Traffic has been horrendous on the way to work for the past three days. I think it might have a little to do with school starting up again. Each day going to and from work I would sit, inching forward waiting for my turn to get through the light in order to sit, waiting again at the next one.

Well today my friends, I rode my motorcycle. And let me tell you – it felt GREAT. I got to work in 35 glorious minutes by splitting the lanes about 75% of the time. Why didn’t I ride those other days? Two reasons, it was too cold (yes, I’m a wuss) and I was going out for ice skating and drinks last night (hence, riding was a bad idea). On the way in today I was thinking that the cold excuse isn’t very good. The amount of stress and aggravation it saved me is well worth the cold nose. I should ride every day!

On another note, I just added a new spot illustration to my portfolio – Music Lover. It’s intended for an article about music downloads or music in general.

Ok, this is not the most impressive photo in the world as far as quality goes, but – it is in that I managed to capture a dragonfly in flight while sitting in my back yard. These guys are fast and very hard to catch. Wow.

So I have two very separate kayaking experiences to relay. I went sea kayaking and I’m learning how to roll a kayak for white water kayaking.

Steve is teaching me how to roll, he’s taught about 30 people. On Tuesday nights we go out to Gunn High School in Palo Alto where they have 1.5 hr sessions for $5. I’ve had two lessons so far and he says that I am doing very well.

Before we began I was so nervous about the whole thing. The thought of being trapped in a kayak under water scared the crap out of me. But he went step by step, first showing me how to escape, then moving on to rolling and all of its steps. It was no where near as bad as I anticipated.

At the end of my second lesson I actually rolled the kayak on my own, although I didn’t really feel it – felt just like when he was supporting me. So apparently it’s somewhat impressive to get it on your second time in the boat. He also says that women learn a lot easier than men because we actually listen and we don’t try to muscle it. It’s kind of fun and I can’t wait to try again and actually “get it.”

Now the sea kayaking… I went with my friend Nicci and a group of her friends. We went out at White Gulch in Point Reyes. It was a three hour tour that included lunch. The day was overcast and not too windy, which seemed to be perfect. Our guides were very nice and lunch was pretty darn good.

We saw some Tule Elk, a huge buck with a harem of about 8-9 females. When he saw us he stared for quite a while then decided to move them up hill – hearing him bugle was quite fascinating. We also had a harbor seal following us around for a little while. The guide pulled a big starfish out of the water and passed it around. And we saw all sorts of birds.

The tour was very quiet and peaceful and just long enough to tire me out. I was a little sore afterwards, but not too bad. After that we went to a local bar and had oysters and beer. I had a good time

My co-worker starts off an IM with:

(14:58:52) co-worker: hey, random question

So I come up with a random answer and wait, while he is frantically typing away:

(15:00:01) co-worker: how much trouble would it be to make the email addresses in our site contact info section be displayed as images instead of in plain text? they do that in a lot of places now to avoid spam harvesters and I get a fair amount of complaints about it.

It was serious and work-related, but I gave him:

(15:00:04) Nicole: random answer – because dogs eat poo

He then proceded to laugh very loudly and for a very long time.

I just read this story in SFGate.com – Chinese county’s rabies cure: Club all the dogs / Only police canines spared — owners got 60 cents apiece.

This has to be one of the most horrible, unnecessary and inhumane crimes against animals I’ve ever heard about. Whoever made the decision to kill all the dogs in that county is a huge moron. There are so many other ways they could have dealt with the situation. They could have tested the animals and let the animals that already had vaccinations live. I don’t know a lot about rabies, but they had to have gone overboard on this one.

In case you don’t like reading sad stories like this, the title reveals it all. They don’t get too graphic, but they go into a little more detail about how and why it happened.

I have submitted a bunch of designs to Threadless, granted not all of them were great but I think that at least two of them were print-worthy. The users on that site are mean and have no clue what good design is. They’re a bunch of young punks with nothing else to do with their boring lives. On top of that I think you need to blow one of the Threadless employees to actually get a tee printed. Threadless can kiss my ass!!!

PS – My cute little strange bug is out of the running. But he’ll be available on Zazzle soon. Damn them.

UPDATE: here is a grey version and a blue version on Zazzle.

Another Threadless submission has been approved. This one used to have the text, “I’m a strange bug” on it – but they asked me to remove it and resubmit. I think it was much funnier with the text.

UPDATE: You can get this shirt here.

I found this cool site, or I should say it found me, called ImageKind. The site is a community for artists to sell prints of their work. They also offer prints of some famous pieces too. I just signed up and so far I really like the interface, which is very easy to use. And it seems that the quality of artwork on the site is well above average. Here are my galleries.

I just added a new piece to my portfolio, the Caterpillar from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I painted it for the Sharpcast launch party that took place last night. The theme of the party was Alice in Wonderland, which is why I painted it. There some other things I painted too, but I think this one was the best. He makes me laugh every time I look at him.

Here is a picture that Thomas Hawk took of me, Nicci and Cheryl.

July 28 it finally turned red. And then we ate it. Boy was it yummy!

So it appeared around June 19 and was edible around July 29 – about 6 weeks to ripen. Compare the three photos