First off, say hi to our new backyard. It’s not big - quite the opposite really. Just a patch of concrete, a Weber grill, then forest - but it’s nice.

Secondly, with a gag purchase I’m now more then ever aware of my wedding, just 2 months away!

Pink & Black Bride & Groom Can Koozies

Thirdly, yesterday Mishka surprised me with my very own PSP: God of War edition! Yay!

PlayStation Portable: God of War Edition

And lastly - if you’d like to volunteer somewhere, the State Fair is a great place to do it. And the MN chapter of the ACLU is looking for people to staff their booth. I’ll be there, will you join me?

So Mishka is went into work earlier then normal today, and she won’t be home until almost 8pm. I asked her what she wanted for dinner, and she said there were some chicken breasts and some pork tenderloins in the freezer - defrost something and mix it with something else.

So I took out the pork tenderloin.

And then I got to thinking. She does so much of the cooking - and she’s really good at it. She makes these big complicated meals, requiring 30,000 ingredients and a team of 7 to help assemble it. When I cook, on the other hand, I usually make a hunk of meat, side it with some form of tuber, and slap it on a plate.

But alas, I had a better idea today. Last week my friend Double M mentioned he made a lasagna¹. I love lasagna. So I decided, screw it - pork back in the freezer, I’m makin’ a lasagna. So I asked my Tweeple & did some Googlin’ and I happened upon this highly rated recipe called “World’s Best Lasagna“. With a title like that, how can I go wrong? So off I went to pick up the stuff I needed.

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1. It was the first time he’s made one, ever [↩]

It’s time for the Pavleck.Com Weekend edition. A lot is going on and I’ll make you privy to it all!

First up, it’s that time once again - the St. Paul Art Crawl kicks off tonight at 6pm. I’ll be walking around my building checking out (and buying) some of the art the incredibly talented people in Twin Town can put together - will I see you there? I’m really hoping to!
See if you can find me or my work called “All my exes live on canvas” (A play on an old country song). It may or may not be there. The fun is figuring it out!

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has so far grossed over $44.8 million in the US alone. And sadly, $19 of that is out of my pocket.

Yes, I took Mishka there yesterday. To sit in a crowded theater. With children. To watch Harry Potter.

And I actually liked it.

Ok, maybe like is to strong of a word - but it definitely had it’s strong points.  The end fight was pretty cool, a lot of sweet special effects and all. It was 2 hours and 18 minutes I don’t regret, so there’s that.

To redeem myself, I might have to go see the Mendicats in Broadway Bound…… and gagged! at the Bryant Lake Bowl tomorrow. Nothing like a pre-opera house of whores to really wash away the Harry Potter fanaticism going on. And then seeing Transformers again, too.

Though, truth be told, we’re severely behind on packing, so the weekend might end up being all about that - but we’ll see.

We also temporarily have a new cat. Yesterday, while we were walking into the building, I heard this soft meow and looked over at the flower garden. There sat this big friendly orange tom cat, filthy and covered in dirt. I mean he was diiiirrrrtttyyyy. Holding him, he felt ‘gritty’. That’s how bad he was.
Anyway, we bring him, and introduce him to Ebbie. She’s insanely curious as to who this stranger is, but he’s not having any of it and  proceeds to extended periods of hissing and meowing. We break them up, Ebbie sleeps in the Mishka, this new cat gets to roam the rest of the place - in the morning we were going to take him to the vet for a checkup and/or the humane society - not sure which, hopefully I win and we keep him though. We wake up and… he’s gone. We can’t find him anywhere. It’s as if he just vanished into thin air. So now there’s some strange orange tom cat wandering the house hiding out somewhere, and our smaller sweet Ebbie has to put up with it. I’m fairly sure she can handle herself though, she has all her claws, and tom doesn’t. So the most serious thing that could happen is he could make a move, get swiped by the fast and furious wolverine like claws Ebbie has, and then runs away tail between his legs.

At least I hope that’s the worst that could happen.

I am a unique and beautiful flower, according to this site. Now to ‘build my brand‘.

On a down note, the 5th Harry Potter movie opens tonight, and I fear I may be dragged to it kicking and screaming. I suppose I shall take the morning off tomorrow, so I can actually get some sleep after it’s all over. *sigh*

Not to mention, we’ve packed about 2% of the apartment, and I don’t really know when we’ll get around to it with all the crap that’s going on. Argh!

 Indeed, I went to Mishka’s family reunion and made it alive! Not only that, I had a lot of fun as well - they are truly a great group of people, and I’d be happy to call them my family if I had the choice!

I’ll put up a few pictures later, maybe try to tell a story. But right now I’m sore from bowling (I think I came in second, overall) and I still, 2 days later, have a bit of a hangover. I’ll tell the story of the Best Buy purchased karaoke machine and the hotel bar later.

Needless to say, there were…. well, a ton of weddings going on that weekend - we were probably the least fruity dressed people in the hotel - except for our reunion T-Shirts in festive primary colors!

