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October 31, 2005
Spooky.
When Jen and I bought this house, we looked past certain things, because the house had a lot of what we were looking for. There are four big bedrooms. There's a greenhouse out back. It's on 3/4 of an acre, and it has a good-sized backyard. We chose to overlook the abysmal condition of the plaster, the lack of modern electrical wiring, the substandard kitchen, and the leaky roof. We also chose to overlook the proximity to Frederick Road.
Being set up so close to the main route through Catonsville has a few advantages, none of which show up on Halloween. Because we're not tucked safely into one of the secondary roads, most parents don't bother to come our way on the big night, so we wind up with a bowl full of candy to make it through the howling chill of November. Each year I've tried to make this dump a little more friendly to the neighbors. Admittedly, the first year we lived here, the place was kid of run down. And last year, when the hedge out front threatened to swallow the sidewalk, it might have been a bit sketchy. But I carved pumpkins and lit them with candles, man! I lit the front of the house up and mowed the lawn. And the first year we were here, we had a grand total of about eight kids at the door. I was crushed.
Last year, I carved two pumpkins and lit the house, and we had about thirty kids. So I figure we're making some progress. This year, Jen and I trimmed the shit out of the bushes in front and cleaned up the hedges, and made the place more presentable. I didn't get any pumpkins for the front steps, but I bought some paper lanterns and put them out on the sidewalk, and lit up the house.
I don't know if the people on the side streets get more kids or not, but I had a gaggle of about thirty in one shot at around 6:30 this evening. Other groups have shown up, and some stragglers have appeared, but I'd say we're up to about fifty this year. And that's not bad.
Addendum: Is it just a Baltimore thing for kids to get a HANDFUL of candy from me, then hold out their hand and ask for "more candy for their brother who isn't here?"
Behavior like that used to make me unscrew the porch light and go down to the bar to drink beer, you miserable little shits.
Posted on October 31, 2005 6:52 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)
Written Up In The Big Papers.
Well, isn't that interesting. The game I helped build at the company I used to work for got written up in Wired magazine a couple of days ago. Pretty cool. If you click the second image link, you can see part of the interface I designed and some of XLT's buildings.
Posted on October 31, 2005 3:33 PM | link to this entry
October 28, 2005
Contracting.
Last night the electrician came back and wired up all our various new expensive toys to the panel, which means that 1/2 the lights, our dishwasher, and our stove all work now. This whole process has been a learning experience, like going to a spanish-speaking samba class on crutches: There are complicated dance steps involved, but they don't tell you what order things go in unless you ask exactly the right questions. Knowing what these questions are is key, like asking the installation guys where they needed outlets, and then transferring that knowledge to the electricians so that you don't wind up with four rectangular holes in the wall that need to be patched after the cabinets are installed.
The installers have been here twice and will need to return again (for the counter installation); the electricians three times (and need to come back once more for final fit-out) and the plumbers twice (and they're coming back for the sink and disposal installation.) It's getting so that we're just going to give everybody a key and keep a twelve-pack of beer in the fridge so they can come and go when they need to.
All this has left us with a pretty sweet kitchen, so far. Last night I flipped one of the two new switches on the wall and 3/4 of the under-cabinet lighting came on, and it looked GREAT. This morning we read the phone-book sized manual for the dishwasher and figured out how to turn it on, and it burbled and hummed quietly, and Jen ovulated at the thought of not having to face another sinkload of dishes to wash by hand. The stove lights with a fast tick-tick-WHOOSH, and it heats the shit out of a pot of hot water.
