The Zootoo Review: It's Coming Rite at You!

If you have pets, you know how big a part of your life they are. Whether you have a dog (the #1 kind of pet to own, in my opinion) a cat, a bird, a turtle, a lizard, a ferret, a rat or even a monkey, a pet can brighten up your life and teach you a lot about yourself. I love both my dogs, Ratdog and Shelly (see photos). Since I don't have any children, they're just like my own kids! That's why I am so excited about a new web site called http://www.zootoo.com/. Zootoo is THE site for pets and their loving owners. Here's how it works: Zootoo allows pet owners to interact, share information, get pet news, enter contests, rate pet vendors, pet parks and animal shelters, and talk to fellow pet owners who have the same type and breed of pets that they own. Zootoo is THE new place for pet lovers to meet. It represents the most innovative way to help people learn more about their pets and how they can make their lives better. Zootoo is assembling a pet community with the purpose of helping pet owners help their pets. What else can you want if you're a pet person? I joined Zootoo recently, and I suggest you join too!

Cast Adrift on the Friends Ship

My fiancée and I were putting together a list of people to invite to our wedding, and the whole topic of friends came up. I find it interesting, because there are so many different types of friendships that we get involved in during our lives, but in the end, many of them have exactly the same characteristics. We are surprisingly inept when it comes to the process of meeting people and establishing friendships with them.
Some people don’t have any close friends and prefer keeping everybody on the periphery. Other folks stockpile friends like they would collect antiques. Others travel in and out of friendships all the time. These individuals can be great friends—for short periods. But, once they lose interest in a relationship, they’re gone just as quickly as they re-appeared. Other people have only two groups of people in their lives--great friends and bitter enemies. (Enemies are a whole different topic. Nixon made a list of his.)
Have you ever stopped to think how many REAL friends you have? And what exactly is a REAL friend, anyway?
I decided to break the “Friends Ship” down into several groups. This is what I came up with:
1.) Obligatory Friends. These are people you are related to, through blood or marriage(s). In many cases, they’re people you cannot stand to be in the same room with, but you have to associate with them anyway, because things like holidays and special occasions seem to be so important to us. Obligatory friends, especially the blood relations-kind, can quickly turn into enemies if you don’t watch it. In many cases, they will develop into love-hate relationships, because almost everyone has good and bad points. My Aunt Maria is a naggy, crusty 80-year-old complainer who smells perpetually of moth balls. But, she makes an incredible Spaghetti Bolognese. My Uncle Chubby, on the other hand, has a major flatulence problem and cusses like a longshoreman, but plays a mean blues guitar and knows all the words to “Muskrat Love.” So, as always, life is a series of tradeoffs.
2.) Fringe Friends. These are people you want to be friends with, but for some reason, you just can’t seem to find the time or energy to get together with them enough to form a genuine friendship. It’s like, “Wow. That person seems cool. We have a lot in common. Do you think they could be my friend?” Then, you don’t pursue it enough or put enough effort into it, and it invariably dies. The end result is someone you have a good time with, even though you see them once or twice a year, usually on the same occasions, like a mutual friend’s annual party. But, in the end, they remain on the outside looking in and a friendship never blossoms. Most of us have more than a handful of fringe friends—they are normally people like old neighbors, college buddies or high school lab partners. You get a Christmas card from them every year and maybe an occasional phone call. But, in the end, they’re out on the fringe and never get in. Politicians and hookers (two groups with surprisingly similar types of careers) have a lot of fringe friends.
3.) Acquaintances. These are folks that you know on a casual or business basis, but don’t seem to have enough in common with to justify a full-blown friendship. Something is standing in the way, like proximity or time. In many cases, you’re fascinated by them, but are either situated above or below them on the friendship tree. Once someone gets stuck in the acquaintance zone, it’s hard to get to get out. People who come into contact with lots of other human beings in the course of their jobs (like strippers, bartenders and timeshare salesmen) have lots of acquaintances, but usually possess very few of what they can honestly call real friends.
4.) Real Friends. We don’t find many of these in our lives, so when you get one—hang on! Don’t let go, because real friends are hard to find. First off, many people don’t make good friends. They’re either too self-absorbed, shallow, crazy and/or oblivious to other people’s feelings. If someone does not understand what it means to be a real friend, it’s not something they can be trained to learn. You either have it or you don’t—it’s a combination of upbringing, genetics and experience. Real friends are almost like siblings—they care about how you feel; they are involved in your day-to-day existence and you can burden them with your problems and vice versa. You do whatever you can to stay in touch with a real friend. It never seems like to much trouble to see them, regardless of where they live or at what stage of life you’re in. Real friends have your back and will support you always, right or wrong. On average, we’ll get about two or three real friends in our lives. Many will come close to the designation, but only a handful will make the team. Warning about real friends—be careful. Real friendships can sour over time, because of things like jealousy and greed. I’m sure Caesar counted Brutus as a real friend—right up until he stabbed him to death. And when a Mafiosi gets whacked, who usually does it? That’s right, their “best friend.”
So, that’s it. This is my analysis of what I am calling the “Friends Ship.” Human beings wander in and out of each other’s lives for a variety of reasons; interacting in all sorts of ways. And every once in a while, we find another person who we mesh with and can add to our list of friends. Whether they can make it into the real friends category and stay there is always the main question. In the end, most will fall by the wayside before we find that real gem of a friend.
So, if you don’t get invited to my wedding, don’t take it personally. You just didn’t make it aboard my ship of friends. I’m sure I probably didn’t make it on your list, either. No problem. Maybe you’ll return my phone call next time. Or come to my birthday party. (Does that sound too needy...or vindictive?)

