kenny bloggins

2012-02-14T18:19:00.004-05:00

seeds came in the mail. goal for this coming weekend is to get them mostly started, with a real deal timeline. i also need to start plotting the garden. raised beds this year with defined pathways. i'm real excited.

kicked off my weekend with a trift adventure, took the long way to petersburg and hit several flea markets, salvages, and thrift stores on the way.

sweet camaro roadside. wish i'd stopped for a photo by every sweet auto for sale, would've made a great album.

love the decal kit.
after thrifting went on a long mountainbike ride. took the brownway to the greenway, to north bank then rode the new trails at dogwood dell. they're not finished yet, but they are SO FUN. and having a bike path thru the woods from my house to the greenway is real tight. so stoked on rogue efforts.
video to come, soon.
naturally, spent time with dogs.

these guys were extra sweet.
laying in the sun, chewing on toys.

being sweet to each other. when they're not busy scrappin and running around, they're a real pair of sweeties.

they seemed pretty tired after the long weekend, full of yard adventure.

they were pretty much content to snooze in the sun, going outside for brief runs.
at one salvage spot i came across this freakin AWESOME tension lamp. i've always wanted to have like SIX of these.

everytime i have a little extra cash and search for em, they run 50-300 for messed up, broken ones to pristine super cool ones. managed to finaggle this one for 30$, and even though the light sockets were totally scary, they worked. i can't believe i plugged it in as it was.

i decided to try my hand at rewiring it. seems easy, right? three way switch, pretty easy.
this was the least offensive of all the sockets...

it held a bulb, wasn't shattering into pieces, and didn't look as poorly wired as the others.

i'm shocked that these were working, but they were.
took some snaps of the original sockets and rolled into home depot on a mission. found a pretty close replacement for 3$ a pop. tight!

armed with some electrical basics, i jumped right in.

a long time ago, before the safari was a pretty moped at all, chance was helping me with some wiring issues. he told me to always mock up your electrical before you tuck it all away and make it perfect/pretty, cause if you've done something wrong its such a pain in the ass to take it all apart once you've routed it all. truth. its stuck with me forever, with so many different projects.
reworked all the little ball/sockets where the lamps were supposed to swivel. lubed em up after a cleaning. they actually swivel now!

and yep. finally, a nice tension lamp. so stoked, such an easy project and a worthwile upgrade.

this is my project for monday...just needs a little work to make it a solid fixture. the legs were put on in a crappy halfassed way, and as a result warped the mounting fixtures over time. it'll be an easy fix (i think).
andrew agreed to come with me to one salvage spot this weekend, there are a couple lamps i'd like to go back and snag. i'm on a mega quest for nice lighting since i have a lot of furniture in place.
keeping an eye out for a nice, vintage hanging porch light and more ceiling fixtures that i can hang to replace the ones upstairs.

2012-02-09T09:50:00.003-05:00

seeds ordered. garden's gonna be bangin.

2012-02-08T13:34:00.006-05:00

well, things are, as always, busy.
finished the chairs, let them cure and dry for a couple days, and i still need to bolt the seats back down.

stoked. love some orange, especially original orange vinyl that matches the original vinyl of my knoll chair.
been stoked on my cast iron, the moms gave me a set of 5 pans that were extras of hers. can't wait for more oven baking. worked up some porkchops, and learned how to make steakhouse style mega steaks in them.

seriously, delicious.
work is busy, sort of. some folks are busy and some folks aren't, the non busy folks just don't come to work so it always feels busy.

simon came to hang while his dog mom got a haircut. that dude rules, he has great manners.
andrew got busy in the backyard, again, and moved all the miscellaneous leaves and dirt off the fence so it doesn't rot.

thats a lotta shoveling. we now have a fenced off area where we'll compost for time being.
the dogs took advantage of the decent weather and laid around in the yard.

only after they'd been out there for 6 hours, running their asses off, being wild, did they take a snooze break.

it wiped egon out for the day, but dottie is as always, boundless, when it comes to energy.
seriously, egon was out cold.

this guy napped all day long after i came home at 3pm.

managed to talk some thrift store dudes down to 20$ for this dresser too, stoked on that. too big for the bedroom, but makes a good storage unit for the upstairs hallway. chairs and lamps make it cozy, for those moments when your parents facetime you and want a bit of privacy

picked up a tub of blueberries, back on a "eating fresh berries" kick, and the dogs wouldn't feck off. those bostons love berries, they know exactly what the container sounds like when you click it open and they come running from wherever in the house they happen to be.
been getting some crucial egon snuggles. seems like he's had some bad days lately, or at least times where he's not feeling top of the world.

he had another series of seizures a couple nights ago, and after more bloodwork we're upping his phenobarbitol level. he was on a very very low amount, and its just not enough to keep seizures at bay. hopefully this new, slightly larger dose will prevent them, since such a minimal amount was definitely putting them off.
the weekend felt too short, monday i had to go to the salon for a photoshoot for our website. it kind of chopped my day off in half...wasnt really able to start the projects i wanted cause they all would be three quarters or half done by the time i had to go in.

dottie came with me. i figured since it was mandantory for all employees, and she was a former employee, that she should come with.
naturally she was stoked

and got in the photos with me. ha. great, this solidifies my title as crazy boston terrier lady.
read a book this weekend that propmted me to submit an application form to a local boston/boxer rescue to do volunteer work. i'd love to foster, and maybe it'll one day happen, but for now i feel like general volunteer stuff would be best.

otto is on the cover of the book, he was the first boston terrier one of andrew's relatives friends owned. it was a good, quick read.
i decided that 2012 was my year of giving more, in different ways. i've already donated $$$ to some good projects on kickstarter, now i'd like to concentrate on time. i think i'm gonna facebook around for old bed pillows (i sew zip off covers for em and voila, dog beds) to donate after they're fixed up as dog beds. i'll keep on the prowl for memory foam too for old dogs. i'll keep making my own dogs treats and if time allows, make enough to give to rescue groups. if i make a batch every few weekends, thats way more than my dogs can eat. grainfree, homemade from fresh organic ingredients, thats whats up. i also started emailing around to take a dog cpr class. good to know how to do and be certified in, esp since my stupid little dogs hork down their food so fast that they choke and get all snotty.

i'm also gonna get another old ass vehicle this year. i can already feel it. there are too many cool rides in my neighborhood, its too tempting.
2012: fuck it!

2012-01-31T16:21:00.002-05:00

this weekend was real fun.
saturday after work i picked up a cool ikea light from someone via craigslist. i cut the plug off of it and hardwired it directly into the ceiling, after i took down the old ugly chandelier.

stoked, it totally goes with the room and because its white, when its not on it totally blends into the ceiling. makes the room feel bigger!
later in the evening we went to El Patron for awesome birthday dinner for Chad. Came home stuffed, it was so good.
Woke up early sunday to start a batch of pizza dough, some of my favorite coworkers from the last salon i worked at were coming over for brunch.

i made lots of pizzas and enjoyed some good QT with folks I don't hang with nearly enough.
i dedicated sunday to chillaxin, and indeed i did. after a liesurely day of nibbling on fruit, pizza, cupcakes, and more, i played tetris 2 while the dogs snoozed on the couch beside me.

it was awesome.
early bed, knowing i'd be up early monday for maximum productivity.
egon was still very tired from sunday playtime with my friends

i let them settle into naptime and split, on a mission to get some things done. got a blind for the french door to the side porch, and hit a local thrift store in search of storage options for my craft room.
found this instead!

also picked up these guys, mega potential

the desk was pretty much ready to roll. so cute, need to find a permanent spot for it.
started taking upholstery off the chairs, hoping something awesome would be still intact. looking at the bottom of the seats, i could see the backing of a fabric that appeared to be orange or red, and the first layer of fabric was definitely not that.

first layer was textural nineties fabric.

second layer was this lace embossed yellow and orange vinyl

third layer was green flower embossed vinyl. it looks like barkcloth, but its really vinyl!

lo and behold, under that was a GREAT orange. it is the exact orange as my knoll chair see, in a stroke of most excellent luck.
i got to work on the base of the chairs. they clearly needed some tending to as well.

i'll have to post finished pics soon, the new paint is still curing.
they came out great, nothing like 30$ worth of cool midcentury furniture!
ended the day with a great sense of accomplishment, got so much done that had been on my to do list.

daffodils are all in bloom, its been so spring-ish lately.

wonder if we'll get anything out of em in the spring, or if this is it?
lots to come this week and weekend, including an epic superbowl partay, visits from philly friends, and maybe a huge bonfire to burn the stump out of the ground! booyeah!

2012-01-25T13:10:00.003-05:00

well, as much as i complain about work, i have good bosses that appreciate me. as a present for having to deal with so much headache, they gave me some awesome gift cards and a nice thank you note. oops, i suck.
now that its winter i stay home all the time. i know i mentioned it before, but winter turns me into a cooking, homemaking hermit.

that said, this weekend was all about pierogi.
i mashed a bunch of red potatos, added sauteed onions and cheddar, and made a literal shitton of pierogi.

they are delicious. again the plan was to make enough to have some for us, frozen, and to give away to the wolaks. two gallon ziploc bags later, i say we have plenty.

we celebrated the "two weeks, no seizures" milestone this week.

the dogs were ridiculous as always. dottie is just totally wild, and shes dangerously smart. egon has been awesome, fired up and nibbly.
as an exciting reward, we went on a toy shopping spree at petsmart (and used up some of my new giftcards)

they were so excited, they played all night long then woke up the next morning and ran straight to the room where their new toys were. didn't even try to go outside, just out of bed and straight to toys. dags, they're funny.

CLantz became a doctor, finally, so there was a celebration for her. the bar was loud, and the night after we had pizza and board games to celebrate in a place where we could hear each other without yelling.

it was real fun, even though maryiln looks so totally bored.
stayed out late, slept in a little the next day.
went for lunch at a new mexican resturant near our house...THAT PLACE IS AWESOME.

first off, its clean and bright and cute inside. secondly, theres a HUGE wall sized wood carving that says VIVA MEXICO. third, the food is bangin. so bangin, in fact, that we went there again the next day.
i finished making pierogi while andrew got real serious with his new chainsaw in the backyard. attacking the massive stump from the tree that got cut down a year ago, oops.
here's a quick before: note, that huge ass stump is taller than andrew - and thats a 6 foot privacy fence.

and now after, after one day of chainsawing:

while i was in the middle of rolling dough, andrew burst into the house hollering for me...assuming we were going to the ER with a chainsaw injury, i was a little alarmed. turns out that dude found a bat while cutting apart the stump!

he was up in the rotten core, hibernating.
boy howdy, after we woke him up he was PISSED OFF.

put him in the neighbors super viney/overgrown mulberry tree in the alley and wished him well.
every time i let the dogs out, egon would run to the pile of wood shavings made from the chainsaw and eat them as fast as possible. what is wrong with him???
at any rate, it made him spectacularly sick. after dinner that night he was making us real nervous, he kept having to go outside, and finally he threw up a pretty big amount of woodchips and dogfood and grass. nice.
that morning he had another seizure. big bummer. friday was the two weeks, no seizures mark, so we barely made it. my thinking (and the vets thought as well) was that he most likely threw up the phenobarbitol pill that night from dinner, or didn't have the chance to absorb it all before it came back up. the wood chips probably absorbed a lot of it. in a couple weeks we'll take him back to the vet for more bloodwork, but for now things are okay.

he still demands that you give him your breakfast, no matter what, every day.
because of his early morning seizure, his next day was pretty much spent sleeping.

thankfully dottie and idle are sympathetic with naps, and they helped him sleep all day long.
many moons ago, i painted the downstairs bathroom and hung shelves/pictures. because i am lazy, instead of moving the ladder while cutting in the last corner of the wall, i stepped off the ladder and onto the corner of the sink. and it snapped off. it was totally angering, and it was stupid. so i broke the brand new sinktop by being lazy and fat. great.

i'd been casually looking for a replacement and got serious with it a few weekends ago.
found a sinktop at the thrift store that matched the dimensions really closely, and it was this great ugly/awesome red thick heavy material.
finally got around to installing it this weekend.

not bad for a cheap fast fix. one day i'll make the bathroom all ikea renovated, but for now i'm totally into the red sinktop.

2012-01-18T15:27:00.004-05:00

ugh. last week started with this:

harddrive on the work computer melted down. totally sweet. meant we had no access to appointments, so we came to work every day, and whoever walked in - got hair did. it was retarded. my job was to write down all transactions (so i could enter them later into quickbooks) and to answer phone calls to tell clients that i couldn't help them.
coworkers passed the buck all week, told all their clients that i would write their name and number down and call them to reschedule appointments when we had a computer up. heaven forbid anyone actually take responsibility for making their own appointment and CALL ME. the few clients i flatly asked to call me seemed almost insulted. amazing, but whatever. works sucks, blah blah blah. this week i'm entering the no-computer days of transactions, working on the three pages of clients to call to reschedule, trying to restore our old files, and trying to piece all the missing data together from old recipts. AAAAAND i'm working on itemizing every single thing we bought for our huge renovation between february and august of last year, its almost 70k worth of merchandise ranging from $3 bags of bolts to $7000 hvac units. the accountant needs it STAT to prepare our corp return. ugh, i kind of want to call in sick, every day, right now.
because work has been total misery, i just focused on happy home livin and loving dogs.
roasted the marina di chiogga squash from this summers garden

came out so soft and buttery and bright orange

went ahead and puree-ed it, thinking i'd make ravioli.

whipped up a quick batch of spinach pasta dough, made it waaaaay too stiff. just meant it was harder work to roll out.

i'd picked up a sweet old tupperware ravioli maker on etsy for 8$, so rolled the dough big enough to use that as a form.

traced the edges of the ravioli form with water, so the dough would stick to the top layer of dough i was planning on laying down.

the whole time this was happening the dogs were FRANTIC, running around dying to know what was happening up on the countertop. by the end of it all they had white spots of flour on their backs and faces.

used fresh squash puree plus ricotta, parmesan, cinnamon, clove, ginger, and a bit of bread crumb as a filling, and doled out a dollop of filling per square.

laid a second layer of rolled out dough on top of it all, and rolled it flat on the backside. the grid lines of the ravioli mold provided for perfect seperation.

the topside (aka the first layer) puffed out of the tray just as intended. simple, awesome device.

flipped the tray back upside down, and with a light tap...

viola! ravioli partay!
it was way easy, and the ravioli all came out so perfect.

boiled some for dinner, served with a little pesto. made the dough a little thick, so they were a bit chewy. the need for thinner dough needed, i rustled up another batch over the weekend.

that one squash provided me with a giant bowl of puree...so i made three batches of ravioli, froze some 1 cup portions for projects later this winter, and made bread with the rest of the puree. delicious.
over the course of the week, i'd noticed that the heat in our house didn't seem like it was working..the hvac fan was CONSTANTLY running, and the house was pretty cold. started paying close attention to it and noticed that only cold air was coming out of the vents. even put a little digital thermometer in the vent to test it out, duly noted that air less than body temp (98 degrees or so) would feel cool. air was definitely colder than the setting on the thermostat.
as a result, there was much snuggling.

even a double dog blanket burrito! the best ever!
hvac guy came monday, found a major freon leak (we had none at all in our system) and 550$ later, we have heat.
been on a search for good beets (well, a search within city limits...i'm not gonna drive 45 minutes each way from my house to short pump mall where the wholefoods is) and found some, finally, at the usually lame martins in carytown.

they were small and the greens were very wilted, but i roasted them to make more ravioli pasta dough over the weekend. after they roasted, i diced then pureed them to add to the dough recipe. when i cut their tops off, the prettiest pattern was right underneath.
i really wanted to make enough ravioli to A: use the squash puree totally up, B: freeze some for meals later this winter, C: give some away to andrew's parents.

and i did! i worked my butt off and made a shitton of it. haha. laid out each little square to freeze individually before i bagged em up. should be delicious!
now i'm back at work, plowing through three days of unentered date, trying to ressurect two days worth of book keeping that just happened to fall between backups, and its all giving me a major headache. not lovin life at work, holding my breath til the weekend...

2012-01-13T19:55:00.000-05:00

Cant seem to get enough Billy Bragg lately, solo or not.