I'd have to say, we've been blessed with some of the nicest contractors in the universe. Our electrician I've written about before. The plumbers are a pair of old-school Bawlmer fellas, and speak through syrup-thick Dundalk accents, but damn if they didn't have the gas line wrangled in about fifteen minutes. These are the guys who would be at home in the engine room of a nuclear aircraft carrier, keeping it floating with a pipe wrench and some chewing gum. The cabinet install guys showed up at 8:30 in the morning, unloaded two vans full of wood, assembled the entire kitchen and hung it expertly on some of the most out-of-square walls in this state, put in the lighting, dishwasher (and its plumbing), and fridge, all without marking up the floor or burning the house down. And they were nice guys. I'd recommend them to anybody, really—I've worked with gruff contractors, ex-felons (that was an interesting summer), guys that treated me the customer like a moron, guys that overcharged, guys that never showed up, guys that never finished, and guys that wanted full payment up front. Everybody I've worked with on this project has spoiled me for any future contracting, and I suppose that's alright with me, just as long as we can have a machine wash our dishes and bake a cake that's not burned on one side.
Posted on October 28, 2005 11:18 AM | link to this entry
October 27, 2005
Somehow Comforting.
It's kind of nice to sit in my house, have plenty of billable work to complete, play a little Cure For Pain-era Morphine, and sip on a hot chocolate I just heated on our new gas stove.
Posted on October 27, 2005 4:49 PM | link to this entry
Lighting.
Jen and I set up an order for three lights on Rejuvenation Lighting yesterday. We ordered this Trenton light for the middle of the kitchen, and two of these Pembrook fixtures for the hallway.
The kitchen light will hang between 12" and 24" off the cieling, based on what we put in the center of the room, and how we like the light it throws. And hopefully the shades on the Pembrook fixtures will have some of that honey/amber color in them when they come out of the box, because we really like that vibe for the hallway.
Posted on October 27, 2005 2:49 PM | link to this entry
Sash Springs.
My sister had a bunch of work done on her house a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things she did was to have the weights to her old sash windows cut, something called "sash springs" installed, and the cavities filled with blown insulation. Having just filled our kitchen window cavities with foam and insulation, I can testify to the results of this operation, and also guess that I'm losing hundreds of dollars in heating bills through our windows.
"The window things are called sash springs; they're essentially thin pieces
of sheet metal bent at about a 45-degree or so angle; the two ends have
screw holes and get mounted to the sash slot, and the angle hits the window
sash. The friction/pressure is what keeps the window up. The thing I've
found is that it makes the windows kinda hard to operate--I have to gunk
them up with silicone spray when I do the storms this winter."
This might be them: They're advertised as spring holders, and they list for $1.99 each.
I did some research on the subject and found this article, which talks about spring balances, which I gather are something different from my sister's solution.
I found this link to the primary manufacturer of the spring balances, Pullman, and it appears I can order them direct from the factory for $23. I think I'm going to order a pair after weighing one of my sashes and see how it works.
Posted on October 27, 2005 2:20 PM | link to this entry
October 26, 2005
Date Night.
Last night, after spending the last two weeks cooped up in our house, Jen and I drove into Baltimore to have dinner and screen a movie. She gets mailings from the Maryland Film Festival about events happening each month, and a particular movie caught her eye: it's called Nine Lives, and it was produced for a tiny amount of money (relatively speaking) with an all-star cast. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First we drove into the city and through my old stomping grounds of Bolton Hill to try a new restaurant.
The old 'hood has changed since I lived there. Back in the day, it had a certain feeling of genteel shabbiness, sprinked with eighteen-year-olds sporting purple hair and thriftstore coats. This evening I got the distinct sense I was walking through Georgetown—in the years since I left the area, the uber-rich have moved in and cleaned the joint up. I get the sense they kicked a lot of my patchouli-stinkin' peeps out and rehabbed the apartments back into respectable Republican drone-hives. (This would be a shame, because in my opinion, one of the best things about being a student at MICA was the ability to score a huge two-floor apartment in a brownstone with a backyard and offstreet parking for $200/person. It's hard to make art in a cinderblock cube.)
Around the corner from one of my old apartments was a small corner cafe that went through several identities while I lived there—overpriced independent coffee shop, overpriced independent lunch bistro—but is now called B, and which features a fantastic menu at reasonable dinner menu prices—you'll drop a little less than $20 on a delicious plate of homemade pasta, and spend a little more for seafood. It's got a cozy vibe, a good wine menu, and a delicious steamed mussel appetizer (ask for plenty of bread.) Unfortunately, we were too pressed on time to really savor the main course, so we ate our dinner quickly, grabbed our bottle of wine, and split for the show.
