Archive for the ‘TILT’ Category

This happened a couple of nights ago. I understand that this is a “Things I Love THURSDAY” post, but it’s taken a couple of days of reflection to fully appreciate that I am still alive. As you know, I am a big fan of the Automated Postal Center because it works nice with my schedule, which basically means being productive at night after all the kids have gone to bed. Before I made the trek to the post office I sent Coral a “goodbye, I’ll be home soon” text.

She never responded because she fell asleep on the couch. And she’s lucky because imagine how bad she would have felt if a mustached man did stab me in the face. The really sad part though would be that my death would have totally been in vain because I didn’t even accomplish what I left the house to do, thanks to the dumb machine at the post office.

Yeah, I would try later, except for I got stabbed in the face, jerk!

I wonder if my mustached murderer would have stolen the package I was trying to mail. How long would my customer have waited before sending me a “Where’s my package, asshole” email? Also, I wonder if Coral would eventually find the email and write the customer back saying something like, “I apologize for the inconvenience of your package not arriving in a timely manner. Because of your order Jeff was stabbed in the face by a mustached man while trying to ship your package using the super convenient Automated Postal Center, that happens to double as a death trap as well as a great way to mail things after hours. We will return your money never because burial costs are crazy expensive and it’s partially your fault we had to bury the guy anyway. Thank you.”

(view bigger illustration here)

I did not come up with this idea. A friend posted about this on the FB, so I googled it and found some more info about it. The illustration is probably good enough, but this post on wikihow.com is much more in depth: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Moss-Graffiti

And, of course, an accompanying video.

Enjoy!

Yesterday I got this email from Coral. No subject and no words in the body of the email. Just this…

and it was the best email I got all day.

On November 1, 2011 I became a NANOWRIMO participant. If you don’t know what that is I’ll tell you. It’s “National Novel Writing Month”. It happens every November. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days. That’s 1,667 words every day. And yes, it’s quite a daunting task. Especially when you live in a house with two rambunctious kids and a four month old baby that needs a diaper change every thirty seconds.

I’ve been meeting the daily goal every day and I’m trying to get a little ahead, but it’s tough. I’ve wanted to try this NANOWRIMO thing for awhile, but this is my first attempt. If I can keep on track I’ll actually be a winner come November 30.

Getting to the 1,667 word goal before going to bed for the night makes me feel quite accomplished. I’ve noticed a couple of things in these first ten days. I need to learn to just let go of any ideas of perfection and get the words down. The whole premise for NANOWRIMO is quantity over quality. Not that your goal should be to write a boring ass novel. The goal is to end the month with a rough draft of a novel that you can polish and clean up later. I’m really into editing as I write and that slows down the process big time so I’ve had to learn a new method of writing.

For now, I’m keeping my story a secret, but eventually I hope that you all get a chance to read it.

I installed a word count widget in the sidebar in case you want to keep track of how I’m doing.

If you don’t see my word count increase by at least 1,667 words per day feel free to send me an encouraging message to kick my ass into gear.

Here’s a chart of where each NANOWRIMO participant should be everyday.

Oh yeah, day 10 actually feels like day 100.

I’m not a professional designer by any means, but I am pretty sure that this dude’s legs should be the same color as his arms and face. How did this go unnoticed when it’s on the cover of a magazine? I’m not sure, but I love it.

“Killer Whale Drum”
by Alano Edzerza

Haida are the indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. I don’t know much about them, but I do know that I am absolutely fascinated with their artwork. I’ve always been a sucker for bold lines and solid colors. And The Haida People are masters at it.

“Wolf Drum”
by David Robert Boxley

Back in the summer of 2000 I embarked on a solo road trip from where in live on the Central Coast of California all the way to up Vancouver Canada. This was before I owned a digital camera. Somewhere I have a shoebox full of photos from that trip and in those photos I have some Haida Totem Poles that I came across. Back then I knew I liked the artwork, but I didn’t investigate to find out anything about it. It was just a couple of weeks ago that I actually learned the term “Haida” and ever since I’ve been scrolling through Flickr and Google Images trying to satiate my appetite for Pacific Northwest Art.

