7-7-2011

When I was a little kid, my mom tried to teach my sister and I Chinese by playing a cassette tape of weird sing-a-long songs. One song was about a mouse eating oil, but the one that sticks out in my mind the most was about flies being dirty. All these years later, I don't really speak any Chinese, but I did develop a permanent association between flies and filth.

I took a picture of this because it's kind of cool seeing such a perfect circle created unintentionally. I'm pretty sure this is bullet proof glass or something, but I don't know who would be shooting guns at an office building/Indian buffet.

My pepper plants are doing great. These are baby habanero peppers that grew from buds and flowers like this. I think some of these Thai chilies should start changing colors any day now.

7-6-2011

This is what I do with my Wacom tablet light while I'm waiting for clients. Yes, I know the lightsaber should be green, and he's wearing the wrong color shirt.

Totally unrelated, this is what a baby nymph grasshopper katydid(!) looks like. I hadn't seen one in so long (like since I was a little kid so long) that I forgot what they looked like.

7-5-2011

A penny shy of what I think gas stations are. I drive too much.

7-4-2011

Nothing says the Fourth of July like an abandoned red white and blue gas station...or family picnics with Nicole's family (who I have a policy of not randomly taking pictures of). Nicole made this though, and it doesn't get creeped out by me taking pictures of it. I also took a picture of this because it looks cool. Speaking of gas stations, this looks like a great idea right? Yeah, people in Cleveland are really into fireworks. I mean, who isn't? So we went to the half destroyed building by the bridge that I posted about last weekend to watch things explode.

7-3-2011

So beyond good parties and doing hoodrat stuff with my friends, this place also has a high Mexican population. That means really really good tacos. That means tacos for breakfast before before getting back on the highway and taking off to another state. This is foreshadowing for tomorrow. So the other day, I posted how Nicole's favorite store had brand labeled water bottles. In an appropriate correlation of relative scale, my favorite store has brand labeled water towers. Yeah! We're going to another Cabela's. It's a lot like the last store we went to a few weeks ago with the crazy taxidermy of stuff like elephants and bears and rattle snakes, so you can probably just read the 6-19-11 post for a better written explanation, but long story short...this store rules. This is the closest I ever want to be to a skunk. I like turtles.

So the main reason I made Nicole visit another store even though it was out of the way and we just went to one recently was so I could see the aquarium again. Seeing all these fish is pretty much my favorite thing right now. Look at these walleye eye balls and this albino catfish. Speaking of catfish, Nicole saw something weird hiding in the back corner of the fish tank. No one else noticed it because we were all distracted by all the other cool stuff, but luckily Nicole is better at looking at things than everyone else. So, look at this...this is a 4-5foot catfish living in a fish tank. I want one for my bathtub.

So Cabela's is actually a store, but this time we just looked around and didn't really buy anything. We did buy this penny for 50cents, and Nicole got a cheeseburger make out of elk for Cheeseburger Tour, but I doubt that pennies and food are their main target sales groups. Did anyone know that they still make Grey Poupon?

Ok, so I really don't feel like writing any more since I've been catching up on my stupid blog for hours, but look at this dancing lion, jumping cat, and this crazy scary wolf. Best store ever.

7-2-2011

I was too busy having fun again all day to take any good pictures. I did take a picture of people talking about some weird clouds until it got dark. I actually took a lot more pictures, but they're just for me to look at. I don't really feel like putting what my friends and I do all over the internet. We do buy delicious pizza though and you can see that.

7-1-2011

This is the first official pepper on my pepper plants. I actually just noticed that there are a few of them, but this one's the biggest and must have been growing in hiding for the past few days. I guess I must have just been distracted the past few days because I've been counting down minutes to get out of town to eat tacos all weekend. Actually, my friend Tony was DJing an out of town party. Party pictures are pretty self explanatory, so yeah...get jealous. We have more fun than you do. See, pictures of a party. My friends rule. It's no big deal right? I probably should have taken more/better pictures, but I was too busy having fun. That will actually be kind of a theme for this whole weekend. One thing that I did take a lot of pictures of was this lady eating and blowing fire because it was too much of a spectacle to ignore. Who does this or this in the middle of a crowded party?

6-30-2011

So I've been writing this blog every single day for the past year and six months. That's a really long time. I'm pretty sure that no one has actually read all of the posts (including me), but you may remember, last year Nicole and I went to an invite only, pre-opening party at Melt. All that really means is that I eat way too much grilled cheese, and have little to no filter as to what I will or won't tattoo on my body. You may have also read about how Nicole likes Anthropologie as much as I like Melt, and that we vist each store in pretty much every city we go to. Well tonight, we went to an Anthropologie invite only, pre-opening party (with the smallest, least intimidating bouncer I've ever seen). They also had fancy food and free booze (above). This makes for a much better shopping experience for the boys. As for the girls, I've never seen so many blonde girls named Lauren that shop on Etsy and only listen to indie pop in one place at the same time. Nicole had Christmas in July one day early.

