Someone dug up my herb garden!! Except for the yarrow and lemon balm. I pulled my comfrey out of the dump. Everything is gone. The stevia! The dill! Everything! I started having a panic attack. Everyone knew I was gardening those plots and the person that I suspect did this knew quite well what I was growing there. In fact I had made herbal remedy recommendations to several people and took them out to the garden and showed them which herbs to pick. Someone is going to pay.

Who wants to go to the Maya astronomy show at Chabot with me!? http://www.chabotspace.org/mayaSkies/default.asp

So, in case you didn't see it coming, I got blue-black adder snakes tattooed on my arms last week. I got them done on the meaty part of my forearm because I figured it would hurt less and would be easier to cover with clothing if necessary. They came out absolutely beautiful, but they were really swollen and had a lot of "glow" and were oozing ink for about thirty minutes. These things normally go away, but they didn't. The "glow" now looks like bruising because the blue-black ink has spread through my skin. In one place it's gone half way down my arm. More than half the scabs are gone from the tattoo, so if this mystery ink mess was going to heal up it should be looking significantly better by now. I went back to the artist, and he said he had never seen anything like that. In fact, before he sent me home after the tattoo he reassured me that his wife's skin is just as pale and the mess would go away. He wants me to see a dermatologist to figure out what the problem is, if my skin is defective or something, and he will do some sort of cover-up work on it. I'm not so sure about this cover-up option because I don't know that I want more tattoos there with my happy little snakes. I could always ask him to just to and go over it with white, but since this is like getting free tattoo work I should pick something nice. I posted a picture on twitter of the wort section of weird ink mess.

Oh and Happy Halloween!! I'm really getting into Dia de los Muertos this year. I'm like a kid waiting for Santa Claus except that it's the dead that are coming! I set up my altar and bought marigolds and everything. Anyone that's going to be around for the street festival tomorrow should call or text so we can meet up.

I am going to bed early tonight because I am getting up early to do awesome things tomorrow!!! I have enormous amounts of roasted garlic and avocados. My hair is fantastic. I have cash. All is well. If you want to know the whole story call, email or IM!!!

Awwwww isn't this adorable Sweet subway sounds: "Punk rock Johnny Cash" among BART buskers who entertain riders

Video HERE

Well I've decided that I'm going to be a vigilante. For years I was well aware of the fact that police are really only useful for writing police reports, and now they aren't even helpful for that. Now that I'm no longer living in a building full of scary looking vigilantes with medieval weapons and motorcycles I really need to get into the vigilante business for myself. You see, my license plates were stolen, while parked in front of my herb teacher's house in Richmond, on a bright sunny Saturday while we were all sitting there in the front window. I watched people walk past that front window all day, so whoever took my plates was real slick. The screws are missing, and they got both front and back plates. I'm tired and busy and don't want to deal with this. I don't have the time, I don't have the money, and taking the time to deal with this is making me lose money. I called the police department and they took down my info and said they would send a cop out to complete the report. Cop never showed, no surprise. I get a call at 8am this morning from a blocked number so I don't answer the phone. The dispatch was calling me back to let me know that my case was still pending and that they would send someone out as soon as I called in to confirm that I was home. By the time I called back someone got shot so all the cops were tied up with that. If someone is already getting shot before noon then I have no chance of ever seeing the police for stolen license plates. I asked the dispatcher if I could just come down to the office to fill out the report and she said sure no problem, it would be a lot faster that way. I thought for sure that the office was closed on weekends, but the dispatcher said to go anyway. I was right. Thank you for nothing. All you rich bastards need to pay out some tax money so that we can have sufficient numbers of police on the streets, and so that the police department can handle more than one incident at a time. Previous calls in for actual real help had the same results. And not that being a vigilante will get my plates back or get my police report, but now I now that I can't count on the cops for help for anything. Tomorrow I get to go file my police report and depending on how long that takes I may or may not also get to the DMV. I am just so overwhelmed by everything right now that I'm taking it all one day at a time.

dont mind me, I'm just really busy with work. I need to cut back on activities and online time that's not work related. I also need to start making more money with one of these jobs so I can quit one of them. I realistically don't have time to chat on IM or the phone, unless it is urgent, emotional, work related, or otherwise important. I need to cut back on activities somehow, but I'm not sure what because I never seem to do anything but I'm never home either. I am starting to track what I do every minute of the day, as a prof once suggested, so I can find these lost minutes and put them to better use. Am I being abducted by aliens or something?? Because there's no reason why I don't have enough time in the day.

Well they gave me an IUD today.

( getting things shoved up my pussy )

Personal responsibility seems to be the theme of my life right now. I keep running into issues with people in this area. To me, personal responsibility is a basic emotional maturity thing, but I'm running into people in their mid sixties that haven't figured it out yet. Personal responsibility is simple, and makes life a whole lot easier, as long as you're dealing with someone who is also willing to take responsibility. Unless you only deal with people in your head, everything in life is a two way street. Even if you think that you are not to blame there is always something that you could have done differently to change the situation. Even if all you did was listen quietly, you could have done something differently. Taking responsibility for your actions is not admitting that you were wrong or at fault. You might be at fault, and if you were then taking responsibility will help clear things up faster.