Also, I’ve made a real main page here, especially now that I’m passing out business cards with the address on it. It’s more of less a PhotoBlog now, though I’ll be a lot more choosy with what pics I upload.

    I’ve been to the Taste of Chicago, I’ve been to the Taste of Milwaukee, and the Taste of Minnesota…. pales, in comparison. It really does. I was shocked but just how few choices they had there food wise - do you want cheese curds, or a tube of meat?

Regardless, I still had fun. The Village People played, that was fun to watch - though they certainly were looking their age hehe.
There were also some rides and games - mainly a Ferris Wheel, a whirl-you-around-in-a-circle thing, a few rigged throw something into and/or at something to win a prize, and an interesting game that was packed - you launched a water balloon at the other side and tried to hit a few areas that would soak them. It was fun to watch, and I was half tempted to give it a go as I made the horrible mistake of wearing black jeans, a tshirt, then a black overshirt - I was sucking up the rays and sweaty.

The Ferris Wheel, that was cool. The guy operating it saw my camera and said he’d pause at the top for a minute or so to let me get some good pictures, and boy did I - even though it was my first time on a Ferris Wheel and I was freaked the hell out hehe.

See the whole set I’ve uploaded over at Flickr. 
The 4th was fairly uneventful - Mishka worked, I stayed at home playing video games. Went to meet up with her at around 4, we had some dinner at Tony Roma’s (Another first, the food was excellent too!) then we went to go see Transformers! It was one hell of a movie, I liked it very much - I heartily encourage you to go see it if you haven’t done so - especially if you’re a child of the 80s like I, and grew up watching them AND went to see the first movie.

Mishka’s family is having a reunion this weekend, so she’s heading over there tonight, I’ll be heading there tomorrow - expect some pictures next week.

Anyway, I’m oncall, so I’m making this short - I’ll write more later.

Today my newsreader is filled with little more then iPhone fud. From people who love it, to people who despise it, to people who have been waiting in line since the beginning of the week. All said and done, either way, it’s one of the in phones to have this year. The other? Why it’s the Motorola RAZR 2, coming out soon - that’s the phone I’ll be getting when it comes out. My current phone is just too…. big. It’s a smartphone, and I purchased it with big plans to do something with it - and I just never managed to figure out what that something is. I really bought it because I stopped using my Blackberry, switched to a Razr, then realized just how much I miss said blackberry. But I want to try something that had games, tons of apps, fun, excitement, adventure - and ended up short. So I’ll wait patiently. Or maybe I won’t. (BTW: It took friggin forever to figure out a proper link to the phones, appreciate it!) I can’t change phones without paying full price until 08/2008.
Anyway - Mishka needs a new phone. Hers was pulled off the assembly line at around the time Reagan made his famous statement of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall”.
She can’t receive anything other then regular text messages - no pics or sounds. And if you place an at sign (@) in your text, she won’t receive anything after it. It has no camera, no internet access, nothing. So, I’m considering getting her an iPhone. Which is the whole point of this diatribe.

So, this weekend I suspect will be fairly bland. Yes, I have some volunteering to do, but it’s only an hour or so and then I’m done. I think we’ll probably be doing some packing, but who knows what’ll happen.

July 4th we’ll probably go down to the Riverfront and watch the fireworks - then she be heading to her parents the next for a reunion, then I’ll follow on Saturday (I’m on call all that week). Then… who the hell knows.

Waiting until August is killing me. I want out of were we are now! NOW! Argh! I have a ton of projects lined up to do this fall too. Not to mention Project SNAP! Gotta get started.

Meh, that’s enough for me. Time to get back to work. Write a little code, then work on some of these editorials I’ve been doing.

Oh, and Hi Wendy!

Well, Saturday I got to the Dinkytowner at 8:30pm with all my gear, as the Unknown Prophets were supposed to go on at 9. Nine came and went. So did 10. Then 10:30. Then 10:45 I said screw it, lets get outta here - we have a big weekend and can’t be out so friggin late. So I sent them an email apologizing, hopefully they will allow me to reschedule and that they understood.

Sunday, that was Father’s Day. We went to go see Mishka’s parents, and gave him our gift - an elite Mork and Mindy Board Game, circa 1979. I was originally looking for some Bob Dylan screen printed gig posters, but didn’t really find anything I liked - not to mention we weren’t able to get her mom anything for mother’s day, and I didn’t want to make it seem like we were favoring her dad, which we aren’t, we just have the means this time.

New lease is almost finished and ready to be signed, 60 day notice is given - there will be a month were I am paying rent for 2 places, but that’s actually not a bad thing - lets us move on the weekend instead of Wednesday the 1st and lets us really spend some time cleaning the apartment - I’ve only been at this one for a year, and hadn’t really hung anything on the walls, so there isn’t much except some broken blinds due to the dang cat. Oh, and a Washer/Dryer combo unit I need to reassemble after a failed attempt to really really clean it. Oh, and the overlap allows Mishka to get to the new place and paint it - she’s got the color scheme all picked out and her mother to help her do it, so I’m quite happy. No way I was about to climb up 13 feet to paint pfffft.

