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Goodbye, Y! Mail. Hello, GMail...

The title really says it all. But the long of it is...

I liked Yahoo! Mail. It was fairly fast and straightforward and suited my lite email needs perfectly. Plus I started out with a Y! Mail account, so there was a lot of history and inertia.

When the new beta launched recently I tried it out and immediately disliked it. Not because of any UI issues - Outlook interface is perfectly fine. But I nixed it due to performance. It was sloooow. Whatever happened to Yahoo!'s committment to performance?

Which brings me to Gmail. I'm not in love with the way it does threading/conversations, it's no big whoop either way to me, but it is fast. Really fast.

Over the past few months I've slowly started to use my Gmail account more (fredland@gmail.com) but lately I've been having issues logging into my Y! Mail account, so I've made the complete switch this week.

So long Y! Mail. (But My Yahoo! is still my homepage.)

drawings

nudes

Wkshop

Aptos / Santa Cruz / Capitola / Monterey , CA

We had a wonderful vacation just an hour and a half’s drive south of the city. We rented a house in Aptos, CA. It was spacious and clean, in a quiet neighborhood and located right next to the beautiful, tree-lined, path down to the beach.

It was a beautiful beach. It had a single pier off of which sat a half submerged ship, the Palo Alto. The Palo Alto was a ship of war made of cement. The war ended before it was finished so they brought it down to Aptos and let it sink off the pier into what must be a lively reef of sealife acivity.

The ocean was fairly tame but by the second week I was able to surf some decent sized waves on a boogie board. The water was still pretty cold, but I found it refreshing. The boys didn’t ever get in the water, more than happy to just play in the sand.

We would often see dolphins swimming by, pelicans diving for fish, and the odd sea lion or two just off the beach. On another trip, Merritt and I saw what we’re pretty sure was an orca. It’s dorsal fin was way too big to be a dolphin’s but it was also quite close to the shoreline.

One of our first trips was a 45 minute leisurely drive to the Monterey Bay Aquarium which is always a big hit with the boys.

Only a few minutes drive away was Capitola Beach which is even more calm for the kids. We met our friends Esther and her daughter Lotus there for a playdate. Esther had grown up in Capitola which is a very cute little beach town.

We also went to Santa Cruz and hung out on the boardwalk, caught some rides and ate some food. The boys liked the spectacle and it was a lot of fun.

We hiked a few trails, and visited some tidepools, almost every day started with an adventure in the morning, followed by some downtime at the beach near our house. Or a dip in the hot tub at our house, or should we say luke-warm-kid-friendly tub. Seth, Mia and their son, Strider, joined us one Saturday afternoon.

Merritt planned the vacation close to home knowing that I dislike to travel. She really wanted sun, sand and water. This area of Santa Cruz fit the bill perfectly. It was a great vacation.

BKNY

In 1988, I went to Andover Summer School. (Yeah, so what if I did? Huh? HUH?) In my English class I met a girl named Alysia. She was cool. We were buds.

Jump to two years later and I’m at Penn (Yeah, so? So?!) And I bump into Alysia on campus. Except it’s not Alysia, it’s her twin sister Beth. She was cool. We were buds.

Jump to two years later and I learn that my cousins, Eugene and Stephanie are her cousins too. So we’re related by marriage, I think that’s called first cousins once removed? Anyway, we sort of keep in touch. It’s cool, we’re buds. She’s a writer in NYC, I was in NYC but moved to SF.

A few years ago, we get back in touch and she sends me her personal newsletter titled, “BKNY”.

It’s hella funny. She writes real good.

But get this, it’s printed on PAPER. And distributed via the United States Postal Service. How quaint! How 20th century! How often do I receive said newsletter? Not very frickin often.

So I says to Beth, I say, “Yo cous’, there’s this thing called the Internet. And something called a Blog.” And she says, “Yeah I know but privacy concerns, yadda yadda yadda, I’m a luddite yadda yadda yadda, I’m afraid of the boogeyman yadda yadda yadda.”

A few weeks ago, out of the blue, I get an email from Beth announcing that she now has a blog. I read it. She still funny.

And now she puts up like 200 posts an hour.

Duck, Water. Water, Duck. Finally. Sheesh!