenwich Village
Four TV shows I love to watch
Iron Chef
The Office
Cold Case
California's Gold w/Huell Howser
Four places I have been on holiday
Cupertino
Gunadala
Las Vegas
Ft. Worth
Four of my favourite dishes
Mac 'n cheese
Perugu vada
Almost anything w/walnuts
Pizza
Four websites I visit daily
AskMetafilter
Google
WEBoggle
Personal blogs
Four places I would rather be right now
Grand Canyon
in a movie theater
at the beach
London
TypePad's technical difficulties.
When TypePad had some technical difficulties last week that temporarily erased a couple of recent posts, it hit me that it might be a sign from the web lords to not post garbage like that. Then I decided to ignore that sign.
Get going to the GIF.
Hey folks. As of now (update: that was back then, before the template change, email shouldn't be too hard to find somewhere on this page), the comments link goes to a .gif* of guavalog's email address that looks like 
Cool, huh?
What's that you say?
What?
...
I still can't hear you.
Maybe if you emailed.
P.S. Your comments, if you left any, are not gone. They're still with me, and not just in the blog-related recesses of my mind. TypePad lets me have them forever. So thank you.
*partly because after fiddling with the template in an effort to make the gif show where "Comments" does, it doesn't.
Sampling sagey cheese on Sunset.
Patty and I went to The CheeseStore of Silverlake. There were so many kinds of cheese (gobs of gouda and gorgonzola varieties;), and we got there with just a half hour to spare before closing time, so maybe I'll go back some day. I bought a bit of sage derby cheese. It has a pretty green color, and I read that this is not just from all the sage, but also from spinach juice. Tasty too. I've never really eaten sage before, though I hear of people burning it for the smell of it. The lady who gave us a sample said that it would be good in an omelette (green eggs sans ham!). No experience with that, but I can vouch for it being good all by itself.
It was the weekend of the 25th annual Sunset Junction street fair, featuring a bunch of music performers ranging from Jodi Watley to the The New York Dolls. So making our way to the cheese store was more of a journey than it might have been without that portion of Sunset Blvd. being closed to auto traffic. Fortunately, we got into the enclosed area without paying for a festival ticket by telling a security guard that we just wanted to visit the cheese store.
On the way to the cheese store, we saw several groups of young white men walking around together with their shirts off, one asian women in red cowboy boots and short shorts and one natural blonde transvestite. The guys made me wonder if I was really in West Hollywood, the woman was actually the second asian woman I spotted that day in shorts with cowboy boots (does Lucy Liu bear some responsibility?), and I thought s/he was natural because in the bright sunlight I could see all the platinum-hued hair on both forearms.
Oh yeah: This was my first time meeting Patty after what feels like a few years of reading Tiny Hiney was a Chihuahua, formerly known as It's My Tiny Hiney Diary! (I think.) She is nice and I felt less weird about the whole thing than the last time I met a blogging personality.
Blogs by babes.
Two new blogs have come to my attention. The first is Kimdog's Fat Celebrity News, "...because amazing talent comes in all shapes and sizes." I learned of it from Kimdog herself at the Monkeyfilter meet in NYC, and I think it has a good mix of news, commentary and gossip. One recent post mentions a record-breaking athlete:
Lynne Cox does not fit the stereotypical image of a record breaking athlete. She became the best cold water, long distance swimmer the world has ever seen. Her 5 foot 6 inch, 180-pound frame of a body was at one with the water. With a body density precisely that of sea water, her 36% body fat (normal is 18% to 25%) gave her neutral buoyancy. Her energy could be used all for propulsion and not to keep afloat...(Source Dover Solo)
The second one came to my attention by way of an email from an online acquaintance. Topless Programming, a Community Resource for Women in Technology, looks interesting too, even though I'm not in technology. Or am I? I use technology, anyway. A few interesting items linked by Topless:
Forbes list of Women Big Wigs - an eye opening list that's about much more than money.
More resources than god... - the motherlode of womens studies-ish stuff on the net.
Spelman women compete for US in RoboSoccer competition
Infidels in the internets.
I just noticed an "I'M WITH INFIDEL -->" t-shirt in a photo on an actor's site (via a recent post at Sepia Mutiny). He's Amir Talai, a new addition to Kudrow's Comeback, a show I can't watch but have heard about.
According to his journal, the tee and another one tagged "My other shirt...is a BOMB!"- was made and offered for sale in 2002 after the performance of a short play by Talai called Osama Yo Mama, featuring a character who wears gag shirts (I spotted another one in the script - "What would Allah do?").
A quick search turns up a shirt with the same text for sale, but it has a different aesthetic to it that doesn't really trigger my impulse buying click finger. The vendor's description of the item is curious. "I'm With Infidel - This USA Patriotic design says 'I'm With Infidel' will adorn your choice of high quality t-shirts, sweatshirts, long sleeve tees, and tank tops...Looks great on light colors."
Hmm: I'm feeling kind of down today, and watching the video for Wake Me Up When September Ends didn't help matters. The first few seconds, with two young people in a field full of yellow flowers, evokes the infamous Daisy ad from LBJ's 1964 presidential campaign, an ad that was revived by MoveOn in the most recent campaign. The video quickly becomes this angsty teen saga thing, so I can't tell if the director really intended such an allusion.
