As I start to look at re-branding this blog, I wanted to take a moment to call your attention to what I feel are 16 of the most interesting posts that have flowed from my brain in the last couple of years. You may not find all of them hilarious or funny, as many of my posts tend to be, but you might find them interesting.

Insightful, inspiring, informative. The 3 I’s of blogging. Well, interesting as well, so really the 4 I’s of blogging. My four eyes. You get the point.

So without further or farther adieu or adoo, here I present them for your review:

1. Back before my wordpress migration, I did a 5 post series on the 2006 Out and Equal Workplace Equality Conference. You can start at the beginning when Rachelle and I arrived in Chicago, enjoy our adventures at a disgusting restaurant called Stetson’s, and revel in the magnificence of us meeting Mr. Sulu of the Enterprise.
2. Continuing on the multi-post theme, who could forget the 5 days of Victoria, BC. Not only did I finally get to meet Bobby Apperson, but we once again experience the awe inspiring Butchart Gardens.
3. Next on the list is an informational page about the Randompedia, the Random Encyclopedia. Are you looking for things you’d never find in wikipedia? Look no further/farther.
4. A pivotal point in my life centered around an event in November 2006. NaNoWriMo, the writing competition to complete a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Well let me tell ya, I didn’t just complete it, I blew it out of the water in 12 days then started on the next one! Here’s the post that started it all. (And the post about my first book published on amazon.com)
5. Ready for something spooky and scary? How about the story behind one of my favourite holidays? Hellaween! (I also shared the true history of Valentine’s Day too, but it’s not one of my favourite holidays because it’s not really a holiday. However, Easter is.)
6. The list wouldn’t be complete without at least one GLBT informational component, and what better than a warning that you should not do business with the gays. Ok, maybe two components - especially a warning about hate crimes.
7. The Hellaween season continued with a quick movie review. Some of you might recall the 8 Films to Die For series, and specifically, the movie Unrest. Yeah - I tried to forget it too. Here’s the review.
8. One of the longest series posts that I’ve done here is the Childhood Journal. After receiving a stack of old notebooks from my parents, I realized there was a goldmine of interesting writings from yours truly back when I was a wee little boy. Here’s the one that kicked it off, which includes a link to the entire series.
9. Ok, so GLBT is a common theme here, and so I should probably fill you all in on what it means to be a Friend of Dorothy.
10. Want to know how to make the world a better place? Try Star Trek.
11. I don’t just care about making the world a better place, I also want to make your lives and relationships better. Who knew that you could learn so much about a relationship from your toothbrush?
12. One of the most popular posts I’ve ever done was about throwing a wine party. It’s really quite easy, and I’ve provided simple instructions on making it a memorable event.
13. Some of you were probably wondering when I’d get to this one, and number 13 is probably appropriate for it. That’s right, it’s my American Idol series.
14. Time for a meme. I’ve done quite a few of these, so I’ll lump some together into #14. What’s on your iPod, iTunes Meme, and What’s On Your Desk.
15. Sometimes it’s important to share your dreams. For some reason I felt compelled to share one of my most bizarre ones with you.
16. Finally, I provided more education, in a post on 8 Quick Tips for Aspiring Amateur Photographers. We don’t just provide entertainment here, we also educate.

So there you have it. 16 posts (actually 22 but in a list of 16) that resonated with me and with my readers (based on a very scientific process that I developed just for this post). Have a great time browsing around, and remember that these are just a sample of what we have to offer here at Digital Heath.

Also remember - safety first!

While our friends Bob and Stephen were in town this past week, we decided to take a trip to the gold country to do some wine tasting and a tour of the Sutter Creek Gold Mine. Here are a few pictures from the day…

First, it’s always a good idea to have some wine, especially if you have somehow injured your left foot and can barely walk on it, like I did.

We stopped by the Sutter Creek Wine Tasting house, and Travis Brown, the Pouring Wench, delighted us with wines from various spots around the county.

Of course we had to buy a few (ok, a lot) bottles, and joined the wine club as well…I mean seriously, how can you go to a winery and not buy a heaping helping of wine? I’ve even tried the patch, but it doesn’t work.

After a glass or two (or three or four) of wine, we decided to check out the town, and get some lunch at the Sutter Creek Palace Restaurant and Saloon (since 1884 even).

Yummy food, and three of us had the seafood sandwich - apparently the most popular item on the menu. Who knew that seafood was the lunch of choice for Sutter Creek visitors? Not me.

But enough about Sutter Creek the town, what you really wanted to see what how sassy I look in a hard hat right?

Pretty scary huh?