It's just been hard dealing with people who see me taking responsibility and think that's an opportunity to blame me for their problems and not take responsibility for their own shit. Or in one case, not taking responsibility for their own carelessness and their own friends actions. Well you know what, I'm not playing that game anymore. I will take responsibility and I will do my part, but I will not have responsibility forced on me by someone who is not taking responsibility for their own part. I am not to blame for your problems just because I was in the right place at the right time. Take responsibility for yourself or you won't be hearing from me again.

last night I had a dream that I was working in the garden and found a really big rattlesnake. I didn't see that it was a rattlesnake until I got closer to it and then I realized that it was going to strike me. I climbed the chain link fence in the garden to get away from it but it kept bouncing up to get me and finally bit me on the neck. I was very aware of the snake's pattern and colors and was able to correctly identify it, while dreaming, as a western rattlesnake. I googled it when I woke up. I have no clue how I knew what species it was since I really know nothing about rattlesnakes.

So I just got bit by a western rattle snake and I call 911 and I start walking around the building telling people that there's a rattlesnake in the garden that just got me. I'm very well aware that I'm going to start swelling up soon and I won't be able to talk or breathe so I ask people to help me and watch out for me. I get quite a number of people there and we all sit on the front lawn waiting for the ambulance. We wait a long while and life just passes us by. People come and go, someone actually tries to rob the building, a cop shows up and says that he will call an ambulance, and I keep thinking that I'm going to start swelling up soon and what sort of first aid can I do in the meantime. But there is no swelling. The bite is sort of oozing, bleeding and irritated, but no pain. Night falls and I finally try to get a ride with someone on their motorcycle to San Francisco, but something happen and I'm at the BART station trying to hitch a ride on some other motorcycle. I end up at some party and I'm telling people that I was bitten by a rattle snake and I need to get to the hospital, but I'm still not having any ill effects from the bite. I just never make it to the hospital and everything is ok.

Among the many different types of drama I've encountered this past month, one of the most bizarre was my yarrow plant being dug up. There was all sorts of drama about the garden in the building. People were complaining about plants and things being stolen. Everyone was upset and a bunch of us neighbors stood around trying to figure out what was going on. Nobody knew anything about yarrow, and nobody seemed to realize that I had it growing in my plot. I have a suspect that I haven't seen since the event, and next time I see him I'll be wearing my steel toe boots.

But anyway, after I got over the fact that my yarrow was not coming back, I stopped by Scarlet Sage to pick up another one. I planted it in the empty hole where yarrow no. 1 had been and I went on my way. Yesterday one of the other gardeners showed me that he had moved some pieces of wood and cleaned out an area and discovered yarrow growing. There were only two little white flowers, but there were several patches. He was so happy that he had found more yarrow for me and volunteered to transplant it for me. It might be a good idea so people don't step on the little plants. I then went over to investigate the large cactus that still has all it's thorns and I discovered a large patch of the same white flowered yarrow tucked in behind some Hemp hemp plant, and of course if you're interested in plants and looking at hemp you're probably not going to notice the yarrow fighting for space beneath it. So there is now plenty of yarrow in the garden. Yarrow no. 1 may never return, but we've all learned more about yarrow in the process.

Why would anyone steal a yarrow plant anyway???? It didn't even have flowers or stalks.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.



Also, WTF is up with anarchists not bathing? There is no political agenda behind the idea of immersing yourself in water.

I am alive. It's just reading LJ has started to make me angry. I'm angry at the lack of actual face to face, over the phone or even personal email communication. Hell, IM works too. I want to be a person again and have personal communication. So, in the spirit of personal communication I'm inviting you all over for a party. Or if you don't mind adult content, and pictures of my ass you can find me on twitter.

Work has been crazy. I can't remember the last time I read my FL here so if something interesting is going on please call or email me directly. I'm half tempted to just delete my LJ, but I might want it again in the future so I won't. I most likely won't be using LJ much. I just have too much work and things happening in real life. I've been twittering, but I don't really have the time or patience for any more than 140 characters these days.

Yesterday I got a call from the temp agency saying that my paycheck had been sent back to them. I went over to pick it up and someone in my building had wrote return to sender on the envelope. So far, 2 out of 3 neighbors that I've met here have been horrible people, so this only made me more upset. I wrote a sign to post up above the building mailboxes that said, "Dear neighbors, common courtesy is putting my paycheck back in here or leaving it under my door instead of sending it back." Well, this morning someone wrote a little apology note and stuck it up there with my angry note. They may be stupid but at least they're polite enough to apologize. Now if only I could figure out who built the huge burningmanbullshit wind chimes in my garden. I can't pull my weeds without hitting my head on these 8 foot tall wind chimes. They just might get a nasty note too.

Instead of bugging drkaos every time I see a cool looking bird, I thought maybe I would share with the whole interwebs of bird lovers and people who might be more inclined than I am to google these things.

Name that bird, please! I was sitting at a gas station in West Oakland and I saw two crows chasing off a huge bird that may have been some sort of falcon. It was twice the size of the crows. It had a pale cream colored underside, and the top was a light brown color. The wing and tail feather tips were black. It was a really pretty bird, what is it??

And I hear the raven on the roof again!!

This is so cool!! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/ a show on PBS about Native American history as told by Native people themselves using Native languages and actors. So far I've seen the Cherokee episode and I see that I have the Geronimo episode on DVR. I hope they show the first two episodes again because I'd really like to see them.