Thoughts after returning to Disneyland after 27 years:

• Everything looks a lot shorter.
• The correct response to why the Autopia cars are still using smelly gasoline is not "because it would cost lot to change it" but "look at who is sponsoring it" (Chevron). (Honda sponsors the electric motors in Hong Kong Disneyland.)
• It's a little embarassing to almost get outgunned by a three-year-old at Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.
• There's nothing wrong with taking your kid's place if he gets to the front of the Minnie Mouse line and then refuses to get a photo taken with her.
• I don't care what anyone else says, the spinning teacups are awesome.

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Irvine Robbins grew up in Seattle and worked at his father's dairy in Tacoma, so the Seattle PI's obituary has the details on his local life. The co-founder of Baskin-Robbins was born in Winnipeg, and his family moved to the area when his uncle purchased an ice cream company on Capitol Hill. He had his bar mitzvah at Temple DeHirsch Sinai, was a yell leader at Stadium High School, and graduated from the University of Washington. When he opened his first ice cream store he defected to sunny California.
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The Nintendo Fan Network at Seattle Mariners' games lets fans with a DS Lite chat with other fans in the park, order food, check game scores and stats. Seattle PI reporter Jon Naito tried it out and gave it a lukewarm review as a "nice distraction from those inevitable ballpark lulls." Now free after its $5 pilot last season, the network lets you order only basic ballpark foods, and only before the seventh inning. A DS Lite can be rented for $10 if you don't have your own. (Nintendo is the owner of the Mariners.)
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Thursday, May 01, 2008

I'm taking a few days off from blogging to catch up on work and sleep, but I should be back next week with tales of adventures in L.A.
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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The rising rice prices are affecting the Asian Counseling and Referral Service Food Bank, where this basic staple is the mainstay of the diet for the community they serve.
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So you've decided that shiny CDs and releasing files direct to the Internet are too good for you. You want your album on that good old stuff: vinyl. What do you do? Freddie Feldman has a guide for you based on his experience releasing an a cappella version of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. You get to have a lacquer master created to make your metal stampers, pick the weight of your vinyl, test your proofs (you do have a turntable, right?), make sure your artwork is ready to be blown up to 12" album cover, and print labels for your records. Don't delay, this technology may not be available for much longer.
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Monday, April 28, 2008

As I read about what types of purchases people are cutting back on in the current economic climate, I keep thinking that Target is nicely poised to attract the consumer who could afford to shop a bit higher class, but who chooses not to when it takes $50+ to fill up on gas and the grocery bill is suddenly something to consider more closely. Today I walked past the cosmetics aisle in Target and noticed a black aproned Boots cosmetics salesperson chatting with women about this British drugstore brand and decided that I may be more right than I'd anticipated.
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When we visited Fort Bragg, California along the Mendocino coast a few years ago, the highlight of the trip for me was a visit to Glass Beach. There, glowing in the sun, lie smoothed shards of glass from years of household garbage, beaten by the waves. The nearby presence of dioxin went understandably unpublicized in the tourist trade. The town housed a redwood mill, now closed, which left behind a toxic waste legacy. A unique clean-up proposal has been proposed by town residents: mushrooms. Mushrooms have been successfully used in experiments to clean up oil spills and research has also shown success with plastics and other chemicals. The Fort Bragg fungi proponents would like to be a pilot study for mushrooms cleaning up dioxins, and called in expert Paul Stamets to assess their situation. Despite some skeptics, Georgia-Pacific is financing a pilot project to see if mushrooms can bioremediate 10 cubic yards of the toxic soil.
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Friday, April 25, 2008

It may be a myth that hemlines go up when the economy tanks, but I'll maintain that the current trend for three-quarter length sleeves (which I have grudgingly become used to) was supported by manufacturers wanting to save money on fabric. And what use is a coat that doesn't come down to your wrists? Well, they've brought arm warmers into style.
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RedEnvelope, one of the few online retailers that also built a successful mail-order catalog business, filed Chapter 11 this past weekend and has agreed to a takeover by Creative Catalogs Corporation. On the surface it's business as usual, with the website still up and taking orders. RedEnvelope has been in business for nine years. Mall and catalog mainstay Sharper Image has also been going downhill and is looking for a buyer.
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Thursday, April 24, 2008

