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Tag / About Me
Pics From The 107 Days Book Tour (Oakland, CA)
I almost passed up on attending this event. It was two weeks ago when I found out MVP Kamala Harris scheduled an event in her hometown for her 107 Days Book Tour. My initial reason for not needing to attend was that I had already seen her, albeit for free and unexpectedly, and how could I beat that? In the two weeks since, well…plenty has happened here in the States. And I had a feeling Harris wanted to talk about all that, so I went!
It was a lot more packed at the event than this pic shows
A menu of the drinks served.
I didn’t get to see that drinks menu until after the event, and if I only knew they had mocktails, I would’ve gone for that!
Sign that tells attendees that our likeness can be used in any way for the event, that they may own it “for eternity”, and that we can’t sue the venue for this.
Our should-be First Gentleman, Doug Emhoff (Harris’ husband)
View of the stage from my balcony seats
She’s back! My President has returned!! If a smile was energy, hers could power all of the Bay Area for days.
Close-up of MVP Harris in discussion
Harris listening to Congressman Simon
Plenty was talked about. How Congressman Simon (who moderated the event) first knew Harris. MVP’s days as a prosecutor in SF and rising up all the way to Vice-President. The Orange guy (of course), his “totalitarian” regime, the new war he started, and his “feckless” ways. (I like how she said that feckless was the only “F” word she could say as there were kids present at the event. Now I wonder what would’ve been said had it been an 18+ over event 😆) She also spoke about voter suppression, ICE raids in Minneapolis and elsewhere, her experiences while touring the South in the past year, and how all this chaos we’re witnessing in real time has been decades in the making.
However, my favorite part of the event was when Harris answered questions from the audience. Two of them came from adolescents. The first teen recently lost her mother to cancer, and MVP told them while it’s always tough to lose a loved one, what can’t be taken away are the moments they’ve shared together. The second teen wants to organize his peers to vote when they can, and how to proceed with it. Everyone applauded him and Harris told that him to “remember” that applause, because there could be a time when his idea may be met with no support. 🥹
It’s that kind of encouragement to our youth alone that make me go…goddammit, she really should’ve been President. Like, she could’ve still done a book tour, but her book would’ve had a different ending and she would’ve held the tour four or eight years from now. Alas, the racism, misogyny, and willful ignorance that still plague this country…
One thing I’m glad I didn’t see were hecklers, as there were none (I’m pleased to report). I legit was ready to cuss them out! Didn’t even see any protestors outside, which was a relief because, mind you, Oakland is right next to both Berkeley and SF, both of which has its fair share of antisemitic idiots that still–in the year of our fascist 2026–think she and Biden are responsible for the mess in Gaza.
Now, go check your voter registration, everyone. MVP said so! If you want to restore democracy, make sure you’re still registered to vote for it!
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The Time I Saved A Life
Five years ago yesterday (according to my Google Photos), I got the first of the two original Covid vaccines. But me getting the vax is not why I gave this entry its title. What took place two days before that is why. And anytime loud noise is involved, I remember the moment more.
I had woken up all of a sudden around 4AM on Valentine’s Day, 2021, to loud banging on the walls. It came from the side of a neighbor who was an old, former homeless drug addict (he told me so) but had been sober for years. (Only vice he had was smoking cigarettes.) The noises weren’t consistent, but that he kept banging on the walls (it sounded like he was hitting the walls with something?) every other minute drove me to call & email my then-property manager about it. It’s always a horrid inconvenience to have your sleep interrupted, but worse when you also have to wake up early that day for both a Covid testing (to make sure I didn’t have “The Rona” before getting my Covid shot) and work (I worked a temp job during pandemic lockdown).
I turned up my sleep noise machine (which I must always have on when I hit the hay), put on some earplugs, and managed to get a little bit of sleep before needing to wake up at 7am. While I was at the drive-thru for Covid testing, my property manager emailed me back. Here was her reply:
The gasp that I gasped in my car when I read that. I had no clue my neighbor had an emergency. I had to report him over noise disturbances in the past, but what happened to him that early morning was unusual. (His previous noise issues were things he could’ve controlled, like turning down his TV or music player, or not talking to himself too loudly.) I later talked with my property manager about this, and she told me he had a heart attack that morning.
(By the way, I was surprised that I didn’t make a single spelling or grammatical error in my 4AM email to my property manager. I thought there’d be at least some incoherence in my email that was written when I was half-awake.)
