In the upper right of this page you'll see a little wee banner. Once in a while it will be for a really cool site called Kiva.

I found Kiva through my work at Zaadz, long before we featured them on the site. I think it was Zaadz team member Ryan who pointed them out. I really dug the combination of internet-powered community action and the use of capitalism to let those with drive improve the quality of their lives and the lives of their communities directly. That just struck a nice strong chord with me.

So back then, in the fall, I put some cash into Kiva and became part of my first loan. That's going well and when I saw the Kiva banner on Zaadz I jumped over and found two more people who needed microloans. Click, Click, Click, type type type, cha-ching. A little bit of world changing underway.

I encourage everyone to get onto Kiva and try it out. Do $25 if you just want to give it a shot. You'll get hooked! I know I have.

The Tribe of Heart film Peaceable Kingdom is a move that I can honestly say changed my life. PK is a compassionate journey into the lives of the beings known only to most people as "food". The film is nearing completion of it's third revision. Get a "sneak peak" at the page linked above.

It's no secret that I'm vegan and feel strongly about it. I went vegan before I ever heard of Peaceable Kingdom, but ordered it as soon as I became aware of it's release. By that point it had reached the second revision. I cried as I watched the DVD. It was my first exposure to the wonderful farm animal sanctuaries that exist to provide a haven for the few, terribly few, beings that escape from the grip of the slaughter industry. I was very impressed, as well, by Tribe of Hearts approach to spreading their message. Their "People Powered Distribution" model focused on individuals or small groups doing screenings to their friends, families and communities. With the help of local activists I was able to setup two such screenings. The first was at the West Hartford Public Library, West Hartford CT.  The second was at the New Haven Free Public Library.

I'm eagerly awaiting the release of PK3 so that we can hold more screenings and spread the message of compassion for all beings.  There are many movies out there that try to spread veganism's message, but I haven't found one that touched my heart more than Peaceable Kingdom.

If I spend much more time on Kiva I'm going to have to find a way to integrate my Kiva portfolio into Zaadz, just so I don't have to make blog posts every time.

So yes, another post about Kiva, the micro-finance website that brings together local facilitators, an internet full of conscious lenders, and a world full of entreprenuers ready to lift up their lives and their communities. I'm going to try to put at least one loan into Kiva every time I get paid, for as long as I can keep it up, or until I've got loans coming off of repayment just about as often. At that point I'll have a revolving cycle of capital inside Kiva that I can be constantly moving into new loans. That's terribly exciting to me. Probably for the same reason I enjoy video and board games where you need to carefully manage resources to achieve success (Settlers of Catan is my newest game).

So today I went into Kiva with the aim of putting in one loan. I made it out with two, and that's good because if I didn't check out soon I think I would have gone overboard!  Both loans need a few more investors before they can get fully paid out, so if you're able, think about joining in!

I recently had the pleasure of rediscovering a great song by The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Part 1. Besides being catchy and fun, this song reminds me of my favorite times at my previous gig. I don't miss the work, but I of course miss the friends I made working there. Recently I've had a chance to spend time with more of them. I'm getting married this Sunday, and my good friend Al Gordon is getting married on Saturday! So with all the bachelor parties and other gatherings I've gotten to see them more than usual. Good times.

Enjoy the video, happy Wednesday!

Today is "The Big Day". I know that because I've been getting asked if I'm ready for "it" for months :-) Besides being Earth Day, it's also the day that Tracy & I get married! Our first date was two thousand, six hundred, and twenty-nine days ago on March 10th, 2000. I proposed to Tracy on March 13th, 2005. And here we are on April 22nd, 2007 getting hitched. What a long, crazy, wonderful journey it's been.



I'm not nervous at all, though I'm quite anxious. It'll be over before we know it. I'll post more about the wedding after the fact and I'll try to blog a bit as we go on our honeymoon road trip through California riding roller coasters and ending up in Las Vegas. Good times.

