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.

5-17-2011

I had a weird experience this morning. Yesterday, I saw a fox in a field by where I work. This was pretty awesome considering that I work in a really over developed suburban area, and that I had just seen the baby foxes this weekend. I hadn't seen a fox in years, and now that I've been obsessing about getting a pet one, I've seen three in two days. In any case, when I went back to get a picture yesterday, the fox was already gone. So today, on my way to work I had the weird precognitive inclination that I should have my camera ready in case the fox was back. As soon as I made the turn onto the same street, I saw these three turkeys (who apparently think they're deer) crossing the street. I know that all the animals are being displaced by new construction in the area (this is the same area where I saw a coyote on 1-21-11), but if this keeps up, I'm pretty sure that I'll see a lion by the end of the week.

5-16-2011

So beyond being awesome to look at on our fire place, Nicole's new trophy was also full of lightningbug candy that glows when you pick it up. Totally unrelated, I did this at work today.

5-15-2011

So last (middle of the) night, we looked online to find out that I finished 24th out of 250 runners in my first race ever, but more importantly that Nicole WON HER AGE GROUP. FIRST RACE IN TEN YEARS. OMGZ #1! Since we totally didn't expect to actually win anything, we left before they handed out the awards last night, so today's entire mission was to go claim Nicole's rightful winnings. But first things first, it's Sunday and that means brunch. Today we kept it super classy and went to the Waffle House. I think I'm building a collection of pictures of Nicole drinking coffee out of various cups. We love diners. Especially ones with open kitchens so you can see them making your waffles. I'm also a fan of Casa de Waffle.

Now totally non-sequitur, a little while ago, I learned that it's possible to have a pet fox. This was revolutionary information. I've been obsessing about this almost as hard as I obsessed about a race t-shirt, and look where that got us. So today, when Nicole's dad left a message saying something about foxes (cropped so you can see them better), I got so excited that I almost exploded. Look at these baby fox cubs looking at you! How could you not want one of these as a pet? They're way better than something dumb like a bird.

Finally, after a day of random adventuring, we returned home with the spoils of Nicole being the faster than everyone else. For Christmas, we got a fireplace but it wasn't complete until tonight. A fireplace isn't a fireplace without a trophy on the mantle. Winning jokes are played out so I won't make one...but yeah, Nicole won.

5-14-2011

Mushroom season is almost over since the big blond variety are starting to come up, and they're the last kind of the year. That means pretty soon, my blog won't just be pictures of mushrooms and knives in the woods. I fully intend to hike just as much, but I'll probably post more pictures of nature stuff like snakes (posing with my new worst enemy "stinging nettle") and pretty butterflies. Until then, enjoy the few pictures left of my happy mushroom hunting face and the prized collections we bring home.

Other than mushroom hunting, we do a lot of strange and outdoorsy/athletic stuff that is sometimes hard to explain. Most recently, the focus has been on a lot of training for running. The real explanation for all of this is that I'm crazy. I get weird ideas in my head and then I obsess about them non-stop until I drive Nicole crazy. A while ago, Nicole had the bad sense to mention that if you run in organized races, a lot of them give away a t-shirt at the end as a prize for finishing. I didn't care if it was ugly, or how badly it fit...I then and there made a resolution to obtain such a t-shirt. So entirely motivated by the vision of a race shirt (and Nicole not wanting me to be unprepared and die), we've been training like crazy in order for me to be able participate in some sort of race. So today, Nicole wore her race-day flower earrings, I wore my trashy bandanna that I say is just for running/mushroom hunting (that really I just like wearing and will find more excuses to wear as the summer progresses), and drove out in the rain to find out just how much damage grilled cheese has done to my heart. We're running a 5K race! Running with a giant camera is a very hard and stupid thing to do, so sorry for the cellphone pictures. This is my prepared to run until I die face. Nicole made me start up in front where the actually good people line up (picture above...note the "pace bicycle"), because she used to run in high school and she's still super competitive. Taking even cell phone pictures while running a race is another hard and stupid thing to do, so you can just imagine how awesome it was running though the woods in the dark, around a marsh, and past a pond down a path lit up by glowing milk gallons. You can kind of see how the path looked in this picture I took of the path leading to the pavilion after I crossed the finish line. That's right, I crossed the finish line! And I didn't even do it on a stretcher. Nicole did too and just looked really happy and classy about it. I didn't flash photo the friends we ran with right after they finished because that's rude and I'm not married to them, but my friend Steve picks flowers when he runs. Now everyone says that they run to get to the finish line, but really I think they're trying to get to the pavilion. It had four tables full of all the things you aren't supposed to eat while you're training for a race like cookies and pizza so you could pig out immediately after said race. That's also where they kept the prizes that I wanted to steal, but Nicole threatened me and made me behave. Regardless, the race was a great success (mainly because I didn't die) and I got the glowing t-shirt that I had obsessed so long about.

