Dogs and My Wife and Brother

I didn't take many photos this weekend.  Here is Buddy this morning on my desk.  

 My Brother and a friends dog in Another friends backyard.

 Frankie and Greta

Yes please I'll have an ice tea

Random Image Roundup

 I love how easy it is to put phone images into my blog now.  W/ googles auto backup feature it's really quick and simple and I don't have to take extra steps.  Here are my feet and my phone reminding me of where I parked at the UCLA campus while I was there last friday to scout the Pauley Pavillion for a an upcoming show.

 This is creepy and kinda scary and absolutely authentic.  The owner who showed it to me keeps it in his truck because he doesn't like it in his house.  I'm not so sure I'd like to have Adolf in my home or my car.

 This selfie was to show my beard to my injured boss who hasn't seen me much in a year.

 this is me feeding a cat treat to Frusciante with chopsticks.  What's more racist, the picture of Adolf or this?

 Angie and I play a game called "is it pee or is it apple juice".  Every time we see a bottle containing a yellow liquid we say... "is it pee or is it apple juice?"  then we say, "Spoiler alert, it's always pee".  While walking down to rehearsal with the Traitors the other night I saw this though... what is a man to think?

 There is a famous store in LA called Trashy Lingerie and their mannequins are busted.  

 A couple of weeks ago we went to celebrate a wedding anniversary at Largo and parked nearby.

 While killing time waiting I felt compelled to document their dead stares.

After seeing these dead eyes a man needs a beer.  Here's to another week passed and another new start.

Watching the watchers

I saw this on my way to work today. 

Vague Return Vol. .02

Pride, Ribs & Osprey

This past weekend was LA Gay Pride.  While we skipped many of the festivities we couldn't help but go enjoy the parade and some fun day drinking around weho.

 Watch as Devin enjoys bacon

 Angela and Dylan are posers

 Channing Tatum is somewhere in there

 Someone I voted for

 These are my first ever baby back pork ribs.  Yum!

 These are Osprey Aircraft landing ahead of president Obama's visit.  They are SOOO loud.  

I snapped this while on break at the studio last night.  enjoy.  

splits - age group champion

there was a time in my life when I wouldn't have been proud of times like this.  After a year of  reduced running tonight felt like a championship.

Splits

NAME

PACE

CLIMB

1 mi

9:51

72

2 mi

8:44

27

3 mi

8:18

4

4 mi

8:36

-132

5 mi

8:58

2

6 mi

9:05

21

For Summer Not Forever

So the final was a total bear the other night.  Nothing in the entire year of schooling had really prepared me for the level of soul crushing difficulty presented on that last test.  I think we did ok, but it felt like a mugging.

My uncertainty about next semester went away when I logged in to check and see if grades had been posted.  They had not, but logging into the LACC student web portal made me realize that I wanted to continue.  I selected a computer science course and added it for the fall term.  At least I will have the break of not having to physically report to campus this time around.

Friday night we attended an art opening which our friend Tiger had some pieces in, selected photos from the experience are below.  We ended the night at the Burgundy room having a few drinks with friends.

 Saturday afternoon we watched Ryan's kickball team get slaughtered and ran some random errands.  In the evening we watched Predestination, which I quite enjoyed and then called it an early night.

On Sunday we cleaned house and I worked on preparing our garage for the onslaught of stuff moving back from our space downtown.  We also went downtown and worked on things for a while then returned home to prepare for Game of Thrones night with tiger and Dylan.  I bought a couple of dough balls from the grocery store and made mushroom, garlic & basil pizzas.  They turned out rather divine, though next time I think I would like to make the dough myself.

Now I'm back at the work, grinding away.

Schooled

Wrapping up accounting 2 at LACC tonight.  This ends a year journey my wife and I have been on.  I really don't like all the time I've had to give up, or the person at times that the time stress has made me behave like, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.  I was just telling my sister today that I wish I had been in my late 30s in high school and my failed attempt at college.  This would have made more sense because I could have been 14-20 in my late 20s and early 30s, when I probably could have used the extra spring in my step.
Yet things happen when they happen and I am fine with how things are.   I'm considering what to enroll in next semester and leaning towards a computer science course.  It's hard to think about continuing to be short on time and long on stress, but I know it's worth while.

