Get your freaky Elvis dolls, here.

Strange stuff abounds - just got the info on this HOT, new product from a supplier:

http://www.entertainmentearth.com/prodinfo.asp?number=MTL9632



Now, back to work.

smoke...

the hazy smoke from all of the nearby widlfires is filling the sky with a weird reddish cast - reminding me of the terrible San Diego wildfires from a few years back...let's hope things improve.

Quite possibly the worst car ever.

We find ourselves using our friend Lauren's 1999 Subaru wagon for the weekend. Long story short, she and her husband and infant baby are going to Davis this weekend, and their A/C is busted. So we lent them the Volvo, and took this thing.

I'm all for friendship, and I would make the trade again in a minute, but this is one seriously bad car -- slow, ugly and surprisingly cramped for a wagon, this thing makes a good case for walking. It is so ugly I didn't even bother going outside to take a picture, I just shot this one through my office window.

Jen's working tonight, so I think I'll hop in the Subaru, put on a flannel shirt and some patchouli oil, and go flirt with girls wearing peasant skirts and Birkenstocks, perhaps somewhere out in West Marin. I'd be discovered as an impostor, though -- it would be like the episode of Seinfeld where George pretended he was a marine biologist. haha!

Cleanup on the Email Aisle

Because Yahoo mail is a wasteland of spam and advertising, I am cutting over my personal email to a gmail account, and I am even consolidating all of my social and business networking to another gmail account for that specific purpose. Yeah!

All of this cleanup and organization feels so good!

Here's an amusing video on social networking.

more new!

here's a snap of the new BMW sedan....

Out with the old, in with the (semi) New

Jen's ever-so-reliable, rock-solid Mercedes sedan is going away tomorrow. After four years and 40K miles, we're ending the lease. We'll drop it off at a nearby MBZ dealership...after which it will be thrown to the auto-auction wolves. Kind of a sad ending for such a great little car -- and interesting that Mercedes was unwilling to deal on a new one, given that a dealership person recently told me that MBZ has more than 100,000 cars coming off-lease in the next quarter. Good luck to them, I say. But this photo is a great way to remember this car -- a bit dirty, wheels covered in brake dust and ready at any time for a lengthy, high-speed trek.

Now, on to the new. Or sort of new. Jen found an incredible deal on a 2006 Volvo V70 wagon on Craigslist. A salesman at the local Volvo store in Santa Rosa wanted out of his lease on this near-perfect wagon, loaded with 22k miles on it. So we took over the lease, and she's gonna drive it for a year and then we'll probably dump it. It will be great for Jen's new business, and it seems fairly quick with the turbo 5-cylinder motor. It's a similar khaki green metallic color to our old, beloved Saab, which is kinda cool.

By the way, we're not getting a golden retriever anytime soon, but I do have my eye on a couple of Volvo-appropriate bumper stickers: "Save Mono Lake" and something from the Kucinich campaign are topping the list of must-haves.

Coming next month: the BMW gets replaced!

Here's the Tree

Just about tinder-box dry right now....but here's a pic.