2012-01-11T11:45:00.002-05:00

last week a client at the salon let me know via facebook that she got a boston terrier puppy for christmas at thanksgiving, just because she loved dottie so much when she used to come to the salon with me. she brought her digital cam full of puppy pics as show and tell.

then in other exciting stuff, my new mixer arrived! merry christmas to me! i've been wanting an artisian for a while, and booyeah i got one.
i was all excited for baking on the weekend until disaster struck.

friday at 5 am (one week, same time in the am as all other times) egon woke us up having another seizure. we know what to do now, so its less stressful as the first time, but every time he has one it opens the pathway to having more, which sucks. this time, after the first one, he immeaditely had another one. we were freaking out. clustering was new, and we didn't want that. he came to bed after a short post-ictal phase then jumped back up about twenty minutes later, launched into another seizure. we were freaking out. it was 630am, we were WIDE AWAKE, and thinking we were heading to the emergency vet with a seizing dog.
to the vet we did go, and after a bajillion tests, we have an epileptic dog. sadface.
he will be on lifetime meds UNLESS he does not have another seizure for a year while taking meds, then if we wean him off, the seizures do not return. poor buddy. we are taking it a step at a time, he is only on day three of meds and he has been WILDLY INSANE, even though the meds were supposed to make him possibly sleepy.

friday, while i was listing around the house waiting for vet to call, i noticed that we had broccoli growing. i forgot i planted it, and hadn't been in the back corner of the yard enough to notice that it wasn't brussel sprouts.

speaking of brussel sprouts, they're still alive too! unfortunately the dogs have peed on them about a million times, so theres no way i'm gonna eat em.
saturday i worked at the salon then tried to do a spot of sewing afterward. it just wasnt working out.

i couldn't focus and i was sort of stressed about mr. egon, just worrying. we didn't start him on meds to control the seizures until monday, so our weekend was full of worry that he would have another cluster, worse than the last. stress.
i just sort of laid low, spent the day with dogs, and tried to chill out.

sunday i woke up pretty early, knocked out a project for an event in petersburg. a couple lady friends of mine started a business called wildebeest, they provide the setup for goldsprints for events. they were having a benefit for a local church in petersburg and invited me to come out and put a table up, promoting my etsy shop. so i did.

apparently after i left, everyone else just took the day off.

demolition coffee shop hosted the sprints, that place was awesome. real industrial/modern little place, clean and nice. and they had a wood top toilet!

it was kind of awesome, awesome enough that i took a photo.

i set up shop and handed out cards. not much in sales, but it was cool to see friends test out their new business.
monday i laid low. couldn't shake the stress. sunday it made me throw up mid day. also, coffee didn't help combined with the no food. yuck.
now that its winter and not christmas, i should have plenty of time to make better meals. i sort of slacked during salon crazy time, november and december are nutso and after nine hours of running around, i can't even stand up to cook. november and december were all takeout or gross processed frozen dinner stuffs. blah.

january could be the month of stuffin stuff. i think i'm gonna make ravioli thursday if i'm not totally zonked. made chicken breasts stuffed with mushrooms and stuffing.
coupled with delicious pasta from stellas, it was so good.
i'd been real antsy to use my new mixer and just hadn't had a chance. i grabbed an orange on the way home, zested and juiced it, and made orange vanilla scones. took about five minutes to make, not including the 12 minutes to bake. AWESOME.
i love it, that kitchenaid is so rad.

trying to get back to better grains for dinner sides, if i make more pasta i'm gonna try to use quinoa flour instead of a mix of semolina and all purpose. i have yet to see if my coffee grinder will tackle quinoa...otherwise the flour is SO expensive, even in bulk.
hopefully this weekend i can relax again, concentrate on prepping good food for the week and taking care of the house. i need to sleep for a couple days, my stress level has been so high lately that its totally worn me out.

2012-01-08T21:42:00.002-05:00

If i had a few grand to toss around...

I miss my toyotas. Tax season means extra cash, means buying a cheap shitty yota? Hahaha. Errr....
As of 2012 my current daily driver is now eligible for antique tags- yep that '92 subaru is a good old slow goer.
We will see how rich I am mid-February. Could be moto time, or truck time.

2012-01-04T11:12:00.002-05:00

new years started with a bang. took time off work to bake a lovely apple pie that noone (except me) would eat. nice. at least i'm good at doughmaking and basket weaving.

had a spontaneous potluck on new years eve in honor of a fine friends birthday. made more roasted beet pasta and then made mac n cheese bake with it.

it was totally delicious. andrew decked out the backyard with candle-lit lanterns and a bunch of big old christmas lights. then he made a nice bonfire. wish i took pictures, cause the backyard just looked so pretty.
from about 7pm onward, the sound of frequent full-clip-unloading gunshots rang out from nearby neighborhoods. and at 12am on the dot, the sky should have been raining bullets. there was no pause between shots, someone, somewhere, everywhere was firing off constantly. across the street, down the block, there were so many nearby (too close) rapid fire bursts of 6-9 shots that we all went inside, convinced we might actually get shot.
amazing, horrifying.
rang in new years day with boston terrier kisses.

andrew was off to work the next day and i was home, big plans for sewing that pretty much floundered. sewing machine is being a real jackass, i got all kind of new soft wonderful fabric and it won't sew any of it. top thread is intermittently looping under the fabric, making for sloppy stitching. can't have that. looks so bad.
in lieu of sewing, i baked a bajillion dog treats.

made carrot elephants and goats

and black rice and wheat zebras and kangaroos. excellent.

the dudes napped on the couch for all the baking, but one Dottie wouldn't leave my side. good dog, good baking assistant.
guess the neighbors were letting their dog roam a bit, cause it set our dogs off. they were SO MAD that she was in the yard.

serious business, protecting the house.

goal for 2012 (really its the goal for right now) is to hit it big on $2 scratcher lotto tickets and quit my jabjab. i have made it clear that all it will take is a $1000 win to make it so. i spent my whole day monday thinking of a million things i could be doing to make $$$ rather than working a 10-7 job. dang.

2011-12-30T15:56:00.002-05:00

weeks almost over. thank goodness. slowest work week, most dragging days, i don't think five 9 hour shifts could go by slower.
dogs tried their best to cheer me up but really i just want to be home kickin it with them.

went to the steak n shake again, got some midwest style chili mac. it was good, no skyline for sure, but it was also sitting in a pool of grease that was noodle bed deep. yikes bro.

whipped up a batch of wheat and black rice treats for the dogs. i like making things that involve cookie cutters. theres a whole second ball of dough in the fridge, needs to get baked tomorrow.

celebrated the ol' anniversary, can't believe its been five years. here's to a solid six...enjoying my new pyrex six year commemorative dish - its already full of cookies.
weekend starts tomorrow, hate to say i'm holding my breath but i am. i need some free time, not at the desk.

2011-12-27T16:10:00.004-05:00

aieeeeeee! the frenzy known as christmas is finally over. phew. things had been stressful and both andrew and i were busy negotiating a happy balance in our own lives rather than doing any christmas shopping. i was determined to make all presents for family barring a few purchases. andrew was on the hunt for a new truck, which had to happen before saturday. i was swamped with custom projects from etsy and other folks, and was knocking those out before doing my own sewing. it basically was really down to the wire. work was crazy busy, i was drinking coffee and eating cookies all day and taking sudaphed and allergy medicine for my insane congestion and burning eyes....somehow that combo made me invincible and productive, because i managed to get everything finished.
saturday was the start of my "holiday", i woke up early and immeaditely started working on stuff. there was pasta to make, cookies to be baked, and pretzels to be dipped in chocolate.
oh wait, things actually started friday night, after work! how could i forget!

there was an Etsy "home for the holidays" meet and greet, where the folks in NY that work at Etsy but who live here in Richmond were serving snacks and chatting to local shopowners. it was fun, lots of good friends and a few stranger faces.
okay....so back to saturday. i had seen a couple mice in the house and knew i needed to get on the task of getting rid of them stat. i am not opposed to kill traps, though i will never use gluetraps.

with that, i rang in the holiday with a gruesome sight.
yuck yuck, Dottie was HORRIFIED. she kept looking at it and sniffing but her little ears were down clamped tight to her head. cleaned up the mess and moved on.
started roasting TONS of garlic. like, three whole bulbs. thats how much it takes to make a half cup of mashed roasted garlic. thats an insane amount. made garlic pasta, pressed it through the extruder, and left it to dry. started baking cookies.

was interruped by dogs barking at the mailman. whats this?

you know you're getting a glitter packed present when this much glitter is present. i opened it outside, wasn't trying to make glitter pasta.

there is still glitter in the house, i'm sure it'll be there forever n ever.
roasted beets for the next batch of pasta, it made the prettiest dough maybe ever.

the noodles were practically day glo magenta. so cool. can't wait to make more of those.
somehow those two batches of pasta and the mega batch of cookies took me all day in combination with the sewing i was doing. i think it was the fact that i was also wrapping gifts, sewing things, doing laundry, cleaning, and in general being so ADD that everything was happening at once.

at about midnight i started making spinach pasta, after the first batch of it came out kind of bunk. finished it up and had my three types of penne all ready for gifting.
i woke up early on xmas day and made all the chocolate dipped pretzels. bagged and wrapped pasta and pretzels and cookies, took all presents to my moms house. gifting and snacking ensued.

came home and dottie had gone into the cubbies in the front room and taken one of all my shoes out and put them on the couch. she even walked past andrews shoes, took mine out of the same cubbie, and didn't disturb his! you can tell who she was really mad at...
wrapped a few more presents to take to andrews parents, and let the dogs have the wrapping paper tubes

probably a trick they shouldn't learn, but its hilarious to watch them launch into berzerker mode when it comes to shredding thin cardboard.
went to andrews folks house, had dinner and presents, and visited. then came home to UNWIND.

basically we were both fried, andrew tracked down a new truck and bought it on thursday night, didn't get home from the dealership until 1030. after a long day of work, nothing is more awesome than spending three hours negotiating loan paperwork. ugh.
with christmas finally over, i tried to simmer down. no dice. i felt the need to purge clean the house. put the dogs outside so i could mop the downstairs, and found them a little while later just going apeshit at the back gate. lo and behold, a classy neighbor had dumped a bunch of boiled bones right behind our gate in the alley. thanks, dude.

yesterday i did laundry, mopped everything, rented a carpet cleaner and did the whole upstairs, then steam cleaned my subaru's mats and carpet and seats, reorganized my craft room with a new desk, and in general cleaned literally everything. by 8pm i couldn't move, my back was broken from carrying the carpet cleaner thing up and down stairs full of 5 gallons of solution....ouchlife.

i sat down and almost fell right asleep. andrew and i hit up a new local place called "steak and shake", which seemed like a potentially terrible bellyache. it was pretty good, definitely will go back.
and with that its the work week again! dang! i need more time off...the cookie/coffee/sudaphedrine diet was making me insane but i was so productive. ha. and somehow i managed to shed a few lbs during the course of what seemed like a horrendously gluttonous week. a true christmas miracle...

2011-12-15T11:01:00.003-05:00

Ah. This week has settled down a little bit.
Car has been running normally, maybe I didn't shut a door or something all the way and the battery drained? Tested 12.4V at the battery, jump started it and everythings been fine. Hm.
Still no word from the insurance company about Andrew's truck, though each time he's spoken to someone they've referred to it as a "total loss." Just need to get a settlement total so he can start auto shopping.
We drove the rental out to peek at tacky light houses close to us. This one was pretty awesome.

You roll up to their house, park, and tune your radio to a station that's playing a radio show on loop. The lights all go to the beat of the music. It was pretty cool.

work week is almost done, three days left.
looking forward to teaching a friend how to drive manual in her new truck.

see, if i totalled a nice new auto and got a large settlement check, this is totally what i would buy. except it would be either a super sick toyota pickup, a volkswagon pickup (either the rabbit body or the bus body styles), or another old muscle car. i wish i'd ever taken pictures of my Ventura, that thing was so sweet. puke green metallic paint, lime green pinstrips...total love.

this is the body style, but instead of metal trim down the sides it had lime green pinstriping. the backseat windows rolled down. i loved that car.

the nonsensical choice, but the AWESOME choice. i need to get over my total unswaying love of old stuff and appreciate the reliability of new autos. its just way too hard.

2011-12-13T11:36:00.005-05:00

last week was CRAZY!
monday the subaru's front brakes seized on river road, doing downhill.
tuesday i came across all those deer parts riding to work.
wednesday andrew rolled his truck on the interstate in a really terrible storm.
thursday egon had a seizure.
friday til now things levelled out, this morning my car wouldn't start.

i swear. whats up, some crazy moon phase, bad horoscope week or something?

the storm that made the puddle in which andrew hydroplaned has sort of ruined our backyard. temporarily. its so damn muddy.

the firepit (two feet deep hole, mind you) is totally full of water. andrew bailed it out only to have it re-fill that day. gross.
in lieu of outdoor activites, i finally got a pasta extruder. did a lot of looking around, review reading, and finally nailed one on craigslist for a GREAT price.

first attempt was garlic pasta. you know how much garlic you have to roast to get a half cup of mashed garlic? A WHOLE LOT. like, way more than you would think. an unreasonable amount. the house sure did smell delicious though.
friendsgiving was this weekend, it was most excellent.

admired mark's christmas branch.

hung out around a nice campfire while TWO turkeys deep fried

there were so many poop stories that pat left! well, he went inside anyway.
and then there was the eating. it was insane. every thanksgiving dish was present, no repeats. last year i think there were three green bean casseroles. this year it was professionally coordinated. so much good food!

we ate, and ate, and ate

until we had to all lay down. good lord.

then it was back out to the campfire to snooze

no really, we were all really full and the fire was warm, it was great.

so tired, took myself home.
came home and this guy was taking up the whole damn couch!

seriously, what a ridiculous dude. look at that smile!

did some sewing this weekend, knocked out a cool new project, looking forward to another weekend of crafting. this work week needs to hustle by.
made some spinach pasta last night.

i love my new pasta maker. its real exciting and stupid.

sorry for the spoiler, but my relatives are getting a lot of fresh food this christmas. i think its a better gift than a bunch of crap that noone really needs.
ugh and now to dive headfirst into the work week again.
i can only hope for moments of lolz from the dogs and good hangouts with andrew who escaped death or at least injury in his truck accident.
speaking of dog tricks, this little lady has been real into climbing lately.

climbing on the cat tree thing, standing atop the trash can, who knew i had such a little billy goat?

2011-12-08T09:39:00.002-05:00

to quote my uncle,
"Seventy years ago an act of war caused a then 15-year old boy to join the Navy and fight for his country. He proudly served aboard the USS Nevada which was refloated and repaired after being sunk at Pearl Harbor. He saw many of the major battles of WW2, including Normandy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Leyte Gulf and Cherbourg. That boy grew up to become my father. Thanks for your service and for being my hero, Dad..."

My grandpa was so awesome, I wish he was still around. Really wish I'd been older and gotten to know him better, he was such a smart and interesting guy. I love looking back at the albums of photos my mom has, my grandpa so young, in his Navy getup on the ships he served on. I'll definitely never forget the good times with him.