The new Brown center at MICA is bigger inside than I'd thought it would be. The architects seem to have done a magic act fitting a huge auditorium into the center of that structure, and I'm more impressed with the building now that I've been inside. Now I understand why the Alumni Association calls me every month for a donation; the heating bills in that place must be astronomical.
The movie itself was very good. The basic structure is nine ten-minute stories about different women, and each story is loosely linked in some way. Also, each story is shot in one long continuous take on steadicam. Apparently the film is not getting picked up for wide distribution—as some of the asshat reviewers on IMDB complain, there's no traditional start or finish to each story, so it's hard to package the movie to the mass market. If you see it recommended on Netflix, put it in your queue (the cast, crew, and actors all share ownership of the movie, so any money you spend on it will go into their pockets.)
After the question and answer session, we bundled back up and walked through the sleepy neighborhood to our car, enjoying the crisp air and our evening together, feeling like a couple in love.
Posted on October 26, 2005 11:25 PM | link to this entry
October 25, 2005
Shiny New Wood.
Here's the kitchen as of this morning. The guy who measures the cabinets for the granite will be here in a half-hour, and it'll take a week and a half for them to cut it and come back out to install. In the meantime, the plumber will be here tomorrow to put the gas line, disposall, and range in, as well as widen the drain pipes from 1.5" to 2".
Meanwhile, we picked up a faucet from the Lowe's (the selection there, while large, was underwhelming) and the aforementioned disposal last night—nothing like the last minute, eh?
Finally, we have to return to IKEA this weekend to pick up 20+ drawer pulls (we're going with the TAG model, which is sort of an elegant stainless swoop.)
Posted on October 25, 2005 9:59 AM | link to this entry | Comments (4)
October 24, 2005
HOLY CRAP IT LOOKS NICE DOWN THERE
That is all
Posted on October 24, 2005 4:19 PM | link to this entry
Asshole.
I'm feeling like one for realizing that it's 3PM, the kitchen installers have been working since 9, and haven't had lunch. The lead installer threw me a hint at about 2 when, admittedly, I was on the phone and otherwise occupied, by asking where we ordered out for food around here. I didn't catch it. I usually pride myself on being a nice guy-the guy who picks up a pizza for the workmen who stay late (we did this last week for our electricians), but this time I dropped the ball. I went down at 3 and offered, but the lead told me he had food coming.
I'm trying to do some freelance work, but it's bugging me.
Oh, yeah, they're doing a really nice job down there too.
Posted on October 24, 2005 3:39 PM | link to this entry
Printed Material.
This weekend, Jen and I went out and seriously looked at large-format printers. She's been working on identities for a client, and our aging, 13-year-old Laserwriter 630 has started being balky after four years of faithful service.
Faithful readers may remember my research from the old weblog, and the same basic problems applied here as well: Give me reliable tabloid-sized color printing from OS X, out of the box, for under $500—without any PostScript or other driver hassles. We revisited the same two contenders, a Canon and an Epson, and found a new entry, built by HP.
The Canon apparently doesn't like non-Canon brand paper, and the HP looked nice (network card, lots of slots on the front for memory cards), but I'm hesitant these days to buy anything HP after my last experiences with their hardware. We settled on the Epson 1280 and brought it home. Today, trying to distract ourselves from the noise downstairs, we hooked it up and got it printing. Boy, it's nice. Clean, crisp prints with little or no hassle, directly from Illustrator, Quark, and Safari.
Posted on October 24, 2005 12:22 PM | link to this entry | Comments (5)
October 23, 2005
The Home Stretch.
Here's the first coat of poly on the floor. It's now got three, but this is the first. Tomorrow at 7:30, the cabinets arrive, and they get installed. w00t!
