Orgasm for Peace Day!

Yeah you read that right.
Today is the day to have an orgasm and immediately after, think about world peace. The organizers say you can direct that orgasmic energy for the good of all - 'Tis the season I say!
Read about it HERE or just do your part on your own!
Today is the day to change the world for the better and have fun "doing it."
LOL

It's Christmas time with Maria

Hey! Click on the picture to see my sister and Santa jamming out. I thought it was funny that I took two pictures of Maria and Greg with Santa that were nearly identical so I made an animated GIF out of them. Greg is making moves on Ms. Claus... It's kinda funny if you're a member of the Harlow Clan. I thought it wasn't working, but it must be my browser at home that is broken...

Thanksgiving in Arizona

It's been a while since I posted last. We went to Arizona to have Thanksgiving with Maria - So that's where I'll start.

It was a good trip. We drove in one day but got stuck in L.A. for 3 hours in traffic. We went 60 miles. It sucked. I never want to go to L.A. Ever again. Well - I don't want to drive there ever. People are crazy. We almost witnessed an accident on the way back - we saw plumes of smoke rise up and all the traffic stopped. I quickly darted out to the commuter lane because it was still going and we drove past a woman who had rear-ended a truck. She was in shock and got out of her car in the middle of traffic. The engine was smoking so I don't blame her.

We made it to Wickenburg OK. Tired but OK. The next day was Thanksgiving so we hung out and cooked and ate all day. It was awesome. Just AJ, Maria, Greg and me. Greg and I played Wii a bit.

Friday we went on a hike up Vulture Peak. (Close to The Burg) It was fantastic. The peak gave great 360 degree views of the landscape. It was a tough rock-scale up to the top, but worth it.

Saturday we went up to Prescott and Jerome. That was fun. They are little towns up on the way to Sedona. We took small highways that wound all around the mountains up and down. It was awesome. On the way back we scored the longest unassisted coast - 7.25 miles. I like to see how far the car can coast. It's like a game while I'm driving. This was late at night so no one was behind me to care. Usually the Prius doesn't fare so well on coasts because it's so light - but with extra people in the car we did awesome.

Sunday we went to Sedona. This time we took the highway and Greg's car. No coasting. That place is stunningly beautiful. Like a picture book that's larger than life. My lame pictures don't tell 1/2 of the story. Speaking of pictures, you can see a bunch on this web page HERE.

I'll post more stuff this week of more recent happenings.

Nintendo Wii !!

Today my Wii preorder came!

YAY! I ordered it from work because it was a little cheaper. Business perk I guess. I don't have any games for it, but that's OK. It comes with Wii-Sports and its FUN. Good games will come out soon enough - like Mario World, Smash Brothers and, and, and...

Anyways - you may or may not have seen pictures of it but it has a cool new way of playing games. Like using a motion sensitive laser pointer! It's totally fun. We played at work for a bit.

The hardware is basically a souped up GameCube - it's able to play GameCube games - just pop them in the slot. You can get online and surf like you were at a computer using the Opera web browser. You can buy old skool Nintendo games and download them online.

I'm taking it to Thanksgiving in Arizona - it'll be fun! Of course we'll probably be too busy to play much. :) I'll be back on Tuesday and post pics from our trip soon after.

Have a good holiday!

Michael Thomas Finnegan

This is Michael Thomas.

We found him in the parking lot at our place in NY. I thought we should call him Thomas, and AJ thought he should have an Irish name, so Thomas became Michael Thomas Finnegan. He's one of the best cats ever. He loves to sit on our laps and he comes whenever we call him. He REALLY likes going outside and we often feel bad keeping him indoors. But it's for his own good, right?

Anyways - he's pretty photogenic and last night when we were watching a show on PBS about penguins, he became extremely interested and jumped off AJ's lap to get a better look. It was funny. He stayed there the rest of the show.

Green Festival

On Saturday November 11th we went up to SF to the Green Festival. It was great to be around so many people who think like we do. All the food was either vegetarian or vegan. All the exhibits were about conserving energy, doing clean business, making good food or clothes. It was really great. We're not as gung-ho as a lot of the people we saw there, but we're somewhere in between them and the rest of the "normal" world. It felt good not to feel like a freak.