2011-12-06T11:42:00.005-05:00

helluva weekend. very busy.
saturday after work i came home all fired up, hellbent to put up the christmas tree and inject some holiday spirit into my life.

made dog stockings and hung em up, busted out the big rubbermaid tub of xmas crap and went to town.

got the little aluminum tree up and in a "sort of safe, out of the way" spot. i've got all glass ornaments, mostly mercury glass, so heres to hoping the dogs don't decide to tackle it.

put up the tiny aluminum tree too. all kinds of holiday-ed out now. the house is pretty festive on the inside.
hunter p has been taking some really stellar long exposure photos lately, and it was a big inspiration for taking a house photo to send to andrews relatives with xmas cards.

my friend shane got a new fancy canon and has been playing with it every chance he gets. asked him to come by and take a couple snaps of the place. i like the photos way better than a boring old daytime straight forward shot. andrews relatives live mostly out of state and know that we bought a house, but don't know much else about it. it'll be a nice way to let them see the place, and share some stuff in the form of a holiday greeting.
took a couple super secret moped related xmas card photos, got a bunch of cards to mail out this week.
after the house became festive, it was time to tackle the most important issue, getting the RV out of the mud in the backyard where it was stuck.

andrew bought a super cool pnuematic jack to run off his birthday compressor and we were super pumped to test it out.
it took about ten seconds to get the winnie's back end off the ground and out of the 8" hole that it was in. AWESOME!

filled the hole in with gravel and supported the raised side with a jackstand, and hit up the other side of the Rv, did the exact same thing.

drove it out of the previously stuck spot, and started moving it to the permanent winter storage place in the yard. the ground was still super wet, so it kept getting stuck while we were parallel parking it between our shed and a maple tree.

we'd stop, dig a wheelbarrow full of gravel, fill up the hole, then keep driving.
hard work, but the end was so near!

if this gives you any idea of how many times we had to do it, you can see HOW MUCH GRAVEL is around the passenger side of the winnie. um, basically half the side yard. ugh.

needless to say, we got it where we wanted it, and jacked it up. put it partially on stands on concrete blocks. we need to get two more jack stands then we'll be totally finished. for now, it was enough of an accomplishment to get it out of the middle of the yard.
monday i HAD to finish up some sewing. knocked out a couple commissioned projects, then decided to run out and bring andrew lunch at work. took all dogs for a ride in the wagon, they love going for rides.
on river road in single lane rush hour traffic, my front brakes locked up and i drove, brakes burning, as quickly as i could to the first available side street. thought the car was going to catch on fire, so much smoke was coming off the front wheel rotors. grabbed the dogs out and stood a distance away, making sure i didn't need to call the fire department. ha. how is that funny?
had to walk all three dogs down the hill to andrews work, theres no shoulder at all, in horrible trafic. so sketchy and stressful. i guess some manual subarus have these things called hill holders, basically they assist you on hills by locking the brakes on the front when you engage the clutch. when something is out of sequence or broken, they often lock the front brakes while driving. by pumping the pedal you can free them, often temporarily. this i learned on google while i was waiting for the tow truck driver. love me some internet.
got the car towed to the shop, my mechanics are awesome and were cracking jokes with me as soon as they saw me pull up.
ran home after the shop, tried to squeeze in my last goal for the day. i wanted to fit the dogs for new jackets. since it was dark, they assumed it was dinner time and were being really dramatic about NOT wanting to get fitted.

this dude was throwing such a temper tantrum, he kept curling up and laying down every time i took my hands off him. shivering, like he was being tortured. what a big baby. after i got his measurements correct and cut and fit a paper pattern, i cut a really nice cashmere fleece coat for him and did a final fitting. then i fed them dinner so they would stop being dramatic.
last nights weather was so warm and lovely, i was pretty pumped on the necessity to ride my mountainbike to work today.
took northbank trail cause i had a little extra time. just at the back of hollywood cemetery, i came up a corner then uphill to find that a hunter had dumped a bunch of deer parts in bags down the hill and right beside the trail.

super bummer, to the max.

texted a friend that often will use previously killed animals for various things, and she was gonna go check them out. its funny to have a friend resource like that, but totally helpful. they were very fresh, not stinky at all, and pretty much bagged already. ugh.
not to end on a bummer note, but its back to the work week for me. looking forward (siiiiike) to finding out how much my car's gonna cost to fix, and REALLY looking forward to the weekend already. dag.

2011-11-29T15:58:00.005-05:00

five days off for thanksgiving.
volunteered working a registration table for a moto ride to benefit a school for autism where my friend works.

they raised about 3500$, which is great for an early morning event on a holiday.
after that it was off to moms for thanksgiving "lunch," then off to andrews folks for dessert. hooked up the sega in the interim, and have been playing sonic 1 and 2 constantly. oops.

my aunts great little mini schnausers were at the family t-giving, those dogs are real cute. fun to hang with.

been meaning to get a care package to Sharon, and made her a fancy back patch. i really want to a series of these, all the places we regularly ride mopeds to. dog shit bridge is a good favortie, but players club, shit lake, lost richmond, the pipeline, and a bunch of others need to be made.

when you tell someone about a "fabric collage" project you wanta do, you sound like a nerdy quilting craft and cat lady. not really what i mean by it, but what else do you call it, making those patches?

pat had a birthday get together for marshall, went over for volcano firepit.

good folks were in town for the holiday.

ran into rachel, not the girl making the stinkface, at lamplighter, long lost sister friend. a fellow monroe, she lives in baltimore now and is soon to move again.

it was fun, and chilly so the firepit was needed.
after a while a projector appeared, and we watched the new FBM video in the empty pool.
sweet.

tried to move the winnie in the yard, to set it up in its winter spot. we have some concrete footers that will hold nice jackstands, so we can properly get it off the wheels for cold weather.

uh, well the rv sank in the yard and got stuck. now its sinking into the mire like atreyu....

still working on getting it out of the hole, the rain today didn't help.
as any good holiday, there was a lot of chillage even though we both had stuff to do.

these guys rule the roost at anytime naps.
andrew detailed the front yard, getting all the leaves together into a man-sized-tall pile of leaves. hauled em to the backyard to compost, and let dottie at em. she loves jumping in new leafpiles, never seen another dog take so much delight in it.

ridiculous.
took some dog photos yesterday so i can send out new magnets.

our dogs are ridiculous.

egon was super sleepy, most of the photos his eyes are squinty, little sleepy guy.
they came out hilarious, which is good.
prints are ordered, magnets will be made, and cards will be mailed with magnets. tight.
back to work after five days off is the pitts. trying to find something to look forward to aside from the weekend, but its kinda bleak. bummer.

2011-11-23T12:27:00.005-05:00

so inspired by some cool concrete stuff lately.
obvs, pats pool is a big inspiration, but here's s ome cool stuff i came across today.

and as far as yard inspiration goes, if i ever build a structure out of block i'll have to think of colored mortar.

frangsgiving is here, lots of eating stuff on the horizon, volunteering at a moto ride early on turkey day, then all out gluttony ensues, followed by four more days of screwing around.
junkyard, sewing, house cleaning, dog hanging out, and more all in the works.

2011-11-19T10:13:00.004-05:00

picked up a subaru wagon yesterday from craigslist, a score at $500.

i don't expect much from a car that cost that little, but in the short test drive i took, i listened for ball joint/axle noise, checked oil cap and radiator for oil/antifreeze contamination, noted an oil leak but saw it leak NO oil while i let it sit for about fifteen minutes, shifted through all gears smoothly, and in general ran every electrical thing i could think of. no problems. hm.

highest miles i've ever seen, never been in a car thats rolled over 300k and is still running great. bought from the original owner, dude watched every mile tick by as he drove to the mountains and back every weekend.
its already got some interesting quirks...if you are running the heat the car will not cut off. as in, you could take the key out and walk away, but engine is running, car will drive, electrics will work. interesting.
oh well. good to have another dog wagon/enclosed hauling vehicle.

2011-11-15T16:12:00.002-05:00

had a bonfire this weekend, and with ten folks being loud and raging flames, the owl was back! idle let out a random woof and ran into the garden about ten feet behind us, as the owl came swooping through. he was creepin!
what a jerk.

split some wood so we can have another campfire this weekend too.
reorganized the backyard...moved the rv to a different spot to start planning where we're gonna put it up on jacks for the winter. big plans for the brave...rebuild carb, address fuel lines, etc.

started pulling together all my toyota crap. old asco hubs...

and parts of the spare solid axle

loaded it all into the toyota thinking that a prospective buyer would actually show up as promised.

they no showed...but i've got another buyer lined up tonight. good lord, lemme tell you how heavy and awkward differentials are to carry!
all the yota stuff is together except for a door in the house, the cab is jammed full. so much stuff. hope this dude tonight loves it like i do.
man, other than epic yardwork, this weekend was sort of a wash. was just biding time til the yota left the driveway, but that didn't happen. crap.
need to order a rebuild kit for my minarelli and get cracking on that. though i guess with holidays fast approaching i should throw that $$ toward gifts. dang.

2011-11-11T16:43:00.001-05:00

probably my favorite picture of pat and kelly kass, ever, hands down.

stolen straight off a photoset by crandall on the leastmost

2011-11-10T09:36:00.003-05:00

this guy turns 21!!!!!! in two weeks

and by 21 i mean 3. can't believe its been three years with this dude, love him so much.
every day this guy wakes up with me, goes out to pee, eats breakfast, then goes back to bed with andrew. they basically spoon until andrew gets up to get ready for work, at which point Egon gets tucked into the covers and sleeps until he's ready to get out of bed. seriously. if i can die and come back as a boston terrier i'd be stoked.
we're prolly gonna have a puppy kegger/rager for all dogs that weekend. save the date.

2011-11-09T10:32:00.001-05:00

Ah halloween happened, it was fun. Went to a small but filled-with-lovable-and-high-quality-folks salon party. DD-ed everyone home, and hungout for a little longer.

julie and i went as bad news bears, the costume may be ressurected next year with more teammates. it was pretty funny.

colder weather has set in, and i've been spending more time snuggling with my fuzzy best friends.
cold weather has led to more bonfires too, which sometimes involve dinner in the workshop space with dogs.

big plans.
a little wren has made the sideporch his new sleeping spot, he's been there every night until last night.

he crashes out so hard that i was able to get about six inches away from him, wobbling on a chair, taking cell phone pics of him.

hope that dude comes back, its nice seeing him in his spot every night.
wildlife in the yard has been off the hook. letting the dogs out to pee at night requires total supervision. three nights in a row we had an owl in the yard, and he was back last night after about a week's absence.
the bostons treed a raccoon last week, they can't stop looking up in the tree now when they go out to pee. never forget, raccoon in tree. haha.

spent a day off work on the couch, sick. stupid long lasting headcold.
thankfully the bostons follow suit, and are content to lay around with you when you're feeling it.

the toyota has pretty much crapped out, i'm so over it i've just been walking and biking everywhere. need a break from the constant mechanicals. voltage regulator from toyota is the incorrect year. thanks guys. love driving thirty minutes and paying 40$ for the wrong part.
i'm so over the yota, in fact, that i put it on craigslist for sale/trade. its not what i need right now in transportation in the form of four wheels, and its causing more stress than help. lemme get your old subaru loyale, i'll trade you a sick old 4x4 yota.

as a result of more walking and biking, you the the chance to see things you wouldn't really notice. this gem has been floating around on local tumblrs and on facebook, saw it about a week or so ago at cary and nansemond. good times.

pushing thoughts of working on the truck aside, i'm pepped to fix up the raven this winter. nice 90cc kit, mags with good brakes, a sweet lil step thru frame, here goes...

commuted through the clouds today. unexpected dense fog makes for a fun ride.
it may be a little long of a ride to work, and i may roll into the salon not looking so top notch, but its fun.

fork is back together on the orbea, and its such a fun bike to ride. i need to start waking up a little earlier so i can ride northbank fully to work. mtbing is awkward with a reload bag on your back stuffed full of a change of clothes, boots or other fancy lady shoes, and your lunch. unexpectedly weighty, but whatevs.
very interested in what the future may bring. new bike shop opening on the horizon, by a highschool friend thats moving back to rva from portland/cali, may be just the place to carry a lot of the cycling stuff i've been making and etsying. intersting times, as always, scheming any possible way to sew instead of book appointments.

2011-10-25T17:53:00.003-04:00

tuesday of last week i woke up with the worst back pain. i had to roll myself out of bed, couldn't sit up. embarassing, right? all week long i hobbled around, hurtin. it put a hefty damper on things.
with a second new voltage regulator on my truck, my charge light was still coming on. took it to the shop, again.
they checked it over (i told them it was my first time replacing an alternator and while it seemed simple, there is always the possiblity i did something wrong) and they found that there is some sort of short in the wiring system.
cool.
basically i need to find it now, and fix it.
the heater has decided to come on, full blast, now. no turning it on or off.
also, the gauges work sometimes, not always, but usually halfway through the drive to work they have worked/not worked at least twice.
there is a sweet spot on the dash, if i press it hard, all the gauges work all the time.
interesting, right?

saturday after work i called a massage therapist friend to please help me, she did, then i had mexican food, and i felt so good that i slept outside by a campfire. it was awesome until i woke up covered in frosty dew. brrrrrrrr!

that said, its been hoodie weather all weekend.
both bostons have been rocking their purple sweats.

sunday morning i made fat kid breakfast for me and andrew, chocolate chip pancakes! i forgot we had whipped cream, but he didnt.

then we hit up the southside for a mega fun shopping adventure where i bought nothing.
i made a big batch of brunswick stew that simmered in the crockpot all day while we shopped. we came home and made another campfire, but sat in the garage and ate and talked about big plans for expanding/re-working the garage as a sweet workshop space for rv/moped/bike/woodworking stuff.
monday i frittered around the house with the dogs, doing chores and enjoying the pretty lovely weather.

later on julie and i went for a halloween costume search, and were getting pretty bummed by the third store with no luck. we got it together, and i had some good luck today, so we're back on track. gonna get together in a day or two to finalize things.

the real spiders got wise at our house, and started hanging out next to the fake ones. smooth move, guys, verrrrry smart.
halloween is right around the corner, the porch is still looking spooky (extra spooky with real spiders) and i'm stoked!

2011-10-18T15:19:00.003-04:00

things are never simple.
i didn't feel like messing with my truck AT ALL when i started my weekend at 3pm on saturday.

the weather was perfect, i opened all the windows in the house and cleaned.
dottie and brown cat were busy competing for the window seat up front

the afternoon wore on, i got tired of cleaning, so called a few friends and decided to have a campfire.

it was a perfect night for it. cool weather, hot fire.

cooked some hot dogs. crystal brought over fresh, warm cinnamon rolls, and i had key lime tarts left from andrews birthday. sugar overload. wasted on dessert!

we both ended up falling asleep outside, the dogs snuggled up on us and it was warm and perfect.
woke up at 2am, cold because the fire had totally died down, and went inside to bed proper.
woke up to another glorious bout of weather.

dicked around cleaning, made cranberry/orange buttermilk scones

(i have a massive amount of buttermilk to use up), and started decorating the house for halloween.
i had picked up a new soccerball for Egon on Saturday, so he played outside for about an hour, knocking it around until it got stuck in a muddy low spot under the rv.
he got a bath, and dottie made fun of him the whole time from the sidelines.

his face was slobbery and muddy, and his legs were gross.

i love bathtime for boston terriers, because afterward, they are like jello. they're all fired up while they're a little wet, then they crash HARD.

i dicked around decorating the porch all day, just kinda putzing around in the gorgeous weather.

found a cool wooly bear caterpillar. he wouldn't stretch out, just sat curled up in my hand til i put him back down.
monday i finished decorating the porch.
its pretty spooky by day

and even spookier by night

julie came over monday and helped me hang bats, we had scones and coffee and the dogs were total assholes.

but the bats came out so awesome. i love it.
monday i figured i'd procrastinated long enough on the alternator issue. i pulled it out of the truck again and returned it.
picked up the new CORRECT one this morning at 745 and installed it. drove my truck to work with the charge light flickering on and off. boooooooooo
dropped it at my mechanic, feeling hopeless and pissed off. the voltage at the battery with the truck running was 13.69 volts, which is fine. with lights on, it dropped to 12.3 volts. not good.
voltage regulator isn't working...the brand new voltage regulator i mean. its been on my truck for five days. so its going back to the store tonight, i'm gonna put the old regulator back on and hope that it still works. we'll see what happens from there. if this doesn't work my truck is gonna get a viking funeral

2011-10-14T10:28:00.003-04:00

so i left work last saturday in high hopes. lots of plans for the weekend, including andrews birthday.

this dog was creepin on my as i walked to my truck down belmont ave. yikes.

neighbors puppies are getting big

the only brindle one is a bossy, vocal little female. funny.
the weekend was a blur, the only things of note on saturday afternoon/evening and sunday were epic snuggs from my lil beaners.

i love lazy dogs that are high energy too

also, i got my cluster backlights to work, that was a big victory.

plus one for being able to see your gauges at night!
keep passing this truck in church hill, sick roll bar and lift kit

i like seeing it, all white, with a rejection inspection too. haha.
monday was andrews birthday, he ran off to mountain bike for a few hours in the am. caught lunch with his mom later.
came home and chilled, then had a pizza party/skate sesh at the bike lot, cardinal sins bowl get together.
sweeeeet.
made him a dozen and a half key lime tarts and a rich chocolate cake with meringues.

something about making meringues always gets me wasted on sugar. wether its the grinding up regular sugar into finer particles or the constant whisking, i always end up totally wired, and literally sugar high.
birthday was a success, gifts were given and liked, it was a fun night with friends and skating and pizza/cake and he was stoked. thats whats up.
so things were good. i thought.

went to work on tuesday, came home on lunch to let the dogs out, went back to my truck and it wouldn't start. eh? i hadn't left lights on, but the battery seemed dead. did i mention its been raining for several days now? that always makes auto repair so much more fun, especially when you're working with electrics.

called roadside assistance for a jump, meanwhile my neighbor came home and hooked it up. truck was running, no bigs. got gas, got it jumped again at the gas station. battery wasn't charging? went to advance auto, got diagnosed with bad alternator. luckly, mercy was taken and i was given a random big discount on a new alt and voltage regulator.
parts arrived early the next day, i went and picked em up. pulley was bent. brought it back. swapped pulleys. had to go to work, time was just not on my side.

biked home from work in the dark. installed new parts. jump started truck, let idle for 30 min. went to drive around for a little bit to really recharge battery, the moment i cut the lights on, the truck died. WTF.
alternator was not charging the battery. why, oh why? then it started pouring, so i called it quits and went to bed.

looking around online this morning, i found some problems. i knew that the alternator i had on the truck was #14273...and the one ordered to replace it was #14274. so what did that mean? the other alternators available according to the computer system were black plug, and mine was green plug. welllllllll. here's what it means.
14273 was a green plug, where the pins referred to F, E, and N on the back of the alternator.
14274 was also available with a green plug (it also comes in black plug thats a different pin style) but the pins go to L, E, and F wires internally.
you can tell which alternator you need by counting the wires that go to the voltage regulator, 5 wires mean LEF or 14274, 6 wires mean FEN or 14273.
now, i'd counted wires to the voltage regulator to order a new one. there were six. that important detail wasn't really listed as a defining quality of the alternators in the advance auto computer system.
so i guess my next move is to see if they'll switch em out for me. order me a FEN and swap it for the LEF.
i have a funny feeling it won't be that easy.

