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Last night, after days and days of requests to do so, Tristan and I sat down to carve some pumpkins.

The day before we’d run up the street to pick out our pumpkins from a local nursery where I was tempted to get a new, black cat since they were giving free kittens away; she wasn’t having it though (she’s allergic and we already have two).

(pumpkin picking pic soon)

Then she wanted to pick up some carving gimmicks like patterns, carving tools and electronic lights, which I never used in all my pumpkin carving years. My family and I always carved ‘em out with our kitchen knives and lit ‘em with candles, but since it was her wish we carve, I humored her. And actually, the little saw did offer up a nice, clean cut but I still carved out its lid with a nice, hefty kitchen blade.

For patterns, she chose one of the ready-made ones, a set of cross-bones and I loosely went off one of an emoticon, actually it led me to Google emoticons for a more devilish one and came up with this:

And hers in the right of this pic:

Together they make quite a pair and finish off our front step decoration quite nicely:

What’s cool about decorating our new house is that it’s an actual haunted house. Since it’s over 200 years old, you know at least one person has died here (possibly even our landlord who was the first to tell us that it is haunted) and we’ve definitely felt a distinct presence in our attic.

Who knows, maybe we’ll even get our own private haunt this Halloween?
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Hmm, still having image posting issues…gotta look into this again. For now, you can see these pics here on my Halloween Flickr set.

As tradition dictates, I rang in the 2008 new year at Green Sector’s annual NYE party.

This year’s event NEW YEARS TWO THOUSAND CREA8, was held at Crea8tivity, in Marina Del Rey, CA. The event started at 10pm and pounded on through the night until 11am the following morning: always fun, always hardcore, with their fantastic parties.

Brad of Moontribe threw down one of the better sets I’d heard in 2007. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the stamina to make it through and see Treavor (partied myself out prematurely with my birthday just two days prior), but am sure he delivered an unparalled and proper trance marathon.

Anyway, here are a few more pics, might post some others online somewhere at some point too.

Happy new year!

2007 was an amazing year of growth and change, on many levels; also, this year’s end saw my one and only Golden Birthday:

(Check out the rest of my birthday pics from at the Edison)

The year started out with a 3-week visit home after my mom broke her arm, shortly after New Years 2007. I spent almost 2-weeks at home with her to help out with her rehab, got her set up with a new Mac, and generally just spent a lot of quality time catching up with her and some of the other family members.

I then bounced down to Florida for a week-long visit with my Dad, step-mom and some old friends from the River: Tim and Doug.

Then it was back to Cali to return to work on Dianovo, but I just couldn’t get back into it or much of any other work: I was uber home-sick and caught up in the slow-pace that the East Coast so often is. So I decided to pack up my things and move back east, but first stopping back over in LA again to dump said stuff in storage and prepare my other business for my departure. But not surprisingly, I got caught back up with my friends and loved ones in LA and decided to push off my departure for a few months.

I hopped back on board hardcore with The Do LaB, for an amazing few months of work on Coachella, then Lightning In A Bottle, the Beverly Hills White Party, and then it was into summer with a 2.5 week long trip to Guatemala. My time there gave me a lot of opportunity to reflect upon what was important to me and what I wanted to pursue personally and professionally. So when I returned to LA in early June, I began in more earnest, to work on both my romantic relationship and professional path.

I continued working with The Do LaB, resumed work on Green Gurus and continued work on my relationship. Then in mid-summer I went back east again (and therein lies a constant theme for me and home) to help head up the Green Spot construction of The Do LaB’s lumi pods and towers at the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore, followed up by another visit home.

While at home again, I heavily re-visited my passion for the outdoors as it related to my old job at Hidden River Adventures and my future plans for Rivertribe, but realized it still wasn’t time for that pursuit; I still needed something more from my investments living out West. So after some much needed time re-connecting to the river with some great kayaking trips, I headed back to LA.

One of my investments or more aptly, reasons for moving out west, was school. So the first thing I did was re-enroll in school at SMC for the fall semester. Then I headed up another gig for The Do LaB at the Future Ape festival, followed by one last get-away before the start of the school: this time back to Santa Cruz to watch my old house and base of operations for Dianovo.

