12-2-2010

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (7-8) came back to town for the first time tonight to make this city look bad all over again (He's those blurry blobs on the TV). So to celebrate the occasion, I poured myself an extra tall pour and went to paint in the basement instead of watching. Sienna just lounged around. The paintings are starting to come around. I'm now somewhat optimistic about actually finishing them before the show.

Earlier today, I lunched with The Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings. That's two fantasy novel/movie references in one post if you're counting.

12-1-2010

I'm under the impression that terms like "winter wonderland" and "Christmas spirit" are really just coping mechanisms people use in an attempt to negate how absolutely horrible cold and snow really are. In the continuation of this theory, I'm pretty sure early decorations are the next manifestation of this psycho-climatological disorder, and extra excessive, over the top decorators are really people living on the brink of complete weather inspired mental breakdown.

P.s. I really do love Christmas time, I just really really hate cold weather.

11-30-2010

Remember the bike I got on 8-24? After months of Craigslist and eBay hunting, I finally got a pair of the black GT mags I've been wanting to put on it since I bought it. Considering I never win anything on eBay, I was pretty happy to win these. The bike looks much fancier now.

In other news, the 25¢ vending machine gifted me a mini-matching monkey to live on my monitor with my other plastic toys.

In other other news, there's only one more month left for this 365 picture project. I really can't believe I've made it this far. We'll see if I even attempt to make it a 730 picture project...

11-29-2010

Oh, hi! We're tearing apart (and vandalizing) our house again. Hopefully you'll see why soon.

Now I probably shouldn't be doing this, much less posting about it, but I think it's fun so I'm going to anyway. I was getting super bummed out about it getting so dark before I get out of work at this time of year. That is, until I discovered a new game called "Voyeurism." I noticed that my new lens can see super far and into the lit up windows of the office across the street. Have you ever seen the movie Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock? I'm pretty sure I'll eventually see a shooting or at least a fight or something if I keep playing. I'll be sure to post pictures when I do.

11-28-2010

I almost took a good picture today. Hopefully I'll be more ready next time we see a giant deer running at full speed down the highway along with traffic. That happens a lot right?

Today, we also saw Harry Potter, an old woman flossing her teeth with both hands while doing 65mph, and this store.

11-27-2010

Still painting frantically, I started my color layers today. Then we got dressed up to have second Thanksgiving at my family's. My family has a strong resemblance of features. I think it's something right under my nose but I'm not quite sure what. Second Thanksgiving had everything again. I had everything again.

11-26-2010

Black Friday is gross. Nicole and I did our best to avoid ravenous soccer moms beating each other up over $6 DVDs (though that would have made for better pictures), and went shopping in places where they sell fish with antlers.

At the beginning of the year when I was first getting used to not eating meat, all I ever wanted was grilled cheese. Now at the end of the year, all I ever want to eat is eggrolls. I feel proud of the fact that I've discovered the two most unhealthy vegetarian foods on the planet.

11-25-2010

Nicole made these sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving, then we went to her parents so she could help make dinner. This is what her dinner-making outfit looks like. This is what the saying "too many cooks in the kitchen" looks like. I just uselessly sat in the kitchen and watched the grown-ups cook the turkey and cut it up with an electric turkey saw. Since Thanksgiving is so much about the turkey, I decided to cheat today and eat meat without being guilty. Really, I decided to eat everything and not be guilty. See, everything. Then we drove home to teach Mushroom to be thankful for turkey.

P.s. I was not a part of that line of yahoos camping on the sidewalk in front of Best Buy in the rain. We just drove by to make fun of them and take pictures.

11-24-2010

I took the day off work today to paint all day in preparation for the show I'm in next month.

After Nicole got home, we reenacted one of my high school rituals of eating a ton of Taco Bell in the theater parking lot before going to a see a movie. We saw the new Disney movie Tangled which Nicole loved. There were even children so elated by the movie that they were dancing in the aisles as the credits rolled (super cute). I considered it, but I think I would have had a very difficult time explaining to their parents why a strange man with a moustache was taking pictures of their children at a kid's movie and what a "blog" meant.

Finally, Cleveland has very few things to be proud of, so when we have something even halfway good everyone goes crazy over it. Great Lakes Brewery's Christmas Ale is one such craze-initiating Cleveland thing to be proud of. As a non-beer drinker, I never really got into the hype, but gave it a fair shot tonight when we went to said brewery with friends (Hi, Gina). Yay! Wooo! At least I can palate this one, but I still think beer taste like stale bread water. Go Cleveland!

11-23-2010

11-22-2010

The super evil looking pod still looks super evil...especially at night.

(See 10-4, 10-13, and 10-26 if you have no idea what this is about).

11-21-2010

Although a topic of debate for the the last thirty years, it's still not dead.

This is do-whatever-creative-stuff-you-want Craft Night at my house with Tony and Barb. We drawed, painted (yes, I use a plate), clay animal maked, and filled an entire bottle with candy wrappers...all set to the best soundtrack ever. I don't think I've ever linked to other websites on here before, but check out tonypretomusic.tumblr.com and feel jealous that my painting sessions in my basement get a live set from a DJ this awesome.

11-20-2010

Remember the ring Nicole got in LA on 9-25 and the picture I took on 10-6? They've joined forces to create the nerdiest/cutest/awesomest cat super power ring ever.

I know I blog about/eat at Melt wayyyy too much for my own health and well being, but Nicole got this special Turducken sandwich that they have this weekend only. That's turkey, duck, chicken and bread stuffing grilled cheese, and probably illegal in most civilized nations.

Speaking of other things I do too much regardless of my health and well being, last weekend I posted about Four Loko (which has since been banned by the FDA). To make up for my trashiness, here's the ultra fancy drink of this weekend. Single malt, Cask Strength, OMGZ-best-Scotch-I've-ever-had-this-is-going-to-be-a-good-night-whisky-hooray!

My "because no one is making me wear them" tie collection is growing with $5 vintage ties from the 60s.

11-19-2010

I'm posting this as an extra picture instead of the main one, because I'm really hoping that my day will improve and that a yellow icecube coming out of the dispenser at work isn't the best picture I take all day, but grosss outttt!

So my day did get better thanks to Nicole's craving of Chinese food. A few days ago, I told her about a place I went to for lunch that put mushrooms in its vegetable eggrolls (pretty much the next step in the evolutionary chain of eggrolls), and she's been wanting to go there ever since. In addition to the mushroom eggrolls, they also advertise a vegetarian hot and sour soup (though after looking at hot and sour soup recipies, I'm beginning to suspect false advertising). Regardless, as a non meat-eating person, it's very difficult to find soup that isn't made out of a meat stock so it's very exciting to find places that have soups I can eat.

After dinner, we went to walk around the near by bookstore and have little-kid-quality fun. Inspired by Nicole's super weird fortune cookie fortune, we found a random book on the shelves and left a small note for whoever ends up buying the book. This probably seems really lame to read, but was way more fun than it sounds.

Also, since I have a t-shirt and jeans kind of job, I've been wearing ties just for fun on the weekends. This is only partially inspired by the movie Up.