2011-10-04T10:31:00.002-04:00

This weekend was all truck, all the time.

Saturday after work I redid so much wiring, spliced all kinds of wires that were oddly severed (I thought certainly they wouldn't work) but they all did!
Techincally the lisence plate lights should've failed inspection, but they went unnoticed. I know that with my luck, if they don't work, I'll get pulled over and ticketed. The old lights were dangling, literally, held on with some sort of magic!

And the wires to the plugs at the wiring harness were cut. I spliced em, and the old wires all still worked, the actual fixure was just dry rotted and broken.

New sockets were available at the auto shop for $4 each, so I bought two, and cut them to fit in the old gaskets.

easy breezy, done and done.
NEXT!
Then I installed 4 new side marker lights. The box of crap that came with the truck had two new fixtures in it, and I had one leftover from the last Hilux, so I ordered one more from eBay and did the same dremel cut to get them all to fit.
Cool, working lights are the jam. I took apart the side marker light that is part of the headlight housing (the driver side one failed inspection because it wasn't working) and filed the connections. Viola, light works! With all kinds of glee, I moved on to tackling the floorboard prep.
Took the seat out to examine the situation.

Gross, man, there was so much dirt and grime. Found 35 cents,5 spare lugnuts, and a lot of weird trash.

Got busy with the shop vac and cleaned it out. Scrubbed it all down with soapy water.

Interior rust wasn't as bad as the last toyota, but was still pretty gnar.

But the body mounts were pretty bad. Thats for sure.

I slept on it and decided to just fiberglass patch it all. I know its kind of a crappy "fix", but knowing my luck with vehicles, I don't really know how long I'll have this truck. I had the subaru from August '10 to February '11, and the other hilux from March '11 to August '11, so lets just see how long this truck survives my luck.

cut fiberglass fabric to fit the general shape. cut two big ones for each side, then did a couple smaller sheets of fabric to reinforce the areas that were open holes, as well as metal screening.

rigged up a light for extra heat since the temp yesterday only hit 60.

all said and done, I coated the outside at the wheel well with rubber undercoating, and then coated the inside with it as well.
Everything got a good scrub down, and its a lot quieter and less exhaust fumey to drive!
Now its back at the shop, hopefully getting the brake fluid leak squared away. Brought the mechanics a dozen doughnuts from Country Style as a thank you for the big discount on parts/labor.
Lets hope its back in my life later today so I don't have to bum a ride home from work!

2011-10-01T13:39:00.003-04:00

ah crap
andrew found two dogs yesterday and they were so freakin nice.
already neutered/spayed.
super super friendly, they wanted to give too many kisses.
decent leash walkers
female was tattooed on her lil belly
please go get them if you want a dog, we couldn't bring them into our house, they're at the richmond animal control shelter on chamberlayne.
pass it along.

2011-09-30T12:12:00.005-04:00

So mopedarmy.com genforum found my etsy shop and ordered some stuff...on my way to the post this morning I noticed a drip fall out of my truck engine bay...popped the hood and watched fluid dripping out of my brand new brake booster.
I think perhaps I am not currently destined to be driving. Or something like that anyway.
What.
The.
Fudge.
So I called the shop, who was of course mortified and gracious and said please please bring it right back to us. They are closed tomorrow for a long weekend but I am taking it back on Monday. Here's to another weekend of no driving around, scared the brakes will give out though I'm sure that wouldn't happen.

It was my plan this weekend to work on the truck a bit, which I'll still do. Install the new horn ground plate/screw, check out my running light situation (aka plug up new lights to the existing wiring harness and cross my fingers that they work), address the one weird side marker light thats out (sand the rusty contacts and put in another new bulb and cross my fingers that that fixes the issue), and prep the rusty crap for a repaint. If I have time and energy, I may install the new door on the drivers side. I need to do that before it gets painted...note to self.
Shoot I also need to replace fuses that don't appear burned out, the lights that illuminate the speedo and gas gauge/temp gauge don't work. The other lights come on when you cut the headlights on (the one over the slider for heat/ac) just not the ones on the dash cluster. Interesting.
Getting a friend with a spray gun to just go over the truck in black. Sorry, the yellow blob really ruins my day, and the green is hilarious but I'm over it.
It might not look like such a heap of crap if its all black? Thats my hope and plan.

ANYWAY.
Last night, after work, I checked Mr. Egon's awful spots again and they were looking worse.

Big and gross. He had popped some of them (Please accept my apology if you're eating and reading this) and the ones that had drained looked better...I mean I guess anything that doesn't have a pus head is better looking right? UGH GROSS.

He certainly isn't acting too bothered by the spots, though he is taking his bedtime a bit earlier these days. I'm sure thats mostly from the antihistime he gets with dinner.
He's at the vet today so the doctor can see the spots and check em. This morning the spots looked better. Less pus, less red. The antibiotics are kicking in and for that I'm very thankful.

2011-09-29T15:18:00.001-04:00

Argh! Helluva week and its only Thursday. I mean Turdsday. So last week on Tuesday I dropped my truck at the shop and got the diagnosis of bad brake booster and master cylinder. Master Cylinder was literally brand new, have the receipt. Apparently the dude that I got the truck from installed it and pedal pump bled the brake lines. Its not the right way to bleed brakes, and results in air in the lines that shred the gaskets of the master cylinder. So it was leaking internally. I called the shop Wednesday am and said lets fix it. Order the parts, I'll bring it Thursday. So I dropped it Thursday of last week, thinking a-ok, I'd have a truck Friday. The shop is so awesome, the found reman or salvage parts for it (cause I wasn't trying to drop $700 without it even getting passed the safety inspection) and ordered em. Brake booster took forever to arrive. It showed up late Friday. They went to start the job and the master cylinder was totally wrong. Brake lines on the wrong side of it, etc. So they looked through all their books and finally found one that would work. Ordered it, arrived Monday. They went to finish the job Monday and the brake booster was off...the bolts on the housing that mount it to the firewall were 2" too short. So they had to order the new one as well. Picked up my truck Wednesday afternoon, and the shop still only charged me the quoted $500 instead of the $700, saying that its bad business to raise the price of a repair when their parts are the ones not right. That warrants a thank you card and probably brownies. in dog life news, there has been a lot of snuggling going on as of late. more than usual even. saturday i was so beat from the week that i came home and napped. i never get to nap. dottie snugged up between my legs and chewed on her fav bone, and egon bodyslammed my face and started snoring later that weekend he took advantage of more naptime and sacked out with andrew. the weekend was pretty grey and i was feeling really unmotivated didn't want to sew, didn't feel like cleaning, i just kinda farted around and honestly didn't do anything. ran errands, sort of. truck was still in the shop so i couldn't do the stuff i really needed to. hung out with the dogs and mostly entertained them, or they entertained me drank way too much coffee and watched the grass grow in the front yard gave the bostons a bath, egon was having a skin allergy and i thought it may help soothe his issues actually the bath was ALSO because of the mud monster he became after a walk and swim. dottie was fun to hang out with as always, but had some harsh words for the neighborhood kids playing basketball in the street there was much snuggling, at all times of day and then egons skin allergy got real gross and worse than just scratching! he broke out in a rash all over his belly. the next day the rash was blood red, and had become tiny pimples oh gad and then the next day the little pimples weren't little anymore, they were large pustules that made me almost gag. and then today they are bigger, i'll take a horrible picture when i get home, i just couldn't do it this morning. gross. back to the vet with him tomorrow. he's on all kinds of meds, antihistimine and steroid and antibiotic. dottie is finishing up a round of antibiotics, so hopefully she's been nice and immune to the grosso skin stuff. hopefully we'll get it all squared away after the vet tomorrow and mr. egon will go back to feeling sassy and great.

2011-09-22T17:34:00.003-04:00

you know that saying about plans and their wayward nature, well the last week and a halfish has pounded that adage home.
oh the truck. lets talk about that. took it for inspection and it failed. duh, holes in the floorpans just like the last one. whatever, i'm okay with that. its simple and fixable. needed horn work (thankfully i'm a pro with reconnecting hilux horns apparently), a seatbelt (i'm good at the junkyard too)

and a tie rod. whatever.
went to the pick n pull and didn't have the one socket i needed d'oh!

went back a few days later and claimed the seatbelt i needed. ready to roll, i thought.
and then the brakes went out. booster was bad, i knew that from the moment i bought it. then the master cylinder went. the brand new master cylinder.
so in additon to the $500ish I was planning on shelling out to get it past inspection, i ended up dropping another $500 for a brake booster, master cylinder, and shop labor. greeaaat.
ugh. i quit old trucks. not really. but yes really.
feeling so shot down, its a bummer. at least the guys at the garage are real posi, they love old toyotas too.
ugh. lets move on.
it was large caterpillar day last weekend, on sunday.
andrew found this guy

and aptly named him MR CREEPERS

his hairs were hilarious. he was waiting for me in a plastic soda bottle when i came home. i let him go the next morning.

he was large and in charge, and i hope he pupates well.

he will turn into a bodacious imperial moth

later in the day i found a tobacco hornworm on my green pepper plants.

it was clear that the very recent colder weather was making all the big bugs consider pupating or launching into whatever transitional stage of life they were next inclined.
all the bugs that were out were very stoic, except for the asshole mosquitos of course.
found another mantis, who was just content to observe the action around her.

dottie, of course, could't stay away from whatever thing i was crouching to film, and nearly trampled her. whadda jerk.

been waking up early and taking time to sit with the dogs and enjoy a cup of coffee, feels like a good way to ring in the colder weather.
hopefully things will look up a bit with the truck situation here and i'll be less bummed, but its hard when most everyone hates on it. oh well. it'll get me to work and back, and hopefully i'll get to enjoy at least $1000 worth of fun times in it.
shern is moving to tuscon, i'm gonna save up $$ and go visit her, buy my dream truck from the desert. everything here on the east coast is so rotten. it wouldn't be a bummer to invest a lot of money in a 31 year old truck if the frame didn't look like swiss cheese.
long term plan.
tuscon
visit shern and caroline
love life
buy a truck
drive it home
haters gonna hate

2011-09-13T10:28:00.002-04:00

SO this weekend I had a good adventure.
Sunday morning I woke up at the crack of dawn, rented a car, drove to Maryland, and bought another Hilux.
WOOOOOOOOOT!
I found it on craigslist...

where it was advertised with these photos

as well as a long description detailing all the new parts. new remanufactured engine, nice header and exhaust, master cylinder, slave cylinder, alternator, tires, and more.
i was pumped, to say the least.
got to maryland and was suprised by a new paint job.

the green certainly is hilarious, and i think it probably makes the truck FASTER.
i'm genuinely stoked on it.
one thing i learned from building a nice restored moped is that i prefer the "patina" of a rusty older vehicle. new is cool, but i like old.
mechanically, the truck is so sound that its stunning, and i can appreciate that.
lets go offroads!!!!!

2011-09-10T10:18:00.003-04:00

i think its my new goal to see a Toyota RV1 in person.

or an rv2. those things are CRAZY!!!! to me, those really look like future cars. seriously.
i found a slide in camper for a pickup truck here in RVA for $300. too bad new truck will be a shortbed!

i think i'll keep my eyes peeled on the statewide craigslist search for a while. it'd be really cool to see one of the toyota camper rear ends available, but i doubt it'll happen. never know.

2011-09-09T15:23:00.002-04:00

oh hey.

i've been lucky enough to catch some breaks in the weather to ride home.
see that boat far right, center? they just pulled it up from the bottom of the james river. i've been riding past the process all week.
it was a resturant, employees hired, menu tested, that was slated to open the week of the hurricane. the wind and rain from the hurricane sunk it, though.
it spent its opening week under water, and just now was brought to the surface.
total bummertown. guess drink prices at poe's pub will be going up....

no but really, who can ever really complain when your ride to work involves some really pretty scenery

and fun off road riding?

2011-09-08T11:44:00.004-04:00

Kissed the 'yota goodbye on Sunday/Monday. A young lady in Massachusetts (dang thats a long drive!) wanted it and sent her uncle from Manassas to check it out. They towed it away early Monday am.

Safari leaves on the 15th, to a good local home. I'm on a major getting rid of shit kick.
I'm going to get rid of my old horror movie collection, and probably donate most of my books to Books Bikes and Beyond. If its still in a box from the move in February, I'm letting it go. Too much holding me down in life lately, and I want to be freed up.
Commute this week has been wonky. Monsoon style rain, all week. What are we, Seattle/Portland???

Since the Orbea MTB is laid up needing fork service, I've been kicking it on the Miyata

Whats in my basket today, you ask? NOTHING! The road are wet and the dirt paths and trails are muddy, so nothing in there please.
Love the Miyata, aside from its steep gear, its a fun bike to ride. Cyclocross tires et al make for a good adventure.

Made for a really muddy ride to work. Last night I went out into the yard in the dark, barefoot, to pick basil for dinner. It was so gross, the ground had about an inch of standing water on it through most of the yard. The firepit is now a pond, the tops of the 3 foot cement sides barely poking up through the waters surface. Gross. Mosquito/mold/mushroom heaven.

The warmth plus humidity/rain makes for a gross ride into work. Well, the getting dirty isn't the bummer, its rolling into work at the fancy lady salon looking like a swamp creature. Wearing rain gear right now sucks, cause its warm, and after a solid 45 mintues of pedalling you'd rather be wet than in a sweat tent.

The hurricanocaine season needs to quit it, I prefer sunny pleasant commutes. I want to be able to ride the trails most of the way in, not roads.

At least the influx of water has washed the shit-stink of the james river away for now. There were some GIANT fish tanking around today down near the pipeline, wish I could've stopped longer to see em.
This weekend holds a special secret adventure, I can't tell you about it until its already happened, lest I jinx myself.

2011-09-02T12:36:00.002-04:00

helluva week.
fork started bottoming out on the trails yesterday's yesterday.
got andrew to peek at it (most pro suspension dude i know) and the seal was blown and unfixable (without taking it totally apart, that is)

true gentleman that he is, he worked on fixing it until 2am.
no dice.

SO.
fuckit.
Safari is for sale. Get it outta my life before my shitluck hits it too.

tell your flossin friends.
i've got a south american 90cc kit, dellorto 16 sha lever choke carb and 16 intake, new in boxes with gaskets, in addition for sale.
sellin the safari with the powdercoated spokes, which have brand new wide pirelli's on em. keepin the mags unless you bribe with lots and lots of cash.

2011-09-01T17:05:00.001-04:00

truck is totalled.
recieved a total loss check for $1000.

2011-08-31T12:08:00.004-04:00

The insurance adjuster called last night pretty late. He was very nice and polite, and let me ramble on forever about how much I loved my Hilux and how I was never gonna find another '81 if he totalled it, and how superior the '81 22R is to other years of the 22r, and he informed me that he needed to do some market research before he reached a decision (aka he couldn't easily find a price and needed more time to poke around online and find one.) He asked about the new carb, and I ran down the list of upgrades/fixes I'd made. He told me that if it gets totalled that having receipts for those things would be in my interest. $400 carb, $200 installation, $300 floor pans, $100 exhaust bits, etc etc etc. Thankfully I have receipts.
Neutral news overall, good that he was polite and caring and doing his research. I thanked him for working hard, anyone that is still working at 830pm when you know their day starts at 8am deserves a big thank you.
In positive news, I've been peeking a bit online and have found some options for vehicles if all else fails. IF it gets totalled, we'll see how much they offer me. Then I'll try and figure out what I can afford. Stress, bummertown, but relieved that things are happening.
In commuting news, I got hit by a goose today as I rode too close to a flock of Canadian geese roadside (traffic wouldn't let me move over into the lane). As the geese took flight, they flew into me and into cars that were already going really slow, noone was hurt, the geese were unphased. It was so slow motion and hilarious that I LOL-ed for a good while down the road.
Here is a funny video of the dogs. We took them for a walk around the neighborhood after the hurricane and I guess they got really hot (it wasn't that hot outside, they're just used to jumping in the pool after walks...spoiled dogs.)

