Violet

I got a sad little african violet about a year ago on clearance for 50 cents. I've been nursing it along and I finally get to see what color blooms it has. Pink!



I know, this is hardly blog worthy, but it's been cold and rainy out the past few days and my natural response is to cling to a single pink blossom in a public forum. It's science! Can't stop it.

Asheville

There's so much to catch up on from Asheville, I'll give the Cliff Notes version of the week.

I stayed here. It was as lovely as it looks. Most days were glorious spring days, too; only one was cool and wet.



Pete and Robb went climbing. I didn't go, as I do not climb.





Robb, Meghan, Ed, my cousin Marlon and I rode at Kitsuma. It was my first time this year on dirt, and it was basically straight up and then straight down. It was slow going both ways, but it was a really nice night, and the fitness and skills will come back.

Meghan blinked in her first picture, so I took another one. She blinked again.



We took the easy way back to the parking lot, on a paved road with very little traffic.





Some friends from Ohio came down, and we went on a short 'take the kinks out of the ol' legs' road ride up to a hill overlooking the city. No pictures, as it was pretty dark. On the way out, one of the guys broke a spoke, so we had the pleasure of checking out Pro Bikes- we got to visit Dave and meet the shop cat.



We ate pizza.



We went to Harvest Records.





I finished off the trip with a celebratory ride in Bent Creek. This time, my legs felt good and I was starting to get back into the groove. It was a great end to a great week.



As a bonus, I got a new dead animal for MY flickr set.

Tea for Me

My friend Pete threw me a set of mugs so tall, the tag on the tea doesn't even touch the table. (And they're pleasantly warped... just like me? There's a possible artist's statement.)





That's a lot of quality tea time. And a lot of pee time, too, of course. Such quantities of tea!

Snips Update

I've been in beautiful Asheville, NC for the past week, while the cat wasted away (or grew fatter still) at home. Someone get this animal some attention, STAT!





The word of the day is Happy Paws.


Once satiated, though, I'm afraid he's right back to being a troublemaker.

Gallery Night

I've been doing it wrong all these years... the MIAD senior thesis show was good, as usual, but the Hide House is where it's at.

After getting home from work, there came an hour or so of "I'll get ready soon." and "Or... Maybe I'll just stay in..." Eventually I forced myself out into the cold, driving rain, armed with an umbrella and a resolve to see some art.







This is a photo of a photo, with reflections of two other photos in the glass over the first photo. Got it?



This girl had a few photos of dead animals. As soon as I saw them, I gave out an audible "Unh!" Doesn't everyone know that that's MY thing? (It's my thing.) I've got the Flickr group to prove it.



I left MIAD around 9:00 and almost didn't go to check out the Hide House. I know one of the artists there and wanted to check out her work. So onward my car flew through the stormy night, into the dark heart of Bayview. (This dramatic effect isn't all for your benefit- it's more like an accurate description of how badly I wanted to chill at home.) I made it, but only just! Again I had to park so far away, I think my parking spot might not have been in Wisconsin. Once inside, I found it was worth it. There were multiple bands, lots of food and wine, and best yet? It doesn't shut down at 9:00! Most of the downtown galleries shut down at 9, tidy and clean. The Hide House keeps rolling. I like a place that seems to say, "No thanks, you do things the way you want to do them downtown, but we're not done yet." Yeah.











After that, it was just a quick jaunt home, and inside for the night at last.

4/14

I missed Milwaukee Day! Area code 414, April 14th, get it?

I'll be celebrating it a day late by going out for gallery night (one of my favorite things to do in the city) and swinging by MIAD to see old classmates and professors, and brand new work from the students there :) That is, I'll be going out if I can shore myself up to face the weather outside...

Sorry, Milwaukee. I'll celebrate on the correct day next year.

Books

Tuesday night I visited a couple of my favorite places- the used book stores of downtown Milwaukee. I was looking for a specific book on minimalism, because I like the thrill of the hunt. You'd think every copy of that book would be littering thift stores across the country, because heaven forbid you have a book cluttering up your life, but no dice.

I liked digging around, anyway! Here are some things I found.

Cats! These two were grooming each other in a chair at Downtown Books. Groom on.


