Halcyon Days.

Insomnia is getting the best of me the last couple of days. So I guess it's good I didn't have anything too interesting or taxing to see. So we went to the fair where I ate deep fried bacon.

And made jokes that those foot long corn dogs should be called stallion dogs. And I made fun of this bird.


And had an existential moment with this one. He was in love with me.

The loneliest people at the fair.



Infinity lights had a booth.

My goal is to make it so you can never predict what you will read here.

I don't normally talk about my personal friendships on the blog much, but I thought this moment was really funny. So, I'm sharing it.

Last night my friend made it through the Vegas rounds on Americas Got Talent.

When I first saw him on the show I thought about sending him an email, but it's been years since I've talked to him. And I didn't want to seem fame-whorish. Even though I'm pretty sure everyone who has ever met me knows I'm the opposite of fame-whore. People change though. He doesn't know. Plus, he is probably in a quiet period contractually with the show. Since he hasn't been voted off yet. I decided I wasn't going to email him unless he lost. Because if he won, that would be super fame-whorish.

So when he made it through last night I felt unexpectedly dorky about the whole thing. I was just really happy for him. And I've just never known anyone on TV. Even Mr S. said that even though he'd only met him a couple of times - the whole thing made him really tickled too.

Finally right before bed I decided just to send a little "it made me smile to see you, I hope you win" email.

We went to bed, and I started having all this anxiety. Maybe he doesn't remember me. Or maybe I'm that girl from his past he didn't want to run into. But mostly about the maybe he doesn't remember me thing. Then I thought, wait a second - he's the only guy on the planet who has taken naked pictures of me. Sure maybe he has some stale friend pictures up on his site, but he can't have taken naked pictures of all of his friends. I mean, he does take a lot of naked photos. But that must be a subset of people who stand out. Right?

I recount all of this internal dialog to Mr S. who basically laughs.

This is just occurring to you now? Even I know that!

Me - Well, we didn't sleep together and it was an art type thing. (And no folks that is not in quotey fingers.) So I didn't really think about it that way. Now that you mention it though, it is kinda awkward to talk about a guy who've I've never slept with, but has totally seen me naked with my husband.

Oh, and to the best of my knowledge - there are NO naked photos of me on the internet.

Release the... lizards?

So.... I've got a garden lizard. Which normally is the most boring story in the world. But I'm an organic gardener Yo! And he's become huge.

Oh. Yes I am. You don't know me.

Apparently if you don't try at all, these guys will hang around.
While trying to get my cucumbers established I realized lizards are the solution to all of our bug removing needs. Like those mass locust swarms. And I've got a way to monetize it!

When they over run you, you can make handbags out of them. Circle of life Yo. Can you do that with a mantid. No. No you can't.

Daydreaming.

I liked how the shadows of the leaves on top of another almost created a fractal.

Some of you bloggers are just assholes.

The past few months this has been bothering me more and more. Probably because at least half the sites I visit are now trying to get that sweet sweet internet money.

You go to a site, and when you try to leave by clicking the back arrow button - you can't because some ad company (usually double click) has hyjacked the page.

Okay, what the fuck ever you say and just start using your pull down menu. Just to go to the site you were previously at. It's just an annoyance you say. In the scheme of things it doesn't matter.

Well, the site I just went to made it so I can't even use my pull down menu. 19 double click ad taps were preventing me. I'd have to go to my browsing history. And for that I say fuck you!

I know some bloggers make money from the ads they place on their sites (and I don't begrudge that), but mark my words - we are getting tired of this shit. And have you ever tried to read these sites from a cell phone?

I guess these guys are getting wise to the fact that we know hitting the back button just pads their wallets. And there is nothing I hate about a site more than it preventing me from leaving. It makes me not want to come back honestly.

It also makes me wonder what is happening that they feel they need to force clicks out of you that way, rather than the standard way. By you visiting their site. I don't mind paying you for your content when I come to visit. I really resent you charging me more - just so I can leave.

It's just so frustrating when you are a data crawler, you don't remember where you just came from. You hop from one link to the next.

Back down the rabbit hole.

For the past couple of days I've been trying to figure out if I thought the report I read on Friday about gas being 3 bucks a gallon by the end of summer could be true. Even though I've said time after time that gas would never hit 5 bucks a gallon, this report shocked me. I expected a decline. Just not like this. Not this fast. And I never thought it would touch 3 bucks again.

Even though I was betting on deflation more - I would have given even odds I was wrong and the inflationists were right. If gas prices hadn't choked off the early year enthusiasm, I think we could have seen a more inflationary environment. But Wall Street walked the price up too fast, and people couldn't adapt because their wages hadn't risen enough.

A couple of days ago Mr S. and I were talking about the report when he said - when President Money Bags first took office gas was around 2.35 a gallon. Oh yeah - I replied. After I thought about it more, I remembered this was at a time when we were going through massive deflation. Which is what I've been worried about the whole year. Collapsing prices. I mean, with what is going on in Europe, how can you not expect prices and demand will collapse? Huge swaths of Europe are sitting at almost 25% unemployment.