5-13-2011

Things are starting to get really real for real.

5-12-2011

Look, my soup looks like it's smiling at me. I'm happy too because I got to go to dinner with two of my favorite people tonight (three if you count Nicole, but I always eat with her, so whatever). I didn't take pictures of any people though. I only took pictures of food...which are both made out of mushrooms. I take mushroom pictures even when I'm not taking mushroom pictures.

5-11-2011

I've become increasingly flippant about my non-meat eating diet. By "flippant" I mean that I'm willing to let a chance (gold) coin flip decide between eating vegetarian or a greasy cheesesteak for lunch. Besides, with all the running we've been doing, Nicole says I need to make sure I'm getting enough protein. And what better source of nourishment than fast food right? Speaking of running, it's been exactly one month since I started running with my iPhone app. In the past thirty one days, I've run this many miles. I think think that's more miles than I've collectively walked in my entire life previously.

Normally on nights when we go running, it means no mushroom pictures, but we were over achievers tonight and found a ton of mushrooms. No, seriously...a ton of mushrooms.

5-10-2011

I've had to work in another office recently. It's not my favorite thing to do, but at least I get to hangout with this wasp that poses in minimalist compositions. He reminds me of the Hedi Slimane Dior bee.

My lunch ruled. I wish I could make a living just for eating food outside in the sun.

After work, the sun decided to get weird and make the weather look crazy. There was a weird color and light over everything. While I was taking pictures of that, I finally got a photo that I've been trying to get pretty much ever since I got a camera. This one isn't nearly as good, but I'm posting it anyway because these shots are really hard to catch.

5-9-2011

This (at like four in the) morning, I frantically woke Nicole up to ask her what day it was and if I could sleep in or if I had to go to work. I wasn't very happy with the answer.

Today was a running day, so I wasn't going to post any mushroom pictures this post I swear. But Nicole surprised me and made a recipe I've been wanting to try tonight and I love it so much that I wanted to post pictures. We had breaded and pan fried mushrooms with roasted broccoli (another new favorite food) for dinner tonight.

5-8-2011

So this weekend, we've already been doing all of our most notable activities other that going to estate sales and antique stores (though we did get this blurry mahogany dresser from 1903 recently). Since it's Sunday, it's pretty much required that we go to (barefoot) "We're Glad We're Not Mothers Day" b-b-b-br-br-brunch. Sunday brunch is nice like a relaxing nap in the shade.

Look how pretty my yard looks. I don't just take pictures of mushrooms. Sometimes I take pictures of pretty stuff. Nicole is much better at this than I am though. Here are some pretty pictures of pretty flowers that she took. She took this picture of a squirrel and this picture of poison ivy too. Sometimes poison ivy can be pretty when it's growing all over a picturesque forest. Yeah, more taking pictures of each other in nature. We also found a ton of unexpected mushrooms. I also found this unexpected giant mushroom. It was like the mother of all the other baby mushrooms around it. So naturally, in celebration of Mothers Day, I cut its head off and took it home with me. Really we went for a drive to do more appropriate Mothers Day stuff. We took Nicole's mom to our favorite ice cream place ever. I've written about Jeni's on my blog before, but that was always in Columbus. Now there's one close enough to my house that I'll probably need an ice cream intervention by the end of the summer. I think Nicole would just enable me. After ice cream, we decided not to cook the giant giant mushroom. It got put on the side with these other special ones since I was cooking all of the rest of the unexpected mushrooms for a much more gratuitous application.

5-7-2011

We're still in the mode where all we do (other than make fires in my backyard) is go running (which is impossible to take pictures of...so you can just imagine how funny I looked after running seven miles this morning), find mushrooms in the woods, take pictures of them, and go on Cheeseburger Tour. So yeah, that's pretty much all I have pictures of. I guess this is kind of artsy and unrelated.

Today's Cheeseburger Tour is visiting Joey's South Side Burgers. We didn't know anything about this place before going there, but we thought it looked cool driving by so we figured it would be a good place to try. It is. I had an "All American" burger, and it was. Their burgers are simple, good quality beef with standard toppings...but made really well. A lot better than their onion rings, but I'm not holding that against them. I would definitely go back again.

Time for a million picutures of mushrooms:
I found these all by myself.
Nicole found this
This guy is little.
Sun beam.
Conjoined twins.
Really, they grow that way.
Hiding one.
Nicole is engaged to a mushroom.
I like how the grey ones look the best...especially when there are a lot of them.
I use my knife for scale when I find giant ones.
Bunches.
The blond ones are coming soon.

This is kind of interesting (to me anyway). You can dehydrate morels and they pretty much can last forever in their dried out state (even if they kind of look like shrunken heads.


Also, since I'm mostly shooting film in my Leica on the weekends, I took the opportunity to take a picture of my whole beloved Nikon arsenal all together.