Yesterday, In The Loop had a private show at the Dorothy Day center in St. Paul, and I was on hand as usual to take photos. I think this is possibly one of my favorite episodes thus far, and the people were great. There was even this homeless musician that played a mean jazz harmonica, with Jeff and The Smarts joining in - made of the most soulful shows to say the least. It was originally going to run from 2pm to 3:30pm, but ran until after 4 - and that’s with a lot of the pre-recorded pieces (all but 1!) removed. There was that much audience participation, everyone had something to say.

Sadly, there won’t be an episode of ‘In The Loop’ next month, and he’s really not sure if they will be given another season - so why don’t you voice your opinion and tell them that WE WANT MORE! I’d hate to see the younger, hipper version of the Prairie Home Companion laid to waste, cast of as if another animated FOX comedy.

All in all I took over 200 photos, and haven’t edited a single one. I’m quite happy with my new lens, though I forgot the lens hood turns, then ‘clicks’ into place. I forgot the ‘click’ part, so some of these have vignetting on the corners, which sucks but I’ll make I suppose. Though I think I’ll end up still buying Nikon’s 17-55mm f/2.8 lens for shows like this - it seems to pull in a significant amount of more light, even though it’s the same aperture. If you’d like to see the slide show, then feel free - or check out my photo set on Flickr - and comment on it damn it!

Oh, it also looks like I’ll be manning the MNArtists.Org booth at the State Fair again this year, come by and say hi! Other then that, not a whole lot more going on. Still trying to decide whether to chill all weekend, the first time in months, or to swing by the large pride parade in Minneapolis and take some shots. We shall see. Anyway, until next time!

I must say that last weekend has to be the most perfect weekend I’ve had in a long time. Friday we got our tattoos. Saturday, that was pretty uneventful, but we did stop at Best Buy for a few things - added on to my Dylan collection. From zero, to 4 albums heh.

But Sunday, Sunday was grand!
We both got up really early, around 8. We headed to St. Paul - first we stopped at the Black Dog for some coffee and breakfast burritos, then we walked across the street to the farmer’s market and stocked up on things. It’s early in the growing season, so there aren’t a lot of fruits or vegetables, but we did end up with about $60 worth of meat - mainly from Prairie Pride Farms - they have some incredibly wonderful meat and their barbecue sauce can’t be beat.

After that, we were off to Swank Interiors where we picked up some wonderful modern vintage items. Swank sells things from the 50s, 60s, and 70s mainly. I’ve been looking for a few things, one of them something to put my sugar/flour/etc in, and that’s when we
spied these guys - Sugar, Flour, and Coffee tins. Remember these things growing up? I know my grandma had a set, only hers was green. We’ll use the sugar and flour tins for their intended purpose, but the coffee tin will probably end up holding tea bags, since I have a ton of them in my cupboard.

I’ve got a thing for older clocks, especially the ones with the date/time numbers that ‘flip’ down into position. Mishka pointed this one out, and I had to have it - the owner even gave it to us at $10 off what she had it listed for. It looks a little rough right now, but I intend to pick up a few things and restore the plastic to like-new condition - it’ll be grand. The only thing that could be better is if it was orange.

We also picked up a few other things, which you can see on this flickr set, but the one thing I really dug was these candle sticks.
You may or may not be able to tell by looking at this smaller photo, but the base of the candle sticks are made from an actual gear from some now no longer used machine. As a result, they are very heavy and a tad steampunk in a way I find perfect.

While at Swank, we also learned that next weekend there’s the “St. Paul Retro Loop” - it’s a yearly event where 5 retro/vintage stores in that particular area have sales and cross-promote themselves. You’ll find everything from vintage furniture to retro clothing, LPs, appliances, and general kitsch. We were in the market for a particular style of bookcase, which happens to be in the warehouse, so next week we’ll do the retro loop, ending at Swank where she’ll take us over to the warehouse. While we’re there, I’ll casually mention how I like to take photos, drop her card, and let her know I’d be happy to help inventory all of their items. Michelle will need contacts like these, and the people that hang out there are fun and funky, so I think it would be a great time.

Afterwards, we went home and unloaded our goods, then headed back out - this time to Valley Natural Foods. Valley is an organic co-op, one of 8 stores located in the Twin Cities area. They specialize in natural foods, organically grown, with a focus on local farmers. There’s one literally 5 minutes from my house. I’ve driven by it many times, stopped a few, but thats about it. This time, we bought a membership and now own 4 shares of stock in the company - and more importantly we plan to do all our shopping there from now on. We’ve been trying to eat healthier over the last couple of weeks and I’ve really noticed it - I wake up early on the weekends, need less sleep, have more energy, it’s been grand.

Other then that, everything is same old same old, though I have been spending entirely to much money on gig posters lately, but there are so many absolutely gorgeous ones out there, and the price is right! (Not to mention: Having a girlfriend who can decipher all of the different types and weights of paper and printing processes really helps, too.)