Embarrassing Photo Bank

I really don't want to lose this, so I'm going to put it here where I can always find it.  One of the moms was taking pictures at a sporting event and caught my friend Ben  [rode the RAM with me last summer] in a pose that can only be described as looking like some sort of "ass appreciation".  The little finger cocked forward on the guy in front of him makes it look like Ben is about to get a lapdance from some cowboyesque stripper in a populated gym  You go, Ben.

Miscellaneous Photo Montage

I have a lot of pictures left over on my camera.  This is Eryn and I at Ring Mountain enjoying ice cream and sending Wali a picture to prove we were there within moments of his visit.



Better if you go to Flickr to see it in full size.  A panoramic of Eryn at the Day By Day Cafe for breakfast.


In addition to Sign Makers, Kyle and I went to see Axe Giant: The Wrath of Paul Bunyan, involving a militia, a lot of guys with beards and mustaches, a very old Grizzly Adams, a violent Paul Bunyan with three times the average life span of a human, the grave of Babe the Blue Ox, and a Minnesota camp for juvenile offenders.  Worthy of Trash Film Debauchery, but put on as a private showing with the help of Twin Cities Beard and Mustache Club.


Our first round of The Farm Game, a gift from Kyle.  Our cows seemed to be committing hari kari.  Death by dog.  Death by car.  Death by lightning.  It was endless.


Allison on the Amtrak train on the way back from Grandma Madeline's funeral preparation.  We shared a sleeper car.  I bunked it.


A photo I sent my wife from Sidney, Montana, that Allison photobombed.



This was in the hotel in Sidney, Montana.  This is amazing and should be sold for $50 so everyone could make pancakes with the push of a button whenever they want.  My happiness at food in Montana was only superseded by a piece of rhubarb pie ala mode.  If there was a machine that could make instant rhubarb pie and pancakes, I'd be 80 pounds heavier again.


From Eryn's tenth birthday party!  We had a late party, post ballet season, so we could invite her friends and family to hang at grandpa's studio, drink root beer, eat fruit snacks and cake, and listen to The Sudden Lovelys, Paige and Danny.  Eryn played their song Waxwing Birds with them which made her very happy.  She dropped her pick at one point but recovered nicely.


I hope she felt hip having her party in an art studio warehouse with live music.  It was a lot of fun.  Hopefully made up for a bit of the annoyance from last year when I was laid up.

Chicago Photos - Things That Aren't in the Zoo

When Kyle, Pooteewheet, and I went to Chicago to see the Burlesque Festival, we stopped by the Lincoln Park Zoo (that's right, we left Eryn at home and then went to the zoo and her favorite restaurant) and wandered around the city in our search for pizza at a local Lou Malnati's.

Goethe, the Mastermind of the German People! No doubt his ability to control eagles was one of his superpowers. There was a nice statue of four people kneeling in a circle at St. Joseph's nearby. Kyle refused to stand in the circle so I could take a picture of him getting a BJ. And obviously trying to create that angle with Goethe wasn't going to work.


Proof that our hotel was incredibly fancy, or cursed. I don't recommend the Days Inn in North Lincoln Park unless you make sure they're not going to give you a room o the east side against the street. If it weren't for all the beer on Friday night, I wouldn't have managed to sleep. Pooteewheet had to go down to the desk to request ear plugs. To name a few of the sounds: people talking, bus revving, bus beeping, cell phone, drunk folks, fire engine sirens, many many honking horns.


I'm pretty sure this is racist in some manner. They don't post signs about Siamese Connections anywhere I've ever noticed in Minnesota.


This is for Eryn. Her hatred of Potbelly is a joke around our house, ever since she had the sandwich with the hot pickle on it.


It was nice of someone to tie all the pieces falling off the bike back onto the bike in a handy carrying tote.


This is cool. They leave the meters up for bicycles. I wonder if they'll do that with the new electronic/credit card meters when those are past life.

Holiday Photos

The holidays were busy. I was recovering from surgery, my folks were in town, and we had family pictures, Macy's, my niece's first birthday, Colin's birthday, other birthdays, Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, Christmas afternoon, New Year's... Nonstop festivities. So here are a few photos for the family.

I wasn't at this event. I was laying at home on the couch in a percoset fugue. Adele is checking out the sword I made for her Korean toll (?) where she picks an item and it determines her future. The sword wasn't the first item picked, despite my effort to make it very shiny and attractive to babies. Apparently I should have coated it with chocolate as well, because it doesn't look like it tastes all that good. I did send along some Hostess Cupcakes in case there was a repeat of the carrot birthday cake fiasco.



I can't believe my sword tasted worse than a used toilet stopper. Nasty.


We had the family photos at the Walker Sculpture Garden. Not in front of the big cherry, but in the arboretum area with the big glass fish. The photographer wanted me to help move some planters and I had to explain that moving concrete blocks was off my list after surgery. After the pictures, we went to Macy's to see the elves living in Santa's workshop display. Eryn and Ame' wore their matching dresses. However, Eryn later took a tumble on the escalator which ensured that her holey, bloody tights in no way matched Ame's.


Ame' doesn't get a lot of candy at her house. Grandma indulged her at Macy's. She's the Charlton Heston of candy fiends. You'd have to pry those bones out of her cold dead hands if you wanted to take them away.


Eryn at the company Christmas party meeting with the Clauses.


