me me me, i i i

with the pops
in irvine all last week. hit the jackpot bonanza and came back with a new tv, a new cell phone (flip and color; gotta love that), and a new computer. the only thing that should surprise you is that it is a pc. my first. naw, i'm not giving into the dark world of microsoft and boring-nothingness. i need it for development (let's face it, my 12-inch iBook is not the most conducive for wild productivity). so i'll take advantage of my talent of being OS-ambidextrous (ambidext-O.S.?) and have both boxes to work with. i have to spend a few extra minutes a day with the iBook, assuring it that it is still my numbah one. if anything, it takes back seat to the iPod, with which i am having a bonafide lub-affair.

i geek therefore i am
speekina, ran into parker at the gardner's christmas party (and while she deserves her own paragraph, lemme just say quickly how much i love mary gardner — she is super fab) who sheepishly asked if i was interested in selling my aeron (and hinting at the ipod). i of course had to respond with a pshaw! me and my aeron?! part?! are you nuts man??!! no way jose. so then we commenced on a fun conversation on the many wonderful qualities of herman miller (i actually have two of his chairs) and that segued into a rally cry for the ipod. what does that say about me, that i can have thirty-minute conversations about my possesions? (well, granted, we are talking about aerons and ipods, two of the cooler creations of our time). insert a capitalistic, overly marketed, highly engineered, form-follows-function, gimme-gimme-gimme self-resigned sigh (and can you hand me that catalog? thanks).

how does your gardner grow?
so the gardner's christmas party was fun, mellow and filled with cool people. i was obnoxiously late (see previous paragraph about each minute of the last coupla weeks being supersaturated), but still able to catch up with carrie and her little bundle of boydom: rainier, parker and his friend, as well as get a gardner homestead tour. they are so ... well... blessed for a lack of another word. cool couple, cool kids, bigass beautiful house, and plus they are just fun and interesting with fun and interesting friends. that basically equates to a blessed life in my book.

battering rams and catapults
saturday — and this may turn into the coolest tidbit on down the road — corrina and i ventured to santa barbara with dan, so he could meet and be interviewed by an interesting brit who is producing a BBC documentary on ancient war weaponry. (ancient weapons of mass destruction?) she is amassing three teams of craftsmans and experts to build three ancient weapons (two of which are a catapult and battering ram) in two weeks in morocco or tunisia. (i told you it was going to be a cool tidbit.) and dan is a mastercraftsman and super creative design guy anyway. specializing in post and beam work for the last ten years, dan can build anything. plus he has that diplomatic gift of being able to be a leader or a team player. all fingers are crossed and we hope to be receiving north african post cards in the spring. (and / or sending them myself. when we walked up with dan for his interview we were asked, "and who are you?" to which we responded, "his people." i think his peops should get to go along too.)