Posted on October 23, 2005 9:24 PM | link to this entry
October 20, 2005
On The Edge.
The Cauzzis graciously offered to make us some dinner last night after I called up and invited us over to their house. (Miss H. took pity on us months ago when she heard we would be without a stove for a week, and offered to feed us. How could we turn that down?) We stopped to pick up some supplies and made our way to their house 45 minutes late, which throws the baby feeding/sleeping/eating schedule off—and consequently the adult feeding/sleeping/eating schedule, which is already more of a loose guideline without my fucking it up. There are many times when I am oblivious to outside stimuli—it usually involves power tools and a home project, and this was one of them. I'll post a picture here of the main cause of my lateness, and apologize once again in public: I'm sorry.
Notice the floor in the pantry in the upper left-yesterday morning it still sported a layer of linoleum and luuan, until I got to the edge of the doorway and had to pull the threshold up. After a brief consult with my wife, I yanked the rest of it out and sanded the pine planks down in there as well. The rest of the room has been edged, and with the exception of some minor buffing to be done, is ready for a coat of polyurethane. All this was accomplished for a total of $144.52, which is $555.48 less than the price we were quoted a few months ago. Knowing this, I'm happy we bought the more expensive range, because it just got paid for.
Meanwhile, in the Cash Flying Out Of Our Pocket department, five men appeared in our driveway this morning at 8AM to trim back the trees that have been threatening to topple into expensive houses in our neighborhood. The silver maple that adjoins our property and hangs over the garage got topped off (more like a Marine buzz cut on the first day of boot camp) and the dead Dutch Elm that's been drooping in the backyard is getting cut to the stump. There's been some controversy over property lines and responsibility for this particular tree, and we finally got tired of waiting for the neighbors to do something about it before it fell into their house. Surveying seems to be a sort of hit-or-miss science given the age and shifting landscape—Jen and I measured out the back property line this summer, and as far as we can tell, the tree is five feet on their side of the line. Either way, I'm just glad we did something before Hurricane Keighleigh or Brandi or Sholene came and flattened their garage.
The downside to all this: I have to cut the initial check and get reimbursed by my neighbor. The upside: They're stacking the Elm, in firewood-sized logs, in OUR yard. Burn that, bitches.
Posted on October 20, 2005 12:31 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)
October 18, 2005
Tired.
If you're in the market for a floor sander, I highly recommend the model shown (Silver-Line). It uses velcro sanding pads, so you don't have to deal with round drums and screws and other crap like that.
Tomorrow I go back for the edger and clean up all the places where cabinets won't be.
Posted on October 18, 2005 4:41 PM | link to this entry | Comments (3)
Kitchen Update, Day Six.
Yesterday morning two compact men of Central American descent pulled up in front of the house and unloaded several thousand dollars worth of new appliances. At first we were worried when they took the boxes off the units in the truck, but they treated our shiny new children with care as they hefted them up the front steps and into the front porch. I stood back with my coffee, amazed, when the smaller of the two men carried our dishwasher up our front walk and into the house on his back. (Note to Sears: Send your deliverymen out with a Johnni-Lift or something next time.)
And then, it was time to say goodbye to the legacy range. The two men strapped it to the cart, carefully navigated through the hallway, and then practically threw it down the front stairs. Goodbye, lousy electric range: may you never spatter grease, burn cookies, collect hair, or stink up our house again.
B. the electrician came back and finished roughing in the electrical work as well. As with the rest of the house, we'll have several dozen outlets and dedicated circuits for all the appliances instead of two ungrounded plugs and an extension cord—halleleujah, amen.
I followed B. last night by patching up various holes in the plaster, insulating the weight channels in the window sash (which were empty, no wonder it cooled off in that room so quickly) and slapped a coat of Kilz on the Pepto-pink walls. In one way, I'm glad I was laid off, because this room needs a lot more work than I expected to get it ready for cabinets.