There was a large, fresh water puddle by the curb and Dottie threw herself in it.
Egon followed suit very quickly.

So ridiculous, we had to laugh and laugh. Then we bathed them when they got home.

2011-08-30T10:21:00.003-04:00

The hurricane Irene came to visit Virginia.
In addition to the tradgedy of my favorite record by the Kinks now having a skip, this happened....

AND IT MAKES ME VERY SAD

no really, i cried about it. i've sunk so much $$$$ and time into this truck, and i guarantee you the insurance company will declare it totaled instead of fixing it.

bummmmmmmmed x 1,000,000,000,000 squared.
i know it could've been worse, my house could've gotten chopped in half, but i'm still fucking sad.
now i get to bike commute again an hour to work each way, and i'm trying really hard to be posi and look at it as more of an adventure ride than a sweatfest. MTBing is awesome and i get to take a fun, chill ride to work, with not too many hill climbs. (though the climb into my neighborhood is rated cat 5, which seems shocking but funny.) i'm trying to avoid the negative, so unless you have something posi to say, go away. seriously. i may just walk away from some conversations today.

2011-08-26T15:02:00.004-04:00

oh lard!
this week we had an earthquake! first one i've ever experienced, and it was pretty cool! scary in the moment, but cool once i realized it was a leetle one. 5.9er.
in other news, my friend from philly recently moved into my neighborhood with his SUPER BITCHIN 64 GMC Handivan. i was thinking about this awesome van i remember from childhood, the era when we lived in the cambodian/vietnamese/white trash neighborhood known as Crestview (Pat lived there too, we went to the same elementary school where there were literally kid gang fights). fresh from the sandhills of north carolina, my mind was blown by the Roach Coach.

i was little, less than 5 years old, but its been engraved in my mind ever since then. i google image searched it, and sure enough, found some pictures of it. i had to call my mom to ask some questions, to make sure i wasn't crazy, if i'd really found photos of it, and sure enough its the real deal.

i remember being real embarassed about the lady with her boobs out.

but i DEFINITELY don't remember the lambo doors. mom swears that she saw it cruising around town within the last five years, i've been meaning to make a craigslist post looking for it.

in less exciting for me but great for cats news, i got a new piece of cat furniture!

and they like it!

especially brown cat, who likes to sit in the top and peer into the house from his perch.
so i guess the calamity of the earthquake and the intense nature of the thunderstorm that flooded my truck cab last night and the impending crash of hurricane irene, all the cool bugs are coming out.

haven't seen a single mantid in the yard, which has been a megabummer. well, until now that is.
this dude was creepin on the back door.

lurka durka, lookin at me all upside down and backwards. what a creep.
i first saw this spider when it was leetle, and teeny, and now its FUCKINGHUGE.

which is cool. i really like garden spiders, they're the only really big orb weaver we have here in virginia.
anyway.
if a tree falls on our house this weekend, i'm sure i'll post pictures, but it might take a little while to update if that same crushing tree smashes the computer or interrupts our wifi. just so you know.

2011-08-24T16:44:00.000-04:00

seems about right.

2011-08-23T11:48:00.003-04:00

welly well. as always things have been stupid busy.
i had time off last week to keep an eye on miss Dot, she got FIXED.

she was under the weather after surgery, but still managed to act a fool.

her little scar looked gnarly. its much nicer looking now, light pink and really healing well.
laaaast monday i took the day to try n chill, and enjoy some "do what i wanta do" time, and i went swimming and then got lunch and icecream with patty p and doodooberry and rachel.
the icecream part was amazing.

i want to eat every flavor. homemade, fresh mexican icecream!

after ice cream it was just dog time, all the time. making sure they weren't ruckusing too much, which is like, impossible.

unless they are sleeping, which i encouraged heavily during her heal time.
worked a whoppin three day workweek, which was hateful anyway.
then saturday, we took egon on his first boat adventure.

HE WAS A FREAK!
Not more than a few moments in the water, in the middle of the deep and wide James River, we passed a few geese (he really wants to eat geese) and he nearly jumped ship to go get them.
Crazy level noted, we tried to keep a tighter grasp on him. We were adventuring downstream and passed a group of about ten vultures, which kept flying away as we approached to a little tree further down the stream. Dummies. About the third time this happened, Egon just straight up lept out of the boat and into the river. ARGH! he was wearing a little harness so we just grabbed his ass right up, but it was a little panic inducing. Fool ass dog.
After that he sat in my lap and we headed for shallower waters, ones where maybe we could see the bottom and it wasn't so murky.

We found a nice sandbar and hopped out to eat lunch, and let Egon get buckwild.

He finally learned to fetch toys in water.

And he wanted to do it nonstop.

We had to enforce little breaks so he could catch his breath.

He's gotten to be a pro swimmer. The plan is to get that guy a life vest, so he'll float regardless. He leaps into the water now, I bet he'll jump off all kinds of things once he has a lifejacket and learns that he floats.
He took off into the water, swimming to get a group of whitewater rafters that had just come down the fall line and were passing thru. Seriously. What was he gonna do once he got to them? I had to dive into the river and swim after him, haul his ass back to shore. TOTAL MANIAC MODE.
After the stinky river adventure (and worries of brain melting amoeba infection) we gave that dude a BATH.

And then he slept for two days.
Seriously, he would follow you around the house but his eyes were squinty and sleepy and he'd almost fall asleep just standing here.
Sunday and Monday were intense workdays for me. I woke up at 7am both days and started sewing by 8am latest.

Dottie helped quite a bit, as always.

After a 10 hour day Sunday and a 13 hour day Monday (with some screwing around mixed in, changing pandora stations, making lunch, taking dogs outside, swiffering and cleaning random things) my back and neck was broken and I had produced a SHITTON of stuff. 11 hats (10 pictured, I know) and seven tool rolls. Tool Rolls are going to the moped shop in NYCITY (get a rope!) and hats are for a bike shop in town. Stoked, but tired.
For some reason I can't stop beating myself up that I didn't finish 10 tool rolls, but whutever, I busted ass and got a lot done.
Now I'm back at jobjob, and shockingly, I sure do wish I was home instead. What a suprise?

Somehow snuggling with this thing beats out jobjob, sitting on the phone all day and catering to rude folks. Shocker?

2011-08-17T17:30:00.001-04:00

ha!

2011-08-17T11:01:00.004-04:00

shit! things have been busy, head spinningly whirlwind busy!
first, there was canning!

crystal came over to help me learn some canning stuff. julie was there too, but she was fresh from knee surgery and did not can, she hung out and provided excellent commentary.

there were dill pickles, sweet pickles, pickled beets, and pickled watermelon rind! it will be awesome in a few more days, when they are ready to eat.
after the pickling, we got vietnamese for dinner. on the way, we passed this

which looked super cool. nay, amazing.
the next morning was pats bikini carwash.

look at that wutang W!
dang!

LYLAS ladies but damn, my truck hood is all scratched up now. fuck.

there were "sponge-kini's" for the ladies that volunteered to wash cars. total ridicoulous times.
remember that video, "put em on the glass" by sir mix a lot? no? here it is. its also sort of nsfw, beware. boobs.

it was inspiring.

some dudes even brought a dirtied up truck!

and that thang got dun up right, son

there were matching kente cloth xxxl nylon windbreakers worn by the lovely Candy Rain (nsfw) ladies from NY.

a motorcycle or two or more got washed.
brad d even helped out with the bikini part!

hubba hubba!

things got really ridiculous.

it was an excellent benefit. made some loot to finish up the concrete around Pats pool so the dudes can drain it and start skating it next month. yay!

monday i went swimming, then went to chicken fiesta for lunch/dinner, then to get ice cream at this little shop that makes everything fresh.

look at those popsicles, the organization and colorfulness is so rad, i love it. makes me happy to just see them. oreo popsicles? yes please.
met travis' dog, who is cute and sweet but timid.

she growls like a maniac when she plays, sounds fierce but is a weenie.
i picked up Dottie from the vet, post lady part removal, and hung with the dogs yesterday. they were all so tired, even Egon just wanted to snuggle.

it was nice, considering the scale of migrane i had all day.
i dragged myself outta the house (reverberating eyeballz and all) and did groceries. lo and behold, check out the level of amazing of the van that parked near me.

i mean, its dream worthy. i almost left a note on the windshield that just said "your van is badass, party on dude."

if you have time, peep the "all sizes" of the side profile pics in Flickr, the bubbles and cubes were supes tight.
seriously, dream worthy. note the terrible parking job.
then on that great note, i went to bed early and woke up full of dread for the next days workday. oh well. work is never a fun party.

2011-08-13T09:36:00.003-04:00

this week has, thank goodness, flown by.
the future called

and it wants its tacos back!
stupid me, i was on the other line and couldn't answer the phone fast enough.
what is taco world? there's certainly nothing popping up on google, esp not in richmond.

the dogs had a cage fight last night. seriously, life with these two is so ridiculous. its like a shark cage!

dottie goes into fixin surgery monday, maybe she'll stop humping the dudes so much.

i mean, seriously, this is so awkward.

i started some avocado trees from seeds, they take like three freakin months to germinate, but the first one has made it through its primary leaves and is doing a second, much fuller set. i also read a lot about them, and apparently growing them from seed is kind of dumb. according to scientists, tree by tree varies as to the quality of fruit, some are horrible and inedible nasty, others are great. trees from good nurserys are grafts, so the fruit quality is guaranteed. also, we are zone 7 here, which means that we get heavy frosts. you have to protect the tree sapling from frost for the first bunch of years, and it won't produce fruit for 7-15 years. uh, so you wait 7-15 years, and maybe get crappy fruit. bummer. since i've already started em, i'm just gonna roll with it. plant em in the side yard and go from there. if they make it, rad, if not, fuckit.

mega fabric score this week means big sewing this weekend. i'm off four days, so really i should be able to produce a ton of stuff. i hope. i really want a tanktop (like dress length almost) from this stuff, i lovelovelove it. also, it will make rad hats. i want to retire from jobjob and sew for the rest of my life, it will happen. i will make it so.

2011-08-12T14:24:00.002-04:00

aaaaaaand this is why my hilux is my current vehicle of choice!

go little pickup, go!

2011-08-10T18:03:00.003-04:00

ah things are weird.
sewing has been good and normal, and for that i am relieved.

i've been making lots of hats. it seems like the time it takes to make one from beginning to end is magically the amount of time my attention span lasts. perfecto!

dottie has been getting crate trained, for real and for serious. she had many meltdowns in the crate, and when i lived in the giant apartment building, dog meltdowns that last a long time or happen in the middle of the night are no dice. each day she moves the crate less and less.
we call it 'the ruckus', if you look, in the picture, her crate started the day over by the yellow chair. she ruckused it all across the kitchen, even moved the stool with a pile of folded towels on it without knocking the towels down. nice!

its full on tomato time, and the garden is producing woah nelly bigtime. lotsa tomatos, every day.

i had a fancy request from a friend to make a messenger style laptop bag for her, so i did! it was fun and new, and i really like new challenges. this one is even made with a foam lining (inside the outer/inner materials so you don't see it) so her laptop has extra cush. booyeah!

and don't worry, in all that sewing, i spent WAY too much time with the dogs. sewing them toys, petting them, laughing at their farts, you know the drill.

speaking of dogs! here's a video! life is like this, all the time, twentyfour sev, with these fool bostons!

2011-08-04T10:18:00.003-04:00

ah where to start?
this last weekend was crazy, nay awful crazy, and i am honestly glad it is over. that is so far from my typical outlook on weekends and time off, that you must believe that it was truly that horrible.
what was good about it, you ask?
some things.

for instance, this guy.
there was a lot of swimming and roughhousing this weekend in the yard, and it brought a well deserved moment of laughter.

i brought home a new soccerball for egon, and pumped it up nearly to the max psi, thinking that maybe he wouldn't pop it.

well, that didn't happen. it was popped in about five minutes but became the new cool thing that all the dogs wanted to own.

after possession was won, the victorious dog tried to EAT the soccerball, which i just wasn't gonna let happen. why are dogs so smart, hm?
in garden news, i found that i am having siamese twins.

OF SQUASH, DUH!

and they are actually growing up well, which i thought maybe wouldn't happen. conjoined squash twins, woaaaahhhh grossss.

the tomatos have finally turned ripe, THANK GOODNESS, becaue i am SO READY for blts, all day every day.

the corn is not too far from ready, Dottie keeps trying to eat the silk. Whats wrong with her?

the other day i was picking the green beans that were ready and was tossing em in a bowl. dottie stood beside me watching, and stole a bean out of the bowl. ran away with it to eat it in her favorite grassy spot. came back, ripped a leaf off the bean bush and ran away with it too. i laughed, but moved on in the garden to pick tomatos and squash. a moment or two later, i heard a bit of commotion in the beans. dottie hauled ass out of the garden area, a whole branch of the bean bush in her mouth, and laid back in the grass to eat the branch. i guess she's learned how to pick green beans now...
she already got every single ripe strawberry this year, now i'm worried for the rest of my garden since she thinks its self-serve...

i did boil peanuts this weekend, that was cool. i brined them a bit too long (DOH) and now they're really salty. so maybe i will soak them to fix that.

the ugly pumpkins got picked this weekend, as soon as i'm tired of them taking up counter space i'll cook em. til then, they'll just sit and be ugly.

sewing has been productive, but this weekend was occupied and alas, no sewing occurred. i have big hope for this week and weekend.

2011-07-26T18:09:00.003-04:00

oh shoot. what a week/weekend/past few buncha days.
i forgot to go pick vegetables for a little while, and the cucumbers got out of control.
they got a little large

but dont be upset, they are still very delicious.
in fact, the squash was so good n perfect, that it seemed as if JESUS hisself had left some sort of miracle mark or sign...

akin to the jesus on grilled cheese
so aquabattle was sunday, and i wanted to go see. it was hot. very very hot, but the water where the aquabattle was held was fresh with sewage, so i opted OUT of swimming.
it was also polluted by this thing

but he didn't stop anyone from swimming

in fact he just cheered everyone on with his horrible bizarre penis parts. wheeeeee! yaaaaaay!

this puppy was bloated, but not like the beaver. he was bloated with puppy things, snips and snails and puppy dog tails? well maybe not the dog tails, but he sure was eating lots of gross river items, like dead fish and rotten things. yum.

though he was cute, i'm sure he had terribly rank farts later.

puppies. whatcha gonna do? you just can't hate something that cute even if they're very very stinky.
speaking of smelly cute things...

this thing has been out of control lately. she gets her ladyparts out soon, and maybe then she will stop humping the boys. shes been fired up lately, on the rampage.
on the final day of my leisurely weekend days off, i got busy sewing.

i made some hats!

its the first time i've ever tried, and i think i like them.

there are some things to tweak, but overall they're pretty rad.
i feel a collab with messengerstu coming on. homemade richmond "fuck all yall" hats in the future i hope....

2011-07-22T10:11:00.002-04:00

jesus shit!
the garden is going so crazy.

look at that tomato patch! theres about a hundred thousand or so huge unripe tomatos hanging there...i am so tired of waiting for them to be ripe!

they're way way bigger than the palm of my hand...i'm gonna make fried green tomatos soon again. i am so impatient. i have bacon in the fridge, JUST WAITING, for blt time.

the watermelons are watermeloning, a lot actually. if all goes well, i'll have at least three.

and this thing...this hideous thing, i have two of them, they're at least ten pounds. like huge ugly pumpkins or stupid sombreros, sort of.

ive been eating lots from the garden, greens, beans, squash, cucumbers...dottie ate ALL the strawberries. basil has been nice to have fresh, and if these damn carrots and tomatos would HURRY up i'd be very happy.

i went to wendy's the other night for dinner, shameful, but i was too tired to cook dinner and that was the only easy option. gross. at least i had good company!