While my neighbor survived that incident, he would sadly pass away a year later. I found out from another neighbor that he passed away (of a stroke, unfortunately) while I was out-of-town for a few days. It’s a shame, but I felt like his fate was inevitable. Even after that heart attack, the guy still kept smoking till the very end. Dude just didn’t care. Just as sad was finding out he didn’t get a proper leave–no funeral or wake whatsoever.
RIP to my neighbor. 🕊️
To this day, I’m still that chick who will say something if I see or hear something (unusual or suspect). Who knows–it could end up saving another life.
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Happy 4th Ketoversary!
Me in January 2022, as I was starting out on the keto train.
Me today, four years into going low-carb!
Has it been four years (and a month) since I started going low-carb?
Prior to that, I–who had been in double-digit size clothing since my teen years–had tried many things to get rid of the excess blubber. Skipping meals. Eating only vegetables for dinner. Lots of exercise. Slim Fast. “Weight loss teas.” Even Hydroxycut before it got pulled off the shelves. Nothing worked. And while I’ve heard of low-carb eating since the 2000s, I originally scoffed at the idea. I knew I was addicted to starches, but little did I know that “healthy” foods like potatoes, rice, and low-fat crackers were making me gain weight.
I originally tried keto out back in January 2022 to do what some others had vowed for their New Year’s resolution: to lose weight. To my surprise, cutting out refined carbs and sugar ended up working for me. By the end of 2022, I had worn a size two. A size two! I had not been in single-digit sizes in all of my adulthood. And I did all this without the assistance of drugs (Ozempic who?!) or surgery or even skipping meals. Sheeit, I was eating a lot more fat than usual, the only exercise I did (outside of my physical job) was walking and yoga, and the pounds kept coming off. 😭
I’ve since gained some weight, but I’m still maintaining and still in single-digit sizes (4-6 petite). I’m more low-carb than keto these days. Still, no cheat meals and I refuse to fall off the wagon. I can eat a bit of a baguette or regular chocolate, but just a bit. And the big (pardon the expression) reason why you’ll no longer see me devour Dunkin donuts or brown rice nowadays is simply because I don’t want to go back to what I was pre-low-carb. My eating habits were bad, I felt lousy, and, of course, I looked out-of-shape. My weight had been a long-time struggle of mine, and I occasionally cringe when I see throwback pics of me from, say, five, six years ago. It’s why I intend to stay the course and keep on celebrating these “keto-versaries” for as long as I can. 💪🏼
PS: YMMV with going low-carb. Refined carbs/sugars just happen to be my culprit, and I wish I knew this years ago.
Gia
I first heard of Gia Carangi in 1999, in the book Models: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women by Michael Gross. That led me to finding an old Vanity Fair article on her, which led me to getting her biography Thing Of Beauty by Stephen Fried. Safe to say, I was fascinated by her. She had a look that drew me in, but she led a life that made me sit down and read all about it. A rough childhood that saw abuse, neglect, and a divorce from her parents. An adolescence where she would discover her true self (and sexuality). A fast rise in the modeling industry–a feat considering that blue-eyed blondes a la Christie Brinkley and Jerry Hall were the standard. A top model by nineteen, only for her vices and inner demons to get the best of her, resulting in her freefall from the industry by 22. She would be one of the first notable women to perish from AIDS in 1986 at just 26 years old. Yet amidst all the cautionary tales about models, hers still remains one of the more memorable.
I actually read about Gia first before watching her biopic starring Angelina Jolie. And seeing that she was openly bisexual intrigued teen me then, as I had begun questioning my own sexuality at the time. I knew I was attracted to guys, but girls started piquing my interest. (The movie was a double whammy for me when I would also find out that Angelina herself was also Bi.) I’d eventually come out as Bi in my early 20s, and to this day, Gia is one of my Bicons. She was attractive, problematic, and tragic, which all made her to be iconic in my book.
Today would’ve been Gia’s 66th birthday. 🕊️ And while I knew she was a major Blondie fan, TIL she appeared in the “Atomic” music video!
Wednesday Random Thoughts
So….WordPress starting doing this for those who want to write using Classic Editor…
…and I’m not a fan of it! I have to use a pop-up window to write my nonsense here now?! Booooo! Bring back the full-page Classic Editor!
