Double

Hooray, I'm in a Starbucks in the Del Monte centre! That means wireless, and it means coffee. I'm having a Venti Caffé Vanilla Frappucino. It goes too quickly. Kiana was with me but she's just left to see if her friend Scott's mother is working at the hotel that is only 10 minutes walk away. Or something more specific.

Knowing my sister's import habits, I bought her a present from Hot Topic! I hope she likes it because it wasn't cheap. I also bought myself a very cool tshirt, but you'll have to wait until you see a photo of me wearing it. It's that cool. Stuff there isn't cheap, but it's still cheaper than England. So I spent about $50 there. But it's ok. I have $350 left for the trip. I might need a little more, but I should be ok as we don't go out every single day, and it's the first actual shopping I've done. So I won't feel guilty. And Kiana's dad filled up the truck with gasoline, so we're ok for a bit.

I have been reading about the Dell exploding laptops. As I told Kiana, she backed away from me, while I typed at arms length. If my laptop was going to explode, though, it would have done it when I was putting it through horrendous heat and leaving it boiling all day. I'm not nice to this thing, and it hasn't let me down. There's nothing it can't run, I'm so proud. Up yours, iBook. This thing rocks.

But seriously, I'm not totally against Macs. I don't understand how people can be so devoted to a brand that they can hate its rivals. I have great brand loyalty to Sony, but I don't hate Nintendo for it. I like Sony just because if I don't buy a Sony product, I usually find I have some kind of regret about it, where I have never regretted buying a Sony product. Especially with audio equipment. You'll find that you can get better than Sony, and I like buying high end German audio equipment, but Sony is very good regardless. And my Sennheisser headphones are suffering from a slight bass imbalance.

Kiana and I just had dark chocolate truffles and buttermilk chocolates. We got into a chat about England with the lady serving, who was a big Beatles fan, but it's hard to find someone who doesn't like the Beatles. Oh yeah, the sub editor of Kerrang. Idiot.

I plan on taking a trip up to Oregon with Kiana, where we will part ways for a while, and I will bus to South Dakota, where I will hopefully meet CM, and there we can party solidly for 4 days or something, and after that I'll return back and then fly to New York. I'll be flying against the clock this time, so I'll lose hours instead of gaining. So it'll be night when I get there. Crazy.

I said to Kiana last night, after a day of almost solid giggling and hair playing, "Maybe I am completely wrong in saying this, but it seems that despite your initial attitude, perhaps your are warming to my presence here." She laughed and quickly found excuses, saying she was getting used to me and stuff, but I feel like she might enjoy having me here a little bit. And her dad is very nice, so we get along too. It's a good place. As desolate as her house is, it's a nice place to live. I wish I had a nicer camera with me sometimes. Or just Yukina. I'm missing some fantastic sunset opportunity photographs, my little phone just can't handle them. Detachable lenses for phones: the next big step.

Is it just me, or is Chinese Gourmet Express some kind of contradiction or oxymoron? There's a restaurant entitled that opposite this Starbucks. Next to Chipotle, which is the origin of my new name from Erin.

If you have been reading a while (or have just read all of this recently), you'll know that I rethink Philosophies on life regularly. Well, perhaps I'll let you hear my latest one. It doesn't replace anything, it just adds to it. Most of you know I don't like killing or death, or hurting things. That goes for insects, usually. Mosquitoes, that's another story. I realise that I can kill them without guilt. I don't feel guilt because they pose a threat to me, they will cause me pain and steal from me. What's more, I don't feel guilt despite the fact that they cannot help it. It isn't their fault. Knowing this, I can understand people better justifying causing pain to others when they pose a similar threat. I don't endorse it, but it's easier to understand. This helps my script writing.

I'm getting inspirations for the movie idea I had years ago, "Kuriyama-". The whole story is taking form in my head. I'm also eager to restart my writing of "Karaoke in Space". That's had some amusing concepts in the works for a while. Maybe I'll record the voices sometime. Reading the script to that was one of the things Kiana and I used to do all the time. It was just silly.

I stalled Kiana's truck today. Just on a mild hill start in traffic. I didn't have to move on so it wasn't an issue, I was trying to creep forward, but as her father says, I need to be more generous with the revs. I only tend to use revs if I'm changing my speed or driving fast. No other time. But It's only a 4 cylinder, bless it. I do need to try out the Cruise Control though. I haven't used that properly before.

I have finished my coffee, and now I'm just wasting time while my downloads finish and I wait for Kiana to return. Bash hasn't updated in far too long, and they even deleted a quote which I thought was pretty good. It was about mapping virtual memory to floppy drives, and it talked about "Please insert disk 427" and stuff. They should spend less time deleting and more time moderating. Honestly, I would spend so much time moderating if they let me do it. They wouldn't even have to let it be final, they could put it through a second queues, I just would like to do something.

Natasha says I should buy some better fitting jeans while I'm here. I might get some in New York. If I have money. I should go in the new Apple Store and get a photo of me trapped in the lift. That would be leet.

I guess you guys have had enough of my meaningless ranting, but some people complain when I don't have an update waiting for them each morning. Natasha got a Flickr Pro account. I want one. Maybe one day. This isn't the Cannery Row Starbucks, so no news on Rachel, but I wouldn't take Kiana there anyway.