2011-07-19T11:44:00.003-04:00

man what a horrible accident. i knocked this cat off a table i have, not that i collect ceramic cats or anything, but this one was really awesome. i've had it since i was 13, it was in my grandparents attic. it was thin and tall, and somehow it survived a hundred tumultous moves, party apartments, and all kinds of other bullshit. i scanned ebay and etsy looking for another one, but no dice. ah. one day i'll get another one, but its a total bummer.

i reorganized the downstairs a little this weekend, trying to make it chiller. i was moving around a stretched piece of fabric i have and this fucking horrible thing was on the back of it...i didn't realize it was there until i'd already been too close, it makes me grit my teeth and squint an eye when i think about it. not a fan of these dudes.
FINALLY got the chance to really tend garden.
andrew cut back the massive marina di chiogga squash, and i realized that my summer squash had powdery mildew.

gross. whipped up a couple nalgenes of "fancy organic garden cure-all", aka water, a drop or two of dish soap, and some garlic.

gave the plants a good spray down, twice. need to treat again today, shoulda done it this am. oops.
in the middle of annhiliating that stuff, and hacking away at the diseased leaves, and getting completely scratchy and itchy, i found this dude.

he was a lot smaller last time i saw him, probably a month or two ago in a different part of the garden. i love garden spiders, they're super cool. the last of the big orb weavers.....
when i was 19 and lived with derek and alex, i had a massive (8" leg span) imported orb weaver that i kept in the window of the pantry. the cool thing about those guys is that they don't leave their webs unless they're dying. they just build and build and stay put, so i wasnt worried about him leaving the pantry. til one day a shrill dude scream let me know he'd moved on from his window space, sure enough dude was pretty much barely alive, but was in the bathroom. most tolerant roomates, EVER.

found some little eggs on the summer squash, the garlic death water probably will kill them, but they were gleaming and iridiscent in the bright sunlight. didn't really translate to cameraphone photo, oh well.

in clipping things back, i found a lot of produce that i didn't know was ready. this weird ass squash is hard as a rock, and orange. def not gonna eat it, i'll just save it for a halloween decoration or something. bizarre evil scarecrow penis or something.
after the long weekend of cleaning, reorganizing, and whatever else (happy birthday chip, allez allez!!!) i was ready to chill out.

but instead i made a massive delicious dinner.

complete with bacon wrapped salmon filets. they were delicious, i was instantly launched into itis town, no regrets.
dottie had a pretty busy day, morning hangouts, then vet, followed by long ass hot as balls truck ride (no air conditioning in my 81 toyota.

she helped in the kitchen by sleeping on a chair.
the city is doing some mysterious construction on all the roads i take through the downtown area to get home, so combined with the ton of fools leaving their office jobs, it took me an hour to get home from the west end. INSANITY. then brett n sunday came over and dottie got all fired up, ran around the yard in circles til she was BEAT.
she was out cold in practically no time after i went upstairs to eat dinner.

2011-07-15T09:40:00.002-04:00

ah so gardenlife is great.

walking into the backyard and picking all your sides for dinner is awesome. food tastes way better when you've made it all happen.

i've been really into roasting things, which is dumb cause its a million degrees hot and humid outside and i'm running the oven.
but shoot, roasted garlic makes EVERYTHING delicious.
our tomatos have been green and huge for, like, weeks. i got tired of waiting for them to ripen so just decided to make do.

and making do was delicious. so good. i'm gonna do it again for breakfast this weekend.

dinner has been pretty epic lately.
the truck is running great, i couldn't be more excited. it sounds like an angry snake as you accelerate, a deep hiss as the intake sucks in tons of air. so so so fancy and beastly and cool. i think i'm in love, i'll never have a stock carb again!!!!
in other news...

i always get some pretty interesting questions about taxidermy and bones and stuff, and lately they've been extra funny.
anyway. the squash plant has grown a bit big. its a little out of control, everything within the thin red line is only two plants, that i started from seeds that were given to me at a wedding. crazy!

so yeah. things are good, the squash might choke us in our sleep, but we're eating lots of fresh awesome things from the garden so eh. no complaints.

2011-07-13T11:10:00.002-04:00

awwwwwwww snap!

lookit that! happy birthday to me and my toyota!

2011-07-09T09:47:00.002-04:00

ah ha.
so i've been hawking the dogs and thier poops (yeah, great.) to see who ate the toy and if it would pass.
sure enough, Miss Dottie woke up this morning and threw it up. Thanks for saving me another $1000+ vet bill yay!

i genuinely think she's vyying for most expensive and troublesome puppy, cause she's winning.

2011-07-08T11:38:00.004-04:00

this week has been insane.

-last thursday at 8am i dropped my truck off at a shop i'd never been to before, but had bad feelings about. they were supposed to bolt up and tune my new carbuerator.
-no call that truck was done thursday or friday.
-called the shop friday to see what was up, since the owner said it would be an hour or so job.
-excuses, excuses, they hadn't gotten to it yet and weren't gonna until tuesday. shop is in the ghetto, but they said they'd pull my truck inside the bays for the holiday weekend. word. it would be done tuesday, hands down.
-tuesday no call.
-wednesday no call. called shop at 4 to see whats up. owner says carb won't work. the carb manufacturer (webe) disagrees. owner offers to call weber, but doesn't have the number. bad sign #3, number is printed in huge font on yellow paper, first page of installation instructions. um, what?
-an hour later i called back and said i wanted to get my truck. would be down there first thing in the am thursday to get it. one week at shop, nothing done, and obvious lack of experience or interest in project. fuggit.
-commuting on moped is great, except when it rains. its rained more the last week than it has all summer. i'm shocked i haven't been fired yet, my bosses are so tolerant. my moped will not run in the rain.
-thursday i go to pick up my truck at 8am, expecting a battle. breeze in, pickup carb (which hasn't even been taken out of packaging) and look for truck. i am told its in a parking lot across the street. its not there.
-truck is up the street, unlocked, in a shitty neighborhood. front tire is flat. has no oil, has no gas. what the hell?
-truck starts, but will not run. cuts off as soon as your foot is off the gas pedal. then engine starts accellerating out of control. in rush hour traffic, in stalling truck, cutting it off to stop high revving. what the fuck.
-get to work. pop hood. various vacuum hoses are loose, off of carb. battery terminal half off. this is all new development since i dropped my truck off, running, fully functional. i add gas and air, tire is holding air but truck still wont run. set up an appointment to get it fixed, but can't be seen til tuesday.
-in additon to major truck drama, battling the rain on a non running moped is hilarious.
-have to bail on birthday dinner at an awesome resturant cause of new transportation drama.
-climb up into borrowed tall truck today after dropping andrew off at work, and skirt splits up the back at the seam. cause i stretched it too much, stepping up too tall. so my ass is out. awesome. get to work, slide out of the truck, twist skirt so split is on side, slink into work where i snag a stapler and staple it back closed. awesome.
-noticed that puppy has eaten a chunk of rubber toy, AGAIN. hopefully no emergency vet this time? toy was okay circa 12am this morning, but missing a chunk at 830am this morning. grrrreeeeat.

i'm so scrambled right now!

2011-07-05T11:48:00.002-04:00

ah, america's independence day weekend.
things kicked off saturday afternoon after work at the local duckpin bowling lane.

we basically had the whole place to ourselves...there was another couple bowling who left pretty soon after we arrived.

a bit into our first game, a band arrived and began setting up. they had four light panels, all kinds of other party lights, and some ridiculous mixer and the hands down, fanciest, neatest merch setup i've ever seen
the owner asked if it was time for EXTREEEEEME bowling, and obviously, we said yes.

the blacklights came on and the overheads went off.

it threw everyone off their game, but i had the fanciest bowling shoes ever and i wasn't gonna let it get me down.

crystal and i were scoring differently, which made things kind of funny. oops.
after a long first game, Stu was delcared the official winner

now, we'd been there a couple hours, we needed snacks. fries are always delicious, and these were REALLY GOOD.

the bowling lane owner, who is super friendly and nice, would come over and chat from time to time. he was very worried for the band, because he realized noone was coming to see them.

he jokingly asked if we could just stay all night so that the band didn't feel bad.
ha ha oooops.

well, we did stay all night!
the second game was much more serious. you only had 4 1/2 minutes to take your turn, and if you were in the restroom or beer line, TOO BAD!

the introduction of a new, fancy, christmas colored ball made things a lil wild.

but overall, it was a delightful time.
so delightful, in fact, that the next day i was stricken with a horrible migrane that crippled me. i slept in, threw up, sweated, died, ate a little breakfast, snuggled with dogs, and in general laid around all day in the coldest, darkest parts of the house.
the sunday that never existed, thats what it felt like.
monday i woke up pretty refreshed and launched into full garden working fervor.

i weeded, transplanted corn and basil and canteloupe, picked a TON of cucumbers and some summer squash, built a new bean trellace (i need to redo it, it kind of sucks, but the wood i found was too dry) and then after working in stupid humid hot heat, i lost all motivation. i couldn't even walk around.
i played with beetles that i kept finding

and watched the tour de france and played with dogs.
then i made huge hamburgers and the plan was to cook them on the fire pit, but it started POURING and lightninging and thundering like crazy. the radar looked terrifying.

so we sat on the side porch and used a little disposable grill thing to cook em.

it was a little terrifying at first, but after the flames died down it was much chiller.

happy fourth of july!
we ate burgers that were too big for buns and then fell asleep. what a crazy party wild weekend! errr....

2011-06-29T12:34:00.002-04:00

oh hey so i turned 30 last weekend, it was pretty quiet.
pat offered to have a pool party cookout at his house, naturally i said yes.
there was swimming, volcano firepit, lots of food and grilling, and throwing stars. also rachel passed out on james' moped, then fell over onto the ground and just decided to sleep there. it was very LOL, oops.

i didn't take any pictures, because i didn't feel like it.
instead i got TWO cakes, and ate some of each of them, and made two sets of wishes when i blew out candles.

in addition to a SUPERFANCYNEWWEBERCARBEURATOR from andrew, the garden gave me lots of cucumbers

and lots of baby cucumbers to come

and nature gave me this really cool female stag beetle

as well as a huge cicada emergence all weekend

and craigslist gave me two new free midcentury chairs

so you know, in all the quietness, there was actually a lot going on.

2011-06-21T12:02:00.003-04:00

man, this feels like the end of an era.

so many years ago i lived with my best friend in a glorious apartment, and got to enjoy her wonderful pugs wile i was there.

i'm so thankful for the time i got to spend with them, because yum yum passed away several years ago. a good amount of time has passed, so it doesn't feel as awful as it used to. its still hard to look back at photos of the past and see them hanging out with all of us, dogs and humans.

and then today, jenny had to put down soda.

i'm sad for her because she had to make the decision to lose a friend...its not an easy one, and even though she says she did him a big favor, i know its hurting her so much.

so i'm just gonna try to be happy, and remember that best friend dog pup for all of his awesome tricks. like how his stupid butthole poked out when he barked, and his silly snaggletooth, and the million text pictures of him i got from jenny sleeping, or not sleeping, with his tongue out. also, he would pee on things, it was funny to have folks over on the porch and warn them to not put their bike bags or beer cases on the ground, and sure enough he'd find someone who forgot or didn't listen and go pee on their stuff.

total comedy, all the time. you could always tell when jenny was home even before she was on the porch cause soda KNEW...he was up and at the door waiting. what a good dog.

we had lots of good times, and i'm gonna miss him.

2011-06-15T15:23:00.002-04:00

ah, jes, so yesterday was the infamous birrsssday of one Dottie June, the finest of all lady boston terriers i know.

the cake was made

and they were soooooo hyped. i was pretty hyped too.

happy birsday to you, happy burrsday to you, happy burtsdaaaay dear Dottie, haaappy birtsday to you!
blow out the candle!

good job!

who wants cake?

any takers? anyone? cake?

are you sure? just a small piece?

this is what it looks like when a dog has lept into the air, high enough to peek onto the stove top. i would say yes, yes indeed, that maybe she would like some cake.

the kale/carrot peanut butter frosted cake was gone so fast, she threw some up then ate it back down in the grossest, most ladylike (?) dog party style possible. ew.

it was awesome, and they are so food focused now. they keep sniffing everything, like maybe there's more cake to be had.
i slipped em a little bit on lunch break today, its pretty hilarious.

2011-06-14T13:19:00.003-04:00

this weekend was way too busy.

we decided to expand the garden a bit. bump it out another section of fence...so i called a friend that has a huge tiller and asked for borrowing.

sunday morning i prepared the yard for DEVESTATION. moved the rv forward a little bit, took out the old fence, and started TILLING.

naturally dottie loves loud two stroke noises and insisted on sitting close to me the entire time it was running. what a kook!

the garden went from this

to this!
and in a matter of a few hours. tilling with the mantis was a lotta work...this hugeass 5 horses power tiller ate roots and stuff for dinner.

i have so much more room now for vegetable wonderland!
all the plants are doing well. the watermelons are growing faster.

the squash is taking over, and the tomatos are tomatoing.

every morning the brussel sprouts catch the prettiest dew. its awesome.

oh, and the cactus is blooming and fruiting too.

its really pretty.
the other day a giant mushroom sprouted out of one of the logs from the cut down tree. over the course of 24 hours it got crazy huge.

and now its really ugly and dead.
i finally released all the scarabs that had transformed from hideous grubs. they were pretty cool. always exciting to grow your own bugs.

and they were really cute! look at those little antennae, like tiny flags.

lately the nature scene in our backyard has been out of control. all kinds of birds, gold finches even, tons and tons of bugs, and lots of cool plants.

these dudes are EVERYWHERE right now. two days in a row they were in the pool. they're my favorite i think, they look so fancy.

unfortunately, unless you are making them totally freak out, they are very boring.
today is miss dotties birthday, she is a staggering year old. best two years of my life so far, having mr. egon and miss dot. such good dogs, they make all my crappy days so so so much better. it is totally worth having a job that sometimes bums you out and always stresses you out to be able to take care of such wonderful loving pups. they're so cool.

can you believe that this little thing...

turned into this little thing....

that earned her namesake from the spots on her nose..

whose ears USED to curl backward....

and who has always been a huge ham...

even when sleeping...

the same little monster that grew up torturing her big brother....

and is now a ferocious beast...

and LIVES for snuffling around in the dirt in the yard....

that same monster is now a total grown up monster

and she's awesome. even though she doesn't have dots on her nose anymore.
egon helped me bake a cake for dottie last night.

even though he was tired, he stayed up with me.

even though he was falling asleep sitting up.

and so here we are, on the cusp of dog birthday cake partytime. they will get cake tonight for dinner...i will have a hundred million pictures, don't worry.

2011-06-09T16:33:00.003-04:00

this could be my new life.

i just found all these so in spiring pictures, and it made me smile on a too-hot day at work.

i think i will make the coathangers really soon, and day dream about my own shasta to travel with and sell goods.

2011-06-09T09:58:00.002-04:00

oh why hello, friend.
have you just had a tremendously long, stressful, nay painful, day at work hell? no better cure than taking the dogs for a long walk in 90 degree humid weather and then taking a long time cooking a very healthy dinner! don't lie, i saw you eat a corndog for lunch...lets counteract that with some vegetables!

you will want to have some things ready. since it was a pretty safe bet that i was going to be the only one eating this, i went ahead and cooked 1.5 cups of quinoa and set it aside. y'know , i wanted leftovers for lunch.

then i peeled and diced an acorn squash into small pieces. i boiled it for a second to soften it some, then sauteed it in a little olive oil.

add some pepper and salt. get wild with it!

you will want to have some corn, you can use canned or frozen but have you ever used fresh corn instead? it will change your life. it takes more time, but it is so so so worth it. take an ear or two and shuck em, then snap em in half and boil them for a while. take them out, let em cool, and use a butter knife to scrape the kernels off the cob. at first it seems crazy, like, this is gonna be way too much work for corn, but once you get the hang of it, it'll be supes easy and quick.

i could probably eat it by the handful like this, it is so good.
um so you have quinoa and corn and sauteed acorn squash set aside. lets go ahead and mince some garlic, and chop up a few leaves of kale really really finely, and heck why not add a tomato to the mix?

lets go ahead and in a bigass pot, sautee the garlic in some olive oil. then throw in the corn and tomatos.

then throw in the squash, and let everything get all sizzly and hot.

this is already looking pretty magical, yes?

dump in the kale and mix it in, then add the quinoa. stir it all up, get it all hot and what not. then take it off the stove to start cooling.
and now, for the best and most non secret ingredient: PESTO!

use some teaspoons of it, however much you want until you're happy.
oh shoot. hey for additional awesomeness, maybe you want to add some pumpkin seeds? i did.

and then you're done!
go sit on your ass on the couch and don't think about work, just eat your amazing dinner and pet your dogs!

