Willo O'Brien

crap, i really hoped that after taking SUCH good care of myself all weekend I’d be feeling better today, but instead I feel worse! blah! around noon i was trying to do some work and just felt horrible, so went back to my station on the couch and ended up crashing out for another 3 hours.

super sad and scary news is my kitty seems to be having trouble swallowing. every time he does, it’s an exaggerated swallow, like it hurts him. :( poor baby!!! he’s still eating and drinking which is good, and seems fine energy & personality wise, but i will be calling the vet first thing tomorrow morning. unfortunately i know that this means i’ll probably have to take him in, which he hates! i’m dreading that already, but i’m worried about him, so i sure hope he’s ok.

Last week, after picking up Jem for the Fort Oregon show (more on that later), I mentioned I’d noticed she hadn’t been blogging very much. And we ended up agreeing that neither of us felt like we could rant about all the little things going on in our lives when they seem so insignificant in comparison to the tragedy so many are experiencing right now (Hurricane Katrina).

My friend Aimee lives in New Orleans and I actually spoke to her right before picking up Jem, and found out her & her roommate were safe. Apparently they’d evacuated last weekend and are now living in a hotel in Baton Rouge for the unforeseeable future. Them and 5 cats! oh my! I was glad to hear that she’s safe, especially because, as she even admitted, it could have been just as likely that she would have heard the warnings and chose to stay/stick it out like so many others. However, in her case the family she happened to be cat sitting for talked her into leaving just to be safe, so they went for it. All of her friends & family are glad she did!

Anyway, I have been doing a ton of stuff and haven’t blogged about it at all… which only leads to a backup in my brain of what I want to blog about for one reason or another. But this weekend I’m home trying to fight off a cold, so it’s as good of time as any to take some time to spill it all out and catch up.

Here’s me today, chillin on the couch w/ my kitty & laptop. Kazoo *loves* it when I hang out on the couch! When I pulled out the blanket, he literally came running. :)

hi, this is what i look like when i’m home sick on the couch (haha)

me & my snuggle buddy
xoxo

Alright, so all the way to a week ago Friday: Eric picked me up & we headed down to say hi to our Odeo/Adaptive Path peeps who decided to have a Friday afternoon BBQ in South Park. We didn’t stay for long, and unfortunately I didn’t take one photo (what is happening with me & my forgetting to snap photos!?), but Dom took this one, which is too cool.

So, after saying hello, and singing Sara Happy Birthday we took off to our next destination: Sausalito, where we met up with David, Elana & their too kiddos for jazz in the park. (Exactly what I did the Friday before, see those photos here, since somehow I didn’t take the camera out last Friday!) We got there way too late, so Elana & Zach left and David, Marissa, Eric & I went for Mexican. It was nice to hang w/ all of them!

After Eric dropped me off, I changed & hopped in my car to meet Ali at the Red Devil Lounge for Scissors for Lefty! One of the openers was a band called Climber from Oregon, and I enjoyed their set. They reminded me of Radiohead a bit, and overall left me intrigued. I might have to buy their album to check it out more.

Scissors for Lefty was great (again), and I couldn’t believe how hard I was crushing on cutie lead singer Bryan all night. :) He’s really adorable and I snapped a lot of photos, despite his other mic stand being in the way on most of them, trying to get a snapshot of how cute his smile is. Hi fan girl! hahaa Seriously, though, his whole band is so fun to watch & I’m sure Ali & I will try to catch another show of theirs soon (Hemlock & BotH are next!).

View the Climber/Scissors for Lefty Photo Album

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Last Saturday I worked for about 10 hours, and then Sunday afternoon I finally repotted my huge tree plant! It’s sooooo much happier now!! AND I repotted a couple others (including my orchid that I cannot believe even bloomed this summer with the conditions I just realized it had been living in), gave them all fresh new soil, and even did a slight re-arrange of my living room! It was a good day! Sunday night Stig & I went over to Matt’s and he made us dinner! YUM! He’s always been such an amazing cook and it was great to see both those guys again. I believe (and hope) we’ll all be friends for life, which is such a nice feeling. We watched Summer of Sam, which I thought was fantastic!

Monday night my neighbor, Nathan & I ordered DELICIOUS take out sushi from Tao Yin and watched Disc 1 of Six Feet Under: Season 4! This show slays me… it’s soo good! I can’t wait for Disc 2! I even had a bottle of saki Chris had given me for my birthday – Thanks Chris! – and I even had a saki set my friend Robin had given me long ago, so it all came together and was so fun! Oh, I also watched All About My Mother last week, and loved it.

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Hi marathon post, you still with me?

OK, so Wednesday night after BAM, I picked up Jem & Ali & we headed over to Fort Oregon in the East Bay. It’s basically this guy’s basement where he buys a keg, arranges some bands, charges $4 at the door and ta-da: instant show! You gotta check out the photos to see all the crazy TV’s stacked up in their front yard, too. wild! So who was playing this prestigious show? None other than our favorite local boys Birdmonster & Hijack the Disco played (along w/ 2 other bands), and it was such a fun night.

Jem, Ali, me & Ted hangin out in the backyard @ Fort Oregon
(hez & misty – look! I bought a belt! ha!)

Birdmonster @ Fort Oregon

Hijack the Disco @ Fort Oregon
(except Dave’s missing out of this shot, there’s some of him in the full album, though!)