Here are more pictures from the trip to Sutter Creek.

I was in Guerneville, CA earlier this week, camping.

As I walked across a bridge from the town to the campground, a girl sitting on the walkway with random guy said the following as I walked past her:

There are two people I hate more than anything in this town…Brittany and Tiffany.  

I don’t know who these people are, but I’m thinking that if they live in Guerneville (which is a very nice town by the way), their names are not spelled as simply as Brittany and Tiffany.

I’m thinking it’s more like Brittani with little hearts over the i’s. Or Typhanie with a ph instead of an f. Or some combination of y’s and ie’s like Bryttanie and Tyffynie, or heck, even Tyffyny and Bryttyny.

You could go nuts with it. 

This past weekend, David and I went on a photography trip to Land Park and the Sacramento Zoo. We hadn’t actually planned on going to the zoo, but it was there, so we went.

Since I always have completely opposite opinions on everything, I both love and hate zoos. My love for the zoo comes from seeing animals that I would otherwise probably never see in my lifetime. Actually feeling the presence of a snow leopard is so different than reading about them on wikipedia. Seeing the gazing eyes of a Siberian tiger, the thoughtful face of an orangutan, or the munching crunchings of a giraffe who is eagerly devouring a carrot, is what it’s all about.

The part that I hate is that in many zoos, there is simply no space for the animals to live. How can a zebra exercise when their habitat is only 50 feet? They need to run across the plains! How can a burrowing owl (pdf) soar above the skies when they are in a cage the size of my bathroom? They can’t, and that hurts me to see. Animals need space to be themselves, just like we do as humans.

Anyway, here are some of the beautiful creatures at our zoo. You can select them and they will open into full size.

And if you’re interested in seeing what the flamingo’s did as soon as we walked up….view this video:

If a customer asks for a side of blue cheese dressing, do not give them a bottle of mustard instead.

If a customer orders a sandwich with a side of fruit, put a fork on the tray. A customer should never have to stab their honeydew with a knife in order to eat it.

And finally…no onions means NO ONIONS.

If you are delivering room service to a customer, and they have ordered a Diet Pepsi to go along with their meal, do not bring them a regular Pepsi just because you are out of Diet Pepsi. They are not the same beverage. Diet Coke could perhaps be substituted, but not a non-diet soda.

Second, do not then tell the customer that they can call one of the bell boys to see if they will go into the employee break room and get a Diet Pepsi from the drink machine for you. If there are Diet Pepsi’s in the break room, go get one before bringing the food to your customer, and they will never know that you have a beverage stocking issue.

Oh…and put some freaking vending machines next to the ice maker like every other hotel on the planet does.

Thanks.

On a recent trip to NC to visit my parents, we couldn’t help taking volumes of pictures of their sphynx S’Belle, who is a sister of my sphynx, Siobhan. (David took the opportunity to dress S’Belle up like Miss Monroe, and take a few shots of her loveliness).

I’ve always thought that S’Belle is the most beautiful and sleek one of the litter, because she looks like a little Clydesdale horse. She has fluffy tufts of white hair on her feet, and she is sleek and slender (very much unlike Siobhan, who has quite the pot-belly).

Something we’ve noticed, however, is that every time we see S’Belle, she’s got more hair! Already she had more than Siobhan. She started off having a very bushy tail, and the white fluffy feet as I mentioned. But she also exhibits another odd hair-trait that seems to be unique to the sphynx breed. Periodically, she will get hair wings on the sides of her body. Siobhan gets them, other sphynx I know of get them, it’s just a very odd and funny looking abberation that occurs every year. But this visit, we noticed something brand new that just takes the cake.

S’Belle has developed chest hair, and I’m thinking it’s the coffee. As you can see from the picture on the left, it’s fluffy white chest hair that were she wearing a wife-beater, she could comb it up and over the top and fit in perfectly with some of the inhabitants of a few unnamed Raleigh suburbs.
So I started looking back through some pictures that we have taken of her in the last couple of years, and I discovered that this odd hair phenomenon has not been limited to chest hair, or wings. She actually went through a phase where her entire body was covered in more hair than is normal. Here are a couple shots of hairy S’Belle.

The picture on the left shows her very hairy paws and tail, while the picture on the right shows her body covered in quite a bit of fluff. Siobhan doesn’t exhibit nearly the same type of body hair, in fact, aside from the wings, her hair is limited to the back of her ears, and her tail. Now every so often she will get oddly shaped wing hair, but it’s still hair on her sides, never on her chest. So I’m still going with the coffee answer. Notice below…no chest hair. Maybe it’s because she drinks tea instead of coffee.

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