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!"

6-23-2011

All ready already.

6-22-2011

These bugs are no ladies. I guess they just got bored and randy after eating all the aphids and drinking all the water.

6-21-2011

My pepper plants have have a (singular) flower! Both habanero plants also have tons of buds now, which is a big deal because they didn't really have any since the ground hog/deer/vampire ate them a while ago. Unfortunately, they also have aphids (above). More aphids than buds I think. We're doing something about it it, but I'll have to wait until tomorrow to show you.

I thought that I would have to wait until tomorrow, because you have to do it in the dark (to surprise the aphids in their sleep), but I bought a container of 1500 ladybugs to put on my pepper plants. Ladybugs are natural predators (they have heat vision and dreadlocks just like the movie), and aphids are their favorite food. Hopefully this works and the ladybugs don't get blown away, because there's a hurricane over my house as I'm typing this.

By the way, start expecting all together too many pictures of my pepper plants. I'm kind of obsessed with them, and I've realized it's really easy to take a picture of them on the nights when I just go running and don't do anything else interesting. Kthnxbye.

6-20-2011

It's Monday so this post is kind of a grab bag of me posting whatever I had on my memory card so I can go take a nap before running.

Even after being eaten, the buds on my pepper plants are starting to open up.

My coworkers that I go to lunch with are starting a new tradition. There's a new build your own frozen yogurt place by my job called Menchie's. In an attempt to do anything to make Mondays better, we've instated "Menchie's Mondays."

Sienna doesn't like Mondays either.

6-19-2011

So to celebrate Baby Lily's first full day of being one year old (while wearing the same kind of shirts that I always wear), we decided to have a Father's Day cookout. My father's favorite thing to do is to buy giant pieces of a cow so he can chop it up and cook it. I haven't eaten steak in probably close to three years, but hey...let's see what happens. We even had colorful steak colored plates and corn colored plates. Baby Lily is pretty neutral about steak.

Before we knew it, it was time to go back home so we could get back early enough to get a good night's sleep before work the next morning because clearly I'm a good and responsible employee...wait...what's that? We should take a long detour to go on an adventure?! Let's go!

Now for years, I've heard rumors and legends of a gigantic outdoors/hunting/fishing Mecca with a "mountain" inside the store. Said mountain is rumored to be covered with taxidermyed animals and be really awesome. I had never actually seen, much less been to one of said stores because they only exist in the middle of nowhere. Frankly, I doubted their existence and was thoroughly skeptical of their awesomeness. Well, I'm not ashamed to say when I'm wrong. These stores do exist, they are every bit as awesome as the legends say, and they are named Cabela's: The Greatest Store in the Whole World. My camera isn't capable of capturing the size and awesomeness of this store (no camera is), but here's my attempt at documenting taxidermy mountain. It was only fitting that we went here today since it was Father's Day and Nicole wanted to be with her bear family (they eat more meat than my family does). Here she is with her bear dad. All jokes aside...this place is amazing. They have real albino trout swimming around the floor, more guns than The Matrix, and for real sniper outfits. I've never seen so many guns in one place, and I've been to gun shows. Now I'm no gun expert, but I do know that this is the biggest sniper rifle you can get in Call of Duty, and you can buy one at this store. The taxidermy was like going to the Natural History Museum, but even more and better. I mean, they had an elephant, and a lion that is sad because it dropped its toy. There's also an art gallery-esque display of atypical antler configurations that was really incredible. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hunter (I did however buy that gun lighter), and I'm totally into animal rights and respecting nature (I'm sure you've noticed this trend if you've read my blog before), but if you're thinking that this place is unfair to animals, you'll be glad to know that they have a taxidermyed human on display too. I can't even talk about all the awesomeness in this store. I feel like I could be there all day and still not see everything, but a few things I did document...a huge arcade shooting gallery like the one I used to go to at the mall when I was a kid, every kind of hobo pie maker ever invented (except they were out of stock of the kind we wanted), and the biggest fish Nicole ever caught. Really though, I'm pretty sure my absolute favorite things in the whole place were the fish in the zoo-scale aquariums. It was like the zoo or Sea World, but instead of weird tropical fish no one cares about, they were giant versions of the fish that I try to catch (but never do). Nicole liked the tanks so much that she decided to go for a little swim before we left.

On the way home, we continued our bear adventure when we found the soda equivalent of moonshine in a vending machine at a shady rest stop. It was birch soda with no company labeling, and facts about bears on the back of the bottle. Obviously it was delicious. I didn't really take any pictures other than that until we got home to install our new real* bear rug. Look how ferocious he looks! Goodnight!

* "Real" meaning it actually exists as opposed to fictional or imaginary.