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I always feel kind of funny when I take my vitamins with a beer.

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I have been listening to my mini-collection of Cocteau Twins music on my mp3 player today. It’s great. My favorite album by them is “Treasure”, and my favorite songs are “Ivo” and “Lorelei”. I remember I saw them in concert a couple times in the late 80’s, and they were great. They used a recording of the drum machine, and for one of the encores, they had to rewind it. I think Elisabeth Fraser cracked a joke about that, which was kind of cool. My bud Colin was totally into them. I like Heaven or Las Vegas as well, there are so many good songs from Cocteau Twins!

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My friend Chris wrote me an IM: “Crappiest court sketch ever.” I have to agree. Shame on you, Vicki Behringer!

[link at CNN via Chris]

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My pal Mikey showed me Last.FM, which is a website that tracks your music listening habits. It uses a free plugin for most of the popular music players like iTunes, Winamp, and MediaPlayer which transmits data to the Last.FM server. You can view your profile which will show the last 10 songs listened to, top albums, etc. I just started, so I don’t have enough data in my profile for the top albums or weekly charts. But Mikey has it! Check it out sometime, it’s very neat!

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It was a fun weekend for us! Saturday morning we went to the big downtown Whole Foods again. We parked in the underground garage and were using the stroller, so we headed to the elevator. Unfortunately it was broken. So we asked a couple policemen who, for some reason, were working down there, where another elevator was. They didn’t know, but called somebody in the store to help us. The guy actually put the movable walkway that normally descends into the garage into reverse and we rode up it. That walkway is cool because when you put a shopping cart on it, the cart is locked into place. Someone said they use magnets to do it, but it looked like the wheels had small discs attached to them that get wedged into the grooves on the walkway (like escalator grooves). Anyways, it was cool that they did that for us. I saw a bunch of people took advantage of the situation and followed us up the people mover.

Later that day, I washed Mariko’s minivan. We have had it for about one year, and we haven’t washed it once. I’ve cleaned out the inside a couple times, but never washed the outside. It really didn’t look to bad, because the grime was uniformly spread across the whole vehicle. But I can’t believe how much dirt there really was! I wish I would have taken a picture of it. I washed the tops of the doors first, leaving a nice two-tone effect. But now it is sparkling silver again.

In the afternoon we went to Bay’s friend Lana’s 4th Birthday party. It was held at a ceramic workshop, and all the kids got to pick out little ceramic pieces and paint them. Bay picked out a little VW Beetle. Later, the people who work there will take the painted pieces and fire them in the kiln. The artwork should be ready to be picked up later this week.

On Sunday we went to the park to do some Easter Egg hunting with the Japanese kids playgroup. It was perfect weather, bright, sunny and warm, with a nice breeze. Bay had a lot of fun, and Koa enjoyed himself too. On the way home, we stopped at Teahouse for some Dimsum, which was yummy as always. In the afternoon I did a little yardwork and then Bay and I went for a little walk. And that is pretty much the whole weekend!

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While browsing the web for information about the Ford Expedition, I stumbled across this article by Malcolm Gladwell about active vs. passive vehicle safety. I think it’s an interesting read.

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...my little Sentra was bullied by a huge SUV. This time, some lady in her huge Ford Excursion wouldn’t let me enter the normal lane from the merge lane. She sped up and tailgated the car in front. What a jerk. She then proceeded to tailgate the poor Camry in front of her the whole way down 360, while doing her mascara and riding her brakes. It really makes me mad that people use these huge gas guzzlers to commute to work. I mean, if you are simply taking yourself to work, why drive a behemoth that gets only 12mpg (and takes up two parking spaces). And heaven forbid she ever runs into anyone. That size of SUV will probably kill anyone driving a car. But as long as *she* is safe, I guess that’s what matters. I love the fact that she had a little American flag sticker on the back too.

The following is from a car review site (http://www.reviewcentre.com/). I just love the mentality of the reviewer.

”General Comments:
We just had a baby, and there was simply no room in either of our vehilces. I had an old Ford pick-up, and my wife had a Toyota Corolla so we purchased the Ford Excursion SUV. I know the MPG sucks, but I am safe, and I feel safe. Nobody DARES to cut me off anymore, and people going too slow on the highway get out of my way. It’s comfortable. I don’t feel like I’m sitting on a pillow on the floor.

We plan on having another baby in a few months, so I need something that can handle 2 cars seats and all the stuff for two children.

I know I marked that I wouldn’t recomend an Excursion to a friend...the reason is because I don’t have any freinds with kids or a justifiable reason to have one. And minus one point for the MPG.”

and a comment to the review that I just love

“you have 2 kids, and you need room for 8? you don’t really need one, you just like having something that big. I’ve got room for me, my sister, and 3 other football players… and I drive something roughly 1/3 the weight of your vehicle and about twice the gas mileage. and oh yeah, mine also has 4 wheel drive. and I’ve got a pontoon boat to tow, but that’s nothing an old pickup can’t handle. have you ever heard of the word “conserve”? and what’s this you say about people don’t cut you off? if it’s smaller than a tractor trailer… and i need to get over, I don’t care if you drive a beatle or an Excursion, you better get out of my way cuz i’m gettin over. why don’t you think a little more about other people on the road… like the REALLY small cars and the people who try to think on a larger scale, which apparently you can’t. I don’t see what’s so attractive about excess.”

I don’t have anything against SUV’s in general (I used to drive a Pathfinder, that I loved), but I do have a problem with people driving excessive vehicles in ways that don’t require it. If you have a huge family, or need that F-350 to haul your gear around the ranch, or your motorcycles to the motocross, that’s one thing, but a city commute is something completely different.

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Ok, yesterday when doing a little web-research on peeing, I stumbled across the “I Used to Believe” site, where you can read all about different childhood beliefs that people had. It’s really fascinating! I just had to post about it again. Here’s a couple good ones from the “selected bests”:

“When I was in kindergarden I used to believe that whenever we would sing “if you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”, the teacher was making a specific reference to something. In fear of her asking me what “it” was, I never clapped my hands. Now I know why teachers spent so much extra time with me.”

“I used to believe that when the judge sentenced a criminal to an impossibly long sentence (like 100+ years) that they kept his body in prison after he died until it was there for the whole sentence.”

“I wanted to grow up and become a marine biologist, which seemed to me the perfect combination of studying nature and shooting people.”

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Konica-Minolta announced three new digital lenses. They look pretty nice!!! Read all about it here at Dpreview.com if you are interested. I know the Minolta community will be very happy!