i am now working on a short departure from portraiture

i decided that i'm gonna paint classic toys during winter.
here is a list of toys that i'm thinking about painting:
box kite
YoYo
Jacks
Atari Joystick
Nintendo game pad
tonka truck

i noticed that these are mostly "boy" toys. for some reason, i can't think of any classic girl toys besides Jacks. hhmmm... maybe someone out there can give some ideas.

i'm already working on the box kite (picture to come soon). it's going aight... for some reason my heart's not into it. hopefully though, like with most of the other ones, it'll come along. iv'e been painting faces so much i'm a little scared that objects will be too boring for me. i don't know, i really hope i find some joy in the process. i'd really like to learn to paint less complicated things.

anyways, my teacher for this "classic toys" theme will be Mr. Wayne Thiebaud

last weekend i was at Lake Tahoe
We left the bay area at around 3pm and got there at around 7pm.

we stayed at my mom's timeshare up the hill from the main south tahoe strip.
it wasn't a bad place. i was actually a little surprised at some of the stuff it had.
it had a rec room with an arcade, a ping pong table, an air hockey table, a tv and a couple of couches.

it also had a video rental place and internet access.

i was pretty happy with the place. so much so that i didn't even go to the casino's or snowboarding. i pretty much just wanted to stay in and chill. i was a little dissapointed that no one was too excited about playing ping pong with me, but i guess that's cool. i guess the air is so thin up in tahoe that you all you want to do is sit there. i swear, i was running out of breath just going up three flights of stairs.

anyway, i loved the snow. it's really nice seeing snow and feeling snow. everytime i see it i always think about how much i wanted to see it when i was living in the philippines. i think every kid in the philippines wants to know how it feels to be surrounded by all this powdered ice. one of my simple pleasures is realizing that i am privilaged to experience what other individuals can only dream of feeling. in this case, i know so many kids who would love to just be where i was last weekend.

sunday morning, i was walking to my parents unit, from the unit where i stayed and i saw my younger siblings Megan (12 yrs old) and Lil Chad (9 yrs old) piling snow into the bed of my dad's truck. at first, i was like "what the hell? why are they dumping snow into the truck?" then i realized what they were doing.

they were gonna bring the snow home to the bay area.

the temperature in the bay area is a little below 60 degrees right now.

yeah... that warmed my heart like a big cup of hot cocoa.

i went to this survey thing last night.
they paid me $75 to come in, look at a couple of visa credit card website versions, and answer their questions.

i have to say, it was a lot of fun being a small part of the development process.
i feel like i contributed to a revamping of the visa website.

funny thing though...
they had me look at two versions of the website.
the first version they showed me Sucked!
i had nothing but negative things to say about it.
they second version was much more pleasant.
it was alot easier to navigate through, and it was more visually pleasing.

after the survey, they surveyor asked me if i wanted to see the "live" website version
that visa currently has.
so i said "yeah, sure".

dammit, it was the first version!!
the version that sucked!

i swear, i can't believe how people can get paid for crap sometimes...

anyway, that's a small rant... i'm sure my site isn't that much better.

i'm happy to say though that the second version is gonna be the new version of the visa site. that one's much better. those guys are doing a better job.

i did learn something about the experience, also.
i learned that i have to figure out what the purpose of my website should be.
it has steadily evolved from an experiment, to a personal diary, to a business storefront, and it's finally trying to make it's way to becoming both... i'm still a little unsure about it's direction... but going to the survey last night helped me realize that
i do need a vision for my website. i need to finally know what i want it to do.

anyway, cool...