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For those on Bluesky: has anyone noticed an uptick in angry/ignorant accounts lately? Especially when it comes to politics? This past weekend alone, in regards to the second murder by ICE (let’s call it for what it is–a murder) in Minneapolis, there was so much ignorance coming from so many accounts (many of whom claim to be “anti-Trump”, and some coming from countries that have their own issues), I swear, the amount of accounts I blocked may have surpassed the amount of followers I currently have. It was *that* bad. There was even one account stirring up antisemitic bullshit on the victim (read it if you dare); that’s the kind of stupid shit you’d expect to see on Elon’s Nazi Bird app. But, nope, that’s Bluesky today, and it blows chunks. Did I mention that if you call out the Dem-bashers or the “watermelon crowd” (as I like to call them, IYKYK) on their bullshit, your account could get tagged labels and placed on block lists that could suppress your engagement/visibility? I’ve seen two accounts of this vein get unfairly suspended. Christ almighty. The site wasn’t this bad a year ago.
Safe to say, I plan on not posting there as much from here on out. (My work-in-progress just yelled out “yaaay!”) It helps that I can’t be on the internet when I’m at my day job and that I’ve hit a busy period with work and non-work stuff. It also helps that I don’t see social media as a big necessity in my life. If you can believe this, I’ve only been doing SM for the past three-and-a-quarter years, and I’ve witnessed the births and enshittifications of Twitter, TikTok, IG, and Snapchat throughout my adulthood. (I signed up for Twitter in the summer of 2022, and IG shortly after, and I initially used both platforms to promote my book.) With the site seeing an uptick in ignorance, antisemitism, and Dem-bashing for clicks, could I be witnessing the enshittification of Bluesky in real time?
Also, if they block you, block ’em back. ‘Nuff said!
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Saw this recently…
I’m sad to see this. Just eight years ago, the brand was valued at a billion dollars, and given the quality of her products then, I saw why. PMG has some top-quality stuff. Motherships 1 and 5 (which I own) are my desert island palettes, their lip glosses are divine, and their OpuLust lip glosses and LustTrance lipsticks remain two of my most-missed discontinued products. I first saw the brand at the Third Street Promenade Sephora in Santa Monica nine years ago, and I balked at the $125 (?) price tag of her eyeshadow palette (in this case, Mothership 1). Then I tried it on for myself, and…I kinda got why it was pricey. (I still don’t believe eyeshadow palettes, no matter how high-quality they are, should not cost that much. I think $80 would’ve been a more reasonable selling price for her Motherships.)
By the way, how is PMG filing for bankruptcy, but not that flopping brand from that plastic lesser (I’m not saying her name here) that’s sold at Ulta, Macy’s and Nordstrom? Or is her family suppressing those stories from the public? No one I know doesn’t wear or buy shit from that brand that’s collecting dust in stores these days.
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I attended some MLK Day events in SF last week:
A speech at Yerba Buena Gardens. I’m unclear over who the speaker in the center is, as I just arrived in the area when this was happening (Nancy Pelosi, maybe?)
Rally signs
KCSM Jazz 91’s MLK event, “Music and The Movement”, featuring some of the radio station’s personalities
An MLK Jr. quote sign outside Oracle Park
I originally went there to see the KCSM event. They first showed a documentary on the radio station’s 60th anniversary, and while it was pretty interesting, I felt like it went on longer than it should. I can always watch the doc at home; it’s not often do I get to see a live, informative discussion on jazz music and how its messaging & history ties to the principles that MLK Jr. stood for.
Tiffany Austin, who performed after the discussion, is a very good singer, by the way!
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I need to go watch Netflix soon. Not only for Heated Rivalry, but now for this:
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The Macarena. Independence Day. The 72-10 Chicago Bulls team. Mariah’s “One Sweet Day”. They all turn 30 this year! And I was there to witness it all when it originally happened! *pops a Werthers*
Nowadays, doing the Macarena would trigger those ICE fuckers.
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Another throwback: Google Photos showed me that seven years (and two days) ago, I was at the NHL All-Star Game and events!
At SAP Center in San Jose, CA, for the 2019 NHL All-Star Game! Taken 1/26/2019.
The ginormous Shark head seen in Sharks home games
Sharks collectible swag (all featuring former Sharks player Brent Burns)
My seats for the game
Close-up of the players. The Metropolitan Team (white jerseys) beat the Central team (black jerseys).
Old me with the Stanley Cup!
It was my first time seeing the Stanley Cup in person! And to see my guys Crosby, Letang, and Lundqvist on the ice at the same time? 😍 They all played for the Metropolitan team, which won the All-Star game.
Ya know, every time I see these throwback pics of me from the 2010s, two things come to mind. One: I sorta-kinda miss my natural black hair (it’s been dyed red for the past six years). And two: I really don’t miss how big I was then.
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I got “money”, “ass”, and “travels”. So far, this is eerily accurate. Right now, I’m making good money working my ass off from my work travels. (I’ll eventually post about my day job here; I’m approaching 15 years into my profession this summer.)
