Art, Art, and Ice Cream

That about sums up my weekend. Before I get going on that, a shameless plug:

My family's having an art show. You should come if you like multiple generations of art.

The opening night of the show is August 19th, at the Plymouth Arts Center. Having just looked it up, I can tell you it's 1 hour and 2 minutes from downtown Milwaukee... I won't hold any of you to it!

Here's the logo I designed for it. It's kind of nice to work on a design that doesn't have to fit on a very specifically shaped bike part. Skinny wheel decals, I'm looking at YOU.



The plan is for everyone in the family to bring their best, and also for all of us to paint the same pig in roughly the same size, to display together. I suspect most of my aunts will be using pastel, so I dug out the gouache for mine. Gouache, more like gauche! (That means 'tacky' or tasteless in French, if I remember correctly) If you've never come across is, gouache is like a chalky water color paint that dries quickly to a shade that is significantly lighter than what it was wet. Not real popular for a reason.

But I figured I'd try it. It didn't turn out too badly, either. The colors are hard to capture with my camera- the iPhone camera made everything more saturated, and it seems my regular ol' digital camera isn't picking up the blues very well. The colors aren't playing nicely. I don't have an excuse for the background, though :) I'm still (over)working on that.



In related news, much of my birthday weekend was spent on the cement floor, fooling around with finicky paints. Every once in a while the cat reminded me he needed to eat. He's good at the whole silent presence thing.



But fear not. I left the apartment. I attended gallery night, helped a friend move, and put on a funky dress/necklace combo and went out for pizza and ice cream.



PRO tip: Galleries get hot as heck. The doors are always open and there are tons of people. Wear a tank top.

I stopped by my old design professor's studio. He paints in his free time- mostly oils of the northwoods.



He recently had the lighting redone in the window of his studio. It looks fabulous.



Sunday moving crew in front of Kris' new house:



Makin' memorieeees.

FYI

I'm moving!

To this place.








To this face.



Whoops, nope. Not that one.

This one.







Apparently I like to flank my prey and snap photos from one side or the other...

I just reserved some space in a U-Pack truck, so it's for real. At this point I'm so excited to move, I could pack myself in a box and wait until August 28th, the Sunday I'll be driving down to my new home :)

There'll be a lot more of this sort of thing... exploring amazing new trails and terrain with my favorite guy.



I'm very excited for the adventure to begin! I've never lived outside of Wisconsin. I'm positive I'll miss it, and the wonderful cycling community I'm a part of here, but when I start to get a little misty eyed thinking about it, I think about all the cool people there are out there, yet to be met!

Things on Strings

On Friday night I went to the Things on Strings show in Waukesha. Or, I think it was in Waukesha. If it wasn't, it was darn close. Anyhow, I went out with a few friends to see some artwork, some of which was bike themed, from local artist Becky Tesch.

Before I let loose on the bike themed work, though, let me share with you some of the coolest interactive pieces. Here I am grinning like a goon at this one, which were a bunch of little... I don't even know what they're called. Let's call them viewers.



Looking inside, you could see little photos like this.



I'm amazed that the camera could focus on that. Modern Marvel.

The other cool one had a bunch of small houses with locked doors hanging, along with about a hundred keys. There were arrows on the floor to point you into the whole mess, which was a nice touch. I think without that people would have stayed away and not touched the art. Anyway, your task was to find the right key so you could open the door and get a sealed envelope with different confessions.





They were... um...



...interesting.



Dad, I know you read my blog, and let me stress that that is not MY confession! You'll all be relieved to know that none of those are any of our confessions. Phwew!

Now let's all shake it off with some nice bike themed artwork.







And just one more piece...



After that, we went to Cafe Hollander in 'Tosa, and I begged to have my photo taken. I know when I've got it going on, and that night was rare example. That, and it was dark enough to hide my frizzy hair.



We ladies also stopped for a picture on the newly finished Hank Aaron bike trail bridge, by the Brewer's stadium. It's so nice! And the bike trail is like butter. I've used that trail the most of all the trails (more than the Oak Leaf Trail!) this summer, I think. Well done, Milwaukee.

Stealth

Finally, we're moving away from the bright red and gold of the old Dorado decals. They were designed before my time, and were never my taste. Lots of people liked them, though- they're pretty flashy. More and more, though, we've been getting reports that people wanted a more neutral look. Ask and I will rock your world.

Enjoy these nasty photos of the fork, quickly snapped right after getting the new decals on it, and immediately before putting in a trailer bound for Dealer Camp.







Come to think of it, I accidentally took the photos with a low light setting, so they're a little grainy, too.

Actual product photos to come later.

Purple Finches

When I was in Asheville for a visit, Robb and I planted some hanging baskets for the front porch.

Ta-da!



I thought they looked pretty good, and it would appear that a mama finch thought the same thing. Robb recently sent a picture of 'the kids', who are getting big! I think they're purple finches, but feel free to challenge that... and lose! I know a purple finch when I see one.