They are producing a new car here now. It's all electric - you have to plug it in. But it goes up to 40 miles on one charge and gets up to 40 mph. Not bad! They say it comes out to 3cents per mile as opposed to an average of 59cents per mile for those of us who use gasoline. Zero Air Pollution - ZAPcars! Too bad it looks so lame. They're sure to improve on visuals in the near future.

Vegetarian Haggis

A while ago we spotted this English import store on El Camino Real. We went in to see if they had fruit thingies. On the shelf we saw an $8 can of Veggie Haggis. I know, I know. Why the hell would we want to try Haggis and Veggie Haggis for that matter?!?! Well, we figured there was no way in hell we were ever going to eat REAL haggis, so we ought to try this since it had presented itself so extraordinarily.

We waited for turnips to be in season and show up at the farmer's market. Last week they had 'em so we put them and haggis on the menu plan. When the day came we were kind of excited... but a little disturbed at how much the stuff in the can looked like dogfood. Michael Thomas was very curious, so we held it down for him to inspect. (Sometimes they like to inspect our food, but unless it's dairy related, they simply walk away snootily.) Mike was instantly entranced by the haggis and started licking away. Well that was a surprise and kind of a bad sign...

We cooked it up and prepared some potatoes and turnips on the side. In the end it was pretty good. Nobody ever told me that haggis is just a dumb name for meatloaf. Maybe the fact that it was vegetarian coupled with being jammed in a can and shipped around the globe made it that way...

I don't think we'll be having haggis again - vegetarian or not.

Sally the Praying Mantis

Last year there was a praying mantis who hung around our yard a lot. I didn't see her during the winter but one (the same one?) showed up over the weekend. I put her in the hedge, but Michael Thomas saw her. He has a habit of finding the little lizards and killing them, so I put her up high to keep her safe, but she fell. She landed on the cactus/aloe hybrid and impaled her abdomen. I pulled her off and put her back in the bushes. I haven't seen her this week. I hope she didn't die - it looked like a minor flesh wound...

Jess & the Twinkie-Bus-Neatloaf Friday

Friday we went up to the city for a surprise birthday gathering for Jess. It was a pretty cool dive bar and we got to meet up with a few people we haven't seen in a while. We also freaked Jess out cuz she was actually surprised.

First we picked up the bus from Tassi. I gotta say that Tassi's RULES. Bruce is a really awesome guy - I needed to have the rear bearings replaced and they also replaced the drum brakes and all that jazz back there. That's kind of internal serious work that I don't have the tools to do. They only charged me labor for one job. Usually mechanics try to make money by charging for all jobs separately even if they are doing them concurrently. There is a price guide in a little book and they are legally allowed to charge what the book says. That let's them make more money as they get faster as a task. Crazy, huh? Well, Tassi doesn't go for that and even said - get this - when I need to do the front end, HE'LL SHOW ME HOW TO DO IT MYSELF. You gotta love a good mechanic.

Then we headed up to SF and went to a new vegetarian restaurant near the bar Craig planned the shindig at. Well, it was new to us. It's called Ananda Fuara. It was pretty nice but everything on the menu was stuff that Alicia could and does make for us. Actually I had a Neatloaf Sandwich. We had never heard of it and I don't know if "neatloaf" is a trademarked thing, but it was really interesting. The sauce they put on it was good too!

Then we walked over to Butter. It's kind of a dive bar on 11th & Harrison. They have a bunch of weird Smirnoff drinks (some with rootbeer!) and a bunch of food from childhood - like Tater-tots. They also have a deep fried Twinkie... which we tried. Now I know I never have to try one of those again. EVER. Craig had a bunch of us meet there to surprise Jess. He bought us all a beer and then we had cake. He got the cake from Citizen Cake. IT WAS AWESOME! It was fun to see people again and we met some new people too.

Albany, NY

I went to Albany last week for work. A few of the VV employees were asked to attend some training sessions at the East coast office. Vicarious Visions has, since I left last year, moved into a new building.

The new office is pretty swank. It was good to meet up with old friends and meet new people. There were TONS of new people.
I got to see the leaves before they changed completely. It was cold - around 40 degrees - and there was no snow. My lips and face chapped up and I tried not to catch a cold. It was cloudy most of the time, but when the clouds cleared up on Friday it was really cold.

I took a tour of the Price Chopper with Jon, Cyn and Murph to pick up a couple things on Thursday night. Price Chopper doesn't seem to have changed much... it's a lot like Safeway. In fact it looks like every other jinormous grocery store doesn't it. Safeway is our last resort for foodstuffs...