Then it was a head-first dive back into school for an intense 3.5 month-long semester in computer science, design and programming; an intense and seemingly appropriate step with regards to my romantic interests; followed by a long-awaited move into the Sugar Shack, then my foray into local politics, the loss of my oldest friend Charlie, and continued work on Green Gurus.

I also worked on the last few gigs for the year with The Do LaB, at the Global Mala Project and a random job for Goldenvoice. Also during the last half of my semester, I started counseling for the first time in years, to help kind of clear some of the noise in my head from everything that year, followed by a renewed start in work on my longest running romantic relationship, through couples counseling (which has been a great decision).

Another big event of the year was my first surgery, in which I finally went in and had a lumptectomy performed to have an overly uncomfortable and ample-sized cyst removed from directly beneath my left nipple; the surgery was flawless and there was very little pain involved afterwards, thanks to the great job performed by my doctor.

While there have been countless other events and random bits of interest from this year, nothing is more noteworthy than the pending sale of my first internet venture. The sale was posted back over the summer and negotiations have been taking place on and off for the last few months with several different parties. Now it looks very close to happening, perhaps within the first month of this new year, so I have been doing a lot of work to prepare for this possibility, both for the business itself and my own well-being; it’s definitely one of the biggest, most life-changing steps I’ve had to prepare for in a long time. But I definitely believe it’s time to make this change and what better time then at the start of the new year?

So as this year starts to unfold and all the previous year’s seeds start to yield their fruits, I look forward to the work in store: for my companies, myself, my family, friends, and the world. I am going to make this my best year ever and I hope you are able to do the same!

Much love and blessings for everyone’s prosperity, health and happiness.

In the spirit of the holidays and my good friend Douglas, an old-time baker, I’ve snapped off a shot of my girlfriend’s sister Olivia’s gourmet-style, Christmas breakfast.

The menu included baked eggs with herbs, French toast seasoned with nutmeg and cinnamon, and lightly seasoned Morningstar vegan bacon, with a side of clementine fruit, and a hot cocoa blended with coffee for a delicious mocha mix.

Here’s a pic:

I stopped by yesterday for a few hours at the now annual Eco Gift Expo in Santa Monica, CA.

And to my surprise, I actually enjoyed it: the intimacy that such a small venue lends itself to, the easy and local commute (carpooled with my significant other), the laid-back atmosophere and other factors contributed to an enjoyable afternoon. I felt the Eco Gift Expo was more in line with its advertised values too, whereas the Green Festival seems to have become or simply is, trying to sell itself as something more than it really is, in my opinion (see my previous mention about this regarding the SF Green Fest).

I think the future of sustainable products is better suited for this more modest-sized event for both the consumers benefit and the environments, since smaller venues means fewer people and cars, less emissions, etc.

If local grown foods and locally made products are some of the key components in changing our current energy habits and subsequent emissions, then shouldn’t events not adopt a similar principle too? I think so and can envision a time of interconnected, regional events throughout the country (if not world).

Anyway, to sum up my thoughts on this particular event…there was a modest but busy and interested crowd both shopping (it was afterall a gift-themed event ) and researching green tips, trends and such. There was a fairly decent mix of interests represented including books, music, photography, art - though the most amazing piece (shown below) on display wasn’t for sale:

- lots of clothing, fabric (including some really nice bamboo towels), jewelry, food, tea’s and other drinks, some great innovative ideas making use of recycled bike and tire tubes (as well as billboard materials) by Green Guru Gear, and much more; trash, recycling and compostable items all appeared to be well managed.

I’m sure this event will continue to grow in size but I hope for the sake of my argument above, that they find some way to moderate their growth. Perhaps a spin-off from this event focusing on another aspect of the green wave or maybe even repeating this one several more times a year?

December 5th was annual Day of the Ninja.

What does this mean? Well you can flip out and kill people; practice stealth walking, throwing stars and so much more.

Why should you care? Cause Ninjas are so much cooler than Pirates, duh.