Save Your $$! If You Still Have Any!

As the recession gets worse, as the price of gas continues to spiral through the ozone layer, as the Euro dominates the dollar, as home foreclosures explode, as the stock market plummets, as food prices go insane, as unemployment gets worse--now is the time more than ever to $ave your money and wait this thing out. Everyone agrees that things will improve after the election (let's hope so!), but you should still hold onto the ca$h you have right now, expecting it to get worse before it gets better. That's why savings accounts are more important than ever. You aren't going to get a huge return, but who cares? Anything is better than nothing, right? Let your money work for you on $ome level. Get it into a savings account right now!

Two Thoughts for San Francisco Foodies

Farallon (450 Post Street, San Francisco's Union Square; www.farallonrestaurant.com) (see photo) is a seafood restaurant with a flair for the unique and unusual. Chef Parke Ulrich is a master when it comes to taking delicate seafood items like scallops, lobster, clams and crab and making them taste great without dominating them with other flavors. Ulrich believes in enhancing the seafood's natural flavors, not overpowering them with seasoning or sauces. Farallon has won a ton of awards for their incredible cuisine, from the Best Pastry Chef (Emily Luchettti) by the James Beard Foundation; The Award of Excellence from Wine Spectator, the Bay Area Top 100 Restaurants and the Top 10 America's Best from Seafood Houses. Farallon's signature dishes include a Dungeness Crab Stuffed Rouget (with Serano jam and a red wine syrup); the Local Oyster Chowder (with smoked potatoes); and the Cedar Planked Alaskan Halibut (with a sweetbread hash, cipollini onions and pomegranate jewels). Everything was excellent, except I could have done without the pomegranate with the halibut. It must be the new, hip thing to use pomegranate in dishes nowadays, but every time I taste it in one, it seems out of place. Farallon also has a very affordable Pre-Theater Prix Fixe Menu, which consists of a three-course dinner for $45 per person, served until 6 pm nightly. For seafood done right, you can't go wrong with Farallon.

