Chasing Windmills

today was day one of our 2 day drive to ABQ. California is such a bigass state- after 9 hours in the car, we are still in CA, in a little town called Needles on the border of Arizona. all this time in the car is a great time to ponder deep questions, such as: "is cottage cheese really cheese?" 


i also learned i have a fascination with windmills. they look like an army regiment where every soldier is doing something slightly different then the next one.

besides windmill land (which we passed through during a brief rain shower), a lot of our trip looked like this:

and then we got a rainbow on rt. 40:

more gorgeous clouds:

and sand dunes:

we ate dinner at a diner in Needles that featured this sign in the entrance:

it also featured dinner entertainment:

my favorite book in the gift shop was called "If Life Were Fair, Horses Would Get to Ride Half the Time". truer words were never said.

Last Meal(s)

for the past week or so, i've been trying to hit up all my fave restaurants in the city since i won't be seeing them again for a while. here's the list so far:


san dong bbq house on geary- lovely carb-y wide hand-pulled noodles 
gialina's on diamond- crispy thin crust pizza
pizza nostra on de haro- soggy thin crust pizza, the kind where you pick up a slice and all the cheese slides right off + the mozz can stretch from here to sacramento
la victoria mexican bakery + cafe on 24th- love their mexican wedding cookies + empanadas
hot cookie on castro- everything's good! erotic bakeries always seem to have the best baked goods around
pica pica on 15th + valencia- venezuelan arepas + maizewiches, nothing else like it in sf


elsewhere in the bay:
mama liang's kitchen in cupertino- best taiwanese food i've found in bay area
5 joy in foster city- more thick doughy noodles!
omogari in san jose- korean food as good as what you can get in LA
taste buds in sunnyvale- addictive indian food
cafe baklava in mountain view- moroccan comfort food to me
orenchi ramen in santa clara- long lines, loud, crowded, short hours, amazing ramen

TOD: wishing

today's OOJ is an oldie, but goodie. from his 2000 album, The Truth Hurts, here is boston's own Edo G featuring Masta Ace in "Wishing". 11 yrs later, it's still too relevant.


Edo G feat Masta Ace "Wishing"

Lost in a Fog

any postcard of the golden gate bridge against clear blue skies has got to be photo-shopped. this is how it looks every time i drive over it.

OOJ: scone invasion

today my PR made scones. more accurately speaking, my PR made scone:

OOJ: german moving boxes

our most recently acquired batch of used moving boxes seem to be German. i understand one word on the list, probably the same one you do: 

OOJ: metal sculptures in abq

albuquerque (ABQ) has all kinds of random but intriguing sculptures scattered throughout the city. this guy is stuck in a shopping plaza with a cost plus world market, which is where i was going when i found him. he is not alone, but he is definitely the goofiest looking one. here are some others near by:

today's OOJ (object of joy): cupcake in spaceship

discovered this awesome little guy at whole foods, where the staff humored me by putting him in a little protective plastic spaceship. i got him for my friend dave's son, who's 4 and who just became a big brother for the first time. when dave saw it, he said, "what's this? a penguin cupcake?" when it is CLEARLY a hedgehog, but i forgave him because he's the dad of a newborn. then josh, waking up from a nap, saw the cupcake. "it's a penguin", he said. like father, like son. 

i enjoy watching a white man get frisked

10 PM on a saturday night. 


my permanent roommate (PR) and i were driving back to our hotel after hanging out at a local microbrewery and having one beer each. PR was driving. he made a right turn onto a frontage road leading to the highway, and immediately our car was flooded with that unmistakable red + blue light. 


PR pulled over and we looked at each other. neither of us had any idea why a cop would stop us. we waited for the officer to approach the window. the officer- a baby-faced, pink-cheeked guy with closely cropped blonde hair- addressed PR as "man", as in, "ok, man, i just need to see your license + registration." he had PR follow his pen with his eyes. then he asked PR to step out of the car. he patted him down and had him walk the line while counting out loud.


i am terrified of cops b/c i hate their near-absolute power- their version of what happened carries much more weight than any words i can come up with. so part of my brain was racing, trying to guess how much it would cost to bail PR out of jail, and whether it would max out my credit line.


another part of me, however, was gratified by the fact that PR is a clean-cut, caucasian male. i suspect that for many Americans, when they hear the word "criminal", the face of a person of color, probably male, pops into their minds. we live in a country where people are still found "guilty of being black [or latino, or asian]". i exulted in every car that drove past us and i wanted to yell: "look at this white guy who's getting frisked! he must have done something bad! he must be dangerous!"


all of which is unfair to PR, who, understandably, did not enjoy this experience at all, and had not committed any crimes beyond weaving outside of his lane twice, according to the officer (neither of us remembers noticing this). but i'm enamored by the possibility that maybe one of the passengers in one of the passing cars was a kid, and that maybe the next time this kid heard someone  talking about a crime that had been committed, his brain would flash back to this night's image: a white man in the glare of a cop's maglite, slowly following a white line painted on the ground.