green bellies

ok, sooooo way back in August I went to guatemala to visit JB. It was a BLAST!!! Ever since then i've been meaning (and promising) to blog about our trip...and so finally, here I am.

Highlights:
- RUINS!!! There are ruins all over antigua. It's amazing. This one church had a main section with three domes, each dome top was gone but had been covered by tarp. There was something romantic and broken about the whole scene.
- VOLCANOES!!! Antigua is surrounded by them -- which was pretty cool. But what was absolutely fantastic was Lago Atitlan - which is a wonderful lake ringed by three volcanoes. I could see them from my bedroom window. It was uber neat.
- LIGHTNING! Phenomenal. On our first night at the little resort we stayed at on Lago Atitlan we hung out on the porch talking, telling pirate jokes (yarr!) and watching the lightning. It was soo relaxing. Our second night we hung out in the outdoor hot tub (literally a pool with a heating stove in the middle). When the lightning got 10 counts away JB made us come in. Something about water + electricity = bad...
- AMEX RULE. This was key. The water in Central America just isn't that good, which typically means no fresh fruit or salads. However, JB decided that any restaurant that accepts American Express credit cards is probably going to serve water/foods that are american tummy safe. So far, it's proved to be a good rule!
- TV. Tela Novella's are a riot. Really too much fun! Camerone. Caliente. Corazon.
- JB = Jote-Be. This was probably my favorite new thing. His name in Spanish is "Jote-Be" (Hota-bay). It's hilarious to me.
- HOTELS -- ok, we stayed in two awesome hotels. In antigua, Panza Verde. This hotel was just gorgeous. The food was delicious. The atmosphere was cool. Buena Vista Social Club plays there on Thursday and Friday nights. Sweet. At the lake we stayed at La Casa Del Mundo. To get there you have to take a boat. We had grand plans of kayaking, visiting the other towns on the lake and relaxing by the water on one of the terraces. The last one was pretty much all we did. The sunrise and sunsets were just amazing.



Check out the rest of the pictures:
Antigua
Lago Atitlan

P.S. Thank you JB for kicking-off birth-month celebrations (in september!!) with the wodnerful cube-photo-gift!! and congrats on running your 1/2 marathon today. You ROCK.
P.P.S. Why green bellies?? Avocados!! Yummy. yummy. yummy. Legend says the guatemalan's have green bellies from eating so many.

vacation!

i'm going on vacation. yes! vacation. I plan to be offline at this cool little resort in central america where all we'll get to do is kayak, read, suntan, play pool and enjoy a fruity cocktail or two. i can't wait...now let's just hope airport security keeps it sane.

While i'm gone, check out these cool pics:


Click the bear to see what happen's next!

OK Go - Here It Goes Again

A while back I posted the original OK Go video...well here's their latest video -- and this time they rock it on treadmills. gotta love it! Now go watch.

iTunes - Features please!!!

SEARCH
- ability to search for a song and find it not only in my library but also in any mix i have created. Seriously the search in tunes sucks! i should be able to build a search query "artist = legend" "song=people" and it should say "are you looking for John Legend - Ordinary People?" I should be able to find songs I own by typing in a snippet of the lyrics. I should have lyric search *integrated* into my music experience.

COMMUNITY
- sometimes i find an imix by a user i really like. often i'll click and see what other imixes they have made. often i buy ALL their imixes! really! But you know what i can't do? Select a user as a favorite and then get an alert whenever that user makes a new imix. i really don't get this!! it seems like such a great feature that would totally lead to more buying from me.
I'm just asking for the ability to track users or select "influencers" and buy from them! Maybe they should get an influencer rev-share or something...
The other thing I'd love is recommendations based upon what I'm listening to or my friends are listening to. Seriously. They need Last.Fm.

PURCHASES
Give me a discount if i've already bought a song on an album from you. When you tell me that I've already purchased part of an album -- tell me what I already have!

There's more. but that's all my rant can capture *right now*

(note - original rant was on 5/9/06 ...but time stamp is from when i actually posted it to my blog)

P.S. And please don't tell me they are coming zune...

Update: DC reminded me last night of another feature request: The ability to link to songs in iTunes. I want to find a song and then put a link to that song on my blog or send it to a friend or have my away messagee in iChat or Jabber or Gtalk link to the song in iTunes. Again, this seems like a good way to drive purchases...and community referrals. There is a way to do this today, but its complex and not cut & paste. I want cut & paste links dammit.

personal responsibility

I've recently been thinking a lot about personal responsibility -- and trying to define for myself what it means to me, where I have control in my life and where i truly lack control or impact. This has been an interesting and at times intense exercise -- and the results of my analysis have shown that pretty much I'm responsible for it all. :) That's both the good news and the bad news. It's the good news because I'm pretty proud of a lot of my accomplishments to date -- I've worked for some amazing companies, done great work, built cool things. Personally, I'm extremely lucky to be so well-loved -- I have incredible friends and family and i'm surrounded by special, unique and not-so-unique people who bring joy, intellectual challenge and love into my life daily. I've also got a great home and enough material possessions to never want again. Although, shamelessly, I do.

These are the upsides. The downside is that i have to own my failures, my distractions, my bad decisions. And that's been where the thinking and analysis began. I think we all struggle with life, with achieving our goals. I'm at point lately where a lot of things that I had wanted to accomplish, I've done. Travel the world? Well, it's always going to be a work in progress (I still have to go to Africa and Antartica!!!) but i've traisped across chunks of it. Buy a home? Done that. Get my dream job? Yep. Be in love? Yes and awww. Then there all of the things I didn't plan for, that have caused me unneeded pain. Making bad choices at work or in relationships, not being focused and generally living my life on a chaotic edge of cyclical successes and failures. It's been like a roller coaster. Which has been exciting, but not always satisfying, and the down bits have caused the high's of the up-bits to feel extreme at times. These days I'm aiming for more balance, and that's brought me to thinking about personal responsibility. I think i've been scapegoating the fact that I own my destiny. That there may be no such thing as destiny --- and whether there is or isn't, doesn't matter. It's fundamentally up to me to make good choices, and correct the bad ones -- not just by taking ownership of their negativity, but by correcting them by changing course. This has been hard, because, well, a change in direction usually requires some sort of idea on where you want to go and be...

anyways, that's what's on my mind. right now. so i'm going to be responsible. That's my 2006 theme. It's a mid-year NYE resolution. I promise.

Truth or Dare - quick recap

2006-7 Board: Ruthie, Phil, Natala (Me), Steve, Sam, Jason

On Tuesday night we held our first ArtReach Seattle event with the new board. It was a total blast!!! Over 200 people came to the event and our wonderful artists sold many, many pieces. I'm really proud to be a part of such an interesting and fun organization. Pictures from the event are here.

Learn more about artreach here: http://www.artreachseattle.org

pirates of the caribbean....

Don't go!
We went to a special preview of this movie last night...i was pysched. Really. I loved the first movie, think Johnny Depp in all forms is hot and enjoy Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightly as well...however this movie wasn't worth it. Seriously, it ends up being a 2+ hour *trailer* for the next movie! As a result, the story was incomplete -- no component has resolution and the ending is a cliffhanger meant to get you excited for movie #3. Blech.

Of course, I'll go see #3....but this movie you can seriously skip.