Our first full day in California is over. We're safely tucked into bed at the Courtyard in downtown Oakland. Farm Sanctuary's Orland shelter is outstanding and we received a great tour by Zaadzster and Farmy Carolyn. The drive up and back was very scenic, in that country sort of way. The geology here is quite different than back in New England.  Thanks to our somewhat helpful guide, who we refer to as Ms. Garmin, we made it through the maze of highways without much trouble.

You can follow our progress in this Zaadz blog and on my Flickr page here.

Once we checked into the hotel and got settled we headed off for San Francisco to get some vegan food. Dinner tonight was at Herbivore, an all vegan restaurant in the Mission District. The food was good, though both of us got adventurous and were glad to have gotten more than one thing. Dessert was vegan ice cream which Herbivore gets from a local place called MaggieMudd.

Our second day in California was quite fun, though we've had a major change in plans. Turns out not one, but both, of the local amusement parks are closed during the week at this point in the season :-( So no roller coasters for us yet. Silly me, I assumed that since it's California and warm out that they'd be open.

I was a little bit concerned though because we purchased season passes for Six Flags and they needed to be picked up at the guest services counter of the specific park we selected (In this case Six Flags Discovery Kingdom). I contacted Discovery Kingdom via their website and asked if I could come pick up the season pass outside of park hours, or pick them up at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Los Angeles, our next stop. Well, I was very surprised when the next morning I got call from the park's General Manager himself telling me that I wouldn't have any problem picking them up in LA and promising to contact the GM there to make sure of it. Excellent service Six Flags! I only wish I could have ridden your coasters. Next time!

So instead of doing coasters we've opted to get out of San Fran a day early (today) and do the drive down the Pacific Coast Highway in two days instead of one. That should be nice. It gives us much more time to stop and enjoy ourselves. David was very helpful in suggesting places to stay, but given our very short notice I couldn't get us into any place in Big Sur like he advised. We'll be staying in Pismo Beach tonight, so it's still a long drive.

The highlight of day two was definitely meeting Siona for the first time! I've worked with Siona for what seems like a year and we've never met before. Tracy & I went down to Palo Alto to have lunch with Siona. It was terrific and we talked about the local area and about work... but in more of a water cooler fashion than a meeting ;-)

And last night we treated ourselves to an absolutely amazing dinner at the famous (to vegans at least) Millenium Restaurant. O-M-Z was it good! I started off with a strawberry enfused mojito and we were given some fried oyster mushrooms that could have passed as actual oysters in any clam shack back home. Then we decided to go with the five course Chef's Tasting Dinner. Our first course was a strawberry salad with delicious candied pecans. Mmmm. The next was a mexican torte with carmelized plantains and black beans layered with whole wheat tortillas. Following that we got into our two sample sized entrees, Stuffed Truffled Roulade. This was stuffed with french lentils and chanterelles, black truffle butter, smoked pimenton cream, roasted maitake & exotic mushrooms, sautéed broccoli di Cicco with currants & pine nuts, and accented with mushroom syrup. The next was Artichoke Al Cartoccio, a mix of roasted fennel, garlic, spicy seitan sausage, served over a barley-leek-chard risotto. To top everything off, dessert was a sampler of outstanding sweet treats: Whiskey Chocolate Tiramisu, Chocolate Almond Midnight, Lavender Scented Meyer Lemon Shortcake, and a lovely chocolate truffle to close the meal.

We had tea and coffee and waddled out of the Hotel California where Millenium is located. I couldn't recommend this restaurant highly enough. But it's extremely expensive, so come prepared to eat away your paycheck :-)

OH! And we went to see Hot Fuzz today at the Grand Lake Theater. Woot! This movie rocked. Go see it! We both enjoyed Shaun of the Dead, the previous film by the same team, and I think Hot Fuzz was even more enjoyable. Props to the Grand Lake theater for being cool, showing the film in an egyptian themed auditorium, and having free popcorn!