The Cosmopolitan (121 Spear Street, San Francisco/www.thecosmopolitancafe.com) is a top-tier restaurant with first-class food and service in a classy atmosphere. The food is amazing and memorable, because it focuses on the creative utilization of fresh, local ingredients. One Wed.-Sat., the Cosmo has a live piano bar with jazz in their lounge. People fill the place up every evening for inventive drinks and great, reasonably-priced appetizers. I can recommend the Dungeness Crab Enchiladas with a Fire Roasted Tomato Salsa; the Crisp Duck, with Arugula, Frisee, Asian Pear and Pt. Reyes Blue Cheese; and the Calamari and Artichoke Fritto Misto. For entrees, I have sampled the Grilled Certified Angus Hangers Steak; the Wild Mushroom-Potato "Lasagne" with Bellwether Farm Ricotta and Smoked Roasted Tomato; and the Sauteed Dayboat Sea Scallops, with an outstanding Oxtail Risotto with White Truffle Oil, Black Trumpet Mushrooms and a fantastic Morelloe Sauce.

Grease is the Word

“Pssssssssst.”
"Hey, buddy—is that your car?”
“Yeah, it’s a diesel,” I reply to the random guy asking me a question as I walk to my favorite Mexican joint in the Mission.
“Hey, are you interested?” he says, winking and holding up what looks like a can of something.
“In what?” I inquire.
“It’s clean, it’s fresh and you’ll love the way it burns,” he says.
Wow, sounds good, whatever it is, I start thinking.
The guy opens the can and reveals its contents. A brownish gold liquid.
“What is it?”
“Grease, man. Cooking grease. It’s biofuel, man. Totally clean.”
It could happen.
Grease is the word in the Bay Area right now. Restaurant owners used to pay to get rid of the stuff, but now it’s worth a ton.
Grease thefts are being reported more frequently than motor vehicle break-ins right now in San Francisco. This means that the people who used to steal your car stereo are now absconding with cooking grease from local restaurants.
David Richardson, a 49-year old man from Illinois, was arrested by the police in Morgan Hill, California. He was trying to steal used grease from a Burger King restaurant and pump it into his tanker truck when he was caught greasy-handed.
People are so freaked out over the price of fuel that they’ve resorted to stealing used cooking oil.
This appeared on the AP wire yesterday and caught my attention this morning while reading my favorite local free daily—The SF Examiner:
A few years ago, drums of used french fry grease were only of interest to a small network of underground biofuel brewers, who would use the slimy oil to power their souped-up antique Mercedes.Now, restaurants throughout the Bay Area are reporting thefts of old cooking oil worth thousands of dollars by rustlers who are refining it into barrels of biofuel in backyard stills."It's like a war zone going on right now over grease," said David Levenson, who owns a grease hauling business in San Francisco's Mission District. "We're seeing more and more people stealing grease because it lets them stay away from the pump, but it's hurting our bottom line."Levenson, who converted the engine in his '83 Mercedes to run on straight canola oil, has built up contracts to collect the liquid leftovers from 400 restaurants in the last two years.Last week when his pump truck arrived at Thee Parkside, a dive bar known for its chili-cheese fries, his driver found someone had already helped himself to their barrel of yellow oil.Grease is transformed into fuel through a chemical process called transesterification, which removes glycerine and adds methanol to the oil, leaving a thinner product that can power a diesel engine. Biodiesel can also be blended with petroleum diesel, and blends of the alternative fuel are now sold at 1,400 gas stations across the country.But as the price of diesel shoots up, so, too, does the value of grease. In the last three years, the price of soybean oil—the main feedstock for biodiesel made in the United States—has tripled. Last week, a gallon of crude soybean oil fetched 66 cents on the open market, according to the National Biodiesel Board.Those kinds of numbers have encouraged biofuel enthusiasts to plunder restaurants' greasy waste, and have even spurred the City of San Francisco to get into the grease-trap cleaning business."Restaurants and staff are no longer looking at this material as trash, they're looking at is as something that's about to go into city vehicles," said Karri Ving, who runs the city's new waste cooking oil collection program. "Unless you lock down every trash can, thefts are going to happen."Drivers for Blue Sky Bio-Fuels, a grease hauler that also manufactures biodiesel for San Francisco's municipal program, often find the 300-gallon dumpster they store outside the Oakland Coliseum nearly dry, despite the dozens of concessions stands that regularly dump their oil there. Losses at that one site alone have cost the company $3,700 in foregone oil revenues in the last year, said Wesley Caddell, the Oakland firm's business developer.Company officials say oil rustlers typically siphon their supplies into drums of their own, which they take to backyard gins to be brewed for personal use.As more customers seek alternatives to petroleum-based fuels, biodiesel production has grown from the grassroots to become a multimillion dollar industry. A combination of government subsidies, tax incentives and high oil prices have increased demand for ethanol and biodiesel, which can also be made from animal fat.The National Biodiesel Board reports that U.S. production of biodiesel reached 500 million gallons last year, up from just 75 million gallons in 2005.To manufacture the renewable fuel legally, biodiesel producers must register with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Biodiesel consumers must also pay the government taxes to help with road upkeep.So far, members of the National Biodiesel Board haven't reported feedstock thefts, but that doesn't mean they aren't happening on a small scale, said Amber Thurlo Pearson, a spokeswoman for the industry's national trade association."We are of course opposed to the alleged selfish, personal-use theft of feedstock that could otherwise go to make product to benefit the U.S.," Pearson said.San Francisco started its program, SFGreaseCycle, to cut down on the millions it spends each year to dislodge fats, oils and grease clogging the sewers, Ving said. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission eventually hopes to power its fleet of buses, fire trucks and emergency vehicles with biodiesel made from local restaurants' old oil, she said.Currently, drivers collect about 15,000 gallons of fat and oil each month from 350 restaurants, including Enrico's, a mainstay in the Italian-themed North Beach neighborhood.When the program started six months ago, the city picked up the old oil for free, and sold it to select licensed biofuel makers for 30 cents a gallon. Now that restaurants are supplying them with cleaner waste oil, they can get up to $1.25 a gallon, Ving said.Those numbers—and the city's sudden move into the market— have convinced Levenson he needs to invest in padlocks to safeguard his precious grease and the barrels that hold it. Several of those have disappeared, too."When you're hauling grease for free, you want to make sure there's something there to pick up. Otherwise, with these prices, it's not worth your while," he said. "That said, if I wasn't doing this company, I would probably be doing the same thing as everybody else, just going to restaurants and filling up directly."

