Infant Memories...

I've heard it said that we are blank slates at birth. My own memories from the womb involve self aware thoughts and feelings. I do not have sensory memories per se, just mostly emotional. We've been so conditioned to believe we don't remember anything from our earliest ages that most of us believe it, but it's not true. I even remember having the conversation with my mom at a young age asking her why I didn't remember anything. The answer she gave me lead me to believe it was true. "No body remembers anything from when they are an babies." Well, that was wrong. Most of us just don't recognize what the early memories are. It is true that I don't have may well defined memories from before 3, but I do have some, mostly in the form emotions, without much sensory relationship to them. We don't have much in the way of sensory memories because our brain isn't yet developed enough to fully experience the the physical senses. So how is the brain going to to record such events? It would be like holding your finger over a tape recorder's mic while recording. I think much of the confusion on this topic comes from not understand this simple fact. Yes, we don't have many memories of physical events, but we do have the memories of the emotions that those events caused. We carry those memories our entire lives without realizing them and what they are. My memories of that period are not recovered. I've had them all along. It just took me a long time to realize what they were in the context of my own experience. From what I remember, I most definately had a well developed personality just waiting for a chance to express itself. But that's a different topic.

Pix from the Kimi, Miriam and Jenn nite

Here's a photo of Kimi, Miriam, and Jenn at Buddha Lounge a couple Fridays ago. The quality of the pix is directly related to the person holding the camera phote, and the strength of the flash on said phone. Also, in this particular case, I took the picture by accident while trying to show some drunk-ass how to take the photo for us that included all of us.

I actually made it into the next photo. :) It took forever for the fellow random bar patron to figure it out. I'm actually surprized it came out as good as it did. Below is Jenn and Miriam growling at each other. I don't think I remember any real growling, but it kinda looks like that in the photo. grrrr hehe

Actually, what was going on there? A picture says a 1000 words, but are any of the words spoken by this photo saying anything meaning full or representitive of our evening? grrr. grrr. hehe

And finally here I am. I was trying to go for a sweet smile, but I think this photo is telling in other ways. :) Special thanks to Kimi for providing this pix!

Tidepooling

A couple of Saturdays ago, Allie and I meet up with some friends of hers at the Moss Beach Distillery for lunch, and a hike down to the Beach to wade through the tidepools. There was like 20 of us that showed up.
At the Distillery, Allie asked me to accompany her down to the restrooms. As I waited outside, she appearently heard laughing. It was the same sequence repeated. When she came out, she was asking if I had been laughing as a joke on her. Umm, no. So she was a little freaked out until she figured out that it was a recording meant to add a little playful fun to the experience of visiting the Blue Lady's haunt.
After lunch, we all embarked on a brief hike to the shore. Down there, we had fun just milling around the tidepools, finding little critters crawling around. There where a bunch of enemities like the one in the picture. We also found a bunch of sea snails and hermit crabs (in their own sea snail shells).
Afterwards we just all relaxed. The heatwave was in full effect back inland, so the shoreline was perfect for once. Usually, the Central and Northern California coasts are foggy, cloudy or just plan cold year around, but that day as perfect.

Mixed Universes

Friday night ended up being a lot of fun. I made plans with Kimi for dinner, and then invited Miriam. I picked Kimi up around 5:45pm and headed up to a Mexican rest'rant in downtown Mountain View called Fiesta del Mar Too.
Miriam showed up on her own, but a bit late, for various legit reasons. This is the first time in awhile that I've mixed my Universes between friends of different groups. It didn't take long to get thangs warmed up. Before long, Miriam starts into some infamous stories about us, and Kimi fit right into dynamics between me and Miriam.
After dinner, we end up at the Budda Lounge for some drinks. At first, both Kimi and Miriam though they where going to have an early night, but as thangs progressed, we all lost track of time. We took over a group of sofas and started up our own little party. I feel sorry for Kimi a bit cuz Miriam kept spilling her drinks over Kimi's legs.
I had called Jenn earlier in the day to see if she'd be interested in coming out too, and well, she found her way down to the club too.
There was this one random guy at the bar that started acting like Miriam's best friend. We were all, "what's up with that guy?" Anyways, it turns out he was on a short leash cuz his g/f came up and claimed him a few times. Weird.
So, when it was time to take Kimi home, I asked Miriam to get her her new "best friend" to take a group camera phone photo for us. So she goes up to the bar, talks to him and then gets another drink from some other random guy. After a fews minutes I go up to see what happened. She forgot all about the photo. lol
Finally she gets the guy to take the photo, but he can't figure out how to push the button. After a few very lame attempts, I got up to show him. He's all, "That's what I was doing!". Lame. Anyways, we finally got our photo on Kimi's phone. I just realized she's still gots to email to me. ok, anyway.
I took Kimi home and then returned to the club to fine Miriam drunk beyond belief, and Jenn getting ready to take off with some other random guy. lol I'm like thinking to my self, "what the help happened when I was gone?".
We see Jenn off, then go dancing for a little bit. I figure out that Miriam is just way to drunk, so I take her home myself, leaving her car in Mountain View. I get her home and then head home myself. Sep for the little bit of babysitting at the end it was a great night.

Just when you think it's safe

Wow, what the hell was he thinking? I mean, Bush just doesn't stop being an embarrassment! Check here: HERE! Freaky!

Toyota problems

"Toyota Motor Corp. said Tuesday it was recalling about 420,000 vehicles globally, including some Echo and Prius models sold in the U.S., over a faulty engine part.
The faulty part is the latest in a string of problems requiring recalls by Toyota, raising doubts over whether the automaker can maintain quality standards amid booming sales." --AP

It's a myth that anything as complex as a car will meet a high level of quality for a long period of time. Toyota (and Japanese brand cars in general) are no exception. They've done a good job with marketing over the past two decades to create the perception of quality, but at the end of the day, they are like every other manufacturing company on the planet in that they much ship product, and deal with supply lines where they actually have very little control. Granted, the effort to produce better quality produces does help prevent a complete decline, but it doesn't prevent it completely. There's nothing magical about Toyota. They've actually been having issues for years with quality, but have gone unnoticed by the general populous because of their overall reputation. Acura used to have a similar reputation. They produced high quality product for a good price. But gremlins will always creep into any system. In the case of Acura, very big ones popped up out of seemingly nowhere. Don't even get me started about European cars. lol The public bias towards Japanese and European cars seems bizarre given what's actually going on right now. Qualitywise, Japanese and American automakers are about on par with each other in quality, and European automakers have fallen substantially behind.