A room FULL of cassettes.


Some kinda neat vintage book covers.




On the third floor of Renaissance Books, I found a vintage book for the ladies. It must have been pretty scandalous in the 40's, right?


It's been a while since I visited these places... maybe since my birthday last summer. It's funny I don't go more often, because once I get in there I really enjoy looking around. Renaissance Books especially, because there are piles to sift through. It would drive some people crazy, but I love it. I'm always on the lookout for a few specific books, and though I rarely find one of them, that's the fun and excitement of it for me.

Family Features

I've got some catching up to do on the H8TR wake, but first, these photos I snapped of me and my dad in our younger years.





Spot-on, right down to the highlights on our noses.

It's the weekend!

Phwew! Busy week at work, but some really cool stuff going on. We're producing a poster of Mike Montgomery to hand out at Sea Otter and beyond. Justin Brantley took some awesome photos- it's easy to make things look good where there's a great photo to design around.

This is the front of the poster:


And the back highlights our raddest products.


It's been a stressful week for all of us, getting ready for Sea Otter, but I finally wrapped up a few projects today, and I stopped by a church garage sale on my way back from lunch. Pretty disappointing for a church garage sale, but I did find these little guys. Cute! And now, to sanitize the bejesus out of them.

Voting

Ok, so it's not as impressive as the woman who biked to the hospital to give birth... but I biked to my polling place to vote.

BMC TT02 for sale

The Tim(e) Machine is up for sale. It's a size small TT02, no dents, some chips in the paint from transport. Raced three times, never crashed.

$900 for the frame (and seat post), fork (Easton EC90 carbon fork- as new as the frame) and headset. I'd do free shipping, too.



It's more track bike than I need! (Oh, and if you didn't know, the frame's mainly used for time trialing, I just built it up as a track bike.) I didn't really like how the huge tubes and deep wheels sounded on the track, either. Good lord, was it ever handsome, though. I'll keep it up here for a while, then it's going on Ebay.

Hail Yes!

Cue the thunder, cue the hail.

Earlier this morning it started hailing, and hard! It was really coming down. My first instinct was to grab a camera and run outside, but then I thought about what that would be like... trying to juggle an umbrella and take photos with the iPhone (It's what I'm using as a camera these days. Very awkward for one-handed use). And THEN I remembered my umbrella was out in my car, so I was now imagining trying to take photos while being pelted about the head and shoulders with pea sized hail. Not ideal.

So I opened a window, leaned out, snapped some pictures and retreated back indoors.





This also starts a theme for this weekend: weather as seen from inside my apartment.

Here's some late Saturday sunlight coming in through the painted windows.


Some light on an unfinished painting in the living room area.


Lest you think I was inside all weekend, I will happily inform you that I was outdoors all Saturday morning and early afternoon. I meant to do trail work, but my friend Pete and I went to the wrong parking lot to meet up with the crew, couldn't find the other parking lot, and weren't sure people were even at the other parking lot, anyway. So we wound up hiking on a scenic overlook and then did 7 or 8 miles at John Muir, instead. (A word for mountain bikers: the trails are still pretty muddy, as you might expect. Wah wah.) While we were walking it was perfectly cloudy, and darker underneath the tree cover. The light was so gray, I remarked that it could have been any time of the morning, afternoon or evening.

All in all, I'd call it an ordinary but interesting weekend for weather.

Home Again, Home Again

On the last visit home (this past weekend) it was the same ol', by which I mean the same 'ol great things I get to do when I'm home. I've said it before, but I like getting back out into the land I grew up around. City slickers could liken it to visiting a neighborhood they used to live in ;), except my 'neighborhood' is a good portion of Iowa County, filled with county highways and small towns.

And now, less pontification, more photography.

Trap shooting seems like it's becoming a tradition.



I'm only just raising the gun up to my shoulder in this photo, but I may as well have been shooting at the ground... I am awful at trap shooting.



We went out to Highland, WI to look at the work that's being done on the streams there, and to do a little fishing. Dad was the only one with a fishing license, so I happily took the camera out to do some shooting I'm arguably better at. Aim, shoot, success! The subject is in the frame, at least.







Another nice trip home, in the kreel. Hah, fishing jokes.