4-10-2011

The weather is nice again and I'm hanging my head out the window like a dog on the way to go look for more mushrooms in the woods. In the woods there are skunk cabbage which smell wonderful when you step on them. Little boys like looking at Nicole and I like looking at trains. Nicole likes looking at leaves. She also likes to find burried treasure and closly inspect it (note the clothing because we're going to have a few costume changes today). Someone didn't do a good job taking care of their baby. They had better hope the vultures don't scavenge it from the swamp or we might need to make it a memorial in the woods by it's house. Can you see the fly on the flowers? This is why we wear boots. Here's a picture of another false morel and a woolly bear (that does not look woolly at all). We've been seeing a lot of snakes in the woods this year. I love the woods.

One of the highlights of warm weather is pretending it's full on summer time a few months too early. Nothing is more indicative of this delusion than going to our favorite seasonal ice cream shack and getting the first cherry dipped cone of the year. This is serious (note costume change). I don't think Nicole likes me shoving cameras in her face while she's eating but I think she's used to it by now. I try to take pictures of other things too.

Costume change number three involved head wear and replacing the rubber boots with something a little more fancy. Nicole wanted to go to the Beachclub Pizza Bistro for wine and pizza (note this was mushroom pizza with truffle flavor...I think it's safe to say we're obsessed). And desserts and coffee. Did you notice "desserts" was pluralized. Remember those yellow flowers Nicole found in the woods? I guess she was wishing she picked some, but we were in a nature preserve, so she respectfully preserved the nature. Landscapers beware, your flower beds are not a nature preserve to me.

4-9-2011

This is going to be a lot of pictures, so get ready. Nicole and I both decided to collect outdoor necessities and go take pictures of the first nice day since...ever. We've been really into going to the same breakfast place on the Saturdays, because really, who wants to wake up and cook in a kitchen when you can go do outside stuff and shoot cross processed film instead. Cross processed film does however make breakfast look a bit like Dr. Seuss, and even something as wonderful as bacon looks kind of gross. Nicole uses normal colored film so I can't blame cross processing for looking kind of gross. Actually, today there will be a lot of pictures of gross stuff even if it's normal colors. Sorry.

Last year I posted about how we look for fancy morel mushrooms in the woods. The season is starting up again, so today in addition to walking and taking pictures, we're trespassing in the woods to hunt for mushrooms with friends. At least we aren't fishing too right? Trespassing isn't even that bad really. At least we aren't doing drugs. We're just looking for fungus but not that kind or this kind, or this, or that. Definitely not this one. This isn't even a mushroom. Actually, between Nicole and I, I think we found every kind of fungus except for the kind we wanted. Here are some of the ones that she found. She also found purple flowers, yellow flowers, and a cat (but not Mushroom). Other finds include a snake that Nicole caught, a snail, a tree that eat signs, a tree that hunts, a pair of sun glasses, a dinosaur, and another snake that wanted to bite me. These are all different reflections. Here are some birds, and this little speck next to the nest above the beaver dam is actually a bald eagle. Here's a hawk out of order since the eagle was so far away. These are all yellow ribbons.

After a break to take our boots off, we went to see Nicole's parents to play basketball and look for more more mushrooms. After a day of searching, I almost peed when I thought we found one, but no. This is a false morel and they are poisonous even though they kind of look like what we want. We hiked so much all day that I kind of wanted to sit down somewhere. This is Nicole taking a picture of me the happiest I've been in a long winter. I think she was pretty happy about the nice weather too. I originally forgot to add this sign to nowhere so I'm adding it now.

When we finally gave up on morels, Nicole reminded me that it was the weekend, which means Cheeseburger Tour. We went to The Erie Station Grill because even bears like it here. This is the second time today that the wrong film made good food looks gross but the cheeseburger was good and it even had mushrooms on it. Nicole's parents have so many morels that they even have mushroom statues. They were nice enough to give us a jar of dried morels from last year since we didn't find any today.

Then we went to my friend Rachel's birthday party which just so happened to be on dubstep night. I learned that punx not dead it just listens to dubstep now and hangs out with weird girls that accessorize with glowsticks. Aweee...birthday friend pictures. Then I slept like I was dead because I was. I can't believe how many places and how much stuff we did in one day.

4-8-2011

I'm going to go ahead an blame Catholicism for me ending up here and eating gross delicious lunch...and I'm not even Catholic. Thank you Lent.

Though the sushi hat and the slanty eyes may confuse you, Nicole isn't really making fun of my peoples. This is just how she gets ready to go running. After doing something healthy like running, we immediately went to The Happy Dog to eat unhealthy food and drink booze to make up for it. Gotta get down on Friday. I took a picture of the band. I'm glad I'm not the only nerd that takes pictures in every restaurant.

4-7-2011

This reminds me of when I was a little kid and my mom would send me to run laps around the (now abandoned) mall to burn off energy when she didn't know what to do with me. Legos are also very reminiscent of childhood.

4-6-2011

Defending the suburbs.

4-5-2011

This is one of the unexpected perks of being married when you're waiting for your dinner at a restaurant. Another unexpected perk is having a wife (drinking "the drink-em things") who is totally fine with eating (matching) candy before and after dinner. Cotton candy. Matching cotton candy.

4-4-2011

...or hell right?

This is on my desk at work. I have a bit of an Altoids problem. Today I opened up a new tin just for them to insult me. So I ran one over with my car (desk chair).

4-3-2011

This is almost 30 pounds of cat on my lap. They're both so interested in learning After Effects that they didn't mind touching eachother.

4-2-2011

This is a scan of a real crossprocessed film picture of a Hipstamatic (the iPhone app that everyone uses to make funny-colored fake crossprocessed pictures) shot of a roll of Fuji Sensia 100F slide film (the film that this shot was taken on). Brain explosion. No one else cares about this but me, but I'm sure I'll forget and wonder what I set the iso at later so I'm typing it here...the answer is 80. This nonsense however explains why the following pictures are all funny colored.

It's pretty obvious that Nicole and I like estate sales. It's a chance to go poking around in people's houses without trespassing. It's cool seeing crazy old things and interesting little details of people's houses that are only interesting because you don't see them every single day. We also like to find things to bring home (lamps and fake inlay tables). Our friends Jen and Chip also like estate sales. And brunch at fun cafes. And weird antique stores that have weird things and antique things. And antique store dogs. I like shooting film and since I had to pay to get these developed, here are a few more random shots. Cat picture. Random stuff I liked looking at. A bike. Anthropologie necklace and a fake Anthropologie catalog shot.

Back home, the fake inlay table turned out to be a (broken) music box table. Sienna took a look under the hood to see if she could fix the broken part. It was a team effort, but we now get to listen to music whenever we open the table. Since the table didn't work at first, I had to make sure my 30 cent scotch glasses worked ok. They work just fine.

This is the Taverne of Richfield. Yup, it's the weekend and that means Cheeseburger Tour. That burger looks pretty good, but it's missing something. They forgot my egg. This is a blue cosmo and a huge scotch. I think they forgot to stop pouring. This is a good thing. These guys forgot it's not the 80's anymore. This is also a good thing. Wind machine! This Van Halen cover band was actually pretty epic. Then we played darts. Is "played" the right word? Honestly, we mostly broke darts, but some people were actually good (it wasn't me). Every bar should have Girl Scout cookies to eat when you're intoxicated. Super Moon.

4-1-2011

Did you think I quit taking pictures for April Fools? I didn't. I've just been too busy/lazy to post. Sorry.

3-31-2011

We went back to Big Fun for their 20th Anniversary Party. This is Nicole eating cotton candy, Jen collecting our photobooth pictures, and above is Antoinette winning raffle prizes. This was very exciting. I also won raffle prizes which is amazing because I never win anything ever. I won a bunch of heart related things and Antoinette won fart related things. Prizes are even better when they rhyme. I had my own give away, and this is me leaving prizes for whoever is lucky enough to live in the random apartment I selected to win. I can't think of anything that rhymes with "half eaten cotton candy" though. We also went to a fancy theater for fancy drinks served extra fancy.

3-30-2011

It looks like I didn't have a picture for today, so I used one from Christmas, but really...no matter how bad the weather is someone always has it way worse.

I have gummy octopussesess.

3-29-2011

I'm pretty sure I've reached the next echelon of food nerd when Nicole gets me gifts like this...and I get beyond embarrassingly excited. These are actual bitty flakes of Tuber Magnatum Pico or white truffle. White truffles sell for over $200 an ounce. The whole truffle industry in general is really interesting and fun to read about on Wikipedia all night when you can't sleep.

We were going to save it all for a special cooking, but we got excited and Nicole poached pefect eggs to put on pasta with mushrooms. You only use a few drops at a time.

3-28-2011

Monday.