Good Luck Charms

My good luck charms, Rachel and Will, have left the building. As promised, I got a couple of photos of them before they left.



In front of a picturesque red truck, even!



Since I got rid of them -er, since they left, good things are popping up all over the place, some expected and some unexpected. I hate when blogs are vague like that, but some of these good things are merely potential, so I dare not speak of them (in specifics, anyway). I just thought it would be nice to write a positive post after my Bad Karma post a while back, but I'm going to have to leave it at "Everything's coming up Milhouse!" Though I will tell you at the end of the day I got to come home and snack on things Rachel, Will and I had picked from the garden in Mineral Point, and while I was doing so I got news that my own garden, at a friend's house, is doing well and will be ready for snackage soon. It was that kind of a day.

MKE > MSN > MP > CR > MP > MKE

This past weekend was a good one. On Friday night I went on a fun bike ride with Kelly in Madison. We were out late, but the next morning I got up early and pressed on to Mineral Point. Dad and I seized the day and struck out for the Wisconsin River with the dog and a cooler of snacks.









Canoes are to Subarus as large gold necklaces are to Run DMC. Bling bling!



We were out from 1:00 til around 7:00. It got pretty warm, but there was a decent breeze, and I took frequent dips in the river to cool down. When we got home I got a call from my friend Rachel, who's on a bike tour that started on the West coast. The guy she's touring with, Will, had a bad mechanical. By pure luck, they were only 2 hours away from Mineral Point. On Sunday morning I got up early and went to collect them. I found them in Coon Valley with little problem, and would have taken some photos of them, but I found a cool tree frog (a Grey Tree Frog) instead.









We stopped back through Mineral Point for lunch and some swimming and fetching in the lake with the dogs. We made our way back to Milwaukee in the evening, and today while I was at work, they got Will's bike fixed at Ben's Cycle and Fitness - quick and thorough!- and will be heading out to Chicago from Milwaukee tomorrow. I'll be sure to get a photo of them before they leave! Unless, of course, I get distracted by an interesting bug or something.

Unicorn Package

My parents sent me some Easter candy (Yes, it's July. Yes, I still want chocolate bunnies.) in this package the other day. Since sending anything to my apartment is like putting it on an old, frail ship and sending it into the Bermuda Triangle, it got delivered to work. The VP of Hayes noticed it while he was over in the administration offices, so he brought it over to me, through a couple hundred yards of the power sports factory area. He said he got more than a few looks and comments.

As I've alluded to, there were a couple of Easter bunnies in there. I've been really bad with candy lately (or really good at consuming it, if you want to look at it that way) so I decided to cut the bunny up into pieces to limit intake. The chocolate was somewhat soft from the car ride home, so it sliced up nicely, and I wrapped each piece (half of a serving) in tin foil, because for some reason I've got six rolls of it. Since it's warm in the apartment, I decided to keep the little packages in the freezer.

As I was dumping them in there, it occurred to me that I was very much like 'The Ice Truck Killer' from the first season of Dexter. He cut up and packaged his victims and kept them on ice. I'm a serial chocolate bunny killer. I've killed before and I'll kill again.

Heh.

Brewers

More like Boooo-ers. I'm bad luck for them.

The night started out with stopping at home to grab the Civia and bike to meet my parents at the Brewers game.



It was hot. Damn hot.



This guy's photo looked so much like the character from 'O Brother Where Art Thou'.
"We thought... you was... a tooaad."



You with me?

Anyway, the Brewers probably lost horribly but we didn't stay til the end. I did get home before the rain, though!

Bad Karma

So many nasty things have been happening lately that when I try to remember back the the days before there were monthly wallet-devastating occurrences (like the brakes on my car, for instance) I can't remember what it was like. I'm pretty much planning for disasters every two weeks now. It seems like they're inevitable at this point.

Hasn't the universe heard I've been donating to charity lately? Come on, guys, I'm a nice person! I went to Megabolt's fundraiser (and I hate to 'go out'!) and bought some raffle tickets! Lily and Emily were there, and when asked if deserved a more worry-free summer they said 'Yes, oh yes!'



If you don't know what Megabolt is, you're missing out. "In late 2009, Megabolt started as nothing more than an idea to do something good rather than just talk about it." One of my designer friends does some work for them, and if I were cool enough I'd design stuff for them, too. One of their neatest projects is the sketchbook.

"When you buy a sketchbook, you're not only getting one for yourself, you're also giving one to a child in a hospital. But we're not stopping there. Every sketchbook is individually numbered which will allow you to see exactly whom you are giving the book to. Once the child has completed his or her book, their artwork will be uploaded onto Megabolt.org where you will be able to interactively flip through the pages of the book."

Who here doesn't think that's the best idea ever? I should buy a few- certainly then I could count on some good karma.