Posted on October 18, 2005 11:53 AM | link to this entry
A Quick One
Y'know, There's something pretty cool about being able to wake up, make coffee, and walk aross the hall to the guest room to have a two-hour concept meeting with your wife. Especially when you like working with your wife.
I posted an update to the houseblog about kitchen progress this morning—I'll follow it up with some pictures later in the day. I'm going to do some freelance logo work, and then run out to rent a floor sander to take advantage of the 75°weather.
How's everybody doing out there?
Posted on October 18, 2005 11:51 AM | link to this entry | Comments (4)
October 17, 2005
Insurance.
I filed for unemployemnt insurance this morning, something I probably should have done last week. At least the food bills will get paid while I hustle up some more freelance work. Theoretically, I should be getting a final paycheck in the mail this week, but I haven't seen one yet....
Posted on October 17, 2005 1:37 PM | link to this entry
October 14, 2005
Reality Check.
Friday was the last day of the first week of my new career, which I'm calling Do Anything To Keep The Gas Bill Paid. It didn't go off as bad as the last time this happened. That time I ran around freaking out over how to make a tiny mortgage payment, sure that I'd never work in the industry again. This time has been better, mainly because I was already doing freelance work on the side, and also because the market is a lot stronger.
I was, however, without my cellphone for a week. We stopped down into the old neighborhood to drop off some shower gifts to some old friends on Sunday. When I got out of the car, my cellphone did a kamikaze leap off my lap onto a pile of wet leaves and stayed there for several hours until I got home and called about it. They rescued it for me, wiped off the water, dried it out (the battery was dead) and kept it for me until today.
Canton has changed even more in the past two years than in the six that I lived there. Pretty much anything that could have been called "local flavor" has been bulldozed to the ground to make way for 3-floor garage townhomes starting in the $400's. At the foot of Lakewood avenue a year ago, I spotted a beautiful painted sign on the side of a renovation project house. It was the size of the whole building, and it had been exposed when they pulled formstone siding from the brick. I stopped to take pictures in the darkness, and found it hard to get a decent shot in the sodium-arc lamplight.
This afternoon, after picking up my phone, I looked for the sign and found it had been covered by glistening gray paint and fake vinyl shutters. Several windows had been cut into the middle, and a rooftop deck had been added with a spiral staircase. Anything original about the house had been wiped out in an attempt to make it as homogenous as the next one. Why would anybody cover that piece of history willingly? Why not seal it with silicone spray (repoint the brick, if you have to) and tell everybody you're in the Sealtest House? It would be a huge selling point to your house, in my opinion.
I stopped recognizing that neighborhood as my own when the Outback steakhouse went in (right before I sold), and the new swoopy metal building in the Safeway parking lot (soon to house a Starbuck's) sealed my contempt for what it's become. With my cellphone safely in hand, I got out of there and headed back home.
Our electrician B. stopped by in the evening and began roughing in the wiring. It's halfway done (he was here until 9PM) but already it's looking like progress is being made. Sears called about our appliance delivery this morning, and our kitchen planner told me the cabinets came in yesterday. Everything is hurtling along, and I have to say, the excitement and activity helps me keep from suffering panic attacks whenever I consider our impending mortgage payment. My wife has been a rock through all this, continually telling me we're going to be OK and not to worry. I don't know what I'd do without her. I should be getting a final paycheck in the mail this week, and then I start drawing unemployment until I my accounts recievable checks start coming in.
So i guess I'm not freaking out too badly right now. Should I be?
Posted on October 14, 2005 9:20 PM | link to this entry | Comments (2)
October 13, 2005
There's A Hole Where My Kitchen Used To Be.
I'd have to say the last four days have been as busy as we've ever been, and I guess that's a very good thing. Instead of sitting around drinking beer and listening to blues records in my underwear, I've been keeping busy with updates to my portfolio site, getting in touch with contacts in the outside world, juggling the housing demolition with finishing up the upstairs rooms, and trying to stay sane. I have a table full of lists, lists of lists, piles of paper, reciepts, and ideas, and I don't feel like I've been able to begin anything yet.