2011-06-07T11:31:00.005-04:00

man, i think i forgot to mention that the dog pool opened memorial day weekend. i was so busy with rally stuff, AND home stuff, that maybe i overlooked the 80 pictures of dogs i took? geeeeeeeez louise.

naturally, we filled the pool up before we let the dogs see it. then we got them all hyped and let them out!

we also had a present, a new basketball toy, that was almost instantly popped. dang.

the deflated ball was still very fun, and there was much tug of war and competing for ownership.

the ball even saw some pool action.

andrew tried to trick them into jumping into the pool, but can you believe that those tiny peanut brains were smarter than that? i cant.
egon got too hot after a while and decided to just chill.

after all the swimming, running, fighting over the ball, and general insanity, there was much squirming in the grass.

i think they had a pretty good day overall.

in honor of the holiday, and summer, and AMERICA, we hung up a flag. it felt funny, but everyone else in the neighborhood has one, so we justified it like that.

its been raining baby birds, which is sort of gross, but so far (i think) the dogs haven't gotten one which would be 10000000000000times grosser so really, its okay.

i bought a lava lamp, first one ive ever owned, at the thrift store and i kind of love it. its a fancy metal one from the 60's, a "starlite" lava lamp, and really i'm transfixed. its stupid, i know, so don't tell anybody.

in cleaning the kitchen, i was throwing away all the lists of to-dos i'd made for rally weekend, and two pages deep, was my thursday list. EXCEPT I WOULD NEVER KILL POCKET! she is my wonderful bird, and though many people are terrified of her, i love her. it was that damn Chance, adding things to my list that he'd like to happen.

i spitshined my truck in honor of the new door panel. i need to get the passenger window lift fixed before i install the passenger side panel, but that will happen maybe next weekend. don't worry, a bird dropped a turd on it right after i finished. i can't have nice things.

i finally took a spy camera shot of my neighbor that i don't know but love, or his yard really. he has two ferraris, a camaro, a harley, and some other type of sportscar under a cover, but his fence is falling down and so is his house. its amazing, and i REALLY want to know what is under the cover. maybe someday if i keep riding my bike around the neighborhood i'll see him outside and ask him. i mean, if you keep your ferrari's uncovered what the shit would you keep covered!!!???!!!
as always, i was tremendously sad about going back to work after the weekend, i always want an extra day off. but when i walked in, my day was made a million times better.

the monkey lady came in with her capuchin!!!!
naturally, i was afraid to touch after seeing such movies as "outbreak" and "monkey shines", but after someone else petted him a whole lot i realized it was okay.
he was so cute, and made little chirping noises, and i instantly forgot how sad i was to be at work.

2011-06-07T10:42:00.003-04:00

man. sometimes you have something so busted and uggg that its so nice to just redo it. i felt this way about my trucks door panels...the previous owner had halfway ripped them off because the door lock mechanism and handle were sort of messed up. so when i fixed the lock and handle, there was no reason to not have nice, new panels!

start with making a template. i used wall board cause its easy to cut, cheap, and doesn't weigh too much.

don't forget to drill holes to mount it! basically use the old door panels as templates, if you don't have em, or they're real messed up (cough cough) then guesstimate! hold em up to the door til they're just right.

make sure you're helpers are ready to help.

let them know that standing on the stuff you're working on isn't actually helpful.

for insulation, i used a thin sheet of foam that was originally purposed for laying down hardwood flooring.

glue it all down! probably should have been using liquid nails or epoxy, but my final plan is to re-do these so i wanted something easily removable. hot glue will work just fine for now.

done! keep everything nice and smooth, don't want wrinkles in your door!

lay out the fabric you are going to use. make sure the pattern is straight and even, lets just admit it and say that maybe if it was crooked it would drive us crazy forever and ever.

and lookit that. door panel, DUN. now lets try to mount that thing to the door!

yee-haw! your truck door is now quieter, and its nice to have the hardware all back on it. there ya go!
finding hardware to fit the holes in the door was kind of a pain in the butthole. the holes in the door were an odd size, 1/4" bolts and 5/8" bolts both didnt fit, nothing metric did either. i ended up using plastic pop rivets, and so far, they're working OK. i'll probably do something different when i recover em with vinyl, but for now we're good.

2011-06-04T09:13:00.003-04:00

ah i've been making a bunch of nature videos in the backard. can't i please quit my job and just film bugs with my iphone forever?

i think this was a big long horn beetle, but SUPER FAT PREGNANT. she was real mad, and had big face pinchers so i decided not to pick it up. about a minute after i stopped taking snaps, this catbird came and started to try to eat it. thing was, this beetle was about three inches long. big. no match for a mere bird. maybe a falcon, but not a regular bird.

these dudes are all over the yard. they're bess beetles, wood boring beetles that are SUPERCUTE and kind of look like little rhinos, i think. they have a funny horn on the top of their head, and if you pick em up, they make a high pitched squeaking noise. i can't get enough of em.

heres a really close up video of them. they're docile and cute. you can see the rotten tree stump where they all live in the background.

in other news, the garden is growing well. the birds massacred my pepper plants, why? i don't know.
the spaghetti squash is growing like crazy, so are the tomatos. i finally kicked the aphids on the tomato babies on the sideporch, so they can get planted this weekend. um, the beans are beaning like crazy! and the brusselsprouts are fighting caterpillars, which pisses me off. i've been spraying them with water and dish soap, it might be working.

andrew bought a sprinkler, so i can be lazy and water the garden real easy.

the dog pool opened at our house memorial day, and its been crazy time for dogs ever since. i have photos, about a million of them, to upload of the first swimming pool party we had. i love my dogs, whatever!

2011-06-03T11:23:00.004-04:00

need this, stat. old carb isn't metering right, its really not anyones fault but the manufacturers. took it to a pro who dialed it in better than it was, gonna bring the winnebago to him if i can.
no air leak like i thought, thank goodness.
the wish list is still pretty long though.
transmission shop on monday to replace a linkage pin.
new carb
new window seals
new tires
new timing chain gasket
new brake lines and pads

don't worry, truck, we're getting there...
header and exhaust, one day

then i can launch into cosmetic
new doors/mirrors or bodywork
front end bodywork
paint, wheels and truck body
and on into infinity

2011-06-01T15:02:00.008-04:00

i think i am fully recovered from my five days off for rally party. it feels like it anyway, i cut off my party wristband tuesday morning and finally brushed my hair this morning, you would KNOT (HAA) believe how many tangles a lady can get in her hair after a week of swimming, moped riding, dancing wildly, and having the most fun ever.
i kicked off the weekend early thursday, waking up at the wee hours of dawn to finish making rally packs

i ran a million rally errands and got my house all ready for a bonfire later on.

emilie from portland arrived early and hung out at the house while i did things.
then ace got here, and i knew the party was really starting.
the firepit was going and everyone was really excited.
we were out late, but it was super fun.
i woke up the next morning and meddled around the house, karen lee and her boyfriend steve were here and wanted to go see the best thriftstores rurchmond could offer, and who am i to tell them no? mike b and ace and emilie also wanted to see these things, so came with us.
we got some very special things to add to our rally packs.
i was supposed to go pickup travis from seattle at this place

but his train was terribly delayed. i enjoyed the view. when i was a little kid, my dad was an electrician for the governor, he worked in the governors mansion at the state capital, and one of his jobs was making sure that the clock at the train station always ran on time. he would always tell me stories about being up in the clocktower.
well finally the train arrived, and off we went!
well, sort of. my truck is notorious for feigning transmission problems, so would not go into reverse. such a gentleman, travis had to push the truck backwards so we could leave the train staion parking lot. welcome to reeechmond!
to mike b's house we went!

there was merch to be sold and rally packs to be given out, and secret party wristbands to be distributed.

it was exciting to see everyone, and meet new peoples.

more and more people arrived, and i was filled with joy.

after a while it was time for the friday night event, the showing of our secret and special move and the beautiful byrd theater.

first we went to seans house, and then to the byrd theater itself.

we are so lucky to have been able to have such a nice private event, very special vip only.

we showed all of our rally trailers before the main feature.

then the lights dimmed fully

and it was time for the feature presentation.
you can watch it here.

Satan Since 2003 from carlos puga on Vimeo.

oh gosh, the laffs. after the video we went right next door to the bar that had a photobooth and dance music and danced our asses off.
elliot's sippy cup was confiscated and he was thrown out, oh shoot.

after the dance bar came the ropeswing, where it was too dark to take photos. i was tired, and rode home.
the next morning i woke up and did some yardwork. then i went to the park to meet everyone for the big ride.

some jerk from the hells satans flew all the way from california to rally with us

so naturally pat tacked him

everyone got to stand around in the very hot sun, hungover, and talk about things

like mopeds!

or not mopeds!

there were hugs

and jokes

and these guys were there

they were here last year too. sheesh.
and then came the CALL!

lets go!

and go we did!

the ride leaders lost the group, and we were broken into three groups. we went one way, and eventually found another group, who had located the other group! can you believe? so we all got together at the gas station and finished the ride.
on roads, off roads.

everyone rode down a grass hill, one by one, while everyone else watched. there was a lot of pressure.

then to the pipeline we went!

everyone got to see the city and its rapids.

and the wild animals that live there, in the woods.
everyone went home to wash the filthy gross river and filthy gross moped ride off their bodies before dressing back up to party party party.
i got to the party spot early and finaggled a few things...like moving the port a potty, and getting a dj table, and then the PA system was unavailable. shit! don't worry, our friends are so good, we got another one right away. to entertain people before the dancing there was a big skateboard bowl.

you know, for skateboarding.

someone fell and broke out their teeth, but not someone i know.

and then the dancing started.

and it kept gong for a really long time. there was sporadic fireworks that made emilie pass out, but she was okay.
my goodness, i danced my butt off with all my favorite lady friends until my legs hurt and riding home hurt.
everyone made it home safe, there were DESIGNATED DRIVERS can you believe how smart our friends are?

AND THEN IT WAS SUNDAY.

it was very hot outside, everyone was sweating

it was so deluxe to cool off in the pool

there were epic water battles

and long lasting friend hugs

and some turds.

and big jumps

and chance wore cathy's clothes

there was food to be grilled and eaten, and friends to um, lick.

it was so fun

OH, AND HOW COULD I FORGET? it was chances birthday

in the honor of memorial day grilling, he got a special cookout cake

everybody got to try it

it looked pretty good

but i was full of hamburger and it was too hot to eat anything else
i spent a lot of time grilling burgers for everyone, and i was way too sweaty.

the pool party was winding down, and people were gearing up for the duckpin bowling adventure planned for that night.

so to the bowling alley we went!

we became quickly wrapped up in a boyz versus girls game, with extremely high stakes.

things were very tense.

even turbo was worried for his life, i mean look at those lips! so tight and worried! puckered into a nervous grimace!

i reassured him with someone elses arm, the girls had it on lock.

we won the first one, in true nailbiter fasion, by five points or something.
the boyz were forced to give to us the ultimate prize...one pitcher of cold beer.
but they wanted revenge.

round two was started

things were very serious

and it ended with a win for the boyz, dag.

i can't remember what the stakes were exactly for that round, but maybe it was the special pin that sharon made.

after we got booted from the bowling alley, noone really wanted to go home quite yet. so i rode to helens with brett and some bandits. we had a beer or two, then rode back to the southside to ride riverside home in the dark. i always think it is very fun, its twisty and steep and winds all along the river.
made it home, and slept promptly.
monday was cuddle time for folks still in town.

we had a more deluxe cookout and more swimming at patty p's pool.

nicole and lee brought their new baby, and everyone wanted to have him.

he even went into the pool for the first time too! hey, did you wash that baby's fuckin feets?

it was much calmer that sunday pool party, so good to quietly catch up with friends.

the pool was less crowded too.

there was a pretty serious game going on between lindsay and chance, called the "toe throw the burned dirty toast into your friends mouth if they can catch it"

it was awesome but chance got sick the next day.

and then just like that, everyone left. the trend was over, and the rally was over too.
it was real fun, folks, but we have a lot of beauty sleep to catch.

until next time!

2011-05-24T13:02:00.003-04:00

this weekend was labor intensive, i mean really, seriously.

work work worked all week, then saturday visited my mom to start working on a truck project. i need new door panels, mine are gone, and it is loud, so so very loud in the truck.

got some wallboard, and made patterns of my doorpanels.

then cut them out in about two seconds with a nice jigsaw.
i'll take more pics when i work on it again, i got so sidetracked.
went to an awesome cookout hangout party for alicias graduation, then came home oh so tired.
next morning got up bright n early and cleaned house. then went for a secret adventure.

lets just say it involved carrying these bricks

up this hill

and that it was hot and humid, my lard, so humid
i was sweating bullets. missiles even, you could say.
after that i couldn't move or use my hands, so i relaxed until i made a quick pasta salad to take to a birthday cookout.
it was great! so fun!
we sacrificed babies

and video chatted with friends on vacation

and it was just so much fun! i went home early, ready for a really busy jam packed day monday
i jumped out of bed first thing monday and ran right into the garden with my cup of coffeee. i HAD to plant my veggies, they were getting too big to be in baby pots on the side porch.

i made some trellaces from sticks i found in the alley

i got so paranoid that they were poison ivy covered because of the little hairs on them, so i washed my arms and hands a lot. um, so good so far.

i made four all together, two for two types of beans and two for three types of tomatos.

and i got pretty much everything in the ground! some peppers are still to small to put out, but they have a spot waiting for em.
i was supposed to go see the pool filled up at pats house, but after the 9am-4pm in the garden, i was hurting too bad to move. lets just say i have new fancy tan lines, ew.
i was ready for bed early.
some random phone call kept me up though, how bizarre.
just some nosy friends, wanting to talk.

so here it is, today, and the moped rally is this weekend! i still have a lot to finish and do. woowoo but i only work a few days this week.

fallen soldier

2011-05-20T14:14:00.002-04:00

The Macho Man died today. He had a heart attack (I would've forcasted that one back in the early 90's, but I dunno about today) while driving in Florida (OF COURSE he lived in florida) and drove into a tree and died.

This dude was the bossman of wrestling, my dads favorite sunday morning schtick, when I was a little kid. He clearly had a major influence on my outfits and street style later in life. Bummer town, dude.

Please, go snap into a slim jim later in honor of your homeboy, Randy Savage.
OOOOOOHHHHHH YEEEAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

2011-05-18T11:27:00.002-04:00

well pie crust dough babies sure are different kids than pizza crust dough babies!

you can't knead it much at all, you have to barely mix it, you have to let it "rest" all the time, i mean seriously pie! you so lazy! pizza dough rests, sort of, but it is chemically reacting the whole time! growing up, getting bigger.
anyway, my hands were too busy for photos.

i've never made my own pie dough, aside from simple crusts like graham cracker or whatever.

but it came out okay, looks wise. not the most perfect, but i'm not that stressed.

and it came out delicious. mulberries are awesome. delicious and FREE. i just have to walk a few blocks down to the park to pick em. no bigs.

maybe if i can finish up the pie i'll make tarts? i think i'll be sick of mulberries by then.

what do you do with all the leftover pie crust corners anyway?

2011-05-17T13:31:00.004-04:00

eh this weekend was too rainy. i had things i wanted to get done, but got hijacked by shopping adventures and general lack of interest. feelin real weird this weekend, i'll just leave it at that.
it would be sunny, then dark and rain, they sunny and horribly humid...in the morning on sunday or something i found my brussel sprouts covered in the most perfect dew drops.

i mean, c'mon! how purdy is that? perfect little round droplets on the stem tips of each leaf. nature, you so fancy.
the irises all started blooming, the ones from caitlyn.

i was expecting purple, so yellow was a really cool suprise.
also found another awesome click beetle.

beetles be creepin!

we were driving on some errand, i think to go buy a lawnmower part one, and passed the Skittles car. I love these dudes. theres a car club in town that is full of folks that customize their hoopties to different food or candy themes. so good. who's got the twinkies car, thats what i wanna know.

we were shopping at southern states for seeds and found that they had cats on sale. man it was really tempting, for $4.99 each cat would come with a complimentary basket. you just can't beat that kind of deal.
i walked the dogs to the park at one point and realized all the mulberry trees were full full full of ripe berries. made cobbler yesterday, and am makin pie tonight. maybe we can talk about it tomorrow with pictures...

went on a big adventure exploring, found some really rad secret things. i'm stoked on my neighborhood more and more, just wish my friends lived closer.

stu's birthday was yesterday, we celebrated with tacos and many desserts.

i wish i had been hungrier! shit!

this cake was so good...german chai chocolate? i can't quite remember what type of chocolate, but mah gad. so good.

the firepit flooded with all this dern rain, so we can't even have a fire. gad, will nothing exist that can cheer me up!!!!

hrm. hopefully i will just have an easy week and everyone will be nice and it will be great. lets just see about that....