But, there shouldn't be anyone alive that doesn't like low gas prices. Right? It's like money from heaven. The cost of everything goes down. However, so do wages. When we were in deflation, pretty much everyone in the valley was taking temporary pay cuts.

This also makes Government Money Bags feel the need to print money to keep their target inflation goals. And remember, when we were in deflation - China stepped up to buy a bunch of our debt.  I doubt China will be there this time as the lender of last resort. They are busy lying about their own economy. I mean, when you read that coal is stacking up over there - it makes you a little nervous. Especially when I see an increased drum beat that a new recession will start in the fall. Coincidentally when gas prices are suppose to be urber low.

I hadn't really looked at the oil inventories in a while, because I'd given up thinking rising inventories had any affect on the price. I mean, I can count on one hand how many times the whole year inventories have fallen. But I guess the excess just got so great, they couldn't keep ramping it up.

The other thing I finding interesting is - for all the reduction in gas prices - I don't see the freeways that full on the weekends. Which is disposable travel time. As a matter of a fact, this weekend I was all over The Valley, and was pretty shocked at how empty the freeways and roads were.

US crude oil inventories rise by 2.9m barrels - June 25 2012
US crude oil inventories fall 0.2m barrels - June 13, 2012
US crude oil inventories fall 0.1m barrels - June 6, 2012
US crude oil inventories rise by 2.2m barrels - May 31, 2012
US crude oil inventories rise by 0.9m barrels - May 23, 2012
US crude oil inventories rise by 2.1m barrels - May 16, 2012
US crude oil inventories rise by 3.7m barrels - May 9, 2012
US crude oil inventories rise by 4.0m barrels - April 25, 2012
US crude oil inventories rise by 3.9m barrels - April 18, 2012
US crude oil inventories rise by 2.8m barrels - April 11, 2012
US crude oil inventories rise by 7.1m barrels - March 28, 2012

Gardens don't grow themselves.

The best yoga is compact gardening. Well, it's more yoga combined with twister. I have a really long area, but it's only about 5 foot deep. So I have to cram everything in. It's been super windy lately, so I had to go in and trim all my onions. The wind will just lay them down.

Then I had to rotate and add my pile a shredded mail to the compost bin. Yeah, for all the bitching I do about green stuff, I compost. I have bunnies and I get a shitload of mail. Add them together - makes great compost. Summer hasn't truly arrived until you can make pizza from the crap in your garden.

Not an exciting post for you guys. But at least it's something. I'm in a dry spell.

A couple of days ago I was paying my insurance when my agent whom I've known forever says, you should take a pen.

Me- Um. No thanks. No one uses pens anymore.

He looks at me and says - no one uses pens anymore? How am I going to get rid of my merchandising? What should I use?

Right then, the inner tard in me came out and said - lights. You should do something with lights. A comment that probably wouldn't help him in the slightest.

I now own a wind up flashlight. He took me really literally.

Two of the more interesting things I've seen all day.

Flexible glass by Schott, and conductive paint by Vorbeck Materials.



To be honest, I stopped to get swag at this booth and decided to ask them what they did because is wasn't obvious. When I found out it was flexible glass I was somewhat mesmerised. They had a piece the size of a large silicon wafer sitting on this shot glass, and you can see how thin it was. I thought it was cellophane. Nope. It was glass. In the top picture you can see it is reflecting the booth next to it's table. It is breakable, but also flexible.



Conductive paint. I'd never heard of it before. But it sounds like one day you might be able to print your own circuit boards. I was wishing I'd asked how I can get some of this stuff, because I want to play with it. Here is a presser they stuck out last year. Here. One of the more interesting applications was anti-theft. When you broke the conductive chain an alarm would go off.

The private secor is doing just fine. Part 3.

Continued from Part 1 and Part 2.



Look at their decimated camera and video section!

The private sector is doing just fine. Part 2.

Continued from Part 1.









This was a panorama shot

The private sector is doing just fine. Part 1.

Around Christmas of last year, I walked into Best Buy and saw how much space they were devoting to kitchen appliances and knew right away they were in trouble. Some of that stuff has a really long turn over rate. Like sinks.

So, today when I walked into Fry's Electronics (One of the largest electronics retail companies on the West Coast. It's double or triple the size of Best Buy, or it dead cousin Circuit City.) and saw the stores were packed with these items - understandably I also realised they were in trouble. Circling the drain kind of trouble. When perfume, stuffed animals, and Hello Kitty are packing your shelves instead of electronics - there is something really effing wrong.







Even more frightening was what they weren't selling. Every single isle was missing about 10% of it's stock. Mr S. finally walked up to someone working there and asked about it. They basically said customer demand was down, so they weren't stocking as quickly. I took 30 pictures to show you I wasn't just cherry picking my data. The whole entire store was this way. Except the stuffed animals at the top.

Rage.

Today we find out the amount of people pulling in welfare exceeds the entire population of California (every man woman and child) by 10 million people. Here. Technically 8 million-ish. But I rounded up.