5-31-2011

So I've been waking up every single morning, driving down the exact same highway, parking in the exact same lot, and working in the exact same building every weekday for five straight years today. I would say sitting in the exact same seat, but I moved offices once (though I might have brought my chair with me actually). As a prize, I got myself a fat free frozen yogurt kids cone. This means a few things:
1) I'm really lame.
2) I'm getting really old.
3) Baskin Robbins doesn't sell alcohol.

5-30-2011

So yesterday I mentioned my love of 3d animated children's movies. I also posted a picture of my friend Joel, who essentially is Poe from Kung Fu Panda. The only logical result of this combination would be to have an interactive Kung Fu Panda marathon. We watched the first movie and Nicole cut up green onions when they cut up green onions in the movie, and we all ate noodles along with the movie. Then we immediately when to see Kung Fu Panda 2 at the theater, but I didn't take any pictures because that would be weird (I feel like I've written this all before like two days ago).

Since today is Memorial Day, I think the only right thing to do as an American is to have the first barbecue of the summer. I really love grilling things, but didn't really cook out all last year, because vegetarian barbecues kind of just aren't worth it. Now we haven't really been doing Cheeseburger Tour much recently (which is probably a good thing), but that's our excuse for me eating meat two days in a row (which is probably a great thing). Nicole made fancy looking caprese cheeseburgers, but I think raw tomatoes are gross, so I just took pictures of them and ate cheese on mine. I don't think giant marshmallows are gross at all. Especially when they're used as an ingredient in next level s'mores. I think I could probably just use a hobo pie iron to cook all of my food for the rest of my life and be alright with that.

5-29-2011

A great perk of "fair season" is being able to sleep in late then go eat carnival food for breakfast. Since we've been running a lot, Nicole has been encouraging me to eat meat...which means I get to eat all the horrible-for-you delicious meat things that I've been avoiding for the past year and a half (and buy food from bored Kanye West). I swear we live like kids with no parents. This is breakfast. There was also a parade for breakfast. This is Lee Unkrich and an Oscar that he won for directing Toy Story 3. He also directed Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo. If you know how much of a nerd I am about 3d animated children's movies, you can safely assume that this was like seeing a Bigfoot for me. This fireman looks like he would be good at editing. These firemen throw candy. Nicole doesn't like this type of candy that hit her in the shoulder, so she literally threw it back at the parade people. Here's another picture of (semi-dangerous) candy throwing. Nicole does like ice cream, but that would have been way funnier for her to throw at the parade people. I like carnival game people. Walking down the row of game stations was a little bit like walking down a row of cages at the zoo...but for interesting people. Also awesome...ride people and this lady's shirt. The game stations were lined down a path made out of straw and mud (that kind of smelled like the zoo too), so Nicole thought it would be a good idea to wash her shoes in a river by the waterfall. Also a good idea, having a girl dancing on a stripper pole for little kids to watch, and these little cars. Speaking of going places in cars, this picture segues well into where we went tonight.

I feel like all of my friends work at tattoo shops. This is Jesse, and today is his shop's three year anniversary party. I think the theme of said party was Icing each other. Since I can't explain frat party-eqsque drinking games nearly as eloquently as Wikipedia, you can read about the game here if you don't know what it is. Long story short, if someone surprises you with Smirnoff Ice, you have to get down on one knee and drink the whole thing as punishment. I would rather get shot in the face with silly string or take a nap in a creepy alleyway (which my friend Pete actually comes from Florida once a year to do in this one specifically). Speaking of friends, if the four of you that actually read this blog (yeah, we're up to four now!) ever wonder how handsome the rest your fellow readership looks, you'll be glad to know that John is now helping to raise standards. Helping to lower quality of life standards, here's a picture of a crime in progress. We kidnapped Snoop Dogg.

5-28-2011

This is a long weekend, so the schedules get all weird for us. Weird like fancy brunch on a Saturday and having cookies for breakfast (actually, that's not so weird). These porn-y sake glasses at an antique store street sale are kind of weird, but it was way weirder listening to old people talking about them. All of this pales in comparison to the weird/awesomeness of this lady's hair.

I like hiking and taking nature pictures of things like frogs and birds and flying bugs and turtles and other flying bugs and snakes. We actually just went out looking for snakes because I'm apparently building a collection of pictures them with their tongues out, but we were excited to find all the other creatures too. The turtle was especially happy to find Nicole because it was stuck between train tracks, and Nicole was willing to save its life and put it back into the water (which is something she's done on these same exact train tracks for a baby goose on 4-25-2010).