And one reindeer.


And getting her picture taken in front of the poinsettia tree.


Christmas before Christmas Eve. We opened our presents so we didn't have to haul them north of the cities and haul them back again. A good idea as the car was full on the way home. In this photo, Eryn is confused because she's just gotten a big bag full of rocks. Several of them.


Ah...a rock polisher. A real one that's designed to run forever and ever, not a Discovery Channel piece of crap which broke after three days and which my wife has hidden somewhere in the house so I don't have to look at it so there's no possibility of a divorce over my irritation with junk in the house and her irritation that I'm obsessed with getting rid of junk in the house, even that junk which she feels might not be junk.

All of which reminds me, it's (the new one) been running downstairs for a week and it's probably time to check the rocks.


Christmas Eve. My mother learning how to play Raving Rabbits on the Wii.


Ame's most hated game on the Wii. Raving Rabbits' pull the worms out of the rabbits teeth game. Only slightly less scary than Artie's new remote controlled brontosaurus.


A tap dancing fairy princess ballerina vetinarian. At least if you asked Lemony Snickett. Adele is somewhere under that pile of Jurassic Park.


Grandpa gets a hug for electronic battleship. And yes, my brother's tree does have some sort of problem that might best be solved by dropping some viagara in the water resevoir.


Artie wants to know where my face went. I'm wearing that hoody right now. It's creepy and super comfortable. If it were managerial, it would be perfect.


Christmas morning. Eryn is excited about the second part of the Lion, The Witch and Wardrobe series she got from Santa. She'd been wanting it since long before it came out. I don't believe, 12 days later, that she's watched it end to end yet.


Christmas afternoon. Cousin Max sporting his Obama shirt and talking to Santa.

Friendly Concern

Mean Mr. Mustard is going to Sunnyvale next week - he was telling me all about the travel details over our morning coffee run. I want him to be extra careful. Not because I'm worried a vampire or demon might get him. Those wooden stake jokes were just me being stupid and, after all, he's watched enough Buffy episodes to deal with that sort of problem handily.

I'm much more concerned he'll simply have his heart broken.

Denmark, Denouement

I thought I should finish off and post the last of my parents' pictures from Denmark, although I swear I'm starting to feel like a photoblog. I need to get in a new groove. It's making me grumpy. See...here I am, being all grumpy about being typecast as a photoblogger. I think I'll go do some pillaging in my longboat.


Nothing says love like the glint of light off some distilleries. It's so you can watch yourself drinking what's made inside.


I don't get it. Why does his leg go up like that? It's like it's part of his pecs. If I were built like that, I'd rip my nipples off every time I went for a run.


Bathrooms in Middle Earth. Orcs on the left. Hobbits on the right.


The JFK pub. Because nothing says Irish American like a bar in Denmark.


Girl kissing man humping goat humping man's head. That bottom head is almost like the one I saw in London. Although it looks more like the head that was under that head on the totem. Sort of gets around. Or maybe it bred, being humped by a goat and all. I guess Mr. Tumnus must have had parents of a sort.


An owl. Presumably taken for the benefit of my father in law, who's one of the great owl collectors of our times. Artistic ones - not real ones - I don't want to get him in trouble with the raptor center. I look forward to the day Eryn inherits his owls and my mother's ducks. No no...I'm not looking forward to grandparentcide...I'm just looking forward to some sort of weird battle royale like when the eagles fought in The Hobbit. We'll restage it with ducks and owls for YouTube.


You can't really see it unless you click through. But it's Damn Good Coffee. That it can drive to you wherever you are is definitely a point in its favor.


Hmm...Damn Good Coffee or Probably the Best Beer in Town. Choices, choices.


An interesting picture of an air raid shelter. I think those double doors are big enough to accommodate the Damn Good Coffee car. But then you'd have to leave behind the beer and the distilleries. Doh. It's a very scenic air raid shelter, which is almost ironic, except that in the end it's just pleasing that someone would use their air raid shelters so seldom they turn into pretty leaf-strewn mounds.


Ha ha ha. I laugh not at this picture, but at my sister, because I've made her sit through several posts and dozens of pictures just to get to the pictures she finally wanted to see. On the right is Katja, the foreign exchange student that stayed with my parents and sister (I was out of the house) when my sister was in high school. My folks spent some time in Denmark visiting. The last time I saw Katja was when she put the hurt on my brother at Grandma's Marathon. They weren't really racing, but he lost anyway.


The rest of the photos.

Swiss Cannabis Iced Tea

From my parents' trip to Denmark. They didn't say whether they'd swilled a few. Notice that it gives you a "fantastic natural feeling".

Retro Photo Blogging - Ming's House

I was just noticing that it's been like 3+ years since we actually hung out at Ming's house. I've been there since, but just on a stop over while we prepared to go biking on the Gateway. Here's his house in mid 2003. The part with the rocks - not the part behind the tape. That's his neighbor. The damage is from Ming beating on the edge of the house after they painted the Malaysian death number on the corner closest to him just to spite him.

Here's Logan and Eryn. Both of them very little compared to now.


Ming and Eryn. She'd obscure him if he were holding her now.


Logan riding a zebra. Based on Julie's love of animals, maybe he'll get to own a real one some day. And it will call into bed with Ming and sleep with it's butt on his face. "Litterbox" won't seem like such a silly nickname then, will it?