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I can’t bring myself to eat let alone buy Dubai chocolate. It’s not sugar-free, for one. And after reading a wild article on (I kid you not) “Dubai port-a-potties” a few years ago, I refuse to touch that sh-,er, stuff!
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Some of my most memorable life events took place in a year that ended in a 6. I plan on doing some throwback posts throughout this year on what was up with me in the years 1996, 2006, and 2016. (Not 1986, though–I was only 1 going on 2 then.) I got some stories to tell! And may 2026 give me something fun and memorable.
The Toronto Trip, Pt. 5 (The Last Days)
I originally planned on spending eight days in Toronto, but I chose to add an extra day as I had a feeling eight days would not be enough to fully enjoy the city. My instincts were right…and I still didn’t have enough time to do all the things I wanted to do there! I had plans on checking out a cat cafe, Eaton Centre, a women’s only spa…but I couldn’t make the time for them. Then there was discovering new places to visit…right when I had to fly back home. Why couldn’t those sites that had those “Best Places To Visit In Toronto” lists also mention the Cheese Boutique? I didn’t know such a place existed until I was at the airport waiting to board my flight back to SF.
I still did everything else I wanted in my nine days there, however. Photo dump time!
A NoFrills store (a Canadian bargain market)
Donuts from another keto bakery called Konscious Kitchen
A bookstore?
No, it’s actually the inside of their version of the Dollar store, called Dollarama. Talk about organized!
A squirrel with coal black fur
A fox sighting on the outskirts of downtown. I saw this while leaving Halloween on Church
My aunt’s pet turtles, found in her North York home
Another reason why Canada >>> the States? They got the full Toys R Us experience!
Toronto has Toys R Us! Found at the Dufferin Mall.
And not just a pop-up in a store, but a whole-ass Toys R Us!
Childhood memories unlocked–I lived for the Barbie section as a kid
Not really toys, unless if it’s toys for adults.
I also had made what little time I had to visit Mississauga, a city 15-20 minutes west of Toronto, and their bougie fancy mall known as Square One.
The skyline of Mississauga
The famous Absolute World condominium towers (yep, people live there)
The chandelier at Square One shopping center
The Toronto Trip, Pt. 4 – “Falling For Niagara”
On November 1st, I ventured out to a region that only the locals knew and was mostly free from tourists. On November 2nd, I would venture out to one of the biggest tourist traps in Canada that everyone and their grandparents knew: Niagara Falls!
This was one of the places I HAD to go to if I were to visit Toronto. And I couldn’t have picked a better day to go: the weather was clear, and I needed some major eye bleach after the mess that was Game 7 of that World Series from yesterday. Photo dump time!
Fall colors blooming at a nearby park
View of the Rainbow International Bridge that connects Canada to the US.
I was a bit tempted to cross that bridge step into New York state for the first time. But with border crossing comes the modern-day Gestapo border patrol, and with the last name and skin tone I have, some of those officers may see me as a target.
Another images of the Falls
Fall colors by the Falls!
A friend of mine who had visited Niagara Falls told me to stay in the area past sunset, as the falls do a “light show” at night. She didn’t lie!
The Falls shortly after sunset (with a near full moon in the sky)
Another view of the Falls at night
Rainbow falls!
A rainbow and a moon
What my friend didn’t tell me about Niagara, however, was this gaudy but intriguing strip right by the falls: Clifton Hill.
One view of Clifton Hill
Another view of Clifton Hill
If the gift shops by the Falls doesn’t rob you of your money, the casinos by the falls will.
A catch-and-release find at a local souvenir shop.
The Sky Wheel, part of the fun attractions found at Clifton Hill
View of Clifton Hill and beyond, from atop the Sky Wheel
I guess if one gets bored by the falls, they can always escape to the flashy lights, the casinos, and the uber-large Ferris wheel found at Clifton Hill. Not pictured are the miniature golf course and the go-kart speedway. I was a bit tempted to go go-kart racing, but I drive a shit-ton (whether for work or play) to begin with, so I watched a race instead. All I took part of was the Sky Wheel, as you can see. $15 CAD (or around $11 USD) to ride five cycles on the wheel.
A little pro-tip: if you’re going souvenir shopping at the Falls, do so at one of those discount gift shops at Clifton Hill instead. I saw some shot glasses at a gift shop by the Falls and they were at least $9 CAD. The glasses I bought at Clifton Hill were only $2-$3 CAD.
Loved my time there! Another trip I can now cross off my bucket list.
I got one more part left to my Toronto trip. Stay tuned…
Lex Writes On 