We also did a bunch of other stuff that I didn't take pictures of, like go to a movie (though I think it would be fun to take pictures of people's reactions to things while they're watching a movie). I guess watching Thor makes you hungry for junk food, because on the way home Nicole and I both wanted cookies for dinner at one in the morning. The Happy Meal toy was just because the window lady was nice (and probably thought we were crazy), and is also foreshadowing the next movie we're going to go see.

By the way, I had to research this, so I figured I would put it on here. My main picture today is a Six-Spotted Green Tiger Beetle. Its mouth parts cross over each other like scissors. You can read about it here. It's cool.

5-27-2011

Have I ever mentioned that I live in the Midwest?

5-26-2011

The weather has been really weird recently with tornado warnings almost every night. You probably don't know what the bridge above is supposed to look like, but it's pretty obvious it's not supposed to look like this. All of the weird rain makes rainbows though. Double rainbows. Rainbows that I eat.

5-25-2011

I have absolutely no interest in children. As a result, I have incredibly spoiled cats. So spoiled that they've broken two fresh water fountain things so far, and each time we get them a newer and better replacement. Now that they're on their third iteration, they've moved up to a stainless steel version that's much nicer than any of our real kitchen appliances. I really wanted to get a picture of Mushroom drinking out of it (because she pretty much refuses to drink stagnant water), but she pretty much refuses to drink when I want her to also.

I keep saying that the mushroom pictures are done for the season, but tonight we cooked the very last of the ones we didn't dehydrate. So this year, we've sauteed them in butter, made pizzas, and breaded and pan fried them. Tonight we made the last recipe we've been wanting to make. Cream of Morel Mushroom Soup.

5-24-2011

I often wish that I could just sit in the sunshine all day and read a paper with my pants rolled up.

Mushroom hunting season is pretty much a wrap for the year, but we still have to cook the last of them. Besides, I'm not sure my last pictures really showed just how giant these ones actually were.

5-23-2011

So a little while ago, Nicole's dad asked me to help him with a video for a running shoe company's contest. I was amazed to find out that our entry came in second place...but the real winner was me (and Nicole) because her dad got us each a pair of the shoes said contest was for. We promptly went out for a run to try them out, which was just as promptly cut short by a tornado siren telling us that the weather was going to kill us. I didn't see a tornado, but the torrent of hail was pretty impressive.

5-22-2011

Yesterday's festival was so much fun that we decided to go to more. Today is the Hessler Street Fair which I was pretty sure would be a People Zoo. I like going places to watch people. These are some of my favorite people. I think this is what happened to Guile from Street Fighter II. This guy in a pepper costume was actually really good at his job. He convinced me to go see this guy and look at their pepper plants. I'm now the owner of a Orange Thai pepper plant that I named Pepper Pots. After buying Pepper Pots, this guy was a good indication of where we were going next.

Now there's no such thing as an "every type of central European country put together festival" for Nicole (well, maybe there is, but it would pretty much just look like Ohio). So we also went to the Asian Festival to celebrate my heritage and traffic cones. There are lots of Asian people in Ohio (or that umbrella just just saying hello in Japanese). In addition to real Asian people, this was also an excellent opportunity for non-Asian people to wear ridiculous hats and participate in traditional Asian activities like sumo wrestling, standing in tents and smacking each other in the face (note facial hair), video games that involve synchronized dancing, dressing up like this, and of course the Chopstick Challenge. I love my culture. We also to got to go shopping in fun stores that sell dolls of Nicole and I. Actually, I really love shopping in stores like this because it reminds me of being a little kid in Chinatown in New York. My mom would always buy me these Chinese slippers every time we were there. I would wear them until they fell apart back home, then need a new pair the next time we went to visit. I always got the plain black ones (Bruce Lee style), but Nicole got embroidered ones with colors. We also shopped for other great markers of my cultural heritage like the cardboard take out container and the roasted ducks that scare white people. Now I grew up eating said ducks and think they're creepy, but delicious. I'm unfamiliar with this squid on the other hand and just think he's creepy. Finally, blending my two loves of Asian things and ice cream (really, dude...I'll be in rehab/fat camp by the end of summer), we got Mochi. These are little balls of ice cream stuffed inside rice dough stuff. Rock on.

