It was a busy weekend! As soon as work ended on Friday we packed up and headed out to see Mishka’s friend Dubya outside of Milwaukee. Heading east the entire time, we got to see a beautiful sunset in our rear-view window - we also got to see a large RV pulling a boat, with the words ‘Noise Pollution’ proudly written across the rear of both. Pulling alongside to pass this behemoth of steel and noise the likes of which H.G. Wells could only dream of, I couldn’t help but notice the side of the bus was adorned with multiple advertisements for BangBus.Com - which makes me think this had to be the bang bus! It was like bumping into a celebrity to me, I was quite shocked! For those not in the know, BangBus.Com is a decidedly not safe for work (NSFW - which is why I didn’t create a direct link) website where young men lure young women into a bus, have sex with them, then ditch them somewhere (I’m fairly certain its all scripted - I doubt you could find that many naive woman around!). I tried to explain what an epic event this was to Mishka, as if we found an elusive, almost extinct creature, that just happens to video tape itself having sex with girls - but surprisingly she wasn’t very amused and didn’t quite share my enthusiasm.

We drove on, passing about 37 police cars - it being labor day weekend and all - before finally getting to Kenosha. After accidentally giving her a little sight-seeing tour (I used to live there long ago) we finally managed to hit a Super 8… But it was booked solid, no room at the inn for us. So we continued on to the next stop, the Value Inn.

Read the rest of this entry »

In about 2 hours I’ll be at the fair, and I’ll be there until about 7 tonight. If you’re out and about, feel free to stop by and say hi to me from 3 - 6pm in the Education building at the MNArtists.Org booth!

Pictures and more when I return, as usual!

And next week? Well that’s the Ren Fest. Not the one in Minnesota, we’re going to the larger one in Kenosha, WI. I’ll get to go back to a place I lived once, yay

 So it’s now official, we’ve moved! We now live in the Rossmor, and even with a few boxes full of (my) stuff lying around, the place looks fabulous - I will upload pictures eventually when I get my office together.
That same night Mishka’s friend Dubya came to visit for the next several days. Well, Saturday she wanted to sing karaoke, so I find a place close by. We get there, it’s fairly dead, and I’m expected to sing as well - so I have some liquid courage in the form of a double gin & tonic. Then I have another, and another, and … well, lets just say I have a date with 2 guys at the Town House tonight, apparently. Yeah, I over did it. Big time. So much so, that only now at 3:30 in the afternoon is my hangover starting to abate. I was essentially carried the 5 blocks home by 2 very hot women, and ended up passing out on the floor.

Don’t worry, I apologized to Dubya, and I apologize once more - I’m terribly sorry! And I really am, I hate losing control. I was drinking to fast, and I hadn’t had anything to eat and they all sort of stacked up on top of each other all at once. Oh well, lesson learned - I will never drink again until the next time!

I’ll write up a more humorous story regarding this event later when my mind has fully healed!

Well, I had my first true night* on the new Sleep Number bed and wow, it was awesome. I was up the second the alarm went off, shower, then Mishka and I went downstairs to Key’s Cafe and had some omelets and then I got to work 45 minutes earlier then normal. I like living in the city
Pickup the U-Haul at 3pm or so, start loading, hopefully get it all loaded since there’s a 70% chance of rain tomorrow - pay the other places rent, get back to St. Paul, unload, unpack, live happily ever after.
Currently, I’m listening to Kimya Dawson and The Moldy Peaches, check em out - Anti-Folk and all. (Also listening to an older Eels and the newest Gogol Bordello)

*Note: This is actually the second night of the new bed, but the first night I didn’t sleep well at all due to the fact that the controller was under my head and during the course of my slumber I managed to hit it enough that my number went from 40 to 85 - so the bed was sorta rock hard by the time I got up heh.

 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.)