Photo by Brian Dubois

Photo by Paul Turner

“Eagle Dancer”
by Alano Edzerza

I could easily post a lot more, but the discovery is part of the fun, so if you’d like to see more just check out the links on the post.

Enjoy!
– Jeff

My latest song addiction.

If you want to avoid the you tube ads I’d suggest visiting http://mattcosta.com/video and watching “Mr. Pitiful”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out a way to link directly to the video on his site.

Enjoy.

For some reason I’m totally addicted to this song by Anya Marina at the moment. Ok, I’ll be honest, the addiction has been going on for a good three weeks. It flew into my life, magic carpet style, from the land of Pandora.

If you care to sing along, like I do, visit www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858807239

Oh yeah, this is actually a cover song. Here’s the original by T.I.

As you know, last Sunday was Mother’s Day. Like many awesome sons I spent the day at my parents house. It was a nice relaxing day. At some point I mentioned that I wanted to crawl around the attic to see if my old baseball mitt was up there. It had been years since I’d been up there and before I embarked on the adventure my Mom said that it might not be up there and to take a look in the closet in the garage. I’m not sure why there is a closet in the garage, but that’s ok. Mom, Dad, and myself headed to the garage and on the top shelf in the closet was a bag full of…
TREASURE!

(I think the dump truck might be a Go Bot.)

The highlight of the loot was the Transformers (and one possible Go Bot). These beauties are twenty seven years old, people! I know what you’re thinking and they are not worth $1000’s on ebay. Trust me. Now my kids get to play with them which is way cooler than selling the treasures of my youth for $6, plus shipping.

Oh, how I wished I had the ghetto blaster Transformer now! Uhh…not for me…for my kids. Geez.

Scattered amongst the loot were a couple of M.A.S.K. dudes too.

I totally forgot about M.A.S.K. until I saw these guys. I remember thinking they were awesome, but I couldn’t remember why. This video, however, will show you why.

Thanks, Mom!

I just came across this awesome product and would bet money that every spray paint enthusiast would want one of these. I already sent an email to the company to see if I could be a retailer. It would be super awesome to have these available in the gallery. The thing is it’s big and from The Netherlands, so shipping is probably a bitch.

www.fatcapchair.com

If you don’t know it already, kids love cameras. They really do. Since I have a new camera that means the kids now get to use my old one. The good old trusty Sony Cybershot. That little camera has been good to me over the years and I’m happy to see that it won’t be retired just because I upgraded.

On Monday afternoon we were all in the bedroom. Coral and Evy were working on a school project (BORING) while James and I were bugging them (FUN) and messing around with our cameras.

Seeking more excitement James and I decided to go outside strapped with our cameras.

Yes, that’s a piece of sourdough hanging out of his mouth.

This is my shot of Bubble Gum Alley. By the time I got my hands on the Sony James had already deleted his alley shots, which is a bummer because he had found a series of photos stuck to gum on the wall. So yeah, he had photos of photos. Now gone forever.

James got this shot of our shadows on the wall. Thinking about it now, I’m not sure how I feel about him holding the camera with only one hand with the creek right below us. Oh, I guess if he dropped it I could just toss him over the rail to get it. It’s only about an eighteen foot drop into water twelve inches deep.

One with Mother Nature, James was able to get pretty close to these pigeons.

But alas, they flew away.

The next two shots are by James.

I didn’t know ducks frequented the creek, but we saw a couple of them cruising around.

I love odd placement street art, so I had to take a picture.

When James took this picture of the tree he realized that walking around with a camera opens your eyes to new things and to really observing your surroundings from a different perspective. This realization came about because he had never noticed how green the leaves of this tree were before.

While he was finding beauty in a tree I was finding it in this mishmash of pipes in an odd corner complete with Stalk tag.

Not to worry, James found some street art too!