Since we weren't going to be doing any parks in the San Francisco area, we decided to leave for LA a day early and do the trip at a slower pace over two days of travel. Today was the first day. We drove north out of Oakland and around the bay so that we could come back down over the Golden Gate Bridge and through San Francisco on our way out of town. We picked up California Route 1 and headed south for a long, but very cool day of driving.

This state has such an interesting coast, I can't even grasp how varied it is, or how dramatic the vistas are. You've got to see it to believe it. But if a picture might work, check out my updated Flickr with our latest photos here. Many of them feature our buddy Fat Penguin and there's a shot of him with his girlfriend Miss Garmin too.

The two best parts of the drive were the twisting, winding, curving, cliff-hugging roads of Big Sur and the Elephant Seal Beach. Tracy was absolutely crazy about the seals!

Tonight we're resting in Pismo Beach and had dinner at the Big Sky Cafe in San Luis Obispo. Really good food and exceptional service. Mmmm.

Tomorrow we hit the road again and go the rest of the way down to Los Angeles. Should be a good day!

We left Pismo Beach in the morning and continued down the coast with Fat Penguin and Miss Garmen in tow. Unfortunately Miss Garmen doesn't know how to follow a given highway... she just wants to get us to our final destination quickly. So no "just follow California Rt 1 please" for her. After a bit of driving we made it to Santa Barbara and decided to find a place to stop for lunch. Thanks to Google and my "zaadz mobile office" (aka crackberry) we found Sojourner Cafe and enjoyed nice little lunch and good service. I had a yummy tempeh ruben and tracy had a "ginger buddha salad" that she liked and I finished.

And that ended the fun part of our trip today :-) Soon after we got back on the road we tried to follow Rt 1 more and ended up getting into the worst traffic of our lives. Who knows, it's probably not even bad by LA standards. But for us, after two days of driving around we were both cramped up and eager to get to our hotel and relax. No pictures today, but we'll keep updating as we do our Southern California stuff. Tomorrow we go to Knott's Berry Farm!

Finally hit the roller coasters today! Tracy & I headed off across greater Los Angeles with our trusty Miss Garmin and her boyfriend Fat Penguin. Both did a great job and we had no problem getting to Knott's Berry Farm. The park was pretty busy, but not too bad. We've been to parks that were insanely packed and because of that we've got a perspective that lets us endure the lines and waiting cheerfully :-)

We road a bunch of coasters and I think the favorite for both of us was Silver Bullet, a steel hanging coaster with a nice hammerhead turn and an intense high-G spiral near the end. I also went on Xcellerator and that was good too, but after seeing Top Thrill Dragster and Kingda Ka, it's hard to get too excited over this smaller, lightish red, launch coaster.

After KBR we headed off for a short drive in pursuit for the mythical "Sonic Drive-In". See, we see these commercials on TV in Connecticut, but the nearest Sonic is over 150 miles away. As a joke I ordered Sonic gift cards online and gave them to some friends, knowing that the fact they couldn't actually USE them would drive them nuts! That's just the kind of friend I am :-) Needless to say, vegan options at Sonic aren't extensive. We opted for the Tator Tots and some drinks.

After that we had Miss Garmin guide us all the way from Anaheim to West Hollywood so we could check out Real Food Daily, an all vegan restaurant I'd heard great things about from my Zaadz co-workers. Wow, what a treat! Tracy and I were both very happy with our food and the service. I had some great tacos, and she had Salisbury Seitan. Somehow we even manged to get down a brownie for dessert. Yummy! We could go back for every meal we've got left to have in LA and we'd never try everything. Highly recommended.

To end our day out we decided to drive around a bit. We drove down Rodeo Drive (meh) and then drove to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame (meh), then drove back to our hotel in Hacienda Heights. It was a pleasant evening and it was fun to explore a bit, even if the landmarks so far were a bit underwhelming.

No luck connecting with any of the Zaadz crew down here so far. Hopefully we'll get together tomorrow. We've got no park plans until Monday when we head north a bit to go to the famous Six Flags Magic Mountain!