Overall the trip went well - I learned some stuff that will hopefully help me at work.

Trunk Monkey

Maybe I find this too funny.
TRUNK MONKEY!
People make monkeys do funny things.

*thanks, Thomas!

Dreary Day

Oddly it's cloudy here. That doesn't happen much. So infrequently in fact that it's quite noticeable. Usually it's a bit foggy in the morning BTU it burns off by 10am.

Anyways - today we'll just take it easy. I need to dig up more yard for planting vegetables for the second season - they SAY things will grow again... and we're going to look at neighboring towns away from the "sprawl" for houses we might be able to afford. It's almost a joke how much houses cost out here. They aren't built any better, there are just too many people who want a home. Seems it's a buyer's market now because people aren't trying to out-bid each other. Meaning houses are starting to go for less than $1 million. No joke - two blocks down a house went for $950k. Three blocks down one went for $1.25 million. The reason the median is as low as it is in that chart is because of tea "sketchy" areas where houses go for $400k-$500k. "Get out of town!" takes on new meaning...

Mii JASE

Someone at work found this site where you can make an avatar of yourself. It's based on what the Nintendo Wii will have for players. You can create this avatar for yourself and a 3D model of it will play certain games for you online and stuff. Pretty neat. Check it out and make your own!

Mii generator - HERE. Select the trait you want to change at the top and then select the options underneath. You can make features larger or smaller, farther apart or closer and sometimes rotate them.

FUN FUN.

Kaan: The Weekend Adventure

This weekend was the last weekend Kaan will be a single man.

I wanted to have a night out on the town - something akin to a bachelor party on the fly since it was kind of sudden - but I thought it would be lame with just the two of us.

I invited a couple of Kaan's close friends in to town to stay with AJ and me. Sean and Chris arrived on Friday night and under the masquerade of "going out for a drink" we surreptitiously ran into Kaan in Mountain View. Kaan just about had a heart attack.

The next day (Saturday) we got up late and went to brunch. Then we headed up to the city. Four old friends looking to spend some time hanging out before Kaan took that big step...

We started out mellow; A hookah pipe and Turkish coffee over at the Pride of the Mediterranean near Japantown. Then we were off to asiaSF for some dancing. If you check out the site, you'll have to look carefully to see why this place is "not as it seems"... After the craziness wore off, we headed up to the Fairmont Hotel on top of Nob Hill for a drink and some live jazz.

All in all it was a great day with the only hang-up being parking. We found street parking everywhere we needed to eventually, but sometimes it was tough. Better than paying $3.00/15 minutes up on Nob Hill. Sheesh!

Sunday we went out with Kaan and bought a suit for the wedding. Then we came back, grabbed AJ and headed up to the city again to see some tourist stuff. We went to Pacific Heights and saw the mansions; We drove through the Presidio; We went down Lombard street; We went to Fisherman's Warf. Sean suggested the Fog City Diner so we hunted it down and ate dinner. It was surprisingly good! Then we went to Columbus street to Caffe Greco for some coffee and dessert. Kaan had been here before and it was really a hoppin' part of town we hadn't seen before. Cool!

Monday we brought Sean and Chris in to the office so they could see it and meet people. That was good - soon after that we had to take them to the airport.

It was one of the most eventful weekends ever.

The next coolest 3D program

The Japanese have created the impossible.
Draw on a screen and it creates a 3D object. Rotate it; cut into it; extrude shapes out of it. All in real time. I'm in love.

Watch it in action in this video. HERE

Now I just need them to release it to the public and a $2500 cintaq to draw on.
Until then, I will dream.

Not too much going on...

Been working a lot this week.
Then I come home and play Lego Star Wars.
Not much else going on.
Made cookies tonight.
Gotta lay low and not spend money for a bit.
Sucks, cuz AJs birthday is next week.

Labor Day Weekend Wedding

Labor Day Weekend was a crazy one for us - we flew to Michigan to see Care-Bear's wedding.
It was good to see the family - it will probably be the last time we are in Michigan for quite a while. It will definitely be a long time before we are all in the same place again...

Anyways - some of the pictures are HERE for family members to enjoy.

Congratulations Carrie & Brad! Take care of yourselves!