Life is on the brink of more changes and as always this is the only vague hint that will happen on this blog, primarily because not even I know what they will be just yet, I only know that they are coming and fast.

My brother is in Kansas today with the rest of my family, that's always a tough pill to swallow, I do wish I could be along.  I'll be content for now with phone calls and photos, as always.

4 Days ago I gave 30 days notice on our studio space downtown.  I'm sad to see it go but I know that it's for the best.  It's an expense that was always tough to manage and with the vague coming change it's best to be leaner and more budget wise.  So June will be a month of moving and re-arranging, my garage will probably be packed, but it will be nice to have all my tools close by again.  And perhaps the day when I'll have a proper home studio in a proper home may come sooner than later.

Self Portrait, Bunny Artist.

I've always thought this lovely bunny was just a destroyer, hell bent on biting through the world around her.  She eats electric cords and guitar cables and she chews on carpet and walls.  What I never noticed until recently though, is that it was never about destruction, it was actually about creation.  She is in fact an artist.  For your consideration I present her first fully formed work, a self portrait in plaster and paint.

It's amazing, is it not?

Life Lessons That Matter - Tire Changing

It is very often in life that you know the exact source of extremely useful information, but I do happen to know the origin of one such useful tid bit in my life.  The tale begins this morning, when I walked outside to my truck only to notice yet another flat tire.  I have changed a metric ton of flat tires in the past 5 years, and every time that I do I remember the little saying that most of us use to know how to tighten or untighten bolts and screws, and I remember when and where I learned it.

When we were in late high school and then for some years after Devin and I got in the habit of going out to our old farm house with friends on weekends to howl at the moon and have lots of fun.   These times were the best, we called them "wood stock weekends", I guess cause it was always a 3 day party in the country.

One Sunday after one such weekend I found myself with a flat tire on my good ole Nissan pick up.  I don't need to again mention how much this truck meant to me, but I will.  I had loved that truck ever since I watched it drive down the long driveway to the farm on the day dad drove it home from Beloit, KS (is that right dad? answer through mom in the comments since you never comment).  The truck looked just like the one that Marty Mcfly got in back to the future, and it served me well through more adventures than I can relate, though perhaps soon I should try.

Digression aside, my tire is flat at the end of woodstock weekend and I'm now tasked with my first solo tire change.  I'm sure Dad had gone over this task with me at some point, and I'm sure I had seen him do it multiple times, but I had never had to do it when dad wasn't around.  A drawback to having a really handy dad is that stuff get fixed and maintained almost by magic, and it's easy to learn to take stuff for granted.

So on my first ever tire change I find myself with sticky lug nuts, which made me question which way I needed to turn them to loosen them up.  My future cousin in law Natalie happened to be along that weekend and managed to be the first person in life who told me the rhyme, "lefty loosey, righty tighty".  Boom, lesson lived and learned.  I use that nugget still to this day when I have to change a damn tire.

Tracked Time Update

My Time Tracking experiment continues.  On Friday I switched from task timer to the light verision of Klok.  Even the light verision of Klok is a step up and it allows easily for the collection of stats over time, something I'm already putting to better use.  I have always enjoyed taking the first half hour after dishing out tech assignments to read local and some national news, along with whatever interesting articles I can find from a skim of stupid facebook.  I've justified this expenditure of time by calling it a job duty to be up on current events, however, my time tracking has revealed something undermining in this.  In just the last week and a half I was able to note that on days where this was my first activity, and that activity lasted longer than 15 minutes, I had noticeably less productive days.  So today I set out to put in a the first two hours of my day in solid work.  Then I allowed myself some time to see what happened in los angeles and the greater world.  Preliminary results show this to be a far more effective strategy at keeping me on track during my most productive hours of the day.

Get Klok here, don't but, just get the free version.