For an actor looking to obtain a degree in his chosen profession, the college application process is likely to include an audition. Auditions are probably old hat, school plays and musicals, local theater, but "Those were auditioning for parts," says Adam Pelta-Pauls whose college auditions were followed by the N.Y. Times. "This is auditioning for your life." The prospective students present two monologues and have a third prepared just in case. Auditors look for emotional transparency, receptiveness to direction, "Someone who brings humanity to their work. And a student who really wants to work hard."
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It's a bit far afield for us, but the Yakima Fruit Market in Bothell, WA is the best match we've found for the fruit and veggie markets we miss from California. The wife of a Yakima employee is keeping a nice blog about new arrivals at Yakima (local asparagus!), recipes, and other local tidbits: Fresh Picked News.
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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Three giant pianos washed up on a beach in the Netherlands. From the artist, Florentijn Hofman's website: "For the fifth anniversary of the Schiermonnikoog International Chamber Music Festival, I came up with a concept of grand pianos washed upon the shore. They refer to stranded cargo and ditto whales. To be salvaged or saved; in any case to be wondered and surprised about."
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Nathan Myhrvold commissioned his own personal full-scale model of a Charles Babbage-designed difference engine. Before it goes into his personal collection, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA is putting it on display. Built by the same engineers that constructed the one in the London Science Museum, the difference engine cost a million dollars and ran into the same kind of setbacks that a typical hardware project runs into, frustrations and a vendor who went out of business. (via numerous techie blogs)
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

I've uploaded almost all of my Beijing trip photos to flickr, so here are a few favorite shots from my final two days: peddler on the Great Wall, steep and crumbly Great Wall steps, Summer Palace bridge, Seventeen Arch bridge.
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If there's one place I expect old traditions to die hard, I know it's at my alma mater, but it's still nice to see, year after year, the women of Wellesley sacrificing their vocal chords for the morale of the runners in the Boston Marathon. Here are the choice quotes from the papers this year. From the Globe: "'Nothing can compare to Wellesley.'... The stretch along the route is often cited as one of the more vocal and supportive, as students hit the streets with signs and voices of encouragement for the athletes passing by." Daily News Tribune: "Bentley College senior Dan Badavus, running in his second marathon, attributed his success to the legendary cheering section from Wellesley College. 'The Wellesley girls - it was just deafening,' he said. 'The noise just gets you going, and you can feel the adrenaline surging.'" And leave it to the Herald to put it all in perspective: "'This is the best day of the entire year,' said Emilie Papageorgiou, 22, as she took it all in outside Wellesley College. 'All that sisterhood crap we talk about all the time is true today.'"
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Monday, April 21, 2008

Fans of the Car Talk guys may want to catch their television appearance on the "Car of the Future" NOVA broadcast this Tuesday. John Lithgow narrates as Tom and Ray learn about the world's reliance on petroleum and what can or can't be done about it.
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Nalgene rose from being a supplier of lab equipment to a well-known brand of water bottle, available in trendy colors. Now that consumers are aware of the controversy over bisphenol-A and whether it is safe or not, Nalgene is protecting their brand by phasing out BPA in their Outdoor line and publicizing their other bottles without BPA. They've put up a web site with a comparison chart of their products and their qualities while still maintaining that BPA is safe. Popular baby bottle maker Avent has not publicly caved yet to any BPA controversy and states that they are following approved standards as are other polycarbonate bottle brands like Dr. Brown's and Playtex.
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Friday, April 18, 2008

At certain periods in the 8+ year lifetime of this weblog I've had time to research posts at greater depth, attempting to add value and usefulness to this vast Internet instead of just linking to interesting things. Working a full-time job and also being a parent doesn't leave me much time for research these days, just finding interesting things to point to takes enough time. Which is all a self-centered way of me leading up to pointing out that Andy Baio does what I wish I had time to do with a weblog. Not only does he have interesting links on the side, but he has now committed himself to adding interesting weblog content to the World Wide Web on waxy.org. And his latest is just a mind-blowing doozy to someone like me who worshipped both Infocom and Douglas Adams. So, instead of trying to find anything interesting today to link to, I'm taking the time instead to read about his amazing find from the "Infocom Drive" which I'm sure will be on every popular linksite in a matter of hours: Milliways: Infocom's Unreleased Sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Thank you Andy!
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Thursday, April 17, 2008