Honestly, watching these two bands play and knowing them as friends, I was just overcome with this amazing feeling that night. I am so stoked to know such incredibly talented people & I truly feel honored to watch them rock out doing what they love. So. Awesome!!! xoxo

View the full album of photos from this night!

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Which pretty much leads me up to now, since Thursday night I was feeling this coming on, and by Friday afternoon I literally had to stop working and take a nap. I’ve been going to bed at 11 every night (which is SO early for me!) and drinking lots of fluids trying to take care of myself big time. I know I must have caught it from the Weingal kiddos last Friday night. Kids are so germ-y!

So combined with a little bit of work, I’ve been catchin up on TiVo & Netflix. Lastnight I watched a marathon of TiVo’d episodes ABC’s LOST. Have you seen it? Lyne kept telling me all last season how good it was, so I started TiVo’ing it, but hadn’t watched any of them yet. It only took one to hook me… it’s so great! But I’m not sure what will happen once the new season starts, because I think it conflicts with one of my other favs… but we’ll see. Speaking of favorite shows though, I’m so excited for a new season of Will & Grace, Scrubs & ER! :) Oh, and while I’m on the subject of guilty TV pleasures, I also am totally hooked on Laguna Beach! ha!

As for movies, lastnight (and into this morning, because I was too tired to finish it) I watched Thelma & Louise. Can you believe I’ve never seen that movie!? It’s great!! Now I’m off to make dinner & watch my next movie: The Goonies!! yay!! (Ali & Trevor, wish you were here!)

Oh my god! This is awesome!

HOLY SH*T!!!!!!!! I dropped off my Powerbook on Monday night, so it maybe shipped out Tuesday morning, and just now DHL dropped it off! WOW!!!

Holy turn around, eh!? I can’t believe it! I actually have been receiving a lot of packages this week, but was sure I’d received the last of them, so when this arrived I had no idea what it was, set it down and went back to work. HA! Then about an hour later, I looked over and was like “oh ya, I wonder what is in there?” and so I opened it. Low & behold it was my baby!!! I almost cried! hahaa!!!

So, turns out they did wipe it completely (never listen to them if they say they might not, they almost aaaaaalways do), so right now I’m doing a full restore from Retrospect‘s Sunday 8/28 backup, that should put me right where I left off! *crossing my fingers*

Man, today is a good day!!!

p.s. Apple’s Customer Service on this has me dumbfounded and glowing. In addition, calling Retrospect for Support on how to do this full restore was a piece of cake: within 15 minutes they walked me through how to get the restoration process started. They’re awesome!!

UPDATE: I am completely sold on Retrospect forever… how *amazing* that I was able to completely recover my entire operating system, applications, bookmarks, EVERYTHING exactly as it was before it crashed. *kneels down & thanks the mac and retrospect gods* Let this be a message to you all: BACKUP NOW!

So that whole 1 RAM slot dying was a big fat indicator that the logic board wasn’t so happy. Yesterday things froze up, so I powered down and went to boot up again, but it wouldn’t get past the spinning gear apple screen. So after an hour dealing w/ Apple Care on the phone, I just went for it & hauled my arse downtown to chance it at the Genius Bar. No such luck there either, so it’s now officially at the mac doctor getting a new logic board and I’m crossing my fingers they don’t have to wipe the drive. However, if they do it’s (pretty much) ok because:

– I have been doing regular backups w/ Retrospect every Sunday – so it was just backed up!
– I bought an external drive while I was at the store, so that before they took it I could at least grab my uber important files off of it first (which we were lucky we could even get to!). #1 reason being so that I had them *just in case* the Retrospect backup wasn’t good for some reason AND #2 so I could have access to my files via my PC this week. Totally worth the last minute buy on the external drive!

The big things I don’t want to ever lose are my Freelance files & my photos!! I’ve had 3 friends recently lose all their photos due to hard drive crashes and/or theft. I would die!! In fact this new external hard drive might seriously become a backup for my current external drive. haha. a backup for my backup!

I’m also extremely thankful that I wasn’t on heavier deadlines yesterday & I was able to break away and handle it. My God, I would have been S-T-R-E-S-S-E-D if I was in the midst of a more hectic week when this all went down.

So, I’m on my PC this week, which has been taking some getting used to – and there’s definitely some snags here & there between software versions & fonts that I’m having to deal with… but overall it could have been *so* much worse. So I’m counting my blessings. That said, I can’t wait to get my powerbook back!!

Here I was just about to ask you all if anyone knew where I could find some photos (that people may have taken lastnight) of Mars, since it was supposed to be the closest it’s ever been – like as big as the moon! Well, turns out it was a HOAX!! Damn internet! *raises fist*

I took these of Kazoo, at my last house, back in 2002:

Inspired by Cats in Sinks! I would love to have them added to the collection, but I think they’re currently getting slammed with that question, so for now they will grace my blog! Go check out all the super cutie kitties in sinks on that sight, though… they’re adorable!

Looks like this guy may have had his hand in CuteLittleKittens.com & DailyKitten.com, too! awesome!

For those of you coming from Ted & Craigs posts about my show calendar, it needs an update! Sorry!

I promise I will update it over the weekend… pinky swear! In the meantime, check out Bagel Ted’s – and go see some music! :)