Asshole du Jour: Intro

This section will be dedicated to those, well, impossible-to-overlook assholes. Our first asshole du jour: the person who works in my business park who thought it would be cute to put his (playing the odds here, people) cigarette butt out in a flower:



And, while I certainly personally know too many assholes, I'm not going to make these posts about people I know. At least not intentionally. Or until I change my mind.

Riding the Rails: Amtrak Better Know the Way to San Jose

I'm getting ready to take my first non-family-generally-emergency-related trip in over 18 months this week. Yay!

Ostensibly, I'm going up to the San Jose area to check out Stitches West 2009, but that's just an excuse to go somewhere. Firstly, I decided to take the Amtrak Coast Starlight route. It runs from Union Station up to Seattle, with a convenient stop in San Jose. I'd never actually taken Amtrak further than Santa Barbara, and that was a long time ago. Ok, the trip is about 10 hours long each way, but I'll bring my laptop and some DVDs and some books and those multiple unread issues of Scientific American I have piled up. And, according to the Amtrak page,

The scenery along the Coast Starlight route is unsurpassed. The dramatic snow-covered peaks of the Cascade Range and Mount Shasta, lush forests, fertile valleys and long stretches of Pacific Ocean shoreline provide a stunning backdrop for your journey.

So I will probably take lots of blurry pictures from the train.

The San Jose area has what looks like a very convenient system of light rail. I made sure to book a hotel near a rail stop, so I can take the light rail from the Amtrak station up to the hotel, and then take the same line to a stop near the Santa Clara Convention Center, where the Stitches show is taking place.

I get in Thursday night, and I'll check out the show Friday. I haven't decided if I'm going to wear my "Mixed Martial Arts and Crafts" t-shirt or my "I Knit So I Do Not Kill People" shirt (in pink). I will, of course, pack both. I will also carry my newly-finished kitty back pack.¹

Saturday, assuming I can drag my butt out of bed after all that overwhelming excitement, I'm thinking about checking out the Winchester Mystery House, also located in San Jose, although it looks like that will require a bus in addition to the rail. After that, I may check out the San Jose Kinokuniya location, which looks to have a larger selection than the Los Angeles store. The San Francisco store is supposed to be huge, but at over 40 miles from the hotel, it would involve three different rail services and at least one bus. I'm not sure I'm up to that much adventure! Then, on Sunday, it's back down to Union Station.

And I will of course be blogging about it the whole way!

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¹Slightly modified version of the "Punk Rock Backpack" by Heather Barnes.

Pandora's Litter Box: LOLCATS!!!

I have a cat named Pandora. I have to clean out her litter box. 'Nuff said.

Anyway, I found out about the most awesomest lolcat site, icanhascheezburger.com. So then I had to try to submit my own lolcat picture, starring Pandora!



Go vote for her so she'll get on the main page! kthxnbai!

Knittin' Crap: Intro

I knit a lot. And crochet. And a bunch of other stuff that could be euphemized as artsy-craftsy. I will now proceed to post about some of those things here.

P.S. I haven't actually knit any reproductions of crap, but I do plan to crochet some Happy Poo.

Intro to the May Metro Experiment

I've been taking public transportation to work most days for the past 10 months, the time I've worked at my current job. Most days are relatively uneventful, but sometimes even the little things are entertaining. Or perhaps I'm just easily entertained. At any rate, I decided to document my experiences for a month, and April was so weird I was sad I missed it but figured it was time.

If I could figure out a way to keep specific places more anonymous, I would, but it would end up being too hard to do, making the language too awkward. I live in Glendale and work at a motion picture studio in Hollywood. There, I said it.

Note: I tend to read while I'm on the bus, although I sometimes knit if I have a seat to myself and the book is boring me. Both activities are liberally salted with just spacing out. I also rarely put on headphones unless I'm knitting or someone near me is having a particular obnoxious conversation. (I'll try to skip the headphones altogether this month, as that's sort of what I'm after, unless I'm too cranky and the conversation is in a language I don't understand anyway.) I have had maybe 3 cell phone conversations on the bus in the past year, but I do use my BlackBerry occasionally. I plan on otherwise mostly continuing my regular bus activities, but I have a small notebook I use to jot notes and try to document the best quotes before they exit my brain. I tend to a small amount of paranoia, so I try to be surreptitious about it without being overtly sneaky-looking.

On most days, I can be door-to-door in an hour in the mornings. Driving would usually be at least half that and leave me cranky, to boot. Evenings, though, it tends to be closer to 90 minutes. I've had nightmare evenings where it was even worse, but because none of the Los Angeles MTA light rail lines go near my home, I am stuck on buses and they are at the mercy of street traffic.

Another note: I called this the "Metro Journal," but the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority (aka, "Metro") is only one of the bus lines I use. It goes between the major incorporated cities in the area around the city of Los Angeles, while most of those cities also have their own smaller lines for travel within their city. I usually take a DASH bus, a line run by and within Los Angeles proper, from Hollywood Blvd to my actual place of employ. (Hollywood is an "administrative district" of the city of Los Angeles, the occasional separatist movement aside.)

Disclaimer: While I may make occasional, potentially negative remarks about some of the providers of public transportation in Los Angeles County, my opinion overall is mostly positive. I own a car so I have the option of not riding the bus. The vast majority of passengers are reasonable people who are just trying to get from point A to point B with a minimum of fuss. I also know that everyone, passengers and bus operators, have their bad days and I try to take that into account. Of course, if all the buses always ran like clockwork and all the passengers were always quiet and normal, there wouldn't be much to write about, would there?