It's too early to have any kind of set schedule at this point (especially as the rest of the house is in total chaos) but my plan is to start doing weekly illustration again, for real, and have a portfolio of new work built by the end of the year. Sometime in early 2006 I'd like to buy some pages in the big directories and try to solicit work. I'll be posting new work on my portfolio site weekly starting next Monday (If I can move my fingers after sanding the floor in the kitchen), so keep an eye out for me.
Speaking of, follow the link to a series of pictures of our bombed-out kitchen. We're now washing our dishes in the bathtub. Whoopee!
Posted on October 13, 2005 11:26 AM | link to this entry | Comments (5)
October 11, 2005
Updates.
In the wake of some bad news last Friday, we did what most Americans often do when faced with potential financial crisis: We spent lots of money. Returning to Sears on Saturday for the Columbus Day sale, we ordered a range, dishwasher and refrigerator for delivery next Monday. The range is a different model and make from the one we first chose-it's a Kenmore Elite gas range, and it turned out to be more expensive than the original, but it's got a bunch of features we wanted. Convection gas oven, a warming drawer, a simmer burner, Check the bullet list on that first link there—six bullets down. See at the end there? We've got Sabbath Mode. Ozzy Fucking Osbourne is going to cook the crap out of our Thanksgiving turkey while "Crazy Train" pipes out of the recessed Bose flush-mount speakers. Not that shaky Ozzy you see on the MTV these days-no sir. Sears got the circa 1980, bat-eating, Stoli-guzzling Ozzy our parents warned us about to saute the vegetables.
Posted on October 11, 2005 6:07 PM | link to this entry
October 10, 2005
Like Clockwork.
So why is it that the week you've been laid off, the people from the alumni association of your college call you and hit you up for money? I swear to god, I had the exact same conversation with a guy from MICA in 2001. I almost felt bad for the dude, too—some earnest, nice-sounding kid with a midwestern accent. He got through about half of his shpiel, to the point where the words 'donation' and 'generosity' come into the prepared speech, when I had to cut him off and tell him, "I got laid off last week."
I'd hate to think I scared him away from a career in the visual arts...
Posted on October 10, 2005 8:27 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)
Shifting Gears.
So I've been through this before. The last time this happened, I was working for a big fancy-shmancy firm in D.C., commuting three hours a day, and waiting for a real assignment. (They had me working on a favor site, called the Museum of Cake, for about a month. I'd come from the corporate dot-com world, and it was hard to shift gears into baked goods from satellite broadband delivery.)
That time, I had a pretty sizable war chest saved up. I also had a rock-bottom mortgage payment, I owned my car outright, and I was looking forward to some time to work on the basement of my house, so it kind of worked out. I spent most of those two months painting, putting up drywall, running electrical, and living frugally. I didn't have the heart to work much on the computer—in fact, I took most of that month off from the computer entirely, looking only occasionally at my email. For a lot of reasons, I was depressed and demoralized. The industry I'd claimed as my own was in steep decline in Baltimore. Most of the shops who'd flown so high were now closed down. There was noplace to look for work locally, and I'd not spent enough time in D.C. to make contacts there.
This time is very similar, but also a little different. The mortgage payment is much bigger now, but we still don't have to make any car payments. We have an equity line of credit, which isn't the same as having money saved, but also means we've got an emergency fund. I'm looking at a house which needs a monumental amount of work, and I suddenly have a lot of time to do it. This time, I've also been keeping busy on the side doing freelance work, so I've got a current portfolio to draw from.
I'm going to use this as an opportunity and try not to look at it like a curse. I've been wanting to switch back over to web design full-time for a while now, and also resurrect my illustration career. The only thing that's been keeping me from doing that is a lack of time. You'll see the progress here and over on my portfolio site (which is going to see a major overhaul in the next couple of weeks) while I make about a million lists, start drawing again, continue developing websites, and try not to freak out too much about being self-employed.
