Sunday was another day out with Doug’s cousins and friends. It was that time of year for the Garlic Festival in Gilroy, CA, and that’s where we went. I never expected that it would be so sunny and hot, so I didn’t bring my hat or shades. Big mistake, one that I’ll pay later in the day.

For those of you who have not gone to the Garlic Festival in Gilroy, let me tell you a little bit about it. The festival usually takes place in the last weekend of July, where visitors can taste the many different kinds of food, with one thing in common in them - you guessed right - garlic. This is where you can sample garlic ice cream, for free, if you dare! It’s actually very yummy (IMO) and not as scary as you think. They have arts and craft vendors there too, with music performances, and a huge BBQ cookout. Fun for the whole family I’d say. Check out the website, you’ll get the idea.

We took our visitors to the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, and were lucky enough to make it for the last guided tour. Remind me never to drive CA152W. The windiness of the road is just too much - LOL! Also, with my migraine hitting me at full force, our drive back on CA17 was horrible - it was jammed for at least 10 miles - winding freeway with blinking brake lights are not a good combination. We had dinner at In & Out, and after that I was done. Apart from the bad traffic, we all had a great time.

Otter was breathing heavily last night when I came home, and I totally regret not being with her in her last moments, coz I’d got this splitting headache and needed to sleep it off. This morning I saw her and just knew. She was 3 and a half years old. I’m sure she’s playing with Schlepp at the Rainbow Bridge right now. Stay happy, my little ratties!

I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a Vespa since they look so cute, and it’ll be nice to ride around the neighborhood in it.

We have Doug’s cousins and their friends visit for the weekend, and we got another opportunity to go places heheh. Yesterday we spent the day in the city, walking along Fisherman’s Wharf, the bridge (it was foggy like crazy), Baker Beach, and Union City. I finally got the chance to visit the Apple Store in SF and it was awesome! The new ipods are sweet, and and iPod Minis are sweeter! If the minis were not that expensive I would’ve got it in a heartbeat. It’s so much more worth it to get the regular iPod. The new click wheel on the iPod is such an improvement. I never did like the four buttons of the 3G iPods anyway.

It was BBQ for dinner when we came back. Clover seems not to mind the additional “flock members” as he was playing with the toys in his cage, hanging upside down and just acting goofy. He’s such a trooper!

I never knew there was a bird shop so near my workplace until today. Brian is looking to buy a bird, and he told us of this place where they had a number of baby parrots for sale. Today, after lunch we drove to the shop and oh boy, there were so many cute parrots there! I played with a Nanday, a Jenday, 2 greencheeks, one normal, like Clover, and the other a Yellow-sided. There was even a Senegal! I really love the Jenday and Nanday, especially the Nanday. His feathers felt so smooth and nice. I had decided to get a Severe Macaw maybe in the future (like 1 or 2 years later), and I’m torn between that, a Nanday or a Caique. Sigh ….

If you are a gadget freak like me, you will love this site I found - it’s called Engadget, a weblog-style site that posts news on the latest gadgets in cellphones, handhelds, home entertainment, and gaming, just to name a few. Worth a look.

Oh I so want this baby!

We went to the Farmer’s market today and look what we got!

I can’t wait! Season 2 of DLM premieres July 25th. It’s a cable channel, so you gotta subscribe to Showtime if you wanna see, but its worth it. Check out the DLM Page on Showtime.

And I gotta add - Season 1 is out on DVD too.

Now I’ve got my PowerBook that’s 15″, I find myself searching for wallpapers that are at least 1280×1024, but I gotta tell ya, they are hard to come by. Even the movie sites max out their sizes at 1024×768. I wonder how people with 17″ laptops get by? heh.

I’ve always wanted to go into video editing, creating flash animations and what not. Now that I have my PB (1.5Ghz!) I’m ready to rock and roll! I’ve done some video editing using iMovie, but far from the professional kind, so now I’m trying to look for sites that discusses tips, tutorials on how a beginner to video editing can get started. Can’t find anything! The closest I got to was Video University, which I think is some kind of HSN type site, with links that bring you to pages that you need to register to get information … it sucks. Next, I try to look for video editing blogs where people post videos on their blogs and stuff, so I found Steve Garfield’s site, which was a cool site, but he doesn’t really have links to any other useful video editing places. Sigh … I’ll just keep looking. If you guys know of any useful video editing how-to community, please let me know. Thanks!

I created two products using a picture of Clover from Cafepress and today one of them arrived - the mug. It actually turned out better than I thought. Here’s a picture of Clover and the mug inspired by him:

I have two accessories that I really want to get for my PB - one, the Airport Express, which starts shipping today, and two, the iSight, the Apple webcam. Each one of those cost about 100 bucks, and … maybe now is not a good time to spend additional dollars. Oh well.

We spent most part of Saturday cleaning the house because Doug’s Aunt from LA will be visiting and staying a couple of nights at our place. I took the opportunity to wash Clover’s cage by taking it out into our yard. Man that cage is heavy! Clover got to enjoy some sunlight while I hosed the cage. He was wary at first at all the commotion, but lightened up after a while. His toys, when wet, bleed all the colors because they used vegetable dyes as coloring, and it was quite annoying to have colors all on my hands.

I was also engrossed in my new toy, PB 15″ which I’ve named “Magnus”. The iBook now belongs to Doug, which I helped reformat. We are now another machine closer to an all Mac family
My cousins-in-law are really great - they are two girls and one boy, all very sweet kids. The boy’s 15 years old and the girls are in 6th and 4th grade respectively. They absolutely loved my blue bug and got to sit in it as we drove to a nearby Chinese place for dinner. They spent most of Sunday playing PS2 and surfing the web while the “adults” went to San Francisco. I was home “baby-sitting” them. In the evening we went to Home Depot and I got a few more plants for my yard.

They leave today, and its really too bad they couldn’t stay longer. They were a lot of fun. I hope Lynn gets a parrot. She really liked Clover, even though I was worried he might nip at her, but he did go on her arm without any aggression. I seem to be encouraging people to get parrots, coz they are just great pets! They are not for everyone, of course, but if you are willing to open your hearts to them, you’ll get so much love back.

Thanks, Honey! This evening my hubby surprised me with a gift - the Powerbook 15″ G4! I’m using my PB to type this! This baby is soooo fast, totally awesome!