(In lighter news, there is a new LEGO ultimate set out! It's Darth Vader's tie fighter. WOO!)

Lake Chabot

We went to Lake Chabot last Saturday for a canoe ride. We only rode around for an hour, but it was fun. It was really pretty. We canoed about 3 miles and then walked along the path for ~5 miles. We were exhausted. But not too exhausted because then we met Kaan for dinner. It was good. The Kunefe was nice & the Baklava awesome!

Japan Festival

Was it Japan festival or Obon or what? I don't know but we went to see.

Saturday Kaan came over and we headed up to SF Japan town. We walked through the street vendors and through the mall. We stopped in the toy stores and found a restaurant to eat at. We ate at Mifune. I would NOT recommend it. It was really lame. It almost made us not like Japanese food.

After Japan town we went to a Mediterranean restaurant nearby that Jason S. Recommended. They have hookah pipes to smoke so that's what we did. We also had some of their Turkish coffee and I must say that it was probably the best I've had. I don't know what extra spice they put in it, but it was awesome.

We were going to go meet Craig & company afterwards, but we were beat and not feeling well after that horrible food.

I took a bunch of pics and put them all HERE.


When we go to visit Kaan in Turkey someday - I'm going to buy a hookah pipe. A real authentic Turkish hookah. Yah man. YEAH.

When we got home we stood in the driveway and talked for a bit. The best part was when I said, "I don't like open bodies of water." and AJ said, "Oh, that's just because you can't breathe under water." For some reason Kaan and I couldn't stop laughing.

Company picnic & DUI (almost)

Friday we went to the beach for a company picnic. It was fun to get everyone out of the office together. The beach was cold - as it always is, but fun. This particular beach is chock full of driftwood and somebody with too much time on their hands built a make-shift house out of it. (See it over there on the left?) The guys built a structure of their own with driftwood. (I think it was meant to be a bonfire - but no one had matches.)


There was also a dead seal or sea lion washed up here. Freaky.


After the beach we went to Cameron's English Pub on HWY 1 near Half Moon Bay. I had a "mudball". It's a pint of Guinness with a scoop of chocolate ice cream. It was weird. Then they brought us another because someone else had ordered one and then backed out. No one wanted it - so I had myself another! (I won't be having any more, though!)

On the way back home I got off at Woodside and headed for a cheap gas station to fill up. There was a checkpoint, so I showed my driver's license. To my horror the officer asked if I'd had anything to drink. Well, I try not to lie as a rule, so I just said, "two beers". THEN they pulled me out of the bus (did I mention I was driving my pride and joy bus?!?!) and another officer drove it around the corner. I walked around the corner with the first officer and proceeded to do some really weird tests. Basically it went like this:

1) Verbal Assessment:
Officer - What did you drink?
JASE - Two pints of Guinness. With chocolate ice cream in them!
Officer - Did you have anything to eat?
JASE - Well, we had just been to a company picnic at the beach down the road and I had a big sandwich and a bunch of chips and stuff. I also had some onion rings at the bar.
Officer - Do you still weigh 200 pounds? (Looking at license.)
JASE - Well, I think I'm down to 195 now - I've been riding my bike in to work a bit.
Officer - Have your passengers had anything to drink?
JASE - Yes.
Officer - How long ago did you have your drinks?
JASE - Um, I'm not sure. I don't have a watch. The guys wanted to go because it was getting close to seven o'clock, and then I got a little gas to get me over the mountain ridge and the sign said it was like 12 minutes from HWY 1 to 280, so... it might be around 7:30 now.