2011-05-10T10:42:00.005-04:00

saturday after work i came home to clean gutters and nearly clean front garden area. i walked dottie, got chased by a black wolf, then put on workin' clothes and joined the landscaping party.
i found this awesome cat turd.

siiiike. its probably a sphynx moth chrysalis! wait, coccoon? no, chrysalis i think. anyway, it was oozing fluid so i put it back where i found it.
we raked and hauled all the crappy red painted mulch out of the bushes, and cut down the daffodills, and i found this beetle too.

he was really cool, until he soaked my hand in this godawful smelling invisible stink. so my hand stunk for the rest of the day.
we dumped the yard trash at the dump, then i went to a birthday cookout where i forgot to take any photos at all.
the next day i woke up and we went to yesterday's, this little mom n pop diner we've been meaning to check out. it was awesome, they have a dish called the four deuce, which is 2 pancakes, 2 eggs, 2 bacons, and 2 sausages. it did not blow me up! the indian couple that owned it came around to the tables and chatted with everyone except us. the check was from a chinese resturant, but thats cool, breakfast was really good and our intestines didn't die!

came home ready to do some serious sewing.

it was so nice outside though that i was having a hard time justifying sitting inside! so naturally instead i decided to have a pool party.

there was a lot of anger over control of the pool...dottie would get really really mad at egon when he tried to get in it. shes so grouchy.

don't worry, egon let it roll.

all that swimming led to wild running, even idle got in on it.

we decided, in lieu of the amazing weather, to build our firepit like we'd been talking about. andrew got to digging.

the neighbors behind us had dumped all their sidewalk slabs in the alley behind our house, so we decided to try to use them. i measured ones that were most similar in shape and started hauling them into the yard while andrew dug more.

um, they were massively heavy and really scratchy, so touching them just in general sucked. but i did it anyway!

the digging continued, because we needed a hole that was almost three feet deep.
the dogs were really great helpers the whole time, they specialize in standing right where you are throwing dirt.

we measured out some trajectory.

and realized we still needed to make it deeper, SHIT!

by this time we were just digging wet clay, it was heavy and stupid. we dug a trench in the hole to lay in the first slab.

at this point, the dogs had pretty much stopped helping. thanks a lot, guys.

first slab in, we really needed to remove another six inches or so of horrible clay.

clay is like, the coolest. it sticks to your shoes so your shoes get slippery and heavy and they fall off your feet constantly, and your gloves get heavy and soggy, and it coats your shovel so your shovel is EXTRA HEAVY so oh my god your arms that already hurt start going NUMB for cryinoutloud.
so we were making progress, even though we were really tired. dottie was being extremely rude to mr. idle, and idle was SO EMBARASSED.

she is in heat, it was an accident, i forgot to get her fixed and then BAM! she's creepy and doing things like that all the time. its almost over, don't worry, and then she will get her tubes tied.

so we got the two side panels in the hole, and were ready for the fourth and final piece after more digging, leveling, and cursing.
so oh, GUESS WHAT? the final piece didn't fit. so we chiseled it with a mini sledgehammer and a piece of rebar until it DID fit, gaddammit!

at that point we realized that lowering and moving the slabs in the hole was way chiller when you used 2x4s for leverage, so that was cool. we had things wedged and propped every which way.

and then magically, finally, we were finished.

we were scared that after all that work, that the pit wouldn't breathe properly so we really needed to give it a test run. we invited some friends to come by, how disappointing would it be if the firepit sucked?

well it just worked great.

we rolled logs around so we had a summer camp style setup, and had a rad night filled with s'mores and jokes.

i brought beds out for the dogs, and they all napped by the fire.

this was the start of a summer of many many campfires and grillouts in the pit.

last night we cooked hotdogs on it, and they were DELICIOUS. just you wait until we get a big grate to go on top, then its SERIOUS BUSINESS.

2011-05-06T21:02:00.003-04:00

Today i came home from work and was totally dissatiafied with my groceries. I ran out to the closest grocer, Food Lión, or "foooood leeeeon" as we say it here in fancytown.
There was hardly anyone there, as always, but there was a long wait at the one register open. In line, a man with very few teeth or maybe none at all started talking to me, and i couldnt even understand him. The second time he repeated himself, I got the impression that he was complaining about the line, or the cashier or the people ahead of us, so i just said "I KNOW THATS RIGHT", which made him laugh, so i guess it was the right answer.
I guess i was messing with my hair, mostly trying to get a knot out of it the the wind blew in, and he said, much clearer, YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT GIRLS THAT PLAY WITH THEIR HAIR.....
i looked at him and said, no, i dont? And he got all winky and raised eyebrows and weird, so i announced WELL I DONT KNOW ABOUT ALL THAT. And he laughed again, guess i was 2 for 2.
Anyway, dinner was much better with zucchini and ricotta. Heres a close up!

2011-05-05T14:16:00.005-04:00

derpa derp.

dottie continues to eat and poop normally, hooray!
things seem good with her, even though i'm crazy and have anxiety when i leave her for long hours of time now. cool, right? shit was so stressful, i can't even explain it.

so i've been hanging at home, sort of monitoring her. she was supposed to be crated and kept calm, and that is very hard.

i emptied my old garage rental in the fan and turned it over to a friend, who was really excited to set it up as a workshop space. nice to not have another monthly bill, but weird to not have it anymore cause i've rented it for the last 6 or 7 years.

the rest of the weekend was spent cleaning and setting up my own workshop space in the house.

i have a friend that is doing vernal pool research, sampling pools in goochland looking for a specific species of salamander but also recording whatever other wildlife she finds there. her partner sucks and hasn't helped with the project at all, and i told her i'd help. after many tries at meshing our scheduling, it finally worked out monday.

these dudes, spotted salamanders, lay their egg masses in vernal pools, which are sort of like tidal pools of the woods.
the pools fill with water seasonally, long enough for salalmander eggs (and toad and frog eggs too) to gestate, turn in to larvae or tadpoles or whatever, and slowly grow into adults.
there werent really any signs of masses or salamanders at the first pool, though we did see lots of snakes. i also found a real cool millipede wandering around.

on to the second pool we went.

these were the masses we found, there were craptons of em, and they were HUGE.
they were already hatched, and oddly green.

we looked around for a while trying to spot any larvae in the water, but the pollen on the surface, the glare from the sun, and the tannic nature of the water was making it really tough. finally i started just scooping up tub fulls of water that were close to rotting vegetation and lo and behold, little stupid salamander babies!

they kind of look like the flying dog dude from neverending story.

all the little ones were clearly the new hatched babies, there were shittons of em! every other scoop i'd have caught one. after a while, and moving to a sunnier spot of the pool, i started scooping up bigger ones. super cool! you could see their spots already, and their gills were reddish.

it was a good adventure, i needed it. been bummin laterly with work stress, home stress, and puppy dog stress. i'm really hoping that the moped rally picks up my chin and makes me stoked on life again.

2011-04-29T10:24:00.003-04:00

can i just say that this week has been so terrible? holy moly!
so dotties illness RETURNED and she barfed/liqued pooped (it was really hard to tell what end it came out of, ew) all over the bathroom Wednesday morning.

ran home from work and took her to the vet, our vet was closed and unavailable. $420 dollars later, we were rushing her to the emergency vet in a total panic.

her intestines were full of air and her stomach was not digesting her food from that morning, indicating a blockage. dogs, especially little ones, can become septic really quickly and die, so i was FLIPPING MY SHIT. surgery was gonna cost about 2500, plus the hospitalization bill, omggg could i sell a kidney or something?

we get to the ER and she's rushed off to the ICU. her stats are all normal, she's active and bouncy, but her guts are still full of air. they put her on 24 hour watch to see if the food will pass, because there is no visible blockage on the xrays.
-total sidenote, metal and really dense items show up on xrays. things like thread, fabric, wood, even peach pits, do not show up, so there was no telling what was up.

the doctor seems optimistic that there is no blockage, but her symptoms are so severe (her intestines were super bloated) that they can't be sure.

so 24 hours later, doctor sends her home. she pooped, she peed, the food and gasses all moved to her colon for emminent release. the gasses have been releasing and let me tell you, they are bad. knock you out, keel over dead stinky bad.

Oh. My. Gad. what a total stressout! i'm glad shes okay and there is nothing massively wrong, but we still have to hawk her for the next week or so. no playtime, no running, no fun, no good foods, no NOTHING. have you ever tried to stop a boston terrier from jumping and playing? its real hard.

so i'm instituting crisis level etsy status, gotta have a real productive weekend and try to fill up the shop. gotta sell stuff too. heres to tons of debt in 2011 arghghghghghghghgghhhhhhh

SO HEY! GO ETSY SHOPPING! or tell your friends to.
CLICKY CLICK FOR MAH ETSY STORE

2011-04-26T13:06:00.002-04:00

cheese and rice!
this weekend was almost awful.
dottie continued to get better over the course of sunday and monday, which was a big relief.

sunday was a million degrees outside. i sewed and tried to list things on etsy, but the computer was so gaddam slow i got frustrated and had to stop. dottie was hogging all the bandwidth!

sunday was easter, and i was happy to stay at home with my doggins. didn't feel like leaving them, at all, after all that near death constant throwing up/pooping water/eating poop water. gross.

i tended to the seedlings that are starting to grow, and i tied up all the daffodils around the front of the house that are getting long and floppy. they are now in neat little bundles.

i facetimed a lot, that is always eggciting.

well, ACTUALLY, mostly the dogs facetimed. they had some important stuff to talk about, like who wanted to go to KFC for dinner, or maybe they just wanted to show andrew how they looked when they ate. idle kept zooming in on his eyeball really close, what a turd!

in breaking news, goldfinches are coming to our bird feeders. thats exciting.!!!

so that was sunday.

then monday i resumed sewing and galderndit, i listed that stuff on etsy even though it took me all day. i just would click to load a page, then do something else while it loaded. seriously. i listed five items like that.

um, i started thinking about how i wanted my dreamboat lovely craft/creative space to look, and what crap i needed to store, and how to do it best while still looking cool. i am going to make a wonderful colorful beautiful den in the front bedromm and then i will never leave it. i will just stay there sewing and crafting and looking out the window. i can dream, right?!?!?!

i went to the most eggcelent southside thrift stores with Daina, and found some cool stuff. i was on the hunt for cool fabric, and shitcrap i got some!

also i got this, and was so stokered.

twenty five dollars!

it came with all kinds of doodads and doohickeys that don't even go with that particular camera, and some already shot 220 film. the one flash in the greenish leather case fits my minolta hi-matic F!!!! coinkidink!

i cannot wait to go take pictures with it, its super coooool.
it also weighs about a thousand pounds, so i'm looking forward to knocking someone out with it.

oh shoot!
also for a quarter i got this booklet about smashing the japs. ha! old timey racists!

its nuts to read, this world war 2 paraphenelia.

so thats that. back at work, bummertown.

2011-04-23T19:45:00.002-04:00

In the last three days I have:
-Washed/dried poop/vomit splatter covered couch covers/blankets twice
-washed puked-up-poop covered comforter once
-scrubbed vomit-wiped-all-over carpet once
-mopped all floors(covered in vomit splatter and smeared regurgitated diahrhea) three times
-sorted through a big bag of dog puke that i collected in one afternoon
-collected puke on dog walks and prolly earned the title of gross ass dog puke pickin up white lady from the hood kids
-chased my puppy around to wipe the stream of liquid poo off her fur twice
-endured the nastiest farts and stinkiest house imaginable
-picked up poopoo/puke constantly.

All because of this dumb dummy:

Lets just say im havin a bangin weekend.

2011-04-23T11:08:00.002-04:00

its funny, when you live "not in the city," how any little incident draws a shitton of cops. like, major drug bust in the city status, shittons of cops.
kids getting into a fight? 6 officers respond.

end result? two young ladies in handcuffs are ridiculed by the approx. 15 younger kids that gatherered to watch the fight. ladies are released to their parents, young kids disperse, cops leave, parents whoop ass, all kids resume hangin out on the street talkin shit. yup.

petsitting a couple days this week. its always cool at shanes house.

except that his big cat, also named Cutter, is sort of terrifying. just a FYI, the black n white cat is full grown, normal sized housecat. google "savannah cats." thats what Cutter is. he does things like jump from one side of the apartment (up top, in the loft) to the opposite side top of the kitchen cabinets. hes big, and agile, and playful. good lard. if he wasn't fat i'd be really really nervous, but as it stands he's kind of a bus.

in other news, egon is still too scared to get his toys out of the bucket.
maybe one day he'll learn its okay.

2011-04-20T12:15:00.002-04:00

So this weekend the swap meet got rained out, all that gaddern sewing I'd been doing for it has now accumulated quite a collection. PLUS, I just ordered a bunch of supplies to sew some fancy stuff with belts included...aka pouches with an adujustable webbing, real official shoulder bags, that kinda crap.

In the meantime, here's my etsy shop. Hit it up if you are in need of something new and fancy for this adventure season.

Dottie June

I'm going on a secret mission this Monday for new fabric...should be awesome.
Can't wait to make cool stuff!

2011-04-19T16:07:00.002-04:00

egg gad!
i wrote a long stupid complaining blog post about this weekend, but it was so gadawful to read that i just deleted it.
this weekend was a real let-down...we'll just leave it at that.

here's some pictures!

this week is starting off real rough. needs to get better or i'm gonna splode. people need to be a lot nicer.

2011-04-12T12:53:00.005-04:00

sad week. long time dog friend, Cutter, passed away last week. he had the cancer, and was going into exploratory surgery to see how widespread it was. maybe a leg amputation would fix it?
in surgery he started bleeding heavily and died right there on the table. too soon!

he was a good dude. friend to all of our friends puppies, he was a really solid dude. good and tolerant to all the puppy bullshit, and chill with idle when idle was a fresh rescue and needed dog interaction.

i'm sad. andrews' sad. chad's sad too. our friends are all sad, it was a rough weekend full of lots of secret tears.

andrew and chad buried him in a secret spot where we will all go visit. pile a cobble on his grave to pay respects.
saturday night i had a pizza party, everyone came over mostly to see chad, even though noone really talked about cutman.
stayed up too late for the amount of work to be done sunday.

we had to tackle all the branches from the tree chopping down spectacle, and haul them away.

we had to cut them up so they'd fit in the truck better, then fill the truck.

i made three loads to the dump, we took the rotten logs and almost all the sticks we could handle.
there is only a small pile left, after all that work!

idle found such a nice hole to lie in, hes a weirdo.
dottie found some grubs, she's voracious for everything.

they are really cool...hopefully they will turn into those awesome beetles i found with eye spots on em.

the drive to the dump was frightful, there was no rear vision to be had.

i mean, the whole damn bed was stacked high full of tree!

it was especially funny when i had to back up inbetween trucks and a big loader, to the edge of a cement cliff to dump my truckload.
this was basically the view to my back.

IT IS ESPECIALLY FUNNY TO GO DUMPING ALONE, when you can't see behind you and have to be fearful of hitting other people or falling off the cliff. you just have to guess, and stop a lot, and look like a fool.
everyone at the dump is very nice, gentlemen always help even though i never ask, and the workers there are especially friendly.
after a day of hauling sticks and yard clippings, i was a lovely shade of brown. sunkissed?

no, just dirty. a shower quickly washed away my lovely glow, bummer.
so, with the yardwork mostly done, i took sunday to chain myself to the sewing machine to get ready for this bike swap meet shit going on.
i made so much stuff!

this one is hilarious, it has secret pockets and is lined with the best tye die fabric ever.

and this one is lined with black velvet (oooh la la) and has a divider with pockets on each side, and a front pocket!

this one is sewn to expand outward and hold TONS of crap

and this one is designed for maximum snack capacity.

this one has a really cute button and is also lined with swanky velvet with a secret pocket

and this one is extra deluxe. pockets, all kinds of vintage trim, a nice bakelite button, and lined with velvety softness.

and i finished a tool kit for the lover of italian things.

again, lined with velvet for showing off your fanciest tools.
now i am back at work hell, and though it really isn't that bad, theres so much to be done at home that sitting here is making me slowly crazier.
hopefully i will get lots of things done this week after work hours....pffffft