Promo Products Help You Get It Done, Marketing-Wise!

A pen, a pin, a hat, a shirt, an apron, an umbrella, a briefcase, a visor, a sweatshirt, a mousepad, a frisbee, a dinner plate, a coffee mug, a BBQ mitt, a wine glass, a trophy, a beer mug, a banner, a polo shirt, a golf bag--these are all things that I have been given by companies trying to use the power of promotional products the best way they know how. The amazing thing, is--I kept all this stuff, so it must have some value to me on some level. Get your name on a product today. It's a form of advertising and marketing that's been working for many, many years. It's positive expsoure with a proven track record. Go Promo, Yo! And Hey--Do It Today!

Maxim Lighting is the Maximum in Savings and Style

We're going to need some more light around here. Sometimes, it gets too dark for my liking in the early evening or late afternoon when the frosty fog rolls in, which it can do even in the middle of summer. And that's why we've considered purchasing a fine piece of Maxim lighting. If you haven't had an opportunity to check out these beautifully crafted high-quality lighting products, you should really get on your horse and look at them now, online. They have lamps, ceiling lighting and any other kind of lighting you can imagine. Maxim has been making lighting products for 35 years, so they're very, very good at it. So, brighten up your life with Maxim lighting.

Will Jones Ever Get his Mojo Back?