2) Physical Assessment:
Officer - OK, now I'm going to ask you to do a couple physical tests. I'm going to demonstrate them first and then you can ask me any questions you have before you do them. OK?
JASE - OK - I've never done this before. I can feel myself shaking a bit.
Officer - That's OK, I'll take it into account.
JASE - ...
Officer - OK first one. Stand with your feet together, arms to your side, lean your head back and close your eyes. Count 30 seconds.
JASE - OK (I do it. I can instantly see why this would be bad for someone drunk. I can feel myself wavering. I tense up and concentrate on counting. I count one-oneThousand, two-oneThousand... I count to 31 just to make sure. Then I stop and look at him. "OK"
Officer - OK, good. Next test.
JASE - Wait, how close was I to 30 seconds?
Officer - Huh? Oh, right on.
JASE - Cool.
Officer - OK next test. Stand with your feet together, point with your index fingers out to the side, lean your head back and close your eyes. Touch your finger to your nose with the hand I call out. Touch the tip of your finger to the tip of your nose.
JASE - OK
Officer - Right, Left, Right, Left, Right, Left, Left
JASE - I do it and I do it really slow, visualizing my finger and my nose. I nail it every time. Sometimes it pays to be an artist with spacial intelligence. :)
Officer - OK next test. Stand with you feet together, arms to your side and lift one foot off the ground in front of you about 6 inches high until I say stop. Then do the other one.
JASE - I look at the ground. "It's a little uneven over here on the shoulder of the road, sir."
Officer - You want to go over to the sidewalk?
JASE - Yeah, that'd be better. (He leads me over there.)
Officer - OK Ready?
JASE - Yeah. I do it. I balance really well because I've been riding my bike to work and I have THIGHS OF STEEL!
Officer - I'm speechless. (OK he didn't say that - but he didn't say anything.)
JASE - OK

3) Breath Assessment:
Officer - OK now you can do a breathalizer test if you want. It's not required but we can finish this a lot faster if you do it. I don't think you'll have any trouble passing this part based on how you did on the other parts. The legal limit is 0.8, but we'll take you in if you blow a 0.4 or higher. We don't want to be responsible if you hit someone later.
JASE - What do you mean "hit someone"?
Officer - Like - get in an accident.
JASE - Oh, I thought you thought I was going to punch someone for some reason.
Officer - Uh, no. So do you want to do the test?
JASE - I'm actually really curious to see what I'd blow after two drinks and an hour of time. But I'm really freaking out that it could be horribly wrong and I'll get a ticket and my insurance will go up and...
Officer - I don't think it'll be a problem really.
JASE - OK let's try it.
Officer - (aside: Hey (someone) get me a test unit.) OK take a deep breath and blow into this tube as hard as you can.
JASE - Has this unit been used already today or been recalibrated before this test?
Officer - This is the first time it has been used.
JASE - OK Breaths in...
Officer - No you can't hold it - I gotta hold it - it's expensive equipment.
JASE - Oh OK.
Officer - OK deep breath again and blow.
JASE - Blows. A loooooong time. The thing clicks.
Officer - OK - He pulls it away and waits. You blew a 0.00
JASE - What?
Officer - Yeah - I guess 2 beers is fine for your weight.
JASE - Really? Is it correct?
Officer - We can try it again to make sure.
JASE - OK Go!
Officer - OK Blow
JASE - Blows
Officer - Oop, no - gotta do it again.
JASE - OK - Blows after he resets the thing.
Officer - Yup - 0.00 again. (Another officer comes up and asks what's up.) Nope he's fine. Just educational here now. Blew a 0.00.
JASE - Sweet.
Officer - Yeah - my limit is 2 beers too. You'd probably be OK with 3, but better keep it at 2.
JASE - Wow - that's cool, because my wife is always giving me flak about having a couple drinks.
Officer - Well, now you have proof that you're fine.
JASE - Cool.
Officer - OK Thanks for going through this with me - have a good night.
JASE - Thank you officer. I walk back to the bus and Kaan and AJ.

We go get gas and drive home. What an interesting day indeed. One observation. The police officers of the Menlo Park / Atherton / Redwood city are VERY polite and quite good looking. (AJ concurs.)

Big Basin Redwood Forest

Last Saturday we went on a hike to Big Basin. It's a redwood park south of us that has some small redwoods. When I say small, I mean it might take 5 people hand-in-hand to encircle one of these guys, so they are still pretty large.

The hike was fun, about 5 or 6 miles. We found an interesting phenomenon, some of the trees had burn scars on them on the outside and some had portions of the trunks burned out. There must have been a fire a while ago. The weird part was that on the trees with the trunks burned out, there was a charcoal pattern and when you looked at it closely, an optical illusion occurred that made it look like it was moving away from you constantly. It was pretty trippy.

The only drawback to going to this park is it's FULL or people. When you want to get to nature and escape the hub-bub of the suburban sprawl, you're not really looking to be surrounded by people and running into them on the trail. Oh, well - we'll take what we can get.

