theSmudge.com

A few months ago I started using Foursquare for two reasons: I wanted to see what it was about, and I wanted to become the mayor of the jail. I met those goals within two days, since my job at the time had me at the police station every day. When I’m not annoyed at Foursquare’s GPS failures, I’m still using it for two other reasons: It’s a handy way to remember where I went, and I can get FREE STUFF!

Seriously, FREE STUFF! As in, chips and salsa from Chili’s restaurant! I grew up learning to pinch pennies. We had one winter where we lived on potatoes and oatmeal, and I still distinctly remember being 10 years old and it was a huge splurge to buy me two sundresses that were on sale for $5 each. Now, I balance cost-cutting measures with the fact that you only live once. If I want to go out to eat, I will. If my coffeemaker dies, as it did last week, I’ll spend a few more bucks to get one that I know will make me happy.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago I heard through Twitter that the Lodi Winegrape Commission was looking for Foursquare users to promote their First Sip wine event. So I got in touch with them, and it turned out that if I took fliers and posters to a bunch of businesses in Stockton, I could score two free tickets that would have cost $35 each. I was game, so I spent two hours and about two gallons of gas delivering the brochures. The marketing director could track me on Foursquare as I checked in at each business, which I think is a pretty cool use of Foursqure.

This weekend was the wine event. I took my friend Deanne, and we sweet-talked her fiance into being our designated driver. Drivers got free food at each stop, so we didn’t have to beg him too hard. About 30 wineries were participating and we couldn’t get to all of them, so I Photoshopped the event map, drawing a route that included wineries that had the most promising food options. Saturday we headed out, and we met the goal of wine before noon:

Five hours later, we’d tasted our way through Lodi. They were pouring quite generously, Lodi wine has about 14 percent alcohol, and I didn’t have enough to eat that day. So the evening became a blur… But here is the other way that Foursquare comes in handy. I did check in every place I went, so later I went back and looked: In five hours, we stopped at nine places, two of which were pouring from multiple wineries. Not bad for one day! Our last stop was at a sushi place where we got happy hour prices.

Conclusion: Foursquare has its uses, and hey, it’s free. Also, Lodi sure has a lot of wine.

Here are a few more pictures of the day:

Remember last year, when much work stopped in the U.S. because there were live newscasts of a Colorado boy who had supposedly climbed into his family’s homemade helium balloon contraption and flown away? (Yep, I was one of those who got in trouble at work, even though I was actually supposed to keep up on news events as part of my job…) The boy’s family was distraught, military planes were scrambled to try to catch the balloon, and then it turned out the boy was actually hiding in the house.

So all was OK and the family started making the rounds on talk shows, as happens in these modern times. And then the boy outed his father on live TV by reminding him that it was a planned hoax in order to get on a reality show.

The parents got in trouble and had to do a little jail time and pay thousands of dollars for all the money wasted on the massive search/rescue. Eventually they faded out of the spotlight, though they did get their own Wikipedia page. What happened to them? Well, apparently the dad has come up with a new idea: a large, gawdy back scratcher that is permanently mounted to a wall for all to see.

The best part? He made a commercial (apparently after hyping himself up on what I guess to be 96 ounces of strong coffee) and posted it on YouTube.

So the San Francisco Giants won the World Series last night, and TV was full of funny quotes.

Take pitcher Tim Lincecum, for instance. He was holding the large series trophy when a TV reporter asked him a rather stupid question, “How does it look?” Lincecum, obviously not sure what that question was all about, replied, “Uh. Shiny.”

Now, to back up a bit, I’m a Chicago Cubs fan. Since they have been on a bit of a non-championship streak lately (har har), I root by geography, which means I cheer for the Giants and the Oakland A’s. In other words, I’m not quite a bandwagon fan, but considering I don’t pay a lot of attention during the earlier part of the baseball season, some might call me one. I’m OK with that. For the record, I’ve said for a long time that I’m sure I’d really get into baseball if I ever dated someone who also liked it, because I’d be interested by the stats and the numbers.

As in most recent years, I watched the World Series again this year (it doesn’t hurt that I’m working with someone who’s a big Giants fan). I have a bunch of friends who are fans, so it was all over Facebook and Twitter, and it was fun to see all the orange and black Giants colors just in time for Halloween. Now that they beat the Texas Rangers, I guess we’re all going to be subjected to red and green for the next two months.

To get back to quotes on silly TV, one not-quite-sober Giants fan was hollering joyfully in a San Francisco bar, where a reporter stuck a microphone in front of him. “I’ve been waiting 29 years for this, since 2002!” he shouted in glee.

And then, later in the night, a Bay Area reporter was outside the Civic Center in San Francisco, after the hubbub had died down. “I’m broadcasting live, where the fans were gathered earlier but now there is nothing but trash left,” he said — as a bunch of fans appeared in the background and began cheering.

This weekend I hit a Twitter milestone, though I’m not sure if I should feel sheepish or proud about it. Yes, folks, I reached my 10,000th tweet.

Does it help if that tweet was about a burnt bison out-running a grizzly bear? Seriously, those photos were pretty epic.

Twitter is such a weird phenomenon, and I think I like it because it’s short and to the point. You’re limited to 140 characters per tweet, which means you say something short, then you get back to skimming through other people’s posts. No wonder I spent a decade as a hard news reporter and found it to be so easy — write fast, move on.

Take a look at this picture:

Yes, you are looking at a doorknob. It’s my interior bathroom doorknob, to be precise. It’s a mix of gold and silver colors. That raised part in the center is only decorative, and the outside half of the knob is identical. It looks quite benign.

But it’s actually a villainous doorknob, full of evil plans. It sits there silently for months, plotting and scheming, waiting to catch me off guard, at a moment when I’m certainly not thinking about my bathroom doorknob.

That moment came Friday evening, when I’d had less than five hours of sleep, had been awake since 4 a.m., had driven 110 miles, and had been staring at a computer screen for a good chunk of the day. Oh, and on my way home I’d gone shopping (not my most favorite past-time) for a birthday present for a 1-year-old. In other words, when I went to open the bathroom door, I was quite confused when the oh-so-angelic doorknob didn’t turn.

I tried again. I turned (or tried to turn) it the other way. Then I recalled that my doorknob had pulled the same stunt a while back. I was quite shocked then to learn that my bathroom door actually locked, and then I promptly forgot that bit of trivia about my house — probably because I spent the summer battling black widows. At least this time, I knew I didn’t need to panic, since I’d clearly managed to free myself the last time I managed to get locked in my own bathroom.

Of course, it would have helped if I remembered HOW to unlock the door. I pulled, I pushed, I turned some more. Just when I was starting to worry, one of those methods worked. Now that I think about it, I’m still not sure how to unlock the door…

In typical Layla fashion, I promptly posted about it on both facebook and Twitter — might as well spread the humor at my own expense! The best response was from my friend Rick, who suggested I put a refrigerator in the bathroom for next time, adding, “Mmmmm. Toilet beer.” Perhaps he was referring to Bud Light?

It’s no secret to most of my friends that I am easily amused. This extends to numbers and patterns, which often drive me mildly nuts because I see them constantly. On long drives, I’ve been known to mentally calculate my miles per hour to the nearest hundredth, simply because I was bored. My days of grocery store work and crime/court work have made it that I see produce  and criminal codes everywhere, too. We’ll get to 11:11 in another post on another day.

Anyway, the other day my car’s odometer hit a cool number. Since I’ve gotten better at thinking, “Oooh, photo opportunity, let me pull out my phone,” I documented it:

Aren’t you glad you spent the time reading this blog post?