After a full day of adventuring, we returned home to tend to my pepper plant. I bought it a house at an Asian grocery store, but it didn't have holes in the bottom and the guy at the garden center said that it would drown Pepper Pots and kill her. So I broke my Dremel Tool and saved her life. See, holes! While at the garden center, I also bought a habanero pepper plant and named it Iron Man (yes, I know I'm wearing a wifebeater and cut off jeans...don't judge me...I'm "gardening"). Now safe in their new homes on my front steps, please meet Pepper Pots and Iron Man. We'll see how many days they last before my bad gardening skills kill them.

After all my hard work shoveling dirt, we were very hungry for the collection of instant noodles we bought today. Mushroom picked which one she wanted to eat, and we made noodles with dried pork for Nicole and kimchi for me (we each bought buckets of said toppings today). The real best thing about Asian culture is the food.

5-21-2011

I went hiking by myself today to take pictures of snakes and toads and birds and butterflies. These are some of my favorite shots. Look at this over weight toad. This butterfly was nice enough to pose on flowers long enough for me to take some macro shots of it. Of course, I was looking for mushrooms too since it's just about the very end of the season and they're ready to go back into the ground until next year. You can tell it's the end of the season because the giantest huge yellow ones are out. These ones are so big and heavy that they were falling over by the time I found them. I'll be really surprised if we find many more mushrooms this year, but it was a really really good season for us.

I don't really have a story for this, but I do have a story of this picture. When I was a way too young to be this devious, I remember stealing a TON of Hot Wheels cars that changed colors in warm water. Clearly knowing that my mother wouldn't let me just have stolen toys, I had the (at the time good) idea to hide them in the plant racks in front of Marc's so I could "find" the cars outside of the store. My plan worked perfectly and I got to bring them home (though why my mother believed that someone would leave a pile of toy cars in the middle of racks of pansies I'm not sure). I remember when I came clean a few years ago, my mom refused to believe that I was that much of a criminal mastermind at that age and thought I was making it up...I wish I still had those cars. Speaking of my mother, I went to dinner with her tonight and ate this delicious food on a patio. Then we met up with these guys and Nicole for ice cream (I told you this was going to be a problem for me).

While eating our ice cream, I eavesdropped that there was a festival going on down the street. Again recalling childhood memories, when I was a little kid that did pajama karate (probably around the same age as my car theft spree actually) I was in the parade for this festival. Beyond that, I've written before about how Nicole and I feel about fair food like corn dogs (Nicole doesn't like Dexter ketchup on her corn dogs). There were also games that are fun to watch like the dunking tank. Even better than that, we got to watch fireworks.

Cue the Katy Perry song and look at these:
Boom
Boom Boom
Boom Boom Boom
Boom Boom Boom Boom
I'm ready for summer

5-20-2011

This guy wasn't too worried about the possibility of the impending rapture. I wasn't really either, but I think if it were to happen, going to dinner with Nicole for sushi would be a pretty good last meal before the end of the world. So much food and sake that the sushi needed reinforcements.

5-19-2011

I mentioned the other day how I've recently (and painfully) been made aware of the existence of Stinging Nettle. Since I hadn't previously known, about or what this evil plant looked like until it was already jabbing needles into my hand, I figured I would warn my three loyal readers about it (even though one of you is Nicole, and she witnessed my first, and almost immediate second encounter with said plant). These seemingly innocent looking leaves (and stem) are covered with hollow little hair sized barbs that inject histamine into you. Now I'm not going to pretend that I actually know what histamine is, but I do know that allergy medicines are "anti-histamine," so it's pretty obvious that you don't want a leaf full of needles shooting it into your bloodstream. If/when that happens, you're in for instant pain and poison ivy-esque itching. I flared up in some rad looking bonus hives which took a day or two to go away too. So long story short, if you see leaves that look like the picture above, don't pet them. Also regarding the picture above, I like it when I take a shot of something, then come home to find an unintentional surprise about it. This one made me jump out of my chair a little when I saw it full size. (Hint: top left corner)

So yeah, mushroom season still isn't quite over yet, but on our hike tonight instead of more mushroom pictures I made sure to take some "wow nature is so pretty," clothing company lookbook looking pictures.

5-18-2011

My car decided to get sick and have a fever today. Luckily we gave it glowing Ninja Turtle medicine before it exploded. We'll see if I make it to work tomorrow.