Tracking of the Times

I'm having a good week.  School has started again and with it my free time is limited.  On top of school and various musical projects I've made a vow to myself that I won't let LACC disrupt my fitness as thoroughly as it did last semester.
Lucky for me I have a new winter evening running route that is super challenging, beautiful and rewarding.  My biggest complaint with the time change is that forces me to only hit the canyons for serious runs on weekends, and weekend time is the first time to get gobbled up by life.  To that end I've started running up the steep streets of beachwood canyon.  From my door to the point where I turn around it's 3 miles of constant climb.  The view from just below the hollywood sign this time of year is a delight.  In the late evening it's foggy, and the lights create beautiful mist orbs to be seen across the horizon.
Here is the typical path I've been doing.

I've also this week started to do some time tracking.  On monday I started using this app Task Timer. I have to say that in just 3 days I can see a marked improvement in how I spend my time at work.  It's a commitment that I could see myself easily breaking from, because it can be very inconvenient to be reminded that you are wasting time when you really want to waste more time.  Yet there is something in me that loves records and statistics so much that I so far am motivated to continue in this new mode.
The concept is simple enough.  I have defined the ways in which I spend my time at work, between my actual job duties, the cooking and the cleaning, sanity breaks, lunch, things I hate doing, and homework.  I set pre-defined goals of time allotment for each of those tasks, and then I leave Task Timer open all day while I work and click start on a new task when I switch.  It's simple and it displays a pie chart at the bottom of the app, showing me in a glance where my time for the day is going.  
Task Timer is buggy though, and I don't like that it's not keeping stats for more than the day that I'm on.  So next week I will begin using a different app to the same ends, I just haven't figured out which one will work best for my needs.

Being back in school again made me curious to see my old college transcript.  It was pretty cool to see that I could request it, pay $9 and have the record of my lack of achievement displayed upon my screen in less than two hours.

Be well friends.

Almost like being there Pt. 1

I'm a happily married man as of 19 days ago.  I know many faithful readers of my blog would have loved to attend our ceremony and were not allowed to do so.  Trust me when I tell you that we love all of you so much that we decided to keep everyone away so as to avoid putting anyone out.  Now as one of the only 2 witnesses anyone of you know that was in attendance I shall do my very best to share with you and all of human history the data which you so desire.

The officiant of our wedding was Las Vegas Gene Simmons and he was AMAZING!

  image reposted with no permission but mad love and respect. 

Today as I was scanning some of the documents relating to our legal union, I realized that LV Gene had been cool enough to include his script of our vows in the envelope with the other documents.  Special points if you can tell me the number of Kiss songs referenced in said vows.  

Thanks for reading and look out for more.  

New Orleans pt. 3

 Friday Morning, 10/24/14 - After an honest good night's sleep we are back into the French Quarter headed for coffee and a cemetery tour.

 Angela is excited to start her 3rd day in New Orleans!

 Ross glances casually over his shoulder, all the while disapproving of the cargo shorts passing him on the left.

 In the streets of the quarter our tour guide under an umbrella begins.

 Here we go into Saint Louis Cemetery Number One.  For some interesting reading about burial styles and traditions in New Orleans go here.  This is pretty much what we were told on our tour.

Offerings left for an ancestor.

This is the future home of Nick Cage.

Modern legend states that wearing red lip stick and kissing his grave helps you with Tax problems.  Oddly specific huh?  Too bad he can't help himself with that.

Ross is gettin' Tomby.

This is the tomb of a false voodoo queen, so says the umbrella tour guide.

Somewhere in this cemetery are the remains of Plessy, of Plessy Vs. Ferguson fame.

 This horse wanted to say hello to all external mind drive readers.

 After the tour I waited in line to get Po'Boys for Angie and.

 And I walked past this place in the day time.

 We had some time to kill so we decided to ride the trolly car and see some parts of the city that aren't the quarter.

 hats and glasses.

We had to send this cute to go chardonnay cup shout out to adrienne.


After our Trolly Car adventure we had to head back to our room and begin the project of getting ready for the costume party.  Look for that in Part 4.