Posted on October 10, 2005 10:26 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)
October 7, 2005
Well, Shit.
I drove all the way out to work this morning in the rain, and before I got to unpack my laptop and settle into work, I was asked to meet some folks in the upstairs conference room. They had the look on their faces that I've seen before, and they said the things I've heard before. I packed my stuff back up and walked with someone to the entrance and shook his hand—no hard feelings—and left.
Know anybody who needs a web designer?
Posted on October 7, 2005 11:19 AM | link to this entry | Comments (8)
links for 2005-10-07
Posted on October 7, 2005 3:17 AM | link to this entry
October 6, 2005
Today's Hurricane Brought To You By The Letter T.
OK, this has probably been hammered to death by the late-night talkshow hosts and second-rate comedians, but considering I don't watch a whole lot of either, I'll ask it here: Since when did this country start getting the shit kicked out of it by trailer-park hurricanes? First there was Katrina, one of the all-time dumbest names starting with the letter "K". Now they're talking about Hurricane Tammy hitting the east coast. (Sorry, now it's "Tropical Depression Tammy", something that compounds the stupidity of that name by a factor of 10.) Tammy isn't a real girl name; it's a stage name for a stripper who gives lapdances for crystal meth.
Posted on October 6, 2005 11:46 AM | link to this entry
October 5, 2005
links for 2005-10-05
Posted on October 5, 2005 3:17 AM | link to this entry
October 4, 2005
Catching Up With Our Peeps.
This weekend, Jen and I did something we usually never do—I took her to a real movie theater, and we saw Corpse Bride with other real live human beings. The real live people didn't disappoint us either. We were four seats down from a group of loud, annoying high school kids who thought it was fun to throw M&M's at each other, play games on their cellphone, and talk loudly during a nine-dollar movie. The movie itself was great, although it could have used (in my opinion) about five more minutes of exposition.
Saturday morning we met up with my old friend Jeff from New York, and his girlfriend Katie, for brunch at the Golden West. Due to the Race For The Cure clogging downtown traffic, it took us longer than anticipated to get into the city for pickup, but once we got into Hampden, things were better. It was great to catch up with Jeff, and we made tentative plans to have them back down for a visit in the future.
Saturday evening, we ventured back into the city again for an art opening at the Shinola gallery for our old pal Logan, who's in town for a week or so. We picked up Rob and his wife and made our way to the wrong address on the wrong street (my fault) then followed a couple to the wrong address on the right street (Logan's fault) and finally to the gallery door. It was great to see Logan again (Our visit was a surprise) and catch up with him; he's been doing very well in L.A. and his art has come a long way. I also ran into a few other folks from the scene, including the daughter of an old friend and a few people from the MICA scene back in the day.
After the show, the four of us retired to the Brewer's Art for a cocktail and some food, and we were able to score one of the tables by the window on the top floor. There's nothing more cosmopolitan for a country mouse like me than to sip a vodka tonic among the hip and beautiful, if only for an evening.
Posted on October 4, 2005 1:18 PM | link to this entry
Sherwood Road
This is an animation of my grandparents' house between a photo taken in the mid 50's and another taken in the early 90's. I put it together about 5 or 6 years ago and forgot all about it until recently.
Posted on October 4, 2005 10:48 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)
October 3, 2005
Donzi
My good friend Rob took me on a boat ride Sunday, on his '68 Donzi. It's a sexy little fiberglas speedboat with minimal styling and a LARGE engine. We crusied through the no-wake zone for a while, sipping coffee to the rumble of the engine behind us, until we got out to the open channel, and he opened up the throttle. It's a fast enough boat that you feel like you're on the edge of control, depending on the skill of the driver and the height of the waves—thankfully, the boatbuilder put an "oh-shit" handle in front of the passenger seat, because there's no windshield and little else to hang onto. We zipped past the cabin cruisers and sailboats, out to Gibson Island, and turned for home in the flat wake of a passing boat. All in all, it was an excellent way to spend a warm October morning. Thanks, Rob!