Garlic Festival

Last Saturday we went to the garlic festival in Gilroy. I guess they grow a lot of garlic there. The bad thing is - it's CON AGRA that funds most of the growing. They are relentless as a corporate bull. They have done good things for the environment as a large company, but have poisoned the American people... so I'm not sure whether to buy them or boycott them. More research is necessary indeed. Well, this wasn't meant to be a bitch session, just a "Hey we did something this weekend." I was just disappointed to see their banner everywhere at the festival. I guess the entrance fees all go to charities, so I guess they're not ALL bad.

Anyways... It was interesting. We had fun. We had GARLIC ICE CREAM! It was awesome. Sweet and tasty with a garlic burn right after - like you were chewing on a clove of garlic right there!

Then we called Kaan and went to downtown Sunnyvale for a couple beers and some fish & chips. We went to Scruffy Murphy's.

Passing California Smog

Today I took the van in for a smog test with a heavy heart for I knew it wouldn't pass. It was too much to hope that it might pass. I couldn't take the let down yet again so I didn't even try to think it might pass.

And yet there is a god. Somehow those guys at Tassi pulled off a miracle and tweaked out the van enough that it passed. The used EGR valve helped for sure - cutting the noxious gases reading down about 750 points from 2000 to 1250 roughly. It had to be under 1500.

I am having a great day and actually look forward to going to the DMV tomorrow to make the van a legal resident of California.

This is a snapshot the guys took of me during a video conference while I was telling them that the van passed smog. It's pretty hard for me to control my utter elation. In fact I have been unsuccessful at it. I have been waiting for this day for an entire year.

LEGO Death Star

I finally finished it! The LEGO Death Star is the largest LEGO set produced by LEGO at 3449 pieces and is 19" in diameter. I barely fits on my desk shelf and is in danger of taking a life-threatening dive to the floor should anyone stumble in to it or, willfully push it over... :)

As you can see by the picture, I surround myself with things I have made or appreciate the style of greatly. I know it looks messy, but it makes me feel good and enjoy my work space that much more. Somehow a "sterile" desk seems anti-creative to me. Maybe I'm nuts, though. If so - I'm fine with that. LOL

Back from Costa Rica

These boys terrorize the elementary school in Santa Ana, Costa Rica. Watch out for them. They'll tie your shoelaces together. AJ found them in Costa Rica.

I haven't posted in a while because AJ came back from Costa Rica last Saturday. So, you know - I was busy cleaning up the house and stuff. The cats really missed her and Maddi slept on the bed next to AJ from the first night on. She had been sleeping on the computer chair by herself the whole month. Mike, who had taken AJ's side of the bed all for himself, reluctantly gave it up and slept at our feet again.

AJ was looking out for me and took these pics of the VW buses she saw in Costa Rica. Too bad none of them were for sale. I mean "SE VENDE".

We went to the art fair in downtown Menlo Park on Sunday. Some day I wonder if I will have a booth at one of those... Sometimes people make "crafty" things and sometimes there's "arty" art. Is any of it REAL art? I don't know, I guess. That makes me sound like an art snob, when I'm not. I don't even know if what I'm doing is art. I mean - I'm being creative - sort of... But maybe it's just a craft in another form.

Art - you are a mystery to me. It's probably better that way.

MUNNY finished!

OK so a while ago I posted about the blank MUNNY I bought and how I was going to paint it up all purty-like. Well I'm done. For some reason I couldn't resist doing a monkey, and what's better than a monkey in a suit? Yeah, I don't know either. BUT, I wanted to give him a split personality so I made another face on the back of his head so I can turn it around and perhaps let it represent my mood. Y'know, sometimes you're just trying to get through the day and other times you've got your headphones blaring and you're taking it all on with a FIRE in your eye! So - there ya go JASE's MUNNY. I'm taking it in to work today. I don't really need any more junk on my desk, but I like it when more of the junk is stuff I made rather than junk other people made. LOL

Hiking w/ Kaan

Went on a short hike with Kaan on Saturday. AJ and I had been there before but not down this path. I didn't want to do anything strenuous, so it was more like an amble along the ridge of skyline drive. Still, while the sun was setting we got neat views of the bay lights flickering on and the horizon of the Pacific. It's good to get out away from the city sometimes. OK - a lot. I really like the way the sky was changing to night - there was a weird rainbow-like effect that I don't know if you can fully appreciate in the picture above. Below you can see the clouds moving in off the Pacific and seeping through the mountain ridges.