The Seattle P.I.'s Edibles column has been focusing on what fruit trees grow well in the area. The first column gives high marks to Italian prunes and describes exactly what we went through with our apple tree (and why we decided to remove it when we landscaped the back yard): apple maggots appeared here in the mid 1980s and apple trees are no longer low maintenance. The second column details all the things that can go wrong when you grow cherries, peaches, and apricots. I'm sure I'll never see a recommendation for an outdoor citrus here, but I'm going to try an indoor pot of Meyer Lemon again one day.
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"A dozen plump tomatoes, sea salt, cayenne pepper and Demerara sugar" in a traditional glass bottle from Heinz will appear on food store shelves in the U.K. this month. This gourmet ketchup for sophisticated palates won't be released in the U.S., but now that Heinz has discontinued their kid-friendly pink, blue, purple, green colored EZ Squirt line, maybe they'll go after the American adults soon.
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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Former (and current) New Englanders take note: herein lies a photo of the dismantling of the "last original Dunkin' Donuts sign standing anywhere." It's a neon original from 1957, now rusty and in bad condition. The Brighton Dunkin' Donuts franchise is putting up a new-fangled flourescent backlit plexiglass sign instead. The old sign is sitting in a yard, with an uncertain fate. (via Serious Eats) Speaking of sign replacements, blog comments about this sign led me to the very old news that Boston's landmark Citgo sign went LED in 2005. It uses half as much energy and stands up to the weather better. But some people actually miss the buzzing.
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In 2006, Ralph O. Esmerian bought luxury jewelry retailer Fred Leighton using a loan from Merrill Lynch. He defaulted on the $185 million loan in January, prompting Merrill Lynch to call in the collateral. Christie arranged an auction of the jewelry collection Esmerian put up for the loan, which includes a pink diamond ring ($15 million estimate) and a diamond brooch ($6 million estimate) that once belonged to the wife of Napoleon III. But Esmerian took legal action to block the auction, calling it a "fire sale" and stating that the jewelry would fetch better prices in private sales. The auction was called off, but you know Merrill Lynch wants to see that money soon. Shiny jewels aren't liquid and Merrill has had enough. Esmerian had also hired Peter Bacanovic as CEO of Fred Leighton which didn't impress his creditors. Bacanovic used to work for Merrill Lynch and had his 15 minutes of fame and 5 months in prison for being Martha Stewart's stock broker.
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Monday, April 14, 2008

Considering that Merchant & Ivory's production of "A Room with a View" is my favorite movie, I took it incredibly well when I read about PBS' Masterpiece new version of the E.M. Forster novel. Since ultimately it is the book that is the heart of the film, I'm open to this new "Room" that debuted last night, much as I'd welcome a fresh production of a classic play. This version is not reimagined in a different era or departures of characterization, but it is wrapped within a flashback that provides an ending twist that several critics have called out as alarming to purists. Of course it's unlikely that my favorite movie will be replaced anyway.
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This article on posh barbershops that offer salon services for men ("don't call them spas") briefly discusses the difference between hair stylists and barbers. The skillset for cosmetology and barber's licenses are different. These upscale barber shops often hire stylists with cosmetology licenses to give massages, manicures, and facials in addition to haircuts. The cosmetology license is more versatile for the range of services these shops offer, but barbers take 300 hours of training with clippers and are skilled in that ultimate luxury service, the straightedge razor shave. Shop owners are hiring stylists who specialize in straight-razor shaves instead. Some states have combined their cosmetology and barber licenses, but that means aspiring barbers have to sit through learning how to do nails and updos. Barbers and barbershops continue to decline in number as stylists grow.
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Friday, April 11, 2008

I bought my husband a Sony Reader Digital Book and he likes it.
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A real estate agent for a house in Novato, California went completely beyond what one may think is reasonable to make a sale. After putting money into improvements and then watching the asking price dip lower and lower, the owner could no longer afford mortgage payments. The lender began foreclosure proceedings and was ready to sell at a loss on the steps of city hall when an offer finally came in that would not have cost the lender any money. The agent called the lender to hold off the foreclosure. When he got nowhere with the lender representative, he tried to escalate up the management chain but failed. Unwilling to stop there, he looked up the names of the lender's executives and concocted email addresses to try to get through to someone. He actually reached the Chief Executive and was ultimately granted another 30 days to close the deal. Whew.
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