What on earth has happened to Andruw Jones? That is the question that has been haunting the Los Angeles Dodgers this season and there doesn’t seem to be a suitable answer anywhere in sight.
The Dodgers spent a ton of money on Jones and at the time I thought it might be a mistake. Joe Torre is sticking with him right now, but how long can that last?
There is going to be a point sometime during the summer when Torre realizes that it may be time to bench Jones. With four outfielders, Jones is pushing a more deserving player (Andre Ethier) to sit on the bench.
So far, the Dodgers are playing hot and cold. After winning eight straight, they lost five in a row. Right now, they sit one game above .500. An extra hot bat in the lineup might just be one of the things they need to get on another roll. And Jones surely isn’t wielding that bat, at least not currently.
What will happen to this $36 million mistake? Here is baseball writer Eric Gouldsberry’s (www.thisgreatgame.com) take on the whole Jones debacle:
Andruw Jones and the Temple of Doom
The vultures are beginning to circle around center field at Dodger Stadium, where Andruw Jones is currently trying to call home. The Dodgers knew they were taking a moderate risk on Jones, signing him to a two-year, $36 million contract despite a dreadful 2007 campaign in Atlanta where he hit just .222.
At least the power (26 homers, 94 RBIs) was there then; but right now, nothing’s there—not the average (.170 through Sunday), the slugging (one homer and just five RBIs through his first 36 games), or the clutch game (1-for-27 with runners in scoring position).
The reviews are in for Jones, and they’re not good. T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times: “(Jones is) a Tubbo (248 pounds) and clueless, which really isn’t a good combination for the player with the highest annual salary in Dodger history.”
Seth Livingston of USA Today: “Is it possible Jones has lost it? Temporarily? Maybe forever?” The fans at Dodger Stadium: “BOO!” And what does Jones have to say about the catcalls? “I don’t care,” he repeatedly told Simers after Friday’s game in Los Angeles, “that’s (the fans’) problem.”

Miami Is All the Rage! But, What About San Francisco?

The study that AutoVantage does about road rage every year came out recently and Miami won again. My question is—how the !@^$#& did San Francisco fail to make this list?
With Barry Bonds as our hometown hero (and as the home of BALCO), we’re obviously the Capitol of ‘Roid Rage in this country, if not the world. But, with all the accidents, pedestrian fatalities and physical assaults on drivers, how is it that we never seem to be able to make this list? Quite frankly, it’s an insult to the motorists of San Francisco.
We’re just going to have to work harder this year at cutting people off, tailgating, yelling at each other and exchanging the appropriate hand gestures. If everyone makes a concerted effort, I know we can do it!
Driving recklessly is not a privilege, it’s a right. So, let’s exercise our right to drive like complete a-holes a little more. If we can all just honk a little more, if we bend a few more fenders; run a few more lights and make more California stops at stop signs; if we can pass other vehicles at dangerously high speeds just a little more—we CAN make a difference!
Let’s show this country that San Francisco is in the Top 10 in everything we do!
This appeared on www.aol.com today:
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - For the third consecutive year Miami has been voted the worst American city for road rage, according to a new survey.
The sunny Florida metropolis topped the poll of 25 cities because its drivers were the least courteous and most likely to run red lights, speed, text and talk on cell phone while driving.
It was followed by Boston, New York, Baltimore and Washington D.C. for the top five positions in the poll by Prince Market Research.
Pittsburgh was voted the most courteous city with Portland, Oregon not far behind. Seattle, Minneapolis and Cleveland were also cited as having the least road rage.
"The primary factor that we see year after year is that the Miami area is a combustible mix of two cultures on the road, and that is retirees out on a long leisurely drive, and young professionals on their way to work," said Todd Smith, of AutoVantage, a national auto club that commissioned the poll.
"We live in a fast-paced, gridlocked, multi-tasking world and that unfortunately has manifested dangerously on the roads, streets and highways across America," he added in an interview.
More than 2,500 Americans were asked in the telephone survey to identify factors which can lead to road rage. Talking on cell phones and sending texts and e-mails were cited the most.
Some of the more outrageous things people reported doing while behind the wheel were putting on makeup or shaving. Almost 50 percent said they were bothered by people who eat and drink while driving.
Other major causes for road rage incidents include speeding, tailgating, running red lights and changing lanes without signaling.

Acne Treatment

Acne can be so very annoying. I never really had a problem with it--you know, a few zits here and there, but nothing serious--but I remmeber some people in high school (there was thing one poor guy named Dave DeClue) who had a hideous road rash-looking irritation all over their face. Ouch! That's why I was happy when they asked me to write about a new acne treatment out there that can really help people with bad acne. Get rid of the rash! Clear up your skin and make it all good again. Check out the link I have provided here. It's to a site called http://www.acnexus.com/. It will help you get rid of that annoying acne once and for all!