Random, unexpected carnival picture.

Since I talked about Melt so much, we also went there for dinner with out of town friends and their walking baby.

6-29-2011

Bald-faced hornets are a notoriously nasty type of nasty stinging bug. This is their house. To quote Wikipedia, "Bald-face hornets will sting repeatedly if the nest is disturbed. Like other stinging wasps, they can sting repeatedly because the stinger does not become stuck in the skin." In other words, I'm pretty much an idiot for taking this picture.

6-28-2011

I think my career's officially "made it" when I get to photoshop my signature as the Secretary of the Treasury onto a dollar bill, and I have more movie prop money in my desk than real money in my wallet.

6-27-2011

Yeah, it's Monday, so I'm posting more pictures of my pepper plants. This is my first habanero flower though, and I thought it would be interesting to compare it to the flowers on my orange thai pepper plant.

6-26-2011

Today, I'm running my second 5k race ever. We signed up last minute because it's in a fancy nature tree place and we thought it would be pretty to look at while gasping for breath until our legs exploded and stopped working. From what I can remember seeing though the tears and hyperventilation, it was beautiful. As discussed previously, running with a giant camera is both impossible and stupid, so the picture of Nicole crossing the finish line above is all that you get. I took this picture of the awards in case a picture was all I get, but Nicole went two for two and won an award again. If you can believe it, I bribed this gnome to make me run fast, and I won an award too! Really, spend some time looking at that very special picture, because I'm pretty sure I won't be holding many other running prizes very often (if ever) again.

Since the race was at a nature place, I'm sure you're already expecting random nature pictures of things like snakes and mushrooms and frogs. You're right. What I'm sure none of us expected was what I saw when I got home and put the pictures on my computer. This is really gross, so fair warning. I zoomed into that frog picture 100% because I thought I saw something weird. Yeah, that's three mosquitoes sucking themselves full of (visible) frog blood while peeing(?) at the same time. Sometimes I think my camera equipment is a little too good. Here's some cool looking tree bark to make up for the gross picture.

After running and nature time, we went to bbbb-brrrr-unch where I quickly ate back all the calories I burned that morning plus a few extra. Don't judge me.

Back home, our fireplace mantle has fancy new additions!

6-25-2011

My cat is confused about how we got stuck in the TV.

I've written on this blog about my obsession with tacos probably more times than you're interested in. On top of that, I've written about this specific taco place multiple times. I don't care. This place is my favorite and I love it. I wish that this lady was my mother. Every time I've eaten here, she's been making tortillas by hand. Those tortillas are one of my top favorite things to eat of all time. Including things that my mom makes. My Mexican mom uses this wooden thing thing to make them that looks like it's older than I am. Oh yeah, and they have a keg of horchata. This is the best taco picnic with the best people I know. That's the only picture though because I was too busy eating the rest of the time.

I haven't posted any pictures of mushrooms in a while, but we saw those on the way to a street festival to walk around and look at our friend's art. Dear little girl, some day this photo will explain the reoccurring nightmares you will undoubtedly have as an adult. Please email me for an explanation when you're old enough. It will save you a lot of therapy money.

6-24-2011

Are you ready for lots of pictures? Because today, I met up with a bunch of friends on Cleveland's public square to watch my friends Bob and Amy get married on bicycles. Yeah, my friends are way hip and are down to have cool weddings that most people would be too scared to actually do. I'm proud of them. I guess a lot of people were proud of them actually, because they made national news and lots of people wanted to interview them. This was a great opportunity to jump into the background of shots with the best man. I probably took way too many photos of the ceremony, and I'm going to post a bunch now because I like them.

Stay classy.
They like looking at each other (which is a good thing if you're about to get married).
Girl ring.
Boy ring.
Aweee.
Bob is way serious about Amy being happy.
Kissin' scene.
Look, they're married now!
I'm pretty sure the guy pulling the rickshaw should have been Asian.
Rick Shaw.
Girl ring detail.
Boy ring close up.
Here's some random unrelated destruction if all the wedding pictures were making you feel too fuzzy.

Their wedding coincided with the monthly Critical Mass bike ride. If you don't know what that is, the few hundred people left in Cleveland that still own bicycles (and epic beards) get together to stop traffic and take over the streets. I didn't do a good job of showing how cool this part was, because I was focused on riding after learning from last summer not to do that while trying to take pictures...or very bad things happen.

After splitting off, we stopped at this gallery so I could take pictures of my friend's pictures before going to the after party to eat cupcakes. Nicole was a little bit interested in the cupcakes. She also had to take on the hard job of drinking with my friends since I was driving and there was a "No shots for Alex" policy in effect (she performed admirably). This concludes Bob and Amy